An Episode of Not Quite Dead.

Episode Content Warnings

Please bear in mind that this show is a work of horror fiction and frequently places characters in situations which jeopardise their psychological and physical health. This episode contains:

Emotional distress

Descriptions of extremely bad sunburn and blisters

Mentions of torture

Discussions of the aftermath of medical torture

Threats of violence

Implications of violence

Transcript

ALFIE

Hnggg. I think that might have been a mistake. Let me just— aaaaaa – there we go. Much better. Much better.

I am so sunburned. I think there is a blister forming on the back of my neck. And my hands? Oh god.

It’s fine. I’ll hunt tonight. Yeah.

The good news is that I have a laptop and a map.

I can feel it healing but oh my god. Oh my god. I’m so hungry. I’m so hungry. I could— I could eat a whole person right now I swear to fuck. Ugh. Neige. I miss your stupid blood. Come back and let me bite you.

Uff.

[ALFIE’S BODY HITS THE BED]

Wait. That’s an access hatch. There’s an attic.

[ALFIE GETS UP AGAIN WITH CONSIDERABLE EFFORT AND MANY SMALL SOUNDS OF COMPLAINT]

I think the one on the back of my neck is split a bit. Ow, ow, ow.

Alright, let me just—

[A HANDLE IS PULLED, METAL STAIRS SLIDING OUT]

Oh, stairs. How convenient. Marvels of German engineering. Right.

[HE CLIMBS THE LADDER, MAKING SMALL SOUNDS OF PAIN, THE RUNGS CREAKING AS HE CLIMBS.]

Okay.

[THE SOUND IN THE ATTIC IS MUFFLED AND CLOSE.

We’re alright. Yeah. We’re alright. I think I’m bleeding a bit on my neck but it’s fine. Yeah.

There’s not quite enough room for me to stand up straight. Neige could. It smells of dust and wood up here. The air is so close, so still, like a tomb.

There’s loads of boxes.

[CARDBOARD SWIPES, ALFIE OPENS THE BOX, AND GASPS]

Casper. The scent is old but it’s been trapped in here, and. Oh, Cas.

[FABRIC MOVES. HE RUMMAGES]

It’s all clothes in here. I wish I knew more about fashion history because then I’d know when it was from. I think they’re all natural fabrics. I don’t know if that means anything.

[ALFIE’S BREATH HITCHES]

I remember waking up, turning over in bed, reaching for him and he was gone. The sheets still smelled of him. This is like. A hundredth of that, in intensity. The smell of him is barely clinging to the fabric. I’m sitting here and I can literally smell it getting weaker the longer I keep it out, and— and—

I’m going to put it back.

[CARDBOARD RUSTLING]

Fuck, Casper. Fuck.

[CARDBOARD RUSTLING]

Jesus, yeah. Yeah. More clothes. Casper’s stuff. I wonder if he lived here. Didn’t he and Neige meet in Berlin? These clothes, I don’t know, they look to new to have been from then. That would have been all victorian-looking, wouldn’t it? This is all like. Shirts, jackets, trousers. Too modern.

[ALFIE CLOSES THIS BOX, MOVES ON TO ANOTHER. HE RETCHES.]

Ugh, god. God.

Medical equipment. It’s used, packed away quick, unsterilised. Old blood. Casper’s. Other vampires’. Half mades’. Some human. Ugh. There’s something— shoved down the side here.

[SOMETHING SLIDING ACROSS CARDBOARD]

A book. It’s full of handwriting, but it’s all in— hmm. From the look of it, it’s Czech. I’m hopeless at Czech. Neige could read it, if he—

[PAGES TURN]

Oh. Anatomy studies. He’s focusing on brains and spines here, which is interesting. And

[PAGES TURN]

— oh fuck. That’s the— the structure Haley was talking about. The one connecting up our throats to our brains. Some kind of new organ. Fuck I wish I could read this—

Wait. I think this is two people’s handwriting.

[PAGES TURN]

It is.

[PAGES TURN]

Oh. Oh my god, this is record of what Casper was working on with Bonham.

[PAGES TURN]

Fuck.

[ALFIE IS BREATHING UNSTEADILY, TURNING FURTHER PAGES]

Oh— oh my god, a telegram. From Henri. In French. Weird French, but less weird than his fucking notebooks, I think I can sort of read it. Uh. Sang, that’s blood, something something, and then— wait. In the stuff from Bonham’s lab, there were these little cards, all typed on a typewriter, I was assuming they were telegrams like this one, translated into English, sometimes badly.

Most of them are to ‘E.B.’, but there’s a few with C.N. on there too. Casper Novotny.

What did Neige say? Bonham wouldn’t visit Paris. Why? I. Hmm.

