by Neil Gaiman
NEWT
But, er, Sergeant, don’t the churches do that, these days?
SHADWELL
Nay, lad. It’s up to us. Against the darkness. It’s a war. And you know what our first weapon is?
Newt looks around. He points to the Thundergun on the wall . . .
SHADWELL (CONT’D)
The Thundergun of Witchfinder Lance Corporal ‘Get ’em before they get you’ Dalrymple? Nay, laddie. That’ll never be used again. Not in this degenerate age.
Newt nervously displays his scissors.
SHADWELL (CONT’D)
VERY GOOD! And you know what we do with them?
Newt makes a rather ineffectual stabbing motion with the scissors, as if attacking a foe.
SHADWELL (CONT’D)
No, laddie.
And he drops a large pile of newspapers in front of Newt. He points to a handwritten yellowing sign he has sellotaped on the wall, or on the table in front of Newt. It says:
1)Witches.
2)Unexplainable Phenomenons. Phenomatrices. Phenomenice. Things, ye ken well what I mean.
SHADWELL (CONT’D)
We read. And we cut.
We pull back and look down on the flat from above. Then move across the hall to see Madame Tracy’s flat.
In the hallway, a very large GENTLEMAN CALLER is arriving. Madame Tracy is in her bedroom, laying out a pink frilly nightie and a large black whip on the pink and fluffy bed.
Her doorbell rings.
232INT. CROWLEY’S FLAT, OFFICE – DAY
The phone begins to ring. On his desk. We see the answering machine. If it’s an old one, we can have a tape in it, but no real reason it can’t be solid state.
CROWLEY (V.O.)
Hey, this is Anthony Crowley. You know what to do. Do it with style.
AZIRAPHALE
(on answering machine)
Hello. Crowley? Is this on? It’s me. No leads yet at my end. Anything at your end? Listen, I have a sort of an idea . . .
Crowley’s hand snatches the phone from the cradle.
CROWLEY
What?
AZIRAPHALE
(confidentially)
Well. I was just wondering . . . Could there possibly have been another baby?
CROWLEY
What?!?
233EXT. LONDON – DAY
Crowley is driving at impossible speeds through London. Aziraphale is not enjoying this at all.
AZIRAPHALE
I brought a little something for the journey. In case we get peckish.
Crowley doesn’t reply. Aziraphale turns and places a tin of shortbread on the back seat of the car.
AZIRAPHALE (CONT’D)
You’ve lost the boy—
CROWLEY
—we’ve lost—
AZIRAPHALE
A child has been lost. But you still know—
CROWLEY
—we know—
AZIRAPHALE
His age. His birthday. He’s eleven. There’ll be records. There’s always records. Everyone keeps records. You – all right, we – just have to look for them. You can remember the hospital?
CROWLEY
You make it sound easy.
AZIRAPHALE
How hard can it be? I just hope nothing’s happened to him.
CROWLEY
Happened to him? Nothing happens to him! HE happens to everything!
AZIRAPHALE
So all we’ve got to do is find the birth records. Go through the hospital files.
CROWLEY
And then what?
AZIRAPHALE
And then we find the child.
Silence.
CROWLEY
(meaningfully)
And then what?
(pause)
I suppose – get off the road, you clown – your people wouldn’t consider giving me asylum?
AZIRAPHALE
I was going to ask you the same thing . . . watch out for that pedestrian!
Crowley takes his hands off the wheel to remonstrate.
CROWLEY
She’s on the street, she knows the risks she’s taking!
AZIRAPHALE
Watch the road! Watch the road! Where is this hospital, anyway?
CROWLEY
A village near Oxford! Tadfield.
AZIRAPHALE
Crowley! You can’t do ninety miles an hour in central London!
CROWLEY
Why not?
AZIRAPHALE
You’ll get us killed! Inconveniently discorporated. MUSIC! Why don’t I put on a little music . . .?
He fumbles around in the CDs or cassettes beneath the seat.
AZIRAPHALE (CONT’D)
What’s a Velvet Underground?
CROWLEY
You wouldn’t like it.
AZIRAPHALE
Oh. Be-bop.
Crowley takes a deep breath, and drives faster.
234EXT. TADFIELD, SOMEWHERE LOVELY AND VERY CHEAP – DAY
The kids come out of the village shop. Dog has been tied to the railing, and now Adam unties him.
Brian is wearing very clean clothes, and is unwrapping a chocolate ice-cream, which he will eat during the scene. Wensleydale eats fastidiously.
PEPPER
I still can’t believe your dad let you keep him, Adam.
