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Leanne:

Wasting Company Time presents Tell No Tales, Episode Six: A Visiting

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[SFX: Recording Begins]

Leo:

Audio diary of Leo Quinn, assistant to Frank Williamson, director of Better Place. Can you believe this? I haven’t had a moment of peace for almost three weeks. And then Riley drops this one on my desk. They say it’s because it’ll give me a much needed break. Get me out of the city for a while. But, I mean, really? Look at this.Case RM#2233, Category 2, case status-active. Reported by Liverpool City Council, initial report: Dear Ms. Hayworth, Further to our conversation on the phone, I am providing my report in writing as discussed. Regarding the haunting reported in Sefton Park, we received, some time ago, complaints of strange climate phenomena in the section of the park known as the ‘fairy glen,’ in addition to a feeling of being observed, the latter of which we initially took to be an issue with trespassers, though we were unable to locate the purported trespassers. In the last few months this has progressed to reports of strange manifestations in the waterfall which — while I do not have all the details — seem to have sufficiently frightened passersby. Please let me know if you need any further information, but if not, please do send a full invoice for the cost of removal as soon as possible. I’m sure you’re aware the process for funding services like these can be a long and bureaucratic process, so we’re eager to get started right away. Thanks for your help, Meabh Slater, Assistant at the Parks and Greenspaces department.Right so, yeah. Riley thinks it’d be a great idea for me to go up to Liverpool this weekend. Back to the ol’ hometown, see the parents, get out of cold, hostile London for a couple of days. I’m sure they had my best interests at heart but honestly, not sounding like my idea of a break. I do love Liverpool, don’t get me wrong. It’s just… You know how families can be. Especially since Noah… Well, just things have been rough recently. But it’s been so hard to get time to work a case file recently, this is the perfect file. A solid category two, local government bureaucracy providing a perfect window of opportunity, it’s not like I can pass it up. Alright. Okay. I’m doing this. Time to text mum and book some train tickets. See you on the other side.

[SFX: Recording Ends]

[SFX: Recording Begins]

[SFX: Nightime ambience, footsteps on gravel]

Leo:

(GRUMBLING) Sure, Leo, it’s not that we don’t think your dreams are worth following, only that, you know, we wish you had better dreams. Oh, Leo, it’s just concerning that you moved all the way to London for a science role at your dream company, and now you’re almost thirty, stuck in admin, and they’re still making you work weekends? Why do you have to be in London for an admin job you could do anywhere, Leo? Why not move back home, so you can still be almost-thirty working in admin, but now you can do it while also living with your parents? Because that’d be a step up for sure! Don’t tell, but somehow it’s actually a relief that I’m wandering through an empty park at night in search of a possibly angry spirit. At least here I can make my audio notes in peace. If I waited until afterwards, I’d be trying to make them in my childhood bedroom, with constant interruptions and even more criticism of “they don’t pay you enough to be doing work on a Saturday night!” Which, yeah, true, but I can’t exactly tell them I’m going rogue. This might not be the dream job my parents expected when I told them I was moving to London, but if they’re proud of me for anything, it’s the fact that I’ve been in comfortable, stable employment for seven years. I’m not about to go around telling them I’m putting that on the line on purpose. (SIGH) It’s fine. Once I get this recorder working, I’ll make a name for myself. Me, and my work, and my invention, will… Go down in history? Which, no, is not the point. The point is to help bring justice to Better Place’s victims. But if a Nobel Prize happens to be a nice little side-effect of that, well, I know I’m not turning my nose up at it. Ugh. Definitely going to have to delete that part if these notes ever do get submitted as any kind of formal evidence against Better Place. Alright, back on track. I’m not far from the fairy glen, which is basically just a little wooded enclosure with a small waterfall in it. Riley couldn’t find anyone who had died in the fairy glen, but they gave me a list of names that their research team dug up, of people who died in about the right time frame and may have had some emotional attachment to the glen. God knows how they managed it. That seems like info you can’t exactly get using key word searches, but hey. Riley’s good at a lot of stuff, but if they’re an expert in anything, it’s digging far too deep into people’s personal lives. So. Er, I think this is it, er, yeah here we are, let me just…

[SFX: Footsteps pause while a bag is rummaged through, the EMF reader is pulled out and switched on. Footsteps continue and a rushing waterfall becomes audible]

Hey there, spirit. Sorry, I don’t know your name yet, but are you there?

[SFX: Buzzing from the EMF reader]

Sound. Er. Okay so, here’s how we’ll do it. I’m gonna run through a few names ok? Can you do me a favour and speak only if it’s your name? (LONG PAUSE) I mean, you can speak now to confirm…

[SFX: Gentle buzzing]

Cool. So, er, Laura Rose? (PAUSE) Roger Sutherland? (PAUSE) Hannah Doherty? (PAUSE) god, sorry, I feel like a teacher. Er… Okay, wait, hang on. This bench, the name looks familiar— er

[SFX: Pages turning]

Yes! Matheson!

[SFX: Louder buzzing]

Right! So, you’re Brian Matheson, of course, and the bench… In loving memory of Anne Matheson. Oh. She… She died before you did?

[SFX: Buzzing]

Did you come here a lot, after she died?

[SFX: More buzzing]

Do you mind, if I sit?

[SFX: Gentle buzzing, Leo sitting on the bench]

Just so you know, I work for Better Place. I’m not sure how much I’ve trusted them recently, but if they really do what they promise, they should come soon, and help you move on. I don’t know if there’s… Something, after this in-between, but if there is, you’ll be together again, right?

[SFX: Gentle buzzing]

I can’t offer much more than that, sorry, but I can sit and chat for a bit, if you like? I don’t want to be presumptuous, just sounds like it might be a bit lonely out here.

[SFX: A single, quiet buzz]

Yeah. No judgement, I get it. You know I grew up here? But I live in London now. I miss my family, even if they can be… A lot. I miss my old friends. But I love London, and I’ve built a life there, and I sometimes wonder if I’m always going to feel a bit split in two, like half from one place, half from another. Like, take my accent right? I heard myself switch, even just talking to a Scouse ghost. It’s like, when I’m in London, I don’t mean to but I hide it. And I’ll still always be too northern for the likes of some of my coworkers. And then, I’m up here, and my accent comes back but I’ve lost enough of it that I’m still an outsider here. Which, I mean, didn’t mean to make that about me but just to say — I get it. Missing people, being stuck in between, untethered. I don’t like, get it, completely, like obviously your situation is harder than mine just that I (GROANS) I… sympathise.

[SFX: Whooshing sound, small buzz]

(GASPS, THEN CHOKED UP) Oh, wow. This is what you’ve been doing since you progressed to a category two? This is what scared people enough to lodge multiple complaints? It’s… God, it’s beautiful. I’ve never seen a spirit manifest something so… wholesome. Nothing’s bleeding, nothing’s crawling, or burning. You’ve just… The waterfall, it’s glowing. It’s gorgeous. And in the brook, are they… Whatever they are, pale silver, moving around just below the surface, you’ve made this place beautiful, Brian. You’re just here. In the place you came to mourn your wife. Maybe, the place you used to come with your wife, I’m guessing?

[SFX: Buzzing]

Right, you’re hurting nobody. You’re just existing, peacefully, you’ve made this place better, god, what is wrong with people? For the first time, the fairy glen has actual magic in it. And people are complaining about that?

[SFX: Quiet buzzing]

Brian, I don’t know you. I don’t know if you need to hear this. But just in case you do, your afterlife, the time you’ve spent here in this glen, it means something. It’ll stay with me forever, at least. So there’s that.

[SFX: More quiet buzzing]

Hey… Er, this might be a bit of a strange question, especially since I can’t actually hear you. But what’s that like? Loving someone so much. So much that, even after her death, your spirit is still tied to this place, this memory of her?

