Unwell Season 3/Episode 2- Talking with Ghosts
by Jessica Best
Now.
Work to do.
How do you know you're alive?
Content Advisories for this episode can be found here.
Support Unwell and HartLife NFP on Patreon at www.patreon.com/hartlifenfp
This episode features: Clarisa Cherie Rios as Lily, Kathleen Hoil as Abbie, Anuja Vaidya as Norah Tendulkar, Joshua K. Harris as Rudy, Abby Doud as Mason, Kat Evans as Stacy, and Michael Turrentine as Wes.
Written by Jessica Best, with post-episode scene by Bilal Dardai, sound design by Eli Hamada McIlveen, directed by Jeffrey Nils Gardner, music composed by Stephen Poon, recording engineer Mel Ruder, associate producer TH Ponders, Theme performed by Stephen Poon, Lauren Kelly, Gunnar Jebsen, Travis Elfers, Mel Ruder, and Betsey Palmer, Unwell lead sound designer Eli Hamada McIlveen, Executive Producers Eleanor Hyde and Jeffrey Nils Gardner, by HartLife NFP.
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SCENE 2.01
WRITING ON A CHALKBOARD. PAUSE.
RUDY: Hmm.
NORAH: What?
RUDY: You know how, the longer you look at a word sometimes,
the less it looks like a word? I’m getting to the point where
all these numbers are looking less like numbers and more
like abstract little squiggles to which we’ve arbitrarily
assigned meaning.
NORAH: That’s what numbers are.
RUDY: No, no, I see your point! That said, I think that’s enough for
ol’ Rudy for today. I’ve got a meeting tonight anyway, and
a fighting chance of being on time for it.
A PIECE OF CHALK IS SET DOWN.
FOOTSTEPS CROSS THE ROOM AND
HEAD DOWN THE STAIRS. WE’RE
FOLLOWING THE FOOTSTEPS.
NORAH: (CALLING DOWN) In all the weeks we’ve been working
together, I’ve never once heard you use the phrase
“enough astronomy.”
RUDY: (CALLING UP) Technically, you still haven’t!
NORAH: (CALLING DOWN) Pedantry is the refuge of tiny minds!
RUDY: (CALLING UP) Right as usual, Norah!
NORAH: (CALLING DOWN) Who is your meeting with?
RUDY: (CALLING UP) Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!
A DOOR OPENS. FOOTSTEPS OUTSIDE.
WE’RE STILL OUTSIDE THE
OBSERVATORY. AN OWL HOOTS.
BUSHES RUSTLE.
MASON: (IN AN UNDERTONE, PSYCHED) All clear?
STACY: (WITH LESS ENTHUSIASM) Clear.
TWO PAIRS OF SNEAKING FOOTSTEPS
CROSS FROST-COVERED GRASS.
STACY: (WHISPERING) Are we sure about this?
MASON: (WHISPERING) Tape on the lock, never fails.
THE FOOTSTEPS PAUSE.
STACY: (WHISPERING) I meant, like, ethically--
THE DOOR SLOWLY OPENS, TWO SETS
OF FOOTSTEPS TIPTOE INSIDE. DOOR
SHUTS.
MASON: You think too much.
STACY: Yeah, well, you don’t think enough!
STACY’S VOICE ECHOES.
STACY: Whoa, okay, that is pretty cool. Oh wait, hang on, hang
on--
A CELLPHONE IS FUMBLED FOR. FROM
THE CELLPHONE SPEAKER, VERY
GENERIC 80’S MUSIC BEGINS TO PLAY,
ECHOING STRANGELY IN THE
OBSERVATORY.
STACY: Music was made to echo.
MASON: Turn that off.
STACY: C’mon, it’s just getting to the good part, why-- (CATCHING
ON) No no no. We are not doing this.
MASON: We’re already doing this. We didn’t break into the
Observatory just to listen to your weird retro jams.
STACY: It’s not weird, it’s New Wave.
MASON: It sounds like one of those demo tracks on a keyboard.
FX: THE SONG IS SWITCHED OFF.
STACY: You’re so mean. You’re like, a mean person.
MASON: So you don’t wanna know, then.
STACY: Of course I wanna know...
MASON: Then you know what to do.
STACY: (SIGHS)
MASON: Come here.
FX: FOOTSTEPS, ECHOING A LITTLE.
STACY: It’s not gonna work.
MASON: And yet here you are.
STACY: Only because of peer pressure.
