Opening theme begins

Leanne:

Wasting Company Time presents Tell No Tales, Episode Eight: Back on the Horse

Opening theme ends

[SFX: Recording Begins, Classical Music Playing]

Leo:

Audio diary of Leo Quinn, assistant to Frank Williamson, dir- nope. No. I can’t do this. There are so many reasons I can’t do this.

Riley:

Come onnn, Leo, yes you can, keep going, this is fun for me.

Leo:

Yeah, that’s one of the reasons. I talk into this recorder alone. It’s the only reason it isn’t mortifying. Like, sure, someone some day might listen to it, but not to my face.

Riley:

You talk shit to me all the time, what difference does a recorder make?

[SFX: Something being thrown, Riley rolling their chair out of the way before laughing evilly]

Riley:

Come on, you can do it. It’s been a month, I know the first time back out there is going to be hard, but it’s time to get back on the horse!

Leo:

Was that a pun?

Riley:

(TEASING) Why would that be a pun?

Leo:

Because the case is about a haunting at a stables.

Riley:

So you did read the file?

Leo:

Reading the file wasn’t the hard part, Riley, it’s the going that’s the problem

Riley:

But reading it shows you’re curious. And I know you. The second your curiosity is piqued, you’re done for. Go on, read out the case. I’ve listened to your old audio diaries now. I know how this goes. First you read the initial report. Or, actually no, first you complain about Frank. Or talk about me. Or swoon over Julia. Oh, we could defo swoon over Julia first if that’ll help.

Leo:

I’ve decided that instead of doing any of that I will simply be passing away, thanks.

Riley:

Audio diary of Leo Quinn, assistant to Frank Williamson, director of Better Place. Sigh. Did you see Julia’s dress last week? I did. She only wore it for about ten minutes after she changed out of her uniform at the end of the work day, but I noticed, because I’m Leo Quinn and I notice everything Julia does because Julia’s a magnificent goddess whom I would lay down my life for in a heartbeat if she asked-

Leo:

(OVERLAPPING)… Okay, Case RM#2245 – Can’t believe you’ve already worked 45 cases this year by the way, nice one.

Riley:

Flattery will get you everywhere, please continue.Leo:
Uh, Category two, case status-active… Are you sure a category two is the way forward? I mean, shouldn’t I be starting with a category one after last time?Riley:
Yes, you should. But. You said it yourself, you think the recorder is ready. Which makes sense because you’ve spent the last month doing nothing but tinker with it instead of taking on any new cases—

Leo:

Wasn’t asking for a personal attack but whateve—

Riley:

—And, as you also said yourself, if you test it out on a category one and it doesn’t work, it’ll be pointless because you won’t know if the problem is with the recorder, or if it just doesn’t work on category ones. In fact, we both know that the ideal first trial for your brand spanking new recorder would be a category three, but nobody’s asking you to do that. So. Category two it is.

Leo:

I don’t like it when you’re right.

Riley:

I love it though 🙂

Leo:

And you’re sure you’re okay to come with me?

Riley:

If you decide to go investigate this spirit, I will be there. If anyone’s getting hanged drawn and quartered this time, I promise it’ll be me… too soon?

Leo:

Definitely… (LONG SILENCE). Alright, fine (CLEARS THROAT) Report made by Hanna Ober via email, initial report: Hi Alison, Many thanks for your timely response to my email, I am happy to provide the details requested. The property in question is my mum’s old stables in Gloucestershire, a plot of land she used to use to run her business as a riding and dressage instructor. She found, however, about ten years ago, that the horses were becoming very easily spooked, strangely twitchy and unsettled. My mum is a very superstitious woman, and wasted no time moving to a different site. She was never able to sell the land, most prospective buyers passed after being shown the stables, and I remember a couple of them saying that it just had a bad feeling about it. But I’ve recently just gotten into my mum’s line of work, and wanted to fix up the old stables to use myself. A recent visit to the plot, though, alerted me to a new development. I’d brushed it off, at first, as my mum’s superstition, but it’s a bit harder to ignore now. I can confirm it’s definitely a haunting — The first time I went over there, just to assess any damage and weathering over the years, I found myself caught in the middle of a snowstorm in August. It wasn’t just a freak weather incident either, it was only over the stables, the rest of the land was fine. Still I brushed it off, came back again with a contractor, and we were both startled by the sound of screaming. I’ve spent enough time around horses to know the sound of a horse in pain when I hear it, and there were definitely no horses nearby to be making that noise so… near to us. The sound seemed to be coming from inside the stables with us. It isn’t an enormous inconvenience at the moment, we were able to survey the stables despite the screaming and, barring any supernatural snowstorms, we should still be able to make some headway on the reconstruction of the place, but any help you can offer would be appreciated. Best wishes, Hanna Ober.