[SFX: Lengthy buzzing, then after a moment, the sound of a text being sent]

Sorry (SNIFFLES) god, that must have looked so rude, sorry. I was just… Texting someone. A girl I know. Nothing… No, don’t give me those goosebumps, nothing grand or declarative, just a hi, something to let her know I’m, I dunno, thinking about her or whatever, shut up, it’s nothing. (SNIFFLES AGAIN) Uh, so… Y’know, Brian, while you’ve got me here. A captive audience who isn’t going to run screaming to the council about the scary ghost, is there anything else you wanted to show me? Like, anything else you can do here?

[SFX: Small buzzing, then whooshing sound]

(BREATHLESS) Oh. Oh, wow. I… Were they even rosebuds, originally? Or have you made all of these bloom from nothing? Know what, actually, it doesn’t matter. Either way, they’re… They’re magnificent. Really. Did roses have some kind of significance, for you and Anne?

[SFX: Buzzing]

Hey, Brian? Why don’t you tell me about her, for a while? I’ve talked so much about myself. I know I can’t hear you, but I can listen. Tell me about your life together. Tell me about what you’ll say to her, when you see her again, wherever it is you go after this. In fact, I know it doesn’t make much of a difference, but I’m going to stop recording my notes, too. I think… I think I want to give you a little privacy to just talk, ok?

[SFX: Recording Ends]

[SFX: Recording Begins]

[SFX: Nighttime ambience, footsteps on gravel]

Leo:

He… He had a lot, to say, did our Brian. It’s… Oh, yikes, it’s nearly three am, okay. I think it was worth it though. Not just for the EMF readings either. Just. I think he needed that. I spend so much time monologuing into these damn audio diaries that I forget how important it is, sometimes, to just have someone listen, you know? (SIGHS) I do feel… I feel like maybe I’ve lied to him though. Like, I’ve led him to believe that Better Place are really on their way to help him. And I don’t know if they are. I don’t know what they do to the spirits once the dispatchers take them to the warehouse. Do they just get destroyed? I… I was raised catholic, but I don’t really have much faith of my own. I don’t know if Brian does. But, I mean, it’s objective fact that something lingers after death, right? Centuries of scientists have studied and proven the existence of, if not souls exactly, something similar. Once a body is burned or buried, there’s something else which can become a ghost. There’s also scientific proof that the place ghosts exist is kind of a — like a different plane, right? Like, this kind of in-between spirit world. It always went a bit over my head, I never was great at the theoretical science stuff, but I mean, the point is it exists. So, there’s probably somewhere like that where the spirits who don’t stay behind go, surely? So, the million dollar question: Do Better Place actually send spirits there? Or do we just destroy them. Because what if, somewhere out there, Anne Matheson’s spirit is just waiting patiently for her husband to join her and he never will because as soon as the council can arrange the payment, Better Place are going to permanently destroy him? I hate this. I hate this job, I hate this company. I hate that people like Frank have enough of a god-complex to think it’s totally chill and cool to just mess around with people’s eternal… like… souls or whatever. Ugh. And I hate that to do anything about it, I have to stay complicit, just a bit longer.The only thing that’s helping is that tonight, the data I collected, it’s going to help in the end. I know it is. It’s… a means to an… no, no I don’t like that… I just mean, it’ll help. Eventually, the work I’m doing right now… Eventually. Not tonight, though. No. Tonight, I’m going home. Or, my parents’ home. I’m going to hug my mum and dad and apologise for not calling enough, and I’m going to text Riley and thank them for pushing me to come here and I’m going to not check my phone to see if Julia’s texted me back. Yeah, that sounds like a plan for now. At least until tomorrow night when I get on the train back to my other home and can start working on applying these data to the recorder. Yeah. That’s enough for now.

[SFX: Recording Ends]

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Leanne:

Episode Six of Tell No Tales, A Visiting, was written and performed by Leanne Egan. If you enjoyed this episode, the best way to support the show is to spread the word. Leaving us a rating and review in your listening app of choice is a huge help, or you can follow us on Twitter or Tumblr @tellnotalespod Links and information about transcripts can be found in the show notes.Tell No Tales is distributed by Wasting Company Time Productions, under a Creative Commons attribution non-commercial share-alike 4.0 international license. Thank you for listening, and remember: the dead don’t bite

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