Heart of Darkness
[INT. PEOPLE’S CHURCH RESEARCH FACILITY, NY-ÅLESUND, NORWAY]
[TAPE CLICKS ON.]
[In the background, there is a steady racket of – what exactly, it is unclear, but something. It sounds rather like a dryer with a pair of shoes inside.]
BASIRA
Sure it’s this one?
ARCHIVIST
Yeah.
[A clicking noise – flashlight?]
ARCHIVIST
Tape recorder thinks so, too.
BASIRA
Right. Something’s coming, then?
ARCHIVIST
Could be.
BASIRA
No windows. Guess that makes sense. We still alone?
ARCHIVIST
I never said we were. Just said I couldn’t see anybody.
BASIRA
(noise of understanding) Oh, I thought you meant, like, See see.
ARCHIVIST
Oh – No.
BASIRA
We need to figure out proper terms for this. (background noises intensify) What are you doing?
ARCHIVIST
Closing the door.
BASIRA
Leave it open. We need as much light as possible, and I’m not seeing any bulbs.
ARCHIVIST
Right.
[The click of the flashlight again. The background noise is gone by this point, and we hear their footsteps as they begin to walk.]
BASIRA
Eyes peeled.
[Pause.]
ARCHIVIST
Was that a joke?
BASIRA
Yeah.
[Silence.]
BASIRA
Any clue where everyone is?
ARCHIVIST
Your guess is as good as mine.
BASIRA
Well, my guess is an ambush.
[The Archivist sighs.]
ARCHIVIST
I don’t know. Everyone back at the research base seemed pretty sure this place was empty.
BASIRA
And you believe them?
ARCHIVIST
They weren’t lying.
BASIRA
Wait – You – Did your –
ARCHIVIST
(overlapping) Oh, yeah, no, I don’t think they noticed.
BASIRA
So they were serious. It’s been empty for, what, a year?
ARCHIVIST
Bit more. As far as they knew, anyway.
BASIRA
So, what, this was another waste of time? Like that Church near [unintelligible – Dasan?] (under her breath) I’m gonna kill that son of a bitch –
ARCHIVIST
No, I – (inhale) I think it’s here. I – I, I can feel it, like a – hole in my mind.
BASIRA
They just left it here.
ARCHIVIST
I – maybe. (shaky half-laugh) Kinda wish Daisy was here.
[Silence, but for the footsteps. Then they, too, stop.]
ARCHIVIST
Basira?
BASIRA
Yeah?
[Footsteps resume.]
ARCHIVIST
Sorry. (shaky inhale) I know this isn’t – BEHIND YOU!
BASIRA
Down!
[Basira fires her gun, and hits someone, who grunts in pain. At the same time, we hear the sound of glass shattering – likely the bulb inside Basira and the Archivist’s flashlight.]
BASIRA
Don’t move!
[The person continues to grunt in pain. Basira and the Archivist move closer.]
[The unknown figure spits at them.]
ARCHIVIST
Oh. Charming.
[The person starts breathing faster.]
BASIRA
Who are you?
[The person just grunts angrily.]
BASIRA
John?
ARCHIVIST
Who are you?
[The now-familiar bass component of the Archivist’s static kicks in. The person has a brief moment of resistance before their name slips out:]
MANUELA
(resisting) Manuela. Manuela Dominguez.
[In the background, we hear the mid-tone range of the Archivist’s static fade out.]
BASIRA
Where is everybody?
MANUELA
(scoffs) Go to hell!
ARCHIVIST
(overlapping) Answer her.
[Big, booming static again.]
MANUELA
They’re dead. Because of you.
ARCHIVIST
Me?
BASIRA
(to John) What did you do?
ARCHIVIST
(hey!) Nothing, I don’t think!
MANUELA
Your Institute.
ARCHIVIST
(soft) What?
MANUELA
So she sent you to finish the job?
BASIRA
Who?
MANUELA
Your Archivist –
ARCHIVIST
I –
MANUELA
– Gertrude Robinson.
