[INT. ????]
[TAPE CLICKS ON.]
MARTIN
Right. (inhale) Martin Blackwood, archi–
[He stops. Sighs.]
Assistant to Peter Lukas, Head of the Magnus Institute. Recording statement number 0060122. Statement of Adelard Dekker,
[He seems to falter, slightly, when he says the name, possibly in recognition.]
taken from a letter to Gertrude Robinson, dated 22nd January, 2006.
MARTIN (STATEMENT)
Gertrude. Sorry I can’t be there in person to go over all this with you. I – still have a few things to clear up over here.
But I thought it would be best to let you know as soon as possible. I am now certain my theory is correct. There is something new emerging. A fifteenth Power.
I didn’t want to believe it either, not at first, but I was alerted a few months ago to the case of a woman named Bernadette Delcour. She works at the Faculté de Théologie, in the University of Lyon, and is an expert in eschatology, specifically failed apocalypse predictions. She had an encounter I believe is directly connected to the new emergence, and I managed to track her down. She was reluctant to talk, though I eventually managed to get the story out of her.
Bernadette had, apparently, received a call from a colleague in Paris about a discovery regarding Garland Hillier. Now, Hillier was a member of the Millerite movement, in upstate New York during the early 1840s. I don’t know how familiar you are with the Millerites, but they would eventually grow into the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
They followed a preacher named William Miller, who believed he had calculated exactly when the end of days was coming, and pinned it down to October 22nd, 1844.
Now, Gertrude, I’m sure you’ll have noticed that date came and went without any sign of Jesus returning, and Miller’s followers noticed the very same thing, calling it “The Great Disappointment.” Most of his followers stuck with him, and gradually turned into the Seventh-day Adventists, but Garland Hillier apparently took it harder than most, abandoning the movement and returning to his native France the following year.
He spent the next twenty years publishing widely derided collections of poetry, as well as essays on belief and atheism that were roundly ignored by the philosophical salons of the time. He was supported by several literary friends, as he was reputedly a gifted editor, even if his own work was often all but incomprehensible. Garland Hillier’s final essay, published in 1867, and simply titled “L’Avenir,” “The Future,” was supposedly a rambling and meandering speculation on the end of the human race, influenced by Darwin’s recent publication of The Origin of the Species, and his own shattered faith.
He posited a future where, far from any glorious or holy revelation or reckoning, a decadent and corrupt humanity was violently and utterly supplanted, and wiped out by a new category of being. One he referred to as “Les héritiers.” The Inheritors.
He gave no details on how he believed they might look like, or how they might behave, but his predictions for the final days of humanity were unpleasant and visceral.
The piece was not popular, or widely distributed at the time, and has, for the most part, been utterly forgotten by history. I’ve been unable to find any accessible copy myself, and have had to rely largely on Professor Delcour’s recollections of its contents, as she has the dubious distinction of being one of the few academics familiar with Hillier’s work.
Anyway, the point is that sometime after that essay was published, Garland Hillier disappeared. Exactly when this happened, no one is really sure, but the last records of his existence can be found near the end of 1867. No contemporaries commented on his disappearance, nor was there any search inquiry. But neither is there any record of his death or indication of emigration or travel.
Despite his dubious academic credentials, he was apparently a man who consistently attempted to court the public eye, and his disappearance has long been a puzzlement, if not a full-blown mystery, in certain academic circles for a long time.
So it’s probably not surprising that when Bernadette got a call from Paris telling her that some workman had discovered Garland Hillier’s apartment, it got her on a train almost immediately.
And it certainly was a discovery, in the most literal sense. On the fifth floor of an apartment building on the Rue Lagarde, near the Panthéon, some construction workers had uncovered a door that had at some point in the past been completely plastered over. Removing the covering and breaking through the old wood revealed another apartment, one apparently unnoticed by any of the other residents, or, indeed, the owners of those sections of the building, each of which had assumed the space was owned by one of the others, and connected to a different part.
As far as anyone was able to determine, the apartment had been sitting there, sealed and undisturbed, for almost a hundred and fifty years. It was untouched. Pristine. With barely a thin layer of fine dust coating the possessions and belongings that had stayed there for so long. A few objects identified the place as belonging to Hillier, including a short journal, and so the local authority, baffled as to what to do with this find, had called a history professor from the Sorbonne, who had passed it off to Bernadette, as she was one of the few academics familiar with Hillier.
