Street scene of Soho 1854. Death and disease are everywhere. A young boy runs towards the camera screaming. The scene freezes with the boy a perfect replica of the Edward Munch painting.
We are in the studio gallery space watching Laura and David, both mid thirties media types, as they edit the John Snow documentary that is being made here. Through the adjoining window we can see the busy sound proofed green screen recording studio, all lights, cameras, wires and crew.
Laura is sat editing while David stands over her. Her desk is decorated with a few family photos which include her and David together with a young boy, their son.
Laura “He looks like George” David is about to put his hand on her shoulder but stops. He’s about to say something when he’s called into the studio by Tabatha his mid twenties perky assistant.
As here walks away he says to Laura “Try starting again with this boy”
David goes into the studio while Laura sits looking at the freeze frame image of the boy. She runs the footage backwards.
OPENING CREDITS OVER…
A floating low level camera moves through the main reception room of the studio complex. It starts with the research table covered in maps, photos and illustrations from 1854 London, the face of Dr John Snow dominating. The camera seems interested in everything and is then distracted by someone carrying a six pack of bottled water. We follow and move through the space to the catering table as it is cleared away.
ACT I
A bottle of water is picked up and we follow it as it is carried through to the studio, the heavy sound proof door is opened and the bottle handed over from Tabatha to David as he is having his make up checked. David stands in the middle of the studio ready for another take, David and Tabatha smile at each other and no words are spoken, fingers touch as she hands him the bottle, 2 crew members who see this exchange a look.
David is filmed doing the closing remarks for the documentary.
The shoot wraps. David instructs everyone to go to the John Snow pub. He talks to Tabatha as Laura watches them from the gallery not reacting.
David and Laura exchange words, he’s off with his assistant to the pub, Laura is obviously not happy with this and knows what’s going on. Laura stays to get more work done on the edit. His excuse is that it’s the wrap party for this section of the show and he needs to be with his crew.
Crew pack up very quickly. The research area is left as it is for the editing process. We see the recording studio from behind the back wall looking back in as if from someone’s POV.
Laura is in the studio alone and we move forward towards here. When a crew member returns to pick up a flight case the camera quickly over back. The crew member comments on how it’s suddenly got cold in there. Laura ‘Must be the air-con’. Crew member asks someone in the gallery to turn off the air con but it’s not actually on.
The studio is now very bare with just the large cameras left starring at the back of the studio, the green screen has been taken down revealing just a bare brick wall.
We see in the next door gallery that the cameras are still on, multiple angles of the room are on a large wall mounted monitor. Laura stands in the studio staring at the back wall listed in thought. In the gallery the audio needles on the mixing desk start to twitch. The crew member returns to pick up the last of the flight cases, the needles go back to zero as he enters.
Laura and the crew member leave the studio just as something passes close to all the cameras on the monitors unseen. The last few crew members say goodbye to Laura as they leave for the pub. She is now alone.
Laura walks through to the research desk in the main room to look at something. Behind her there’s movement, she turns and walks back to the studio. The mixing desk audio needles go crazy.
Standing in the studio, his back against the back wall, is a young boy, the boy from the filming or from the family photos?
‘George?”
The boy holds out his hand and smiles.
In the pub David and Tabatha sit slightly removed from the main crew who are having a great time drinking and chatting.
David talks about their relationship where is it going?
The crew members joke about their lookalike actor, try it on with the girl tourists about their knowledge of Dr John Snow and the water pump outside.
Laura is surprised but very happy to see George. He seems reluctant to leave the studio but she takes him through to the reception area to clean him up a little, she thinks he must have been dressed as an extra but someone. He seems a little bewildered.
Tabatha rejects David, she’s off to the states for work and he should really be trying to make things work with his wife. Crew fail with tourists.
George starts to get insistent about where his father is on the local map on the research table. He wants to go back into the studio. Security guard Ben surprises Laura. He tells here all is locked up except for the side door. She mentions looking after George but Ben looks a little confused. Laura turns to where George was sitting a moment ago, he has disappeared.
Ben leaves and Laura looks for George going back into the studio, but he’s not there.
Laura calls David to get him to return and help with George. David is reluctant to return, Tabatha makes him go. He’s about to explain something but just says it’s complicated, ‘We’ve been here before’.
ACT II A
David says goodbye to his crew, and Tabatha, and returns to the studio.
Laura is in a state of panic due to the disappearance of George. David tries to reason with her but they row about his affair which he denies.
David calls Hillary, Laura’s therapist, a slightly eccentric well dressed lady in her sixties. She is at the opera (Don Quixote) with Donald her husband, also sixties and well dressed. Hilary advices David to go along with Laura and look like he’s try to find George, take things slowly and try to get her to remember what has really happened.
Hilary and Donald talk about Laura and how she is living in a phantasy world and is it better that she still believes her son is alive. [intercut as VO]
David helps Laura search the building, inc the old basement, we see some of the history of the building and the history of their lives [flashbacks of George as a baby]
Hillary and Donald talk and we find out for sure that George, their son, died two years ago of the measles due to not having a vaccination, Laura’s choice due to the totally fake autism link scandal.
As David and Laura talk they walk back into the gallery and David gets Laura to admit the truth. She sits quietly at the edit machine and looks at the family photos.
From behind the back wall of the studio we see a POV shot watching Laura through the gallery window.
The audio needles start to twitch.
David goes off to make a cup of tea for Laura.