Right, this telegram. Uh. He’s talking about blood, and the brain, and purities, and— there was a lot of this in the stuff from the lab at York, too. Purity and impurity. Act, I didn’t know about Henri’s weird thing about thinking the half-made were a more pure kind of vampire when I was reading them, though. I never thought to revisit it. I should have.

Oh! Fuck! He mentions Claudio, and then, something about types? Types of what? Of vampires? What does he mean? Uh, I’m pretty sure that word means variability and that one means manifestations but I don’t know! I don’t know.

Goddamn it Neige I need you and your languages to read this bloody thing. UGH. It it like, blood types? Had they worked out blood types back then, when Bonham and Cas were working together? I can’t bloody remember. I’m too hungry to think properly.

[RAIN BEGINS TO FALL ON THE ROOF]

Oh, typical. It would start raining now, wouldn’t it? Stupid weather. I should have waited an hour.

[BOOK SLAMS SHUT]

Oh hey, my neck has stopped bleeding, though.

So, if there’s stuff from when Cas and Bonham were working together here, this must be where he came after Bonham and he went their separate ways, after the house burned down. Or. Well. Precise chronology of Casper leaving the house burning down aside, this is where he came. He left so much stuff behind there, but he thought this book was worth holding onto. And all of this equipment, too.

[ALFIE GRABS ANOTHER BOX.]

Oh, oh. Casper. Why is this one so. Oh. Oh, it smells so much more strongly of him. But it looks like it’s just, wads of cloth.

[ALFIE GASPS]

A finger. I think. A little finger. I. Casper’s finger. Oh— oh. It’s very desiccated, dry and— It falls apart. I suppose that proves it’s not something about him which was keeping him from crumbling away. He can decay, like vampires decay. A desiccation. But the rest of his body didn’t.

[RUMMAGING]

Oh my god, Casper’s finger, in a vial of blood. The same little finger as the one which just crumbled to dust, oh my god.

Fuck, when we— when we were in Paris I fucking. I cut off a bunch of my toes. I don’t even know what I was thinking, really. I just kept thinking about the teeth, regenerating. How Neige, how at first, when we were running away, I could feel he was— like inside of him there just wasn’t enough him. It wasn’t until the third time after we’d hunted together that he started to feel like he had before. Like it had taken his body all that time to put him back together. He’d just been walking around, hollow and I—

There’s something wrong with me, I swear. I just thought. How far does it go? I’ve thought about it before, cutting off a finger. I went for toes because I thought it would be easier to hide but Neige knew. He found them. He let me keep them but, I. I don’t know.

And Casper. He did the same thing. Cut off his finger. Left it here to rot.

[VIAL OF BLOOD AND FINGER SLOSHES]

I put my toes in blood. Human, not vampire. Haley said to me she thought the only reason Cas kept on going was because I was giving him blood. I’ve got no needles to inject my toes with anything but, surely if the blood is smart enough, I don’t know. Maybe it’ll find its way in.

Anyway, some of the jars, it worked? The toes didn’t rot. Some of them, they did. The blood went off. unrefrigerated yeah, of course it did. But. Vampire blood is such a good preservative and I just— like obviously I know you need a sufficient amount of vampire blood to make a vampire but I wondered. I don’t know what I wondered. Ugh, I can’t THINK. I wondered if it was enough, the blood in my toes, to convert the blood in the jar? But it didn’t?

[VIAL OF BLOOD AND FINGER SLOSHES]

I’m not sure how I feel about the fact we’ve wound up running the same experiment on ourselves. I’m not sure I like what that says about me.

The toes are gone, now. I got rid of them in Paris. Neige said I could keep them, but I… I didn’t want to bring them with me. Not after I saw the look on Neige’s face.

But like… of course he looked like that. He probably know’s what’s up here. He probably knew Cas had done this.  I can smell him too, much fainter. Sometimes when I move a box, there he is. Neige. The smell of him clinging like frost on grass, gone as soon as I touch it.

Maybe he was the one who packaged—

Fuck. Wait.

[WHISPERING]

Someone’s coming.

[DISTANTLY, A DOOR OPENS, LETTING IN THE SOUND OF THE CITY; PASSING CARS; HUMMING ENGINES, DISTANT VOICES.]

AN UNKNOWN VOICE
(Stern, suspicious)
Zvat? Ledyanoy?

[FOOTSTEPS GETTING CLOSER. ALFIE BREATHES HEAVILY]

AN UNKNOWN VOICE
I know you’re up there.

ALFIE
Fuck.

AN UNKNOWN VOICE
Come down. I want to talk.

ALFIE
That was Russian. What you said before.

AN UNKNOWN VOICE
Da. It was.

ALFIE
You don’t sound Russian.

AN UNKNOWN VOICE
I’ve been speaking English for two hundred years.

ALFIE
Neige sounds French.

AN UNKNOWN VOICE
Snowblood is sentimental. I’m too busy for that kind of thing. Speaking English in this accent has many advantages.

ALFIE
You didn’t break in, you had a key.

AN UNKNOWN VOICE
Yes. I keep an eye on this place for him. He called me, let me know he was coming to stay.

ALFIE
So. You’re his housekeeper.

[A MOMENT OF STONY SILENCE]

AN UNKNOWN VOICE
Come down the ladder, fledgeling.

ALFIE
Fledgling?

AN UNKNOWN VOICE
It’s what you are. Though you stink of him you’re not old blood. You’re new. Are you the boy from the new passport?

[ANOTHER SILENCE]

AN UNKNOWN VOICE
Ah. I didn’t think dalliances with humans were Ledyanoy’s sort of thing. That was always Novotny’s hobby, not his.

ALFIE
You knew Casper?

AN UNKNOWN VOICE
Once, yes.

[FOOTSTEPS]

AN UNKNOWN VOICE
That photograph of you was unflattering. Though perhaps it’s just the angle.

ALFIE
Uh. Thanks?

AN UNKNOWN VOICE
Will you come down, now?

ALFIE
Who are you?

INNA
You may call me Inna.

ALFIE
You knew Casper. And you know Neige.

INNA
Knowing might be overstating it. We have a begrudging acquaintance. He has left you here, then?

ALFIE
He said it was safer.

INNA
Than what, I wonder?

ALFIE
I don’t know.

INNA
From the stink of you, you two are very well-acquainted. Or as well acquainted as he allows anyone to be.

ALFIE
What is that supposed to mean?

INNA
Oh, so you’ve found him forthcoming, have you? Honest?

ALFIE
He tries his best.

INNA
Of this I have no doubt but I wonder what exactly his efforts are expended towards, as it’s almost certainly not the same end as your own.

ALFIE
What?

INNA
You’re hungry, aren’t you? Probably because you walked across the square this afternoon in broad daylight. Things are different in Berlin. We are careful here. It’s not like the circus Ros pantomimes presiding over in York.

ALFIE
You know Ros and Eponine, too?

INNA
The world of vampires is a small one, and the world of those of us older than a hundred years even smaller than that. Your absent protector made sure of that.

ALFIE
You mean the stuff with Claudio—

INNA
Do not speak his name. You don’t know where he’s gone, then?

ALFIE
Neige? Uh. No.

INNA
I caught the end of his trail but it was difficult to tell where he was headed. He stole a car. Once he was inside, he’s harder to track. He knows the autobahns well, the backroads better. we don’t have the numbers to spare to track him.

ALFIE
Sorry, why would you want to track him?

INNA
Don’t you want to know where he’s going?

ALFIE
Well, yeah. Course I do. But why do you?

INNA
He’s been lying low for a while. Now I hear from Michel and Etienne that he’s been to Paris, Versailles, with rumours he’s heading to Venice to meet with Cosette.

ALFIE
Wait, who?

INNA
Ah. Not so well-acquainted after all.

ALFIE
He tells me what he has to.

INNA
And nothing more besides, from the sounds of it. And now he’s left you here, all alone.

ALFIE
I— trust him.

INNA
Liar. But I’ll forgive that. It’s the second wisdom you’ve shown since I walked in.

ALFIE
What’s the first?

INNA
You have not come down the ladder.

ALFIE
If you try to hurt me, I—

INNA
What? You’ll tear me to bits like you did those poor lab technicians? You know they exterminated almost fifteen full-blooded vampires after your little stunt. I hope your Sang de Neige is worth it.

ALFIE
You didn’t see what they were doing to him, I couldn’t just leave him there.

INNA
Of course not. But one wonders how your beloved came to be in grasp of Bonham’s lackeys, doesn’t one?

ALFIE
I— it wasn’t— if you hurt me he’ll kill you!

INNA
He’d do worse than that, darling. I’ve seen him at work. You’ve had a glimpse yourself, of course, but you’d just learned how very squishy and breakable humans are, so perhaps it wasn’t all that impressive. You’ve never seen vampires fight, have you? You’ve been raised in isolation, hand-fed by a monster expending all his effort not to show you his claws.

ALFIE
I’m not scared of Neige.

INNA
Fascinating that you seem to be telling the truth. You have loyalty. I can see why he’d find that appealing. Novotny, though, he hated that kind of thing. Reviled it. So there’s something else about you. Curiosity, perhaps. A propensity to stick your nose into places it shouldn’t be. That would explain your behaviour this afternoon.

ALFIE
I thought you didn’t know Neige that well! How come now you’re saying you know how he picks which people to fuck?

INNA
Oh, no, it’s not about fucking. It’s about keeping you around. He saved you, for starters. