[INT. MAGNUS INSTITUTE, ARCHIVES, JOHN’S OFFICE]
[TAPE CLICKS ON.]
ARCHIVIST
Uh – not really; I was just going to record a statement. Why?
MELANIE
Well… (sigh) Daisy’s been, um… I’ve been keeping her company, uh, while, while Basira’s busy. She’s, um…
ARCHIVIST
(overlapping) Oh! No, I, uh, I know.
MELANIE
Well. I’ve kinda got to… uh. (inhale) I’ve got somewhere to be. Do you mind if – if she hangs around with…?
ARCHIVIST
Uh, I suppose – Not at all. She’s very welcome.
MELANIE
Great.
ARCHIVIST
If you don’t mind me asking – where are you off to?
[Unfortunately for both of them, the Archivist’s signature static rumbles low in the background as he speaks.]
MELANIE
Therapy. (surprised inhale) Wait…
ARCHIVIST
Oh – Oh god, Melanie, I, I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to –
[Melanie lets out a very annoyed, very “not this again” sigh.]
MELANIE
It’s fine. I would probably have told you eventually anyway.
ARCHIVIST
E-Even so, I shouldn’t have – I –
MELANIE
(overlapping) Just forget it.
[She sighs.]
ARCHIVIST
It’s good though. I-I’m glad you’re getting help.
MELANIE
Yes, well. We’ll see. (inhale) There’s a – a lot of crap therapists out there.
ARCHIVIST
I guess. Still. I-It is a good step.
MELANIE
I suppose.
ARCHIVIST
You going to tell them the truth?
MELANIE
I don’t know! (long, steadying breath) It’s all a bit – (fwoo-phkush sound) – you know? Uh – C-Can we drop it?
ARCHIVIST
Of course.
[Melanie opens the door and sticks her head out to call to Daisy.]
MELANIE
(to Daisy) Uh yeah, he’s – he’s fine with it, so…
[Daisy comes in.]
DAISY
Alright?
ARCHIVIST
Yeah, uh – are you okay?
DAISY
Yeah.
MELANIE
Right. So, anyway – I’m – I’m running late, so, uh – thank you.
ARCHIVIST
Anytime.
[Melanie leaves, closing the door behind her.]
ARCHIVIST (CON’T)
You alright?
DAISY
Asked me that already.
ARCHIVIST
Right. Sorry.
[There’s an uncharacteristic casual happiness to his words.]
DAISY
I didn’t ask her to do that.
ARCHIVIST
B – I-I-I-It’s fine.
[Daisy exhales.]
DAISY
You’re not babysitting me, alright? I know that’s what the others think, sometimes, but that’s not it; I just – don’t like being on my own if I can help it. You know,flashbacks, panic attacks, the usual. (breath) Just trying to avoid it if I can.
ARCHIVIST
I know, Daisy. I – I do.
(exhale) It’s hard.
DAISY
Yeah, well. Don’t let me get in your way.
ARCHIVIST
Of course. (clears his throat) Statement of Alison Killala, regarding her time as friend and carer to special effects artist Neil Lagorio. Original statement given 1st December 2012. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, The Archivist. Statement begins.
ARCHIVIST (STATEMENT)
I loved Neil. I might even have been in love with him; it’s hard to say. When there are so many emotions caught up in a single person, when they’re such a significant force in your life – it gets difficult to say what’s really there at the heart of it.
His work, his art, defined my early life, as his friendship defined the last twenty years of it. One of my earliest memories is cowering behind my mother, watching Labyrinth of the Minotaur on our tiny television, seeing the clay of the creature move and come alive in stop-motion. It terrified me. It thrilled me. It’s a moment that’s never completely left me. I’ve always had two passions: engineering and special effects. So naturally, the course of my life gradually led me towards working on animatronics. I don’t – care about the other stuff, not really. A squib’s a squib no matter how much you dress it up, and… (inhales) makeup never really wowed me. Even pyrotechnics, while… impressive and visually spectacular… They just didn’t give me the same sharp joy as making something that could move. That came alive, directed and controlled by my hand. I always felt Frankenstein should have been an engineer, not a medical student, as reading that book I couldn’t help but see myself in that obsession.
But I suppose everyone’s already done the monster as a robot, haven’t they? (heh)
And none made it move as well as Neil did in 1975 when he worked on Agents of Orion. That was one of his movies that I went back to time and again. The way the robot moved, the weight and life he managed to give each clanking, hissing step. I was fourteen when I managed to hunt down a copy on Betamax, and I just watched that scene over and over again. I was already obsessed with Neil’s work by then, mostly his sci-fi stuff from the late 70’s – Beyond Time, Under New York, The Crawling Ones, all that sort of thing. His earlier stuff I certainly enjoyed, but… for all my fondness for that – animated Minotaur, his stop-motion work never really grabbed me like his animatronics.