She went immediately. While the confusion over legal ownership would probably keep the place in limbo for some time, Bernadette was also acutely aware that it meant there would be limited protections in place as well, and she was keen to see it before anything too drastic happened to it.
She got her wish, and her colleague even managed to supply her with a photocopy of the journal, though it made little real sense. It talked of Garland Hillier’s ‘new revelation,’ about the absolute change of the world in terms that seemed at first elegiac, but later seemed – almost panicked, with the final entry simply repeating the words “La porte est la porte.”
The door is the door.
Clearly his mental state had been in decline, and Bernadette said she could not help dwelling on the image of this poor man, his whole world shifting and falling away from him, lost and alone in his tiny apartment, gradually losing himself until at last, he lay down, and simply did not get up again.
But that couldn’t be the case, she knew, as there had been no sign of a body.
Bernadette arrived, and got into the building without any trouble, save for the five flights of stairs that needed to be climbed, and found the door unlocked. Monsieur Pinard, who had been supposed to meet her there, was apparently nowhere to be found, so she simply let herself in.
The place felt strange, she told me. Like a tiny pocket of another time. A bubble, where the world had never changed. And stepping inside she almost felt like she would never change, either. Even the light that came through the window seemed to be of a different quality, muted, and gentle. The street chatter of Paris, which usually reaches all but the most remote of windows seemed to vanish entirely. There was a sense of peace to it all, shot through with a strand of disquiet, a wrongness she told me she could not identify, but she could almost smell it.
The objects left within the room itself were, unfortunately, somewhat disappointing. While the clothes and household objects were in a remarkable state of preservation, none gave any insight into the life or fate of Garland Hillier. The bed was unmade, but seemed to hold no clues, and aside from the journal, there were no papers in the place that gave any useful information, save for a few letters from Hachette and the like, declining to print his essays.
All in all, Bernadette described it as intensely disappointing, at least from her perspective, since the only aspect that served to shed any further light on Hillier – his theology or his fate – seemed to be the journal, something she hadn’t needed to spend an hour and a half on the train to get to.
She turned to leave, and that, she says, is when she started to get the sense that something was wrong.
The door had been damaged by the builders who uncovered the place, and there were several distinct gaps in the wood, but as she walked back out, the door appeared to be whole.
She ignored it, and left anyways, trying to reason it all as a strange quirk of memory. Just “one of those things.”
Unfortunately for her, it was not the only thing that had changed. The walls of the stairwell were discolored, as though covered with a dusting of some faint yellowish dirt, and the stone steps were ever so slightly sticky beneath her shoes.
There was no sound, no sign of life other than the squeaking of leather as she descended, trying desperately to convince herself that nothing was wrong. That it had been just as quiet on the way up. That this building had always had a thick, humid feeling to the air.
When she stepped outside into the street of corpses, that was when her mind could no longer deny that she was not in any Paris that she knew, no matter what the architecture might have looked like.
There were hundreds of them, stood in place where they had died. Some fallen, a few kneeling. They were stiff, and desiccated, mummified by some process Bernadette could not begin to guess at, but that rendered their flesh like tightly packed ash. At least that’s what it looked like, as she dared not touch them. Those that had fallen seemed to have f-fused with the street, and some of it seemed to have been too close to nearby walls, were embedded within them.
Every single shriveled ashened face was contorted in a scream of agony, every sharp and jutting jaw cracked and twisted in an expression of horror. Of understanding not just of their death, but the end of everything they knew. It was clear that they had been this way for years, if not decades.
Bernadette says she was sure nothing had moved in that dead city for a hundred years. She was mistaken.
I have never envied you your position, Gertrude. I have never coveted your gifts, as I know the terrible costs that come with them. But honestly, trying to get a description of these… things, these… Inheritors from Bernadette Delcour made me wish I could just pull the image from her lips, like you would have been able to. In the end, she would say nothing of them, except that “there is nothing done in the history of humanity that deserves the things that come after us.”
She was more precise on her escape. Remembering Hillier’s words about the door, she had just enough time to retreat back to the apartment and barricade herself inside. Then, she waited until the entrance changed again, and she could emerge back into the world she remembered.
