by Neil Gaiman
Anathema is in the back seat, and Aziraphale, who has gathered up the spilled contents of the bike’s basket, dumps it all (including the BOOK) onto the back seat next to her. Then he hands her a slightly bent breadknife.
She holds it as a weapon.
They drive off, the bike miraculously fastened to the back of the car.
CROWLEY
So. Where are we taking you?
ANATHEMA
Back into the village. I’ll give you directions.
259EXT. TADFIELD VILLAGE – NIGHT
ANATHEMA
Listen. My bike. It didn’t have gears. I know it didn’t have gears. Make a left.
CROWLEY
(sotto voce)
‘Oh Lord, heal this bike?’
AZIRAPHALE
I got carried away.
ANATHEMA
You can drop me off here.
The car stops outside Jasmine Cottage.
Aziraphale, beaming, helps Anathema out. She grabs her theodolite, basket, breadknife, etc. Gets out.
The Bike is already miraculously propped up against the garden gate. No gears.
AZIRAPHALE
Oh look. No gears. Just a perfectly normal velocipede.
CROWLEY
Bicycle. Can we get on? Get in, angel.
Anathema heads in to the house as the Bentley roars away.
260INT. JASMINE COTTAGE – NIGHT
Anathema is in her kitchen, drawing on her map. All her things are laid out around her on the table. She’s got the iPad in front of her. Taps her mother’s icon.
Her mother appears on the screen.
ANATHEMA’S MOTHER
Hi, hon. How’s it going?
ANATHEMA
Lousy, Mom. I just got hit by a car.
ANATHEMA’S MOTHER
Ow. Baby. Any progress in finding the . . . the whatever it is?
ANATHEMA
The ‘young beast and the lesser beast’? It must be at the north end of the village. I’m certain of it. I just can’t work out where.
ANATHEMA’S MOTHER
Have you used your pendulum?
ANATHEMA
Mom. I’m not a kid. Get too close, the signal swamps me. Further away, I can’t get an accurate fix.
She pours some coffee.
ANATHEMA’S MOTHER
The answers are always in the book, honey. It’s just sometimes you don’t see them until afterward.
ANATHEMA
I just have to think like a seventeenth-century witch with a mind like a crossword puzzle. Okay. I’ll go back to the book . . .
She looks down at the table, with the stuff she had in the bike basket on it. And she realises . . .
It’s not there.
ANATHEMA (CONT’D)
The book. Holy shit. Mom, I’ll have to call you back—
She turns off the iPad and runs out into the street . . .
261EXT. JASMINE COTTAGE – NIGHT
Anathema stands, not knowing where Crowley and Aziraphale are. Or where her book is.
262INT. GREASY SPOON CAFÉ – NIGHT
A greasy spoon café. Crowley has a cup of tea. Aziraphale has a cup of tea and a slice of cake, which he is enjoying.
AZIRAPHALE
. . . You know, we might be able to get another human to find him.
CROWLEY
What?
AZIRAPHALE
Humans are good at finding other humans. They’ve been doing it for thousands of years. And the child is partly human. Other humans might be able to sense him, perhaps.
CROWLEY
He’s the Antichrist! He’s got an automatic defence thungummy. Suspicion will slide off him like, like . . . whatever it is water slides off of.
AZIRAPHALE
Got any better ideas? Got one single better idea?
Crowley glares at him, glarefully.
263EXT. ADAM’S HOUSE – NIGHT
It’s night time. A glow comes from Mr and Mrs Young’s bedroom window.
264INT. THE YOUNGS’ BEDROOM – NIGHT
Mr and Mrs Young are in bed. He’s reading a book. She’s reading on her iPad.
DEIRDRE
I still don’t know why you let him keep that dog.
MR YOUNG
I reported it as lost. But they said just to look after it, and if anyone came looking, they’d send them to us. It was his birthday. And, I don’t know, the way he was looking at the dog. And the dog was looking at him. As if they were made for each other.
DEIRDRE
Arthur. You are a softy sometimes.
MR YOUNG
I resent that remark.
DEIRDRE
Where’s the dog now?
MR YOUNG
Tied up outside. Adam asked if he could have him in his room, and I said, ‘Absolutely not.’ ‘Absolutely not’, I said.
Mrs Young gets out of bed.
MR YOUNG (CONT’D)
What are you doing?
DEIRDRE
Checking on something.
She walks out of their bedroom, across the hall. She knocks, then pushes open the door.
265INT. ADAM’S BEDROOM – NIGHT
A typical eleven-year-old boy’s bedroom, only not typical, because it’s sort of perfect. Perfectly messy. Perfectly typically a boy’s room – a football, toys, a mess of books and comics. Nothing that anchors it in time, though – no rock bands yet, no specific football posters.
