Chapter Text
[SOUND OF FOOTSTEPS, SOMETHING DRAGGING ON THE GROUND]
OLIVER
The hell is this?
Oh.
[GROAN]
I talk to the archivist once. I leave, and now these, these tape recorder things are following me everywhere.
...I did also sneak into the archive. And swipe a statement from the archive. And move around a few of the archivist’s pens to mess with him when he gets back. I’m surprised I didn’t get, like, a hand on my shoulder from one of their all-seeing staff.
I’m not very good at this “villain” thing, am I?
Well, I promise you, whoever’s listening, that I took this statement for a reason. It’s from one “Nathaniel Thorp,” who apparently gambled for his life with Death. Then he won, became Death for a few hundred years. Then someone beat him, and now he…
He had this sentiment towards the end, something like: “I know there were others like me. But I don’t know where.” I guess I related to that. Not just because I’m gay, [CHUCKLE] though that was certainly part of it. Just… it’d be comforting, you know? To meet someone else who’s with the End, even if he is an eighteenth-century party boy.
So I’ve managed to track him down. It was difficult; he’s moved around a bit these past few decades. But I figured it out. Even saw some veins leading up here, to a cabin in the middle of no-fucking-where. And you know what? They were severed.
...I suppose I should knock.
[EXACTLY ONE KNOCK]
[DISTANT SOUND OF A MUSKET BEING LOADED]
OLIVER
Was that a musket being loaded?
VOICE [SLIGHTLY MUFFLED, AS IF FROM BEHIND DOOR]
Are you with What the Ghost?
OLIVER
I… No?
VOICE
Are you with Ghost Hunt UK?
OLIVER
Didn’t they go defunct?
VOICE
Oh, Christ, are you with Buzzfeed Unsolved?
OLIVER
[SOUNDING SLIGHTLY OFFENDED] No!
VOICE
Right, then.
[DOOR CREAKS OPEN]
VOICE
What do you want?
OLIVER
Name’s Oliver Banks. I think this file should be self-explanatory.
[BEAT]
OLIVER [SOTTO VOCE]
Oh shit, is he still illiterate?
VOICE
I heard that. And… [SHUFFLING OF PAPERS]
Nathaniel Thorp? [MORE SHUFFLING] 1972? Oh. Oh, this is from when I was illiterate.
But you’re not with the Magnus Institute, either. You look too young to have been there in the 1970’s.
You’re…
You’re with the End.
OLIVER
Yeah. I’m with the End.
NATHANIEL
[DRY CHUCKLE] All those years. All those decades. I knew there were more of us, but--
Do you want to come in? I don’t know if a house as small as mine could accommodate all your, er…
OLIVER
Veins.
NATHANIEL
Veins.
OLIVER
They phase through walls most of the time. Ghost logic, y’know.
NATHANIEL
I suppose.
Is-- is that tape recorder yours?
OLIVER
Yes. Yes, it is.
[RECORDER SHUTS OFF]