At least – that’s my interpretation of events. She was rather agitated by this point in the account, so – I believed it best to leave her to it. I may try to interview her again, later, though I have my suspicions she may find herself disappearing. She has that quality about her; I’m sure you know what I mean. O-of an unfinished meal. And I can only hope that when the second course starts, she can find her way back to Garland Hillier’s apartment once more. But of course the evidence suggests that, in the end, even he wasn’t able to.
Now, I know what you’re going to say, Gertrude. Odd doors are a sign of the Spiral; empty worlds tend towards the Lonely; and eschatology is almost literally the study of the End.
But this is different. I feel it. This fear is new. This is a fear of extinction. Of change. It used to be part of the End, perhaps; when the end of humanity was to be the end of all things. But now – th-the fear is not of a rapture or a revelation. It is of catastrophic change. A change in our world that will wipe out what it means to be us, and leave something else in its place.
Mankind will warp the world so much it kills us all, and leaves only a thousand years of plastic behind. Technology will strip us of what it means to be human, and leave us something alien and cold. We will press a button that in a moment will destroy everything we have ever been. Animals are witnessing the end of their entire species within a single generation. These are new fears, Gertrude, and a new power is rising to consume them. The Extinction. The Terrible Change. The Future-Without-Us.
I know you don’t credit my theories, and I’m sure you’ll have plenty to say on this one, but I’m going to need your help with this at some point, I’m sure of it. I don’t know how you can stop the birth of something that has no life, or mind, or… substance, but if anyone can figure it out, it’s you. I’ve never met anyone so gifted at understanding that – strange dream-logic of the fears, and if what I suspect about this new power is true, it could be catastrophic.
Until then, (inhale) I’ll keep searching for evidence, (sigh) trying to find instances and manifestations of the Extinction.
I’ll keep you updated. Stay safe.
Adelard.
[Martin sighs, statement over. Immediately, from the distance, the signature static of Peter Lukas roars in.]
MARTIN
So that’s it, is it?
PETER
It is.
[A couple of footfalls in the distance coming closer.]
MARTIN
A new power.
PETER
The Extinction, yes.
MARTIN
So – (sigh) – so what, you’re afraid of the competition?
PETER
Not at all. Honestly, that’s the sort of thing I normally relish; I’ve always been a little bit of a gambler, and the higher the stakes the better.
MARTIN
So – So this is, what?
PETER
This is different.
MARTIN
(sigh) I’m listening.
PETER
Good. It’s about time.
[Martin exhales.]
PETER
There are two powers that, to my knowledge, have never attempted to fully manifest. Never had followers set them up for a ritual. Mother of Puppets, and Terminus. The Web and the End.
The Web, I’ve never really been sure about. If I were to guess, I would say it actually prefers the world as is: playing everyone against each other. And so on.
The End, on the other hand… The End doesn’t really need one. It knows that it gets everything eventually, so why bother? The End manifesting would not be a new world of terror; it would be a lifeless world. Devoid of everything.
MARTIN
Including fear.
PETER
Exactly. It has no reason to truly attempt to enter our world; it’s – passive. But the Extinction… The Extinction is… different. It’s – active; it will seek to create a lifeless world, in a way that none of the other powers ever would. Some interpretations suggest it might replace us with something new – that can then fear annihilation in turn.
But I, and those like me, would rather that did not happen.
MARTIN
S-S-so, what, you want to – stop it being – born?
PETER
I don’t know if such a thing is even possible, but if it is, then yes. Or at the very least weaken it.
MARTIN
Okay, m, okay, so – so let’s say – for now – that I believe you. Hypothetically. Wh-what does this have to do with me?
PETER
I’m still working out some of the kinks, but I believe I have a plan. However, it requires this place, and it requires someone touched by the Beholding. Elias was, perhaps unsurprisingly, unwilling to help.
MARTIN
(unamused) And you thought that since I’m so lonely already, I’d be ideal.
PETER
Yes!
MARTIN
You see – The thing is, Peter, I’m still not all that keen on being a part of any ritual you set up. You know – In fact, if I were to be blunt, I’d say that it would be suicidally stupid.
PETER
(patronizing) Martin. It’s going to be decades, if not centuries, before I get another chance to bring Forsaken into this world. (deep inhale) Your last Archivist saw to that. Honestly, if Elias hadn’t killed that woman, I’d have been very tempted. I warned him she was danger, but he was always –
MARTIN
(overlapping) Peter, Peter!