ARCHIVIST
Gertrude?! I –
BASIRA
(overlapping) That doesn’t make any sense.
ARCHIVIST
I, uh… (inhale) What. Happened?
[Bass.]
MANUELA
Don’t – Don’t make me, please!
ARCHIVIST
Tell me.
[Manuela exhales. The static intensifies. We start to get the mid-tones again, and nearly get all the way to the point where the highest shimmery overtone usually kicks in.]
MANUELA
Fine!… Fine.
[The static immediately begins to fade.]
MANUELA
And what do you wish to hear? Shall I tell you of the decades of preparation? Of the long wait for the eclipse? Three hundred years from the failure that birthed the thing that preached from the depths of Maxwell Rayner. The sacrifices made to birth the Dark Star that would make it all possible?
It was to be a week of night and horror, culminating in the eclipse that passed over Ny-Ålesund on the 20th of March, 2015, almost three hundred years after Halley’s eclipse passed over London. We had hundreds of sacrifices prepared and ready, plunged into darkness and terror for days on end. All prepared to culminate in the unveiling of that point of purest night at the moment of the eclipse’s height.
It would open the door to a world of true and holy darkness, extinguish the sun, and take us to a place where we would be redeemed of our base and corrupt need for light and warmth.
Maxwell was here, with me, prepared for our moment of triumph, and our churches around the world were ready, in those lost and forgotten places of worship, shut up and left in shadow.
Hither Green was, I believe, where your Institute was watching, but Natalie’s efforts were but a small and meager part of the greater effort. When they collapsed, it was as nothing to the grand ritual. Though… perhaps we should have seen it as the first sign of what was happening. But, we had no idea.
To begin our seven day feast, we slew the still and lightless beast, and drank of its stagnant blood, submerging the first of the sacrifices in the brackish water it had blessed with its stillness.
Maxwell plunged its claws into his chest, freeing the darkness within him, and we waited. And we sang. And we exalted in divine stillness.
The darkness was beyond anything that could be imagined, and even in my wildest experiments in the void of space, I could not have believed such a peace was possible, as I felt in the quiet whimpering terror of that place.
The sky was light, but we were well-protected, and we knew that when the sun was swallowed in eclipse, the darkness would be complete. We believed it far too late for anyone to stop us, and the crude methods of your Archivist least of all. The death of a few have never been more than an inconvenience, and that’s all she was ever really capable of.
You were not the first to try and stop us, you know. Not even within living memory. I was but newly joined when Lynette fled the church, and Maxwell had her silenced. But I remember her brute of a husband. He fed the beast for us, you know, when first he believed Lynette might still be saved. Then, later, we faithful served as his fuel to banish it.
But, not for long. That’s the thing about darkness, isn’t it? You try your hardest to eradicate, flood your surroundings with light, but it’s always there at the edges, waiting for the glow to weaken, to return and cover you forever. Robert Montauk discovered that the hard way. And someday, so will your Gertrude.
But we got so close. We touched it. There is another world, a world of still and quiet darkness, where no heat touches, and death cannot find you. You might wander beneath that empty sky of void forever, and never see a light to guide your way. No left, no right. No up or down. Only forward, into the crowded, shivering gloom.
For that night is not empty, far from it. Things move there, the sound of shuffling. Scuttling. Crawling. A scream. The fall of gentle stagnant raindrops that chills you as you try desperately to know if that is the sound of the storm… or something out there.
It is a world of the fear of darkness, and as I began to see it, I felt again that celestial terror that had not gripped my heart since first I gazed upon the pitch-black sun that I had created. The scream was mine, and it was joined by uncounted voices in fearful song. I was complete. It was so very close. We were to slice a hole in the world, and this paradise would flow through the wound like ink, smothering the sun, and all its children.
Maxwell had always had the visions, the drive. Whatever was inside him pulled him to this end, to this great undertaking, like a magnet, and I was so very honored to be his right hand. Natalie and the others followed, but they did not truly understand. Not truly, with their talk of peace and unity and Mr. Pitch. A friendly name, to try and hide from a concept they couldn’t grasp. Vardaan Darvish had an inkling, I thought, but he crossed a Montauk, which has traditionally gone poorly for us.
But as the hours turned into days, and the final dusk drew closer, it seemed as though all the uncertainty was washed away.
I don’t know exactly when it all started to come undone. I think Maxwell first felt the ripples four days before the eclipse was due. It was strange. Like a pause in the hysterical whimpering and fruitless prayers of the sacrifices. And a ripple that was felt through the waters, and the stagnant blood that bound us. A disruption. We would later learn that this was the collapse of the ritual at Hither Green. But it was only the first.
Our congregation in Alaska disappeared the next day, and Russia, as well. One by one, it seemed our scattered whisperers of night were falling, and holding it together, keeping the lightless world anchored to our star, bringing it closer, was becoming an almost unbearable strain on Maxwell. I helped as I could, but without knowing what was happening, there was little I could do to stabilize it.
I began to drown the sacrifices. Too soon, perhaps. But it worked, to keep it going, and keep it together, until at last, we felt it. The eclipse.
We had been worshipping in the deepest dark, and yet, when it crossed the sun, I felt it rolling over us, like a cooling balm on a summer’s day, plunging us into a deep, black void, far more complete than I can ever convey with mere words.
It was divine. And as we unveiled our new and absent sun, the sacrifices who remained screamed and fell in holy agonies, and the world of endless night we had been promised began to pour in, shining out and all around us. It touched and caressed our souls with the soothing fears of night, and I heard Maxwell weeping with joy at what we had done.
And then, it stopped.
It just. Stopped.
All at once, that loving embrace was stripped from us, and it began to retreat, to recede back into the place it had come from. (getting emotional) We were so close! (softer) We were so close.
I heard Maxwell cry out, scrambling desperately into the dark sun, stopping just short of touching it. But it was too late. Whatever it was that you and your Archivist did, it clearly worked.
We left, half of us dead, and the other half destroyed by coming so close to the true essence, (sigh) and being denied.
In my most wretched hours, I wonder – perhaps it was us. Perhaps we simply lacked faith. We weren’t worthy. The world wasn’t worthy. But – no. We were ready. We had earned our dark rapture. And we were robbed.
I don’t know how long we waited after that. It was weeks before anyone spoke. And then… when they did… the arguments began. The recriminations, the desperate resolutions to try again, to find what went wrong. But, I could see in his eyes that Maxwell was so very tired. And all the words fell to nothing. Instead, we began the search for his successor, a new host for his… continuation.
He would regain his strength, and we would plan our next move. It was difficult, though; the approaching culmination meant Maxwell had not prepared another host, and the search for another vessel was long and involved. Finally, about eighteen months ago, we found one: a child, whose father had, by coincidence, been directly marked by the Dark.
It was a desperate plan, but we were desperate, a shadow of what we had been. Maxwell left me here to guard the Black Sun, and everyone else left to help in his rebirth.
But it didn’t work, did it? I can only assume we were too weak to hide from you, and you struck when Maxwell was vulnerable.
For the first six months, I let myself hope that my suspicions were unfounded, that the silence I felt was simply… him lying low, recovering, before returning to his abandoned disciple.
But no. Soon enough, I could no longer fool myself. He had been slain, and I was alone.
And here I have remained. Perhaps I have told myself that I am preparing, gathering my own strength, and making plans to continue the church in his name. But I think in my heart, I have been waiting for this moment. For the final axe to fall, and finish the last remnant of our holy crusade.
And here, at last, you are.
[She sighs, breathy.]
MANUELA
There. Now you can kill me like the others.
[A sigh.]
BASIRA
She telling the truth?
ARCHIVIST
Yeah. I, I mean – Unless she can lie to me somehow. (inhale) You said it wasn’t the eclipse.