WENSLEYDALE
Actually, when I found a cat we had to put up a notice saying we had found a lost cat, and then we had to give her back.
ADAM
It’s my birthday. And he didn’t have a collar. An’ we asked. Nobody’s reported a missing dog.
Brian is getting ice-cream on his face.
BRIAN
Our dog doesn’t like me. It pretends I’m not there.
A glob of Brian’s ice-cream hits his shirt.
WENSLEYDALE
Did you know, that my cousin Charlotte says that in America they have shops that sell thirty-nine different flavours of ice-cream.
FREEZE on Wensleydale.
GOD (V.O.)
Wensleydale’s first name is Jeremy, but nobody has ever used it, not even his parents, who call him Youngster.
A still photograph of the Wensleydale family. His parents and he look like they come from a matched set. Obviously he will grow up to be his father.
GOD (V.O.)
All that stands between Wensleydale and chartered accountancy is time.
PEPPER
There aren’t thirty-nine different flavours of ice-cream. There aren’t thirty-nine flavours of ice-cream in the whole world.
FREEZE on Pepper.
Still photographs: Bad Hippy Times on a field in Wales. A sheep chews a tent.
GOD (V.O.)
Pepper’s given first names were Pippin Galadriel Moonchild. She had been given them in a naming ceremony in a muddy valley field that contained three sheep and a number of leaky polythene tents. Six months later, sick of the rain, the men, the sheep who ate first their marijuana crop and then their tents, Pepper’s mother returned to Tadfield, and enrolled in a sociology course.
The action starts again. Brian’s shirtfront and face is now covered with chocolate ice-cream.
BRIAN
There could be, if you mixed them up. You know. Strawberry and chocolate.
FREEZE on Brian.
GOD (V.O.)
Every gang needs a Brian: always grimy, always supportive of anything Adam invents or needs.
BRIAN
Chocolate and vanilla. Strawberry and vanilla and chocolate.
Brian wipes his face with his sleeve, so he now looks generally grimy, face and clothes.
ADAM
Anyway. Nobody’s going to take Dog away from me. We’re together to the end. Aren’t we, boy?
And Dog wags his tail.
235EXT. TADFIELD LANE – DAY
On a narrow lane in Tadfield, we see Anathema. She’s taking a siting down her theodolite, her bike propped up against a tree . . .
We move in
on Anathema, who is now making notes on a map of the area on her iPad.
ANATHEMA
Eye of newt and tongue of dog, north by northwest . . . There. And it’s . . . southwest . . .
236EXT. HOGBACK WOOD – DAY
A sunny day. The THEM are sitting around in the Pit. Adam is playing with Dog; the other three are talking.
PEPPER
There’s a witch moved in to Jasmine Cottage.
BRIAN
That’s stupid.
PEPPER
It’s not stupid, stupid. Mrs Henderson told my mother the lady there gets a witches’ newspaper.
WENSLEYDALE
Excuse me. My father says there’s no such thing as witches.
ADAM
It makes sense witches would have their own newspaper. My dad gets the Anglers’ Times and I bet there’s loads more witches than anglers.
PEPPER
Shut up, I’m trying to tell you things! It’s called the Psychic News! She’s a witch!
WENSLEYDALE
Actually, there’s no more witches, because we invented science and all the vicars set fire to the witches for their own good. It was called the Spanish Inquisition.
ADAM
I don’t reckon it’s allowed, going round setting fire to people. Otherwise people’d be doin’ it all the time.
Brian, grimy, is eating crisps . . .
BRIAN
It’s all right if you’re a vicar. And it stops the witches from goin’ to Hell, so I expect they’d be quite grateful if they understood it properly.
ADAM
We could be the new Spanish Inquisition.
WENSLEYDALE
Actually we can’t be the Spanish Inquisition, because we are not actually Spanish.
BRIAN
I’ve been to Barcelona. I can teach you Spanish. They say Olé a lot.
ADAM
We should practise. Before we start burning witches. We should start small and work our way up.
Pepper nods, decisively. She’s an excellent second in command.
PEPPER
Leave it to me.
237INT. BENTLEY – DAY
Crowley is following the road signs to TADFIELD MANOR.
AZIRAPHALE
This is the way to Tadfield Manor. Does it look familiar yet?
CROWLEY
You know, it does. I think there was an airbase round here somewhere.
AZIRAPHALE
Airbase?
CROWLEY
You don’t think American diplomats’ wives usually give birth in little religious hospitals in the middle of nowhere, do you? It all had to seem to happen naturally. There’s an airbase at Lower Tadfield, things started to happen, base hospital not ready, our man there said, ‘There’s a birthing hospital just down the road’, and there we were. Rather good organisation.