PETER
(low) Anyway. (normal) The point is that yes, obviously, if I last that long, I’m going to try again. But I’m rather keen for the world not to end in the meantime?
[Martin hms, lets out a long sigh.]
PETER
Martin, this is what we agreed. After the Flesh attacked, you – came to me.
[Martin sighs again.]
PETER
And I’ve held up my end of the bargain, despite your continued hesitation. Your friends have been largely untroubled by the many, many enemies that they have made.
MARTIN
What about the delivery guy? Breekon. And the coffin!
PETER
Was that its name? To be honest with you, I thought it was dead.
MARTIN
You thought wrong.
PETER
True enough. And as soon as I learned it was here, I moved to intervene. But, well, it turns out I wasn’t really needed. And as far as the coffin goes, there’s not much I can do about a bull-headed Archivist –
[Martin lets out an annoyed sound.]
PETER
– who seems hell bent on self-destruction. My powers only extend so far.
MARTIN
Mhm.
PETER
Look. I’m not going to pressure you into doing anything you don’t want to. It won’t even work unless you’re willing to commit.
In any case, I have plenty of preparations to work on myself before it’s ready. I’ll see what else I can find to help with your reservations in the meantime, okay?
Just – don’t hesitate too long? We are on a deadline after all.
MARTIN
Fine.
PETER
Right. Then if you’ll excuse me, I have a family thing to get to.
MARTIN
Are we going to talk about John?
[Slight pause.]
PETER
Do we need to?
MARTIN
I – wh–
PETER
Because to be honest, I’m not entirely sure what’s been going on with him these past couple of weeks.
MARTIN
(overlapping) Oh, oh, yeah, (scoff) sure.
PETER
Martin. My patron – hopefully our patron, someday – doesn’t give me any sort of special insights. I’m not quite the accomplished voyeur that Elias was; I have to keep tabs on things the old-fashioned way.
MARTIN
What, turning invisible and eavesdropping?
PETER
If you like. But – I’m only one person, and I can’t keep an eye on everything.
MARTIN
Or – anything, apparently.
PETER
(long sigh, exasperated) As I said, one of the last shreds of the Circus delivered a gateway into Too-Close-I-Cannot-Breathe. I went to help, but was too late. Then, your detective friend –
MARTIN
(overlapping) No, she’s not a de–
PETER
(ignoring) – left on one of Elias’s wild goose chases. Then John willfully hurled himself into the coffin. I did not intervene because thankfully, I did not agree to protect your friends from their own idiocy.
[Martin huffs.]
PETER
Though actually, he gave it more consideration than I thought he would.
MARTIN
He’s not a moron.
PETER
…If you say so. Regardless, he’s in there three days and then what do you know? He manages to pull himself out of the coffin like a grubby Jesus, and he even brings a penitent thief along, in the form of your pet murderer. Does this seem about right to you so far?
MARTIN
Yeah,
PETER
Now, from my point of view, so far, none of this has been any of my business. We have bigger concerns than this little soap opera you call an Archive.
[Disbelieving sound from Martin.]
PETER
What does – puzzle me though, and I mean that genuinely, is – why you were piling tape recorders onto the coffin while John was in there. (brief pause) It’s a question, Martin, it’s – it’s not an accusation.
MARTIN
I don’t know. And I just – felt like it might help. He’s always recording, and I thought it – it might help him… find his way out.
PETER
Interesting. Were you compelled?
MARTIN
I don’t know. Maybe? I-I, I definitely wanted to do it.
PETER
But?
[Slight pause.]
MARTIN
I’m – I’m not sure where the idea came from.
PETER
You should watch out for that. Could be something dangerous.
MARTIN
Sure.
PETER
I can’t help but notice you’re recording right now?
MARTIN
It – was a statement, alright; that’s what we do.
PETER
Anyway. Point is, I’m not your captor or your torturer. I’m not going to tell you to stop talking to him, or even saving him if it comes to it. If that’s not a decision you’re willing to make yourself, me scolding you isn’t going to help.
[Martin scoffs.]
PETER
You know what the stakes are now, and I just have to hope that you’re with me on this. Focusing on the big picture.
MARTIN
(resigned) Yeah.
PETER
Okay! Now, I really am running late, so if you don’t mind?