Adam is in bed, sleeping convincingly. Dog is nowhere to be seen.
Deirdre looks at him. Smiles lovingly, closes the door.
266INT. THE YOUNGS’ BEDROOM – NIGHT
Mr Young looks up, quizzically.
MR YOUNG
What was that about?
DEIRDRE
Oh. Just checking on Adam. He’s quite sweet, you know. When he’s asleep.
MR YOUNG
When he’s asleep, yes.
267INT. ADAM’S BEDROOM – NIGHT
Adam opens an eye to check that his mum’s gone. He whispers:
ADAM
Come on, Dog!
Dog puts its head out from under the bed, and jumps back onto the bed, next to Adam, who smiles, and genuinely closes his eyes to sleep.
His dog is asleep on the pillow beside him. And it’s a heartwarming moment.
Except for the WHISPERS.
A low susurrus of whispering voices, of all kinds. We can’t make out what they are saying. Not yet.
And we move slowly in to Adam’s sleeping face, as the whispers surround him. We can’t make out words yet. Just whispers.
268INT. CROWLEY’S BENTLEY – NIGHT
Aziraphale is rather enjoying having the upper hand in the ideas department.
AZIRAPHALE
Look. There’s something I should tell you. I have a . . . network of highly trained human agents, spread across the country. I could set them searching for the boy.
CROWLEY
You do? I actually have something similar. Human operatives.
AZIRAPHALE
Gosh. Do you think they ought to work together?
CROWLEY
I don’t think that would be a good idea. My lot are not very sophisticated, politically speaking.
AZIRAPHALE
No. Neither are mine. So we tell our respective operatives to look for the boy? Unless you have a better idea?
CROWLEY
(pause. Then:)
Ducks!
AZIRAPHALE
What about ducks?
CROWLEY
They’re what water slides off.
AZIRAPHALE
Just drive the car, please.
269EXT. TADFIELD LANE – NIGHT
GOD (V.O.)
The trouble with trying to find a brown-covered book among brown leaves and brown water at the bottom of a ditch of brown earth in the middle of the night is that you can’t.
Anathema, with her torch and bike, staring at the ditch, the road, desperate to find the lost book. She is talking
aloud to the book.
ANATHEMA
You have to be here. There is no way I’ve lost you. Agnes would have told me if I was going to lose you. She was always very clear on things concerning you. Oh god, I am talking to a book right now, I am talking to a book that isn’t even here.
There’s a beat. And then she breaks.
ANATHEMA (CONT’D)
Okay. You’re gone. I guess you must be in the back of the car with those . . . men. But that’s fine. I have the annotated notecards. And I know you by heart. So, I mean. I guess it’ll be okay.
(beat)
It’s not like they’re ever going to figure out what they’ve got.
CUT TO:
270INT. CROWLEY’S BENTLEY – NIGHT
They aren’t talking. Appropriate music is coming out of the Bentley’s stereo. Queen, perhaps? And then Crowley says something that’s been bothering him for hours.
CROWLEY
You know, if you lined up everyone in the whole world, and asked them to describe the Velvet Underground, nobody at all would say Be-bop.
The Bentley draws up outside Aziraphale’s Bookshop. Aziraphale gets out, reaches into the back of the car to get his box of shortbread, then notices a book . . .
AZIRAPHALE
There’s a book back there.
CROWLEY
It’s not mine. I don’t read books.
AZIRAPHALE
It has to belong to the young lady you hit with your car. We really should have got her address . . .
CROWLEY
No, we really shouldn’t. I’m in enough trouble as it is. I’m not going to start returning lost property. That’s what your lot do. Why don’t you send it to the Tadfield post office addressed to the mad American woman with the bicycle . . .?
The last couple of sentences SOUND WEIRD, because our entire world is suddenly Aziraphale and the book. Aziraphale’s glanced at the title page and if he had a heartbeat it would be loud enough to hear.
AZIRAPHALE
Oh. Jolly good, yes. Rather.
He heads for the door.
CROWLEY
Right. So we’ll both contact our respective human operatives, then.
AZIRAPHALE
. . . Sorry?
CROWLEY
Are you all right?
AZIRAPHALE
Perfectly. Yes. Tip-top. Absolutely tickety-boo.
CROWLEY
‘Tickety boo’?
AZIRAPHALE
Mind how you go!
And he goes into his bookshop and closes the door.
CROWLEY
(baffled)
Right. Well, that was a thing.
271INT. AZIRAPHALE’S BACK ROOM – NIGHT
Aziraphale is making cocoa.
Having made the cocoa, he places it beside the book. He gets a pad of paper and a pen.