(SLOW CLAP FROM RILEY)

Leo:

Can you not?

Riley:

No, I love it. I see why you were always cast as the narrator in school plays, excellent reading voice.

Leo:

I’m not above murdering you.

Riley:

I’d haunt you. And not in five to ten business years either, I’d come right back to annoy you, like, immediately.

Leo:

As long as you’ll still do in-depth ghost-research for me from beyond the grave.

Riley:

Ooh, yeah, good point, read the rest of my file, my beautiful beautiful research.

Leo:

(BIG SIGH) so Riley found that the spirit was likely a teenager who used the stables a little while before Hanna’s mum started using the land. Her name was Anya Rotherham, and she died after coming out to the stables after a fight with her parents, taking one of the horses without proper equipment, and riding out in a snowstorm. The horse got hurt, and so did she, and she wasn’t able to get to a phone to let anybody know where she was. She died of hypothermia the following night. It’d certainly explain the manifestations. She doesn’t seem… violent, at least.

Riley:

No, just scared.

Leo:

Yeah. Thanks for this, by the way. Not just coming along on this one but, being the kind of person who gets it. Who’s willing to put your job on the line to save some ghosts.

Riley:

I’m honestly kind of offended that this was ever in question.

Leo:

Yeah. That was daft of me, sorry. Alright. Enough of this, let’s go.

Riley:

Really? We’re going?

Leo:

Well, no, we’re not going to Gloucestershire right now, it’s low-priority, right? So we’ve got time, we can go on the weekend, I just mean, it’s nearly six. You really want to be that person still in the office after six?

Riley:

Oh, right, yeah, oh hey maybe we could see if Juuuulliiaaaa is free to go for some after-work drinks tonight…

Leo:

(OVERLAPPING)…Passing away now!

[SFX: Recording Ends]

[SFX: Recording Begins]

Riley:

So are you gonna do the thing?

Leo:

The… thing?

Riley:

You know, when you talk about what happened when you went there, and you get all lyrical and shit.

Leo:

I do not get all… lyrical, and whatever.

Riley:

You do! It’s not a bad thing, it’s nice, feels like I’m there.

Leo:

You were there this time.

Riley:

Humour me. I’ll even get you started — so we went to Gloucestershire over the weekend…

Leo:

(GROANS) okay, fine, yeah we went to the stables. I mean, it’s already winter so when we got there and the temperature dropped, it didn’t feel as menacing as it would have if it had been August, but when we got closer, it got… much, much colder. Colder than I think I’ve ever been in the UK.

Riley:

That’s because you’ve never spent all night in the snow in the UK. According to my research, she was lying in about a foot of snow for almost eighteen hours before she died. The manifested cold probably wasn’t the actual air temperature from the night she died, but something closer to the cold she felt that night.

Leo:

Right. Yeah. Dark. Think I preferred not knowing that actually.

Riley:

It’s literally my job to know that stuff. Hence the willingness to team up against the evil corporation. So, carry on taking down the evil corporation…

Leo:

I mean, not much more to say really, it was cold, then the feeling, y’know, the goosebumps, then the horse screaming, then I asked her questions and tried to record her answers.

Riley:

Wow that’s all you’ve got?

Leo:

That’s all I got.