The way Neil tells it, he split from his partner Gabe in 1972, and sculpting for stop-motion had never really had the same charm after that.
“Besides,” he always told me, “I’m a puppeteer at heart.” And that was certainly true. Neil never really talked about his early life, but, sometimes, when the medication was kicking in, he would tell me about his training with puppets.
I could never figure out what performance school he learned at, or even if he went to one at all, but he would twist his fingers into all sort of bizarre, intricate shapes, until I could see the strings flowing over them.
“We made them dance,” he would say, wonder and nostalgia in his voice. “Oh, how we made them dance.”
Growing up an 80s cinephile and devotee of his art, I obviously had to learn to love horror. It wasn’t just his work with John Carpenter, either. It was common knowledge that Neil was deliberately seeking out darker and – more grotesque works, though no one knew why. Dead Sky, The Nightmare Children, Forty Winks – they were all in this period of his career, which culminated of course with Toy Shop. While it’s now regarded as a cult classic, I still remember the editorials of the time condemning it, and some even called it “the end of Neil Lagorio.”
I think it was too late to officially be a video nasty, but it was certainly referred to as such in the UK Press. He told me later that he just needed to get it out of his system, though I don’t know if I entirely believed him.
Whatever the case, my own relationship with him started in 1992, on the set of Jewel of the Amazon, a mid-budget effects-driven Kevin Costner vehicle. I’d been working in the industry only a couple of years by that point, and while I’d always dreamed of working with Neil Lagorio someday, it wasn’t – quite how I’d always pictured it. The production was rushed, the budget was stretched, the direction was… uninspired, and Neil seemed broadly miserable.
Despite this – or, maybe because of it – we became friends. I think we bonded on that shoot, sheltering from the rain for hours at a time, watching a soggy animatronic jaguar gradually start to rust. I had to fight every instinct inside me, everything that wanted to burst out in admiration for his work and his – profound effect on my life, but instead I chain-smoked and laughed, trying my best to come across as my hero’s peer.
What was Neil Lagorio like? The question is harder to answer than I always thought it would be. In so many ways, he was his work.
Conversations were usually about the current shoot, future projects, or the most recent films of anyone he considered worth his attention. He had no time for whatever the issue of the day was, and despised Hollywood gossip and anyone who dealt in it.
I will say that there was no… warmth to him. At all. He was not unpleasant or cruel, but beyond that you may as well have been talking to one of his steel-and-hydraulic creations.
There were two sorts of people in the world as far as Neil saw it: those who were worth his time, and those who were not, and if you were in the latter group he honestly couldn’t care if you lived or died. Not that most people could tell which side of the line they fell on. There were even days that – I wasn’t sure myself.
Sometimes, I remember, he would invite people over to his studio that I was sure he hated, for screenings of his original cuts. I was – quite jealous of this at the time, as I’d never got such an invitation. But it was probably for the best. I didn’t realize it back then, but… (sigh) Those guests… (how do I say this) …they never quite looked the same afterwards. We stayed in touch over the next few years, even worked together on The Wire Runner, his one underwhelming foray into CGI. He even kept in contact when I left to have my baby. It wasn’t planned, but while I may not have had much time for makeup and monster suits, the bodies inside of them were a… different matter.
Anyway, even once I’d sorted out childcare arrangements, I found myself… more and more unwelcome, in the industry. It wasn’t that people weren’t willing to hire me – by this point, I had a hell of a special effects resume – but the hours you were expected to be working, the way shoots were set up, the culture of drinking, networking – (sigh) – none of it was really possible alongside parenting.
I only really heard about Neil’s work from – what he told me. His disappointment at the director’s limited vision for the irradiated creatures in Eagle Falls, or his satisfaction with his latest – and, as it turned out – last foray into horror, with The Harvestmen. He’d always had a fondness for spiders, he told me, and I of course reminded him that harvestmen weren’t technically spiders.
It was around that time that he started to suffer his first symptoms. He told me later his greatest regret was not being able to finish his final film, an art house piece simply titled Dancer. He never explained what it was about, nor do I think it actually came out, in the end. By the time it was due to start shooting he’d already begun to seize up.
I became his carer a few months later. It just seemed to make sense. A frugal life, lucrative career, and prickly personality had left him with lots of money but no real support, while my life had left me in a position where I cared deeply about his wellbeing and was in desperate need of money.
Everything just – lined up so neatly.
I will say this once, and you can draw whatever conclusions you wish from it: Neil Lagorio did not have Parkinson’s disease.
He began to have difficulty moving, yes, but his mind remained razor-sharp at all times, and his growing immobility at no point seemed to cause him any pain, or discomfort. It was simply that, over the course of several years, he stopped being able to move under his own power. The doctors were never able to name it anything other than Parkinson’s, and – I’ll admit I’m no expert… But I know they were wrong.
When it started, I was worried that Neil would take the loss of his work very hard. It had been all he was for so long, surely being unable to continue would devastate him. Instead, he threw himself into a new project, one I would never have expected, but that suited my engineering background perfectly: Neil had devised a series of frames, ropes, and pulleys, to be constructed in the rooms and corridors of his home. At the end of these ropes were hooks, which slotted into harnesses, again of his own design, that he wore on his wrists, his neck, his torso, and his legs. When properly built and attached, it allowed me to move him, without a wheelchair or my own support. I could stand him up, and walk him like a puppet.
I protested of course; this man was my hero, I loved him, and there was no way I could subject him to this – awful indignity. But my objections were ignored, as always, and Neil insisted that this was what he wanted.
So I built that – strange contraption, using the skills I had developed across my whole life, to fill every corner of Neil Lagorio’s house with wood and steel and cable. And when it was all done, and I pulled him through his first jerky, standing motions, it did seem to make him happy. Pulling on those levers and cords, moving him step by stiff-limbed step through his house – it was the first time I had seen Neil smile in years.
And so that became our life. For almost a decade, I went to his home every day, strapped him up, and gradually puppeted my idol through whatever strange, parodied version of domestic life he desired.
I still had to feed him, had to wash him, but he would always insist that his arm be hoisted to his mouth before I fed him a sandwich, or that I correctly position him in the bath. And gradually the surreal gave way to the mundane, and it simply became… our life. I barely even noticed when the harnesses were no longer necessary, when the loops for those hooks were now embedded directly into his body. I must have asked him about it, but at the time it just seemed like – such a natural progression.
It was almost six months ago when the woman came to our door. She looked like a film student, and at first I took her for a fan. Neil’s work wasn’t the sort to attract adoring masses, but occasionally admirers would find their way to his home. Usually he’d send them away, but sometimes he’d have them wait in the atrium while I positioned him in his studio, ready for a short meeting or Q-and-A session.
I was about to ask her to wait while I checked with him, but as I started to speak she turned her head, revealing a mass of white thread criss-crossing all over the side of her temple, standing starkly against the dark brown of her skin.
She told me to sit down, and I did. I heard the levers and pulleys move behind me, and I could tell that Neil was being walked down the corridor towards this woman, but I couldn’t see. I couldn’t turn my head. So I don’t really know what his reaction was. But it didn’t sound like one of fear, or despair. He called her ‘Annabelle,’ and she sent me to his screening room. She told me I was to watch his original cuts. “Just until we’re all done here,” she said.
And as I walked away from Neil, the last time I saw him alive, he was dancing, the cables shifting and moving him in a graceful, sweeping ballet. And he was crying with joy.
I don’t know how long I was watching those films. I don’t – It was hard to keep track of time. According to my daughter, I was missing for five months. When Annabelle let me out, Neil was dead. He was hanging there, wrapped in his strings like a cocoon, twisting gently around, and around, and around.
She told me to take the films, his original cuts. She told me to come here. She told me to give them to you. I resisted for some time, but I’m done now. She’s won. And I’d – very much like to go home.
ARCHIVIST
(sharp intake of breath) Statement ends. (exhale) Hm. Neil Lagorio. You ever see any of his work?
DAISY
No. Not really into films.
ARCHIVIST
(overlapping) Mm, they were… Well, let’s just say it’s not a complete shock there was something unnatural to them. Didn’t know we had copies in the Institute, though, let alone original cuts.
[He laughs.]
ARCHIVIST
Records indicate they ended up in… (paper flips) Artefact Storage.
DAISY
Probably best they stay there.
ARCHIVIST
Yeah. (inhale) Yes, of course.
[Pause.]
ARCHIVIST
Annabelle Cane, though… She worries me – I – I don’t know. This is the second time she’s turned up, uh… Peripheral to the Institute?
DAISY
That you know of.
ARCHIVIST
Meaning what?
DAISY
(sigh) She’s Web. Spider’s sneaky like that. Like that lighter you’re always using; where’d you get that?
ARCHIVIST
Mm. Good point. We should keep our eyes open. Anyways – How’s Basira doing? I haven’t seen her much since – (inhale) Well, she seemed a bit tense the last few times we spoke. (cautiously) How are you guys doing?
DAISY
(overlapping, clears throat) N-No, Basira she’s – she’s been good. We’re together, so it’s good, (sigh) if she didn’t keep treating me like a china doll. (inhale, exhale over speaking) But it’s alright.
ARCHIVIST
That’s understandable, I suppose.
DAISY
(sigh) Yeah, well – (sigh) What do you think? You think I’m weak, just – (sigh) – ‘cause I’m not already chasing the next kill? You think I’m less me?