Then he takes white cotton gloves and puts them on. He takes a lamp and angles the light onto the book.
Finally he sits down at a chair in front of it.
While he’s doing this, we linger on books in the glass cabinet above his head. We can see titles: these are famous books of prophecy.
And through this whole scene we hear . . .
GOD (V.O.)
Aziraphale was particularly proud of his books of prophecy. First editions, usually. And every one was signed. He had Martha the Gypsy, and Ignatius Sybilla, and Ottwell Binns. Nostradamus had signed ‘To myne olde friend Azerafel, with Beste wishes’; Mother Shipton had spilled drink on his copy of her book; he even owned an original scroll in the handwriting of St John the Divine of Patmos, whose ‘Revelation’ had been the all-time best seller. Aziraphale had found him a nice chap, if a bit too fond of funny mushrooms. But there was one book he didn’t have. One book he had only heard of . . .
Aziraphale opens the book to the title page: it’s the title page we saw in the seventeenth century, earlier in this episode, only it’s ancient, and a decade ago a child drew on it in crayon. But yes, it is.
AZIRAPHALE
The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter.
Then he opens the book at random. We see the prophecy over his shoulder.
AZIRAPHALE (CONT’D)
3008: When that the angel readeth these words of mine, in his shoppe of other menne’s books, then the final days are certes upon us. Open thine eyes to understand. Open thine eyes and rede, I do say, foolish principalitee, for thy cocoa doth grow cold.
He creases his brow at this.
AZIRAPHALE (CONT’D)
Cocoa doth grow cold? What cocoa?
He looks down at the mug of cocoa. Looks amazed and filled with wonder and awe.
And then he picks up the book and starts to read.
Time lapse: in the background, we see the dawn and the day begin and the sun come up. And Aziraphale just reads and turns the pages.
The cocoa sits untouched beside him.
272EXT. CROWLEY’S FLAT – MORNING
Mayfair. The world is coming to life.
273INT. CROWLEY’S FLAT – MORNING
The houseplants in Crowley’s all-white, ultra-stylish flat. They are looking at the door to Crowley’s bedroom, nervously.
We hear Crowley getting out of bed, coming to the door.
As he approaches, the houseplants all stand to attention and stick out their leaves.
Crowley looks a bleary mess as he walks past the camera one way. We can see his snake-eyes, his messy hair.
He walks back past the camera fully dressed a second later looking stylish, with not a hair out of place, and his dark glasses on.
274INT. CROWLEY’S FLAT, OFFICE – MORNING
Crowley’s at the desk.
He picks up the phone (connected to answering machine). Dials . . .
CROWLEY
Any news? Found the Antichrist yet?
275INT. AZIRAPHALE’S BACK ROOM – DAY
Aziraphale is on the phone.
AZIRAPHALE
No! No news. Nothing. Nothing at all. If I had anything I’d tell you. Obviously. Immediately. We’re friends! Why would you even ask me?
CROWLEY
Dude. Chill. I was just asking. No news here either. Well, they’re taking the wrong boy to Megiddo. But they’ll find that out soon enough. Call if you find anything.
AZIRAPHALE
Absolutely, why would you think I wouldn’t?
He puts down the phone. We see The Nice and Accurate Prophecies, and a pad of paper, on which he’s been doing sums . . . A row of numbers. He looks at a prophecy, checks . . . We see prophecy 3817: ‘The Number of the Beast is in the Revelayting of Sainte John, call hym in Taddes field. And ye will know hym by this sign, that when ye do call to hym, the Lesser Beaste will walk upon his hinde legs like unto a Dancing Bear.’
Then he opens an ancient Bible. We look over his shoulder – it’s the Book of Revelation.
AZIRAPHALE (CONT’D)
Hang on:
(reads)
Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is six hundred threescore and six . . . It can’t be that simple . . .
Then he looks, doubtfully, at his piece of paper.
AZIRAPHALE (CONT’D)
I’d need to put the Tadfield area code first, of course . . .
Then he picks up the phone and dials . . .
276INT. ADAM’S HOUSE – DAY
Adam and Dog are playing in the garden, visible through the French doors. The phone rings. Mr and Mrs Young are finishing breakfast.
Mr Young goes over to the phone.
MR YOUNG
Tadfield, oh four six triple six? Arthur Young here.
ADAM
Dad! Look! I got Dog to walk on his hind legs!
277INT. AZIRAPHALE’S BACK ROOM – DAY
Aziraphale. We see the expression on his face . . . It’s all true. And that boy is the missing Antichrist.
AZIRAPHALE
Sorry. Right number.
> And, shocked and stunned, he puts down the phone. ‘Everyday’ starts . . . and we . . .
FADE TO BLACK.
Episode Three
Hard Times