BASIRA
It’s not the time.
ARCHIVIST
Well. She believes it, at least. This doesn’t make any sense.
MANUELA
Well, where is she? Afraid to face what she’s done?
BASIRA
Just shut up.
MANUELA
(audible smirk) Coward. So, how did she do it? It’s been three years waiting, guarding this place without hope. At least do me the courtesy of telling me how she collapsed our moment of triumph.
[A sigh as she speaks.]
ARCHIVIST
You really don’t know, do you?
MANUELA
Know what?
ARCHIVIST
Gertrude’s dead. She died right around the time of your ritual.
MANUELA
(smirk again) Ha. So, stopping us took everything she had.
BASIRA
You wish. She was murdered. Unrelated, as far as we can tell.
MANUELA
That’s – Well – Then why are you here? Maxwell is dead. The ritual failed. What’s left?
ARCHIVIST
(inhales) A good question. (exhale) Basira?
BASIRA
You said the Dark Sun was still here.
MANUELA
(light laugh) Fine. If you’re so keen to take everything, undo the work of centuries, it’s just through that door.
BASIRA
John?
[The Archivist sighs. Static begins.]
ARCHIVIST
How dangerous is it?
MANUELA
Only myself, Maxwell, and Natalie could even look upon it. It will annihilate you both in an instant.
BASIRA
Ask her how we can destroy it.
ARCHIVIST
I know how. I just need to see it.
BASIRA
See as in…?
ARCHIVIST
As in… actually see it.
MANUELA
Go ahead. Just try.
BASIRA
(overlapping) Look, it’s okay, John. No one else knows it’s here. And if we just leave it, no one will know.
ARCHIVIST
No, I – (inhale) I’m doing it. (another steadying inhale) Get out.
[Basira leaves. The Archivist takes several steadying breaths, and then opens the door.]
[The Dark Sun sounds melodic, like pipes groaning harmonics into the wind, like the mournful notes of a creaking iron gate as it is opened for the first time in years.]
[An enormous rush of static begins building; it is not the Archivist’s static, is much too reedy and wispy for that.]
ARCHIVIST
It’s – It’s beautiful.
[The static overtakes the audio field; Manuela gasps and screams –]
MANUELA
No – NO!
[All at once the static rushes away.]
BASIRA
John!
[Basira opens the door and hurries back.]
ARCHIVIST
No, I, I’m okay.
[Something else shatters – there goes flashlight #2. The Archivist yelps. Basira shoots.]
BASIRA
Get down!
[She shoots twice more.]
ARCHIVIST
(breathing hard) Basira?
BASIRA
I’m alright, just – just one second.
ARCHIVIST
(background) Um…
BASIRA
Stay here.
ARCHIVIST
(after her) Look, I’m okay, I can help –
[But it’s too late. Basira has walked off, presumably in pursuit of Manuela. The Archivist groans in frustration. There is a relative silence, during which he catches his breath.]
[Then a soft static begins to fuzz in the background. It is one we know, one we have heard many times before. A door creaks open.]
ARCHIVIST
Did you catch her?
HELEN
Yes.
[The Archivist gasps: this is not who he had been expecting.]
HELEN
She needed a door.
ARCHIVIST
H-H-How did you –
HELEN
Oh, finding this place was easy without the darkness.
ARCHIVIST
Will… she be coming back?
HELEN
(thoughtful) No. Uh… This one, I think I’ll keep.
ARCHIVIST
Why are you here?
HELEN
I told you! I’ve decided to help. I thought you might like a way home?
ARCHIVIST
Another door?
HELEN
If you want it. (short pause) How was it?
ARCHIVIST
Hm?
HELEN
Looking upon the Dark.
ARCHIVIST
I thought I was going to die.
HELEN
You seem to think that a lot. I remember when you thought you were going to die at my threshold.
ARCHIVIST
Yeah.
HELEN
Go find your Basira. Then let’s get you both home.