ARCHIVIST
I – (sigh) I don’t feel like I’m exactly in the best place to judge the… intersection between free will and humanity. (stuttering inhale) I’m still trying to figure that out myself.
DAISY
John… When you went in the coffin, was it you choosing to do that? Did you actually think you could save me, or was that something telling you to do it?
ARCHIVIST
It was me. I was – drawn to it, I’ll admit, but it was my decision. It wasn’t entirely about you, though.
[He sighs as he says those last words.]
DAISY
What was it?
ARCHIVIST
My – (large sigh) My memories of the coma are not clear, but I know I made a choice; I made a choice to become… something else. Because I was afraid to die. But ever since then, I – I don’t know if I made the right decision; I’m stronger now, tougher, I can – (he cuts himself off) If I do die, now, or get sealed away somewhere forever? I don’t know if that’s a bad thing. And I don’t want to lose anyone else, so if I can maybe – stop that happening, and the only danger is to me, I – I’ll do it in a heartbeat; worst case scenario, the universe loses another monster.
DAISY
That’s messed up.
[The Archivist lets out a laugh.]
ARCHIVIST
(inhale) Yeah. I suppose it is.
DAISY
Did you know the coffin wouldn’t kill you?
ARCHIVIST
I – guess I thought imprisonment wouldn’t – wouldn’t be as bad as it was.
[Daisy sighs.]
ARCHIVIST
And it’s a lot easier to make that choice than it is to actually endure the result; you might have noticed when I was in there with you I… I had regrets.
DAISY
Yeah. I remember.
ARCHIVIST
Plus I thought – (pause, small sigh) Well, I didn’t know what being down there had done to you.
DAISY
(slight intake of breath) You thought I was gonna kill you?
ARCHIVIST
It was a possibility.
DAISY
Guess so.
[A short pause, silent but for the Archivist’s breathing.]
ARCHIVIST
Daisy.
DAISY
Hm?
ARCHIVIST
It, uh – hm – Is it, uh – Weird question, but – I – (sigh) I haven’t seen you in my dreams? The last couple of weeks?
DAISY
Oh, ah – No, I – I work here now. Figured it seemed to protect the others, so –
ARCHIVIST
Oh! Right, so you – wait, did you talk to Lukas, or…?
DAISY
(overlapping, hah) Broke into Elias’s old office, found an employment contract, filled it in, and signed it.
ARCHIVIST
And that worked.
DAISY
Seems so.
ARCHIVIST
And you’re not… worried about –
DAISY
Basira’s trapped here. So are you. Not like I’m going anywhere anyway.
ARCHIVIST
I suppose not. So… (sigh) No more dreams.
DAISY
Not of you and your weird eyes. Just the coffin.
ARCHIVIST
Is that better?
DAISY
(fierce) It’s mine.
ARCHIVIST
Right.
DAISY
You need to stop moping.
ARCHIVIST
(the picture of Edwardian offense) I what?
DAISY
You need to stop swanning around, being all sad.
ARCHIVIST
I – I’m not swanning around -
DAISY (OVERLAPPING)
“Boo-hoo, I’m so alone and a monster.”
ARCHIVIST
I am alone. Martin is –
DAISY
Busy doing paperwork. Not like he’s dead. Besides, he’s not the only other person here, you know. There’s me, Melanie, Basira –
ARCHIVIST
Traumatized, traumatized, and paranoid because of me.
DAISY
(give me strength) Get over yourself! You’re always talking about choices; we all made ours. Now I’m making a choice to get some drinks in. Coming?
ARCHIVIST
(wha?) I – I don’t – I – (slight pause, he grapples with the concept of friendship) Yeah, okay.
DAISY
Melanie’s out. But I’ll go get Basira.
ARCHIVIST
(sigh) Is she – W-Will she want to join us?
DAISY
(darkly) If she doesn’t, I’ll rip her throat out.
ARCHIVIST
Uhhh…
DAISY
It’s a joke, John.
ARCHIVIST
Oh. Haha! (soft) Yes. I – I-I’ll get my coat.
[TAPE CLICKS OFF.]
[INT. THERAPIST’S OFFICE]
[TAPE CLICKS ON.]
THERAPIST
Right, have a seat.
[Immediately, we notice a large rush of background noise. It’s not obvious what’s making it up – it’s very condensed – but it’s definitely there. The therapist herself sounds very pleasant.]
THERAPIST
Do you mind if I record our sessions?
MELANIE
I do mind, yes.
THERAPIST
Ah, I mean, it’s just for my own notes –
MELANIE
I categorically, and completely, do not give consent for you to make any recording of me, ever. Turn it off. Please.
THERAPIST
I – I see. Yes, of course.