MASON: Sofia and her cousin tried it last year and they both heard
something. Are you calling Sofia a liar?
STACY: No...
MASON: Then what are you afraid of? Gimme your hands.
FX: THEY CLASP HANDS.
MASON: (WHISPERING) You first.
STACY: Ugh, why? (PAUSE) Okay, whatever.
(IN A VERY FED-UP TONE)
Spirits--
MASON: You have to close your eyes, and say it like you mean it.
STACY: Fine.
Spir--
MASON: Eyes closed.
STACY: Sp--
MASON: Deep breath. Think hard. Feel all the energies of the dead
surrounding you. Know that they loom on all sides, in all
directions, as far as you can imagine. They are here and
they are hungry, but they can be controlled if you are of
strong mind and soul. Breathe it in.
STACY: (SLIGHTLY SHAKEN) Uh-huh.
MASON: (KINDLY) Try again.
STACY: Spirits of the tower, let the sound carry,
Whisper the name of the boy I will marry.
PAUSE.
STACY: This is dumb, let’s--
MASON: Maybe nobody marries you.
STACY: Seriously, I don’t know why I hang out with you.
MASON: My turn.
(SOLEMNLY AND DRAMATICALLY)
Spirits of the tower, let the sound carry,
Whisper the name of the boy I will marry!
FX: A LONG PAUSE.
STACY: (MIMICKING) Maybe nobody marries you.
MASON: (FED UP)
Spirits of the tower, let the sound carry,
Whisper the name of the boy I will marry!
NORAH: I don’t know!
STACY: What was that? Mason, did you--?
MASON: (FREAKED OUT) No.
STACY: (SARCASTIC) Uh-huh, sure. What was that, oh Ghost?
NORAH: I don’t know who you will marry, and also frankly, I can’t
imagine why you’re so consumed with such things when
neither of you can be much older than thirteen!
MASON: What the--
NORAH: You have your entire lives ahead of you, years of schooling
left to discover what it is--
STACY: (TERRIFIED, OVERLAPPING) Mason, you’re...not doing
this, are you?
MASON: No, I’m not!
STACY: Jesus Christ, run! RUN!
TWO SETS OF FOOTSTEPS
FRANTICALLY RUNNING
THROUGH THE OBSERVATORY,
DOWN THE STEPS, AWAY.
NORAH: You came to me!
OBSERVATORY DOORS SLAM
SHUT, ECHOING. AN OWL
HOOTS.
NORAH: (TO HERSELF) And here I am.
Here I am.
TRANSITION
FLUENT TYPING ON A LAPTOP
KEYBOARD. KNOCKING ON A DOOR.
ABBIE: Yeah?
LILY: (THROUGH DOOR) Hey Abbie? Can I ask you for
something?
ABBIE: If you make it fast.
ABBIE GETS UP, CROSSES THE ROOM, OPENS THE DOOR.
I’m elbows-deep in a debate about proper gloves protocol
around antique documents, and things are starting to get
personal.
LILY: It’s about Wes.
ABBIE: (IMMEDIATELY) Come in.
FX: THEY BOTH TRAIL BACK INTO
ABBIE’S ROOM.
ABBIE: Any news?
LILY: No. That’s kind of--why I wanted to talk to you.
ABBIE: The lack of news?
LILY: Look, I have a favor--
ABBIE: You said.
LILY: It’s weird.
ABBIE: I inferred.
LILY: Things just aren’t the same without Wes around, and
Mom’s at loose ends, and I know he’s dead but he’s also
just a kid, out there by himself. I just want to make sure
there’s not something I’m missing, some way of reaching
out to him--
ABBIE: --so we’re going to the woods to talk to Silas, I’ll bring the
flashlight.
LILY: What?
ABBIE: The Reverend Silas Lodge? It seems like an obvious
avenue to explore, given that he said he could help bring
Wes back and you’re clearly comfortable enough to invite
him to Thanksgiving dinner.
LILY: I think we’re steering clear of him for just now.
ABBIE: Don’t tell me you’re going to start throwing around the
E-word, too. Black and white thinking is the enemy of truth.
LILY: I’m not saying he’s evil, I’m saying...I think that’d really,
really freak out Mom and she doesn’t need that right now. I
thought we could take a more hands-on approach looking
for Wes.
ABBIE: You want to ghost hunt.
LILY: I want to know how he’s doing, not mount his head on the
wall.
ABBIE: You want to find him.
LILY: Yeah.
ABBIE: You want to talk to him. You want to--hold a seance? Is
that where we’re at?
LILY: Abbie, just to remind you--
ABBIE: (OVERLAPPING) No, I know--
LILY: --to remind you that a few days after Wes vanished, you
told me, and I think this is a direct quote, ‘The next time I
dogmatically refuse to engage with the unknown, snap me
with a rubber band.’
ABBIE: ...which you’re not about to do...
LILY: Don’t have any on me.
ABBIE: In that case. Fine, yes, it’s been demonstrated to my
satisfaction that we live in a world with ghosts. But we also
live in a world with liars, and I’m still willing to believe that
the latter is more common.
Historically, when people have come forward about a
supposed ability to communicate with other people’s dead
loved ones, they’ve ultimately been discredited. The
seance has always been a blunt-force instrument of
misplaced hope. Let’s not repeat those patterns.
At least we’re not paying anyone.
LILY: Uh.
ABBIE: What.
LILY: I did pick up a few things on Spoodle.
ABBIE: Things.
LILY: Supplies.
ABBIE: Supplies.
LILY: They were on sale. We’ve got...
RUMMAGING NOISES THROUGH
A BACKPACK
LILY: --a digital recorder, infrared scanners, and an EMF reader.
ABBIE: So, the exact same things reality TV charlatans use on
manufactured horror shows.
LILY: For what it’s worth, they’re all top-rated in their categories--
ABBIE: There’s phony ghost hunter gear that works better than
other equally phony ghost hunter gear? How does that
happen?
LILY: Abbie, if that’s how you wanna do this, I can go find some
rubber bands.
ABBIE: No, no, suppose it makes more sense than buying the
lowest-rated--(REALIZES WHAT THEY ARE ABOUT TO
SAY AND IT PAINS THEM) ghost-hunting items on
Spoodle.
Can I respectfully ask, ‘Why me?’ Why not ask your
girlfriend? If ever there was a town where trying to talk to
the dead qualified as a fun date night activity--
LILY: I’m--giving Marisol some space. She, uh, asked if I’d
volunteer to help her with the Mount Absalom Craft Fair
Crafternoon.
ABBIE: (LOST) And that’s an issue because...
LILY: It’s not an issue. It’s just. In March.
ABBIE: And you’ll have left by then.
LILY: I don’t know! I don’t know where I’ll be in March!
ABBIE: And your plan is to...avoid your girlfriend indefinitely.
LILY: Not indefinitely. I was just caught off guard, and I need a
day or two to regroup.
ABBIE: Far be it from me to give you relationship advice.
LILY: ...but?
ABBIE: “But” nothing. Far be it from me to give you relationship
advice, full stop.
LILY: Besides, I’m not looking to make this a fun weekend
activity, I need someone where there’s no chance they’ll
get all into it and see stuff that’s not there.
ABBIE: You need to eliminate false positives.
LILY: Exactly.
ABBIE: You’re aware this will be an ordeal, right?
LILY: For you?
ABBIE: For both of us.
LILY: Yeah. I know.
Do it for Wes?
ABBIE: ...let’s go.
TRANSITION
LIGHT WIND SENDS THE WIND
CHIMES CHIMING HERE AND
THERE. NO BIRDS. WHENEVER
ABBIE MOVES, THERE’S A
“VVVVP” OF PUFFY COAT. LILY IS
WEARING A LEATHER JACKET.
ABBIE: Are you sure we couldn’t do this inside?
LILY: I’m not sure about anything. But the back porch was Wes’s
spot, and everything I could find online about contacting a
specific ghost said to find somewhere with personal
resonance-- (REACTING TO THE FACE ABBIE IS
DEFINITELY MAKING) --I know, I know, but that’s all we
really have to go off right now.
ABBIE: (PAINED) So, how do we--is there. A chant. We’re
supposed to say.
LILY: A chant?
ABBIE: To start us off. Something in Latin, for instance. (PAUSE)
Answering my own question, we have no reason to believe
Wes ever studied Latin, or that being dead makes a person
suddenly talk like an ancient Roman.
LILY: He was already dead. I think we just talk to him and then
use the equipment to keep an eye out.
ABBIE: Talk to him. What do we say that your mom hasn’t said
yet?
LILY: Anything we can think of?
ABBIE: So, just hucking spaghetti at a spectral wall.
LILY: Please, Abbie, tell me your better idea for how we get
through to him! If we’re really gonna try this, I think we
need to be prepared to feel a little silly first, okay?
ABBIE: Okay.
LILY: Uh, I’m gonna turn on the recorder.
A BUTTON IS PRESSED.
LILY: Here’s your scanner, and we’ll keep the EMF reader
between us so we can both check it for blips. (PAUSE)
Abbie, are you okay?
ABBIE: I am holding in--so many comments right now.
LILY: Hey Wes, uh, we hope you’re doing okay. We miss you.
Mom misses you especially. The ghost tours are a lot
duller without you, Mom barely--
ABBIE: Lily.
LILY: Yeah?
ABBIE: Maybe it’s a little insensitive to mention the tours,
considering--
LILY: (TO ABBIE) Right. Yes. (TO WES) Look, we’re all really
worried about you. Please come home. And if you can’t do
that, if you could at least give us some sign you’re okay,
that would--really be--great.
LILY AND ABBIE HOLD THEIR
BREATHS. NOTHING. THE WIND
CHIMES CLINK A LITTLE.
LILY: Do you think, maybe, the chimes--
ABBIE BREATHES AGAIN.
ABBIE: Ghosts may exist, Harper, but so does the wind.
LILY BREATHES AGAIN.
“Some sign you’re okay” doesn’t work for me, can we dial
down and get a little more granular?
LILY: Abbie--
ABBIE: No, I’m serious. If we’re trying to avoid false positives, we
should know what a true positive would even look like.
Wes, if you can hear us, if you can let us know that
wherever you are, you’re alright, can you-- (THESE
WORDS HURT ABBIE’S SOUL) spike the EMF reader
three times.
A PAUSE. LILY AND ABBIE HOLD
THEIR BREATHS. THE WIND
BLOWS. THE CHIMES CHIME.
LILY: Anything?
ABBIE: No.
LILY AND ABBIE LET OUT A
BREATH.
TRANSITION: AN HOUR PASSES.
LILY: Anything?
ABBIE: The same as when you asked an hour ago. Of course, the
only suggestion we have that ghosts can manipulate the
electromagnetic field comes from--
A DISTANT RUSTLING.
LILY: Do you see something?
ABBIE: Where?
LILY: In the trees? Point your scanner, over there. No. Over
there.
ABBIE: It’s a raccoon.
LILY: It’s the wrong shape.
ABBIE: Raccoons can stand upright. Have you never been on the
internet?
LILY: Oh. (IT IS IN FACT A RACCOON) Shit.
This feels like a dead end.
ABBIE: We still haven’t explored all our options.
LILY: Are you seriously up for more ghost hunting?
ABBIE: We shouldn’t base our investigation on any one source.
Do--this will be hard to say.
LILY: Take your time.
ABBIE: Do you know. Where we might. Find. A Ouija board?
LILY: Mom has one.
ABBIE: Wait, really?
LILY: She used to host a mini seance the night after Halloween.
ABBIE: In earnest? I can’t picture that.
LILY: And then she’d just use the board to spell out rude words.
ABBIE: Alright, I can picture that, but if, and for the record, I want a
lot of credit for saying this, if we’re trying everything--
LILY: I really don’t think a Ouija board is gonna break this open.
ABBIE: Why, because it’s made by the same company that puts
out Mr. Potato Head?
LILY: I mean, that doesn’t help.
ABBIE: The modern Ouija board is a commercialization of the spirit
board, which has actually been around since the
mid-nineteenth century. If the original does work, I don’t
see the Hasbro version working less, unless ghosts are
very concerned about copyright law.
LILY: Alright. Let’s see what the spirit world has to say.
TRANSITION. WE’RE INDOORS. THE CAT
CLOCK CHIMES.
ABBIE: Nothing.
LILY: Yeah, nothing, right?
ABBIE: Nothing at all. Do you think, maybe instead of getting lost
in the weeds of what we don’t know about ghosts, we
should be starting with what we can know.
LILY: What can we know?
ABBIE: We’ve met other ghosts, haven’t we?
LILY: Like, a disturbingly high number of ghosts.
ABBIE: Not that many.
LILY: How many ghosts do you need, Abbie?
ABBIE: If we’re doing proper data science, easily over a thousand
for a decent sample size. But that’s my point. I don’t think
we can approach this from a strictly quantitative
perspective. We need to gather qualitative impressions of
individuals. We need to go Studs Terkel on this.