We see the POV shot again but this time the camera tracks backward to reveal George standing in a vast dark space, a void behind the studio back wall. What should be a brick wall is a shimmering transparent veil to him. He continues to watch Laura. On the gallery tv monitor we see that the cameras are picking up a vague outline of George through the brick wall, more a ghostly static shape than a person.
FADE TO BLACK.
ACT II B
David makes tea in the small studio kitchen. He seems relieved that Laura has calmed down and seen the truth.
At the opera interval Hilary and Donald talk about the sad death of George and about Laura guilt at refusing to give him the MMC vaccine influenced by the autism scare by the discredited, and struck off, Wakefield. Donald is outraged by what the man did and what he is doing now.
Laura senses something in the studio through the gallery window. She gets up just as David returns with the teas. He calls after her. She ignores him and walks through to the studio staring at the back wall.
He follows her into the studio and then sees the floor stains. They seem to be marking out the outlines of a house and extend though the back wall. He asks Laura if they have always been here. She half distractedly answers that she’s not sure. David looks confused.
David takes the drinks back to the edit machine in the gallery and sits down looking at the family photos and then though to Laura who is just standing in the middle of the room staring at the back wall. He checks through some of the footage they shot earlier in the studio to see if he can find a shot of the floor. Eventually he sees an outtake and the lines aren’t there, the floor is a clean grey paint finish.
Unseen by David the audio needles on the mixing desk start to move, then they go crazy. Through the gallery window we see Laura as she starts to act a little weird. She has knelt down and is acting like she is talking to someone.
We then see the gallery monitor, all four cameras are on Laura and a ghostly image of a small boy standing in front of her, a threatening veil of static but clearly George.
Inside the studio Laura is knelling down talking to George, to her a fully formed boy. He is reaching out trying to hold her hand. She is looking in her pockets for a wet wipe to clean his dirty hands.
David looks up from the edit screen and sees Laura acting strangely. He doesn’t notice the monitor as he walks passed to the main reception space to check something on the research table.
David finds a print out of the 1854 Dr John Snow Ghost Map of Soho. He takes it back into the gallery and goes back to the edit machine and looks up a current map of the area. He takes a pen and draws an outline on the print out of the current studio complex over what was houses in 1854. Exactly where the studio sits there was a house, the walls matching the floor stains and extending out through the back wall. Three coffin shaped marks indicate where three dead bodies where found at the back of this house in the 1854 cholera epidemic.
David looks up and now sees Laura acting strange through the window. He takes the map and quietly walks through to the studio.
He approaches Laura, she has her back to him, and she carries on talking as if George is in front of her.
As David is about to put his hand on Laura’s shoulder when there’s a piercing frenzied scream of feedback filling the room. At the same time the screaming face of George appears to David but he’s no longer a small boy but a vision of horror, a terrifying banshee lashing out at him.
David can do nothing but recoil in fright, falling backwards. He crawls as fast as possible back into to the gallery, the heavy soundproof door slams behind him and all goes suddenly quiet. He sits on the floor under the desk unable to move with fear.
Back at the opera house the performance has just finished. Hillary and Donald are walking out and Hillary wants to call David to check how things are going with Laura, Donald isn’t keen and wants to go for another drink.
David is paralysed with fear not knowing what to do as he sits under the gallery desk. He slowly start to move checking the studio window. Suddenly the horror face of the banshee is banging at the window threatening him ‘Stay away from us’.
David shrinks back into the room then notices the tv monitor showing the cameras in the studio. He sees George turn back into a boy and walk towards Laura holding out his hand, ‘We need to cross back’. Laura takes his hand and the back wall of the studio dissolves and a vast dark expanse opens up. In the distance faint lights can be seen.
Hand in hand George and Laura turn and slowly walk towards the wall. David realises that he has to stop this happening. He tries to get the heavy studio door open but it’s stuck fast. He looks around and finds part of a lighting stand. He uses the metal pole to prize open the door and forces it open.
Inside the studio David rushes at Laura and George as they walk through the translucent barrier that was the brick wall. David grabs Laura’s free hand just in time and he is pulled across through the barrier with them, falling to the floor.
In the void David finds it a great effort to move. George and Laura continue to walk away from him just looking back to check he can’t keep up with them.
David struggles to get to his feet. He now sees in the distance a room, a small living room from 1854, sparsely furnished and lite with candles. As George walks away he slowly turns back into the cute small boy Laura has always seen.
David doesn’t have the strength to keep up and can only watch as they escape.
Both Laura and George turn back to look at David. In unison they both say ‘I need this, please leave us here’
David takes a step backwards and the dark void starts to vanish. He is then back in the studio staring at the now returned brick wall. He remains silent trying to take in what has just happened.
He is jolted back to reality by the sound of the door buzzer going.
It’s Hilary and Donald at the door. Donald still thinks this is a bad idea.
David lets them in but doesn’t know how to start to explain what has just happened.
Hillary starts to look through the research material. Donald asks for a drink. David goes off to find a bottle of red wine in the kitchen and 3 glasses. He brings it back but is shaking too much to open it. Donald takes over. David downs his glass in one go and Donald refills it.
Hillary finds a old photo amongst the print outs. She takes out a magnificent glass to have a closer look. ‘Amazing’ She shows it to Donald then hands it to David. ‘I think she is where she wants to be’.
The photo is a street scene from 1854 of a group of people posing by the water pump on Broadwick Street. In it Laura can be clearly seen, her hand on the shoulder of George.
She is smiling.
THE END