And by now he’s going up the drive to the former Satanic Hospital . . .
AZIRAPHALE
(sarcastically)
Flawless.
CROWLEY
It should have worked.
AZIRAPHALE
Ah, but evil always contains the seeds of its own destruction. No matter how well-planned, how foolproof an evil plan, no matter how apparently successful it may seem upon the way, in the end it will founder upon the rocks of iniquity and vanish.
CROWLEY
For my money, it was just an ordinary cock-up.
238EXT. HOGBACK WOOD – DAY
Anathema wanders from the village green down the path to Hogback Wood. She’s alternately scribbling in a notebook and waving a pendulum above a map of the village, covered in marks and crosses. She’s depressed.
She sees the kids; they cheer her up a little. They wave.
Anathema marks off another square on her map.
Pepper and Wensleydale go past. Wensleydale is dressed as a witch. Or at least, he’s wearing a pointy black hat made of paper, and he is carrying a broom.
ANATHEMA
Hi guys.
PEPPER
Hi.
ANATHEMA
Nice hat.
WENSLEYDALE
Actually, we made it out of cardboard. It’s for our game.
ANATHEMA
Stylish. What are you playing?
WENSLEYDALE
The British inquisition.
PEPPER
Come on, Wensleydale.
Anathema is amused enough that she is following.
Adam is wearing his dressing gown. Brian is a guard. Pepper is wrangling Wensleydale. Anathema looks at Adam.
ANATHEMA
Looks like fun. So, how does this game work?
ADAM
I am Chief Inquisitor of the British Inquisition. Brian is the head torturer. And we’re trying to find a witch.
ANATHEMA
That sounds . . . very sensible. How do you do that?
ADAM
Watch.
(to Wensleydale)
Art thou a witch? Olé?
WENSLEYDALE
Yes.
PEPPER
You can’t say yes. You’ve got to say no.
WENSLEYDALE
Then what?
ADAM
Then we torture you until you say yes.
ANATHEMA
You’re going to torture him?
ADAM
We’ve built a torturing machine.
He points to a tractor tyre hanging from some ropes, as a swing.
ANATHEMA
It looks like a swing.
WENSLEYDALE
But obviously in this scenario I actually am a witch. I have a big pointy hat and we have a cat at home, and I borrowed mum’s broom . . .
PEPPER
Look, no one’s saying you can’t be a witch, you jus’ have to say you’re not a witch. No point in us taking all this trouble if you’re going to go round saying yes the minute we ask you. Say NO.
WENSLEYDALE
But . . .
Pepper looks serious.
ADAM
Art thou a witch, oh evil crone?
239MOMENTS LATER
Cries of pure joy. Wensleydale is having the TIME OF HIS LIFE being swung backwards and forwards on the tyre.
Brian is doing the pushing, and he is getting a bit tired of it.
BRIAN
Excuse me, Adam, I don’t see why I have to do all the work.
WENSLEYDALE
I am being tortured! Actually, this is very painful! I am thinking of admitting to being a witch.
Brian stops pushing.
BRIAN
I’m going to go home unless I can have a go. Don’t see why evil witches should have all the fun.
WENSLEYDALE
You have to keep pushing.
Anathema is talking to Adam.
ANATHEMA
Hey. Kid. Can I ask you something?
ADAM
Yes.
ANATHEMA
Are there any . . . great beasts around here? Or strange things happening?
ADAM
There’s Dog. He’s a beast. Go on, Dog, shake hands.
Anathema looks at Adam’s cute dog, and smiles. Dog offers her its paw.
ANATHEMA
Not really what I was looking for.
ADAM
Hold on. I have to tell them what to do. All right, evil Witch Wensleydale, don’t do it again, and now you get off the torturing swing and let someone else have a turn.
Brian takes the pointy hat from Wensleydale and puts it on his own head as he gets into the swing.
Anathema grins at the display of sweetness in front of her.
ANATHEMA
You kids are hilarious. Okay. I’ll keep looking.
240EXT. TADFIELD MANOR – DAY
And the Bentley pulls up in front of somewhere that we recognise. It’s the former Hospital of Satanic Nuns. Now it’s a fancy manor house, with lots of nice cars in the carpark in front of the façade . . .
They get out of the Bentley.
As they do we are looking at them through rifle-sights.
AZIRAPHALE
Um. Are you sure we’re in the right place? This doesn’t look like a hospital . . . And it feels loved.
POV shot: someone with a gun is looking at them down the barrel. Sighting on Crowley then Aziraphale.