LILY: Studs who?
ABBIE: Oral histories, Lily. Primary sources. The backbone of
history. Who can we talk to about being a ghost?
LILY: I mean, there’s Joey, but I haven’t seen her for more than
a second or two since I got back to Mount A. She might be
hard to track down.
ABBIE: Or easy, for Marisol’s niece.
LILY: Spikes is in Cincinnati.
ABBIE: There’s also Silas--
LILY: Let’s count him as a last resort. You said you talked to
Great-Uncle Tim--
ABBIE: --current location also unknown, since the Delphics got the
diner shut down. But that still leaves us with one ghost,
and we know exactly where this one is.
TRANSITION.
LILY: Hello?
ABBIE: Norah?
THEIR VOICE ECHOES IN THE
OBSERVATORY. AN OWL HOOTS.
LILY: Uh, Norah? Are you--around?
ECHO.
ABBIE: How long do we give her?
LILY: I don’t know, I--
NORAH APPEARS.
NORAH: He isn’t here.
LILY: What?
NORAH: Dr. Peltham isn’t here right now.
ABBIE: Where is he?
NORAH: Away.
ABBIE: ...away where?
NORAH: Do I look like your era’s definition of a personal secretary?
ABBIE: One, they’re called administrative assistants now, and two,
that job is extremely difficult--
LILY: Abbie, take a breath. Listen, Norah, if it’s okay, we actually
came to talk to you?
NORAH: Really.
ABBIE: We did call your name. Multiple times.
NORAH: You’ll have to forgive me, it seems like yesterday every
living person who saw me ran hard as they could in the
opposite direction, and now suddenly people are crawling
out of the woodwork wanting a chat.
LILY: We’re not here to make small-talk.
NORAH: Thankfully. (A BEAT) Then why--
ABBIE: We have a question for you.
NORAH: Oh, one of those.
LILY: ...does this happen to you a lot?
NORAH: (SIGHS)
AN ECHO OF MASON: Spirits in the tower, let the sound carry,
Whisper the name of the boy I will marry!
LILY: (STARTLED) Who said that?
NORAH: A local child earlier today who decided I could be used for
divination. I think I preferred being the town monster.
ABBIE: So you can replay sounds at will. Alright, sure.
NORAH: Ony sounds that happen here. I tend to the echoes.
ABBIE: (HOLDING ON BY A THREAD) Alright.
NORAH: Alright?
ABBIE: An anomaly of that degree would probably throw me into
some sort of an existential crisis if it wasn’t, you know, the
twentieth-weirdest thing to happen in Mount Absalom.
LILY: So, uh. How are you, Norah?
NORAH: How am I?
LILY: What’s it like, y’know, being--
NORAH: A brilliant scientist? An accomplished inventor?
LILY: Um.
NORAH: Ah. Of course not. You meant “dead.” You know, it’s been
so long, I might ask, what’s it like being alive?
LILY: Point taken, but--
NORAH: No, I’m serious. What is life like, as a rule?
LILY: Every person on Earth would have a different answer.
NORAH: Well then. I can only tell you what it’s like to be dead and
me. Do you actually want to know?
LILY: I.
NORAH: Do you?
ABBIE: That’s not why we came here.
LILY: Abbie.
ABBIE: Lie to ghosts on your own time. Norah. Have you ever
been to Julian?
NORAH: Why would you possibly care if I’ve been to Julian?
ABBIE: It’s for a theory.
NORAH: Ah yes, the soft sciences.
ABBIE: (UNDER THEIR BREATH) Soft in that they’re pliable,
malleable, useful to everyday--
NORAH: I’ve never been to Julian.
ABBIE: Oh.
NORAH: Why does that matter? I’ve been to Cambridge.
ABBIE: Really. Which one?
NORAH: Both.
LILY: Abbie, can we--
ABBIE: So you’re broadly aware of a world outside Mount
Absalom?
NORAH: I have been trapped here for over a century, I am painfully
aware of a world outside Mount Absalom.
ABBIE: Huh.
NORAH: What.
ABBIE: That doesn’t square with my theory.
NORAH: Then it sounds like you need a new theory.
ABBIE: Care to express your feelings on the soft sciences again,
or--
LILY: Abbie, come on. Look, Norah. We’re sorry to bother you.
Before we go, do you have any thoughts on how someone
might connect with the other side?
NORAH: You want to know how to talk to ghosts.
LILY: Yes.
NORAH: Besides the general speaking of words, I assume.
LILY: We’re looking for some way to reach out to Wes.
NORAH: Wes.
LILY: The young guy who came with us when I went down into
the pit, and then, uh.
ABBIE: Surely, this must warrant a place in your memory.
NORAH: He hasn’t been back since?
ABBIE: Do you think we’d be here asking you for help if he had?
LILY: (REPROACHFUL) Abbie...
NORAH: He could have returned and left again.
ABBIE: Well, he didn’t. You told him he was dead and he vanished
in a way that smacks of permanence.
NORAH: Because he didn’t know. Because you didn’t tell him.
LILY: We had no idea how to start that kind of talk.
NORAH: Again, by saying words?
ABBIE: Because it went so well when you did it.
NORAH: Don’t.
ABBIE: I’m sorry?
NORAH: Are you? Are you sorry?
ABBIE: I didn’t make him disappear!
NORAH: You are the ones who knew him. It was on you to find a
way to explain it.
LILY: I see your point, but he’s sixteen. Or, y’know, he was
sixteen.
NORAH: And?
LILY: That seems a little young to have the dying talk.
NORAH: A convenient line of reasoning to have about a being who
can’t age.
ABBIE: Do you know that for a fact?
NORAH: I don’t know anything concrete about this whole
predicament; it is very obviously not my area of study. I
didn’t even know there were others--
ABBIE: Alright, another false lead. I guess we go back to the
internet--
FOOTSTEPS START
NORAH: No. No. Do not walk away from me.
FOOTSTEPS CEASE
LILY: Norah?
NORAH: You came to talk to me, and now we are going to have a
talk. You knew about your friend’s death, and you hid it
from him. How was I to know you’d come to that decision,
to keep him from the truth of the world? Dr. Peltham told
me that the twenty-first century treated children differently,
that fairy tales no longer end with the little girl being
gobbled up for her curiosity. Was he wrong?
ABBIE: How did that even come up?
NORAH: You’ve met Dr. Peltham. He was very tired at the time. I
believe he was making some sort of point about wolves.
My point is--
ABBIE: You hurt Wes. Can you not let yourself even see that?
NORAH: Do you know what, for all those years this building was
abandoned, I actually started to forget about how people
act when they aren’t fleeing for their lives, how desperate
they are to fit you to their own needs. A fortune teller. A
tool you can put away like a slide ruler. A monster.
I regret playing a part in your friend’s disappearance. I
really do. But until you acknowledge that you played a part
too, I don’t see what good it does for you to stand around
blaming me.
LILY: You’re right, okay? We screwed up, you’re right.
NORAH: I know I’m right.
LILY: But what now? How do we make this better?
NORAH: I told you: not my area of study.
LILY: Do you have any guesses?
NORAH: I’m a scientist. I don’t guess.
ABBIE: Of course you guess. You form hypotheses, right? You
make an educated prediction and then you test it.
NORAH: I will say this: I don’t think there’s anything you can do to
make him come back.
ABBIE: We’re hitting diminishing returns, Lily. Let’s head out.
LILY AND ABBIE’S FOOTSTEPS
ECHOING DOWN THE
OBSERVATORY STAIRS
LILY: Uh, thanks for your time, Norah.
NORAH: Well, I have an infinity of it.
LILY: We appreciate you talking to us.
NORAH: The rude one doesn’t.
ABBIE: (SIGH) Thanks for ruining my only theory.
LILY: Abbie--
ABBIE: No, I’m serious. I’d always rather know if I’m careening
towards a dead end.
NORAH: Was that a pun.
ABBIE: Not intentionally. Lily, I’ve got one more place we should
investigate.
LILY: You do? Where?
ABBIE: What was Wes’s address again?
LILY: You’re kidding...
ABBIE: You can’t find a more resonant place than the childhood
home.
LILY: Alright, but I am not setting one foot inside there.
ABBIE: But how will we--
LILY: We’ll figure something out.
OBSERVATORY DOORS SHUT.
ECHOES.
NORAH: Why go to the trouble of talking to ghosts if you won’t
listen?
DOOR CONTINUES TO ECHO,
TRANSITION. FOOTSTEPS ON A
STREET. WIND BLOWS
LILY: We should be almost at the turnoff.
ABBIE: 1974 Oak Street. Classic Americana: name the street after
whatever you destroyed to build it. So what’s the plan?
LILY: D’you have your cellphone on you?
ABBIE: Yes.
LILY: Great, I’ll stand guard at the corner while you break into
the creepy ghost-house, and then once you’re in, call me
and put me on speaker.
ABBIE: You want to teleconference into a seance? Will that work?
LILY: How the hell would I--
ABBIE: Lily?
LILY: ...How long have we been almost at the turnoff?
ABBIE: You’re not saying...
ONE SET OF FOOTSTEPS STOP,
THEN THE OTHER.
LILY: I think I am saying.
ABBIE: This is Elm Street. Can you see the next street sign?
LILY: Uh, Spruce.
ABBIE: We didn’t pass it.
LILY: No.
ABBIE: It goes Elm Street, Oak Street, Spruce Street. I’ve seen the
maps.
LILY: Oh, for shit’s sake. We’re lost. (A BEAT) We’re lost?
ABBIE: We’re not lost. We know where we are. We know where
we’re trying to go. It’s just.
LILY: Gone.
ABBIE: Inaccessible to us, yes.
LILY: Is there a difference?
ABBIE: Maybe philosophically. Not my area of...shit. I really
thought this would--
LILY: It’s not your fault. You thought the streets would work.
What now?
ABBIE: I’m out of leads.
LILY: Back to Fenwood?
LILY: Sorry to drag you on this whole stupid wild goose chase.
ABBIE: Eh, not all hypotheses pan out. Even in the soft sciences.
LILY: Do you think we’ll be back in time for you to still get in on
that fight about handling old books?
ABBIE: I feel like the forum has probably moved on.
WIND BLOWS.
TRANSITION. THE WIND IS NO
LONGER BLOWING. DISTANTLY,
AN OWL HOOTS.
WE ARE IN THE OBSERVATORY
ABBIE (ECHO): You hurt Wes. Can you not let yourself even see that?
You hurt Wes. Can you not let yourself even see that?
You hurt Wes. Can you--
NORAH: Enough.
THE ECHO STOPS. END.
CREDITS PLAY
AFTER THE CREDITS:
WES WALKING THROUGH THE WOODS. A
COLD WIND RATTLES THE BRANCHES AND
TWIGS BREAK BENEATH HIS FEET.
WES: Not a ghost. Listen. Look. Footsteps. See?
Would a ghost have footsteps? Could a ghost
do...
A BRANCH SNAPPING OFF A NEARBY
TREE.
WES: ...that? (BEAT) Not a ghost.
CONTINUED WALKING. NEARBY, A BIRD
IS HEARD CHIRPING. IT HOPS CLOSER
TO WES, STILL CHIRPING. WES SPEAKS
TO IT.
WES: Hey. Hey there. Winter’s almost here. You
oughta get heading south, right? Or are you
one of those that stick around? I never
know.
CHIRP.
WES: ...you don’t even see me, do you.
CHIRP.
WES: I’m here, though. I’m actually here. I’m
still me. I’m still Wes. That means
something, doesn’t it? Even if I’m, if I, if
I died? (BEAT) I don’t understand! This
doesn’t make any sense! How am I...?
CHIRP.
WES: Why didn’t I know? (BEAT) Maybe I’m not
dead? Maybe it’s just, maybe my soul is
trapped outside of my body and I need to
find my body and get back inside it? (BEAT)
No. No, that’s not it. This is real. (BEAT)
But everything else was real too, wasn’t it?
I didn’t just imagine it? Can a ghost dream?
(BEAT) My name is Wes. I take care of Dot
Harper. My friends are Lily Harper, Abbie
Douglas, Rudy Peltham, Spikes Cabrera. And.
And. Was that...everything? Is that all I
am?
CHIRP.
WES: Chirp. That’s all you got for me, bird. Can
you give me middle C?
THE CHIRP OCCURS IN MIDDLE C.
WES: ...octave higher?
THE CHIRP OCCURS AN OCTAVE HIGHER.
WES: What. Is. Happening.
THE FINCH FLAPS ITS WINGS AND
ALIGHTS ON A HIGHER BRANCH. A
SMALL FLOCK DESCENDS ON THE TREE,
EACH CHIRPING AT THE OCTAVE HIGHER
THAN MIDDLE C.
WES: Hi. (PAUSE) How many of you are real?
THE SMALL FLOCK CONTINUES
CHIRPING, BUT DOES NOT OTHERWISE ANSWER.