Riley:

Where’s the lyricism? The drama? In your old recordings there was no “so yeah, there was some blood and maggots and screaming and yeah, then I left.” No! It was all, “and the floorboard creaked beneath my foot, heavy with the sound of the mourning spirit”

Leo:

I have never said those words in my life.

Riley:

I’m paraphrasing.

Leo:

Yeah, well, maybe I’m just not up for… Not in the mood to- I mean, I’m just impatient to see if it worked, can we just listen to the recording?

Riley:

Fine, fine, go ahead, can you play it here?

Leo:

I think so, the thing doesn’t have audio output, only input — I didn’t think about that, actually, when I was building it, gotta look into adding something like that, but It’s got an external memory storage for the recordings so I can just…

[SFX: Memory storage being unplugged from the recorder and plugged into the laptop, typing and clicking]

…cool, yeah, so I can convert it to something that’ll play on my laptop

Riley:

Do you always bring your personal laptop into the office with you?

Leo:

Yeah, I’m not going to keep my anti-Better-Place notes on a Better Place company computer am I?

Riley:

Smart. Oh, but this way you still get to waste company time by making your notes during office hours. Love it. It’s the small rebellions that count.

Leo:

Exactly. Here, okay. (DEEP BREATH)

[SFX: Mouse clicks, then playback begins. It is vaguely recognisable as speech, but mostly an incomprehensible garbled mess]

Leo:

No no no no, hold on

[SFX: Clicks, playback stops then starts again from a different point, still garbled]

Leo:

(VOICE THICK) no no no, it can’t not work, it can’t (CRYING)

Riley:

Hey, hey, it’s okay, Leo, we knew it might not, this was a first trial, we’ve got time.

Leo:

No, I know I. I just thought… Ugh. I just hoped that last time would be… Like if it had worked this time it’d be…

Riley:

You hoped that you’d never have to do it again?

Leo:

No not that, I’d still have to interview new spirits with the recorder. It’s (SNIFFS) I just… God it’s stupid. I’d hoped maybe, if last time, Whitechapel, had been the one that got me enough data to get it working that… It’d make it… I don’t know, worth it?

Riley:

Oh, Leo.

Leo:

(LAUGH CRY) Told you it was stupid.

Riley:

Not stupid, just… Going through that is never worth it, it’s just… it wasn’t a waste. This is a step by step thing, right? Every bit of research gets you closer. It all adds up. Maybe that wasn’t the tipping point, but now, because of that one, you’re one step closer.

Leo:

Yeah. God, just… It didn’t even hurt, y’know? I don’t know why I’m this…

Riley:

Those bruises around your neck begged to differ

Leo:

You know what I mean. The knife. It didn’t actually hurt.

Riley:

You’re still allowed to be traumatised. Intestines usually stay on the inside.

Leo:

(LONG SILENCE, THEN LEO STARTS TO LAUGH) Yeah. Yeah, I suppose they do, don’t they?

Riley:

Leo, you know I was only so pushy with this case because I thought it was what you wanted. I thought you wanted to get back out there, so I tried to help push you to do that. But if I got it wrong, if it’s not what you want, nobody would think any less of you for calling it quits. Whether that’s forever, or just for a little while—

Leo:

No, no, you were right, I needed it. It’ll get better. Like, exposure therapy, right? I can’t go around being afraid of every ghost I meet. Doing this is still too important to me.

Riley:

You haven’t talked much about it. Y’know. Since that day.

Leo:

No. No I haven’t.

Riley:

Don’t you think it would help?

Leo:

Yeah, it probably would.

Riley:

Do you want to?

Leo:

Not really.

Riley:

Okay. Frank’s not coming back today, right? He’s gone for the afternoon?

Leo:

Yeah, he’s gone.

Riley:

Let’s go waste some company time at the pub instead then.

Leo:

(DEEP BREATH) Yeah. Yeah, sounds good.

[SFX: Recording Ends]

Closing theme begins

Leanne:

Episode Eight of Tell No Tales, Back on the Horse, was written and performed by Leanne Egan. You also heard the voice of Phil Thompson as Riley, with additional voice work by Sophia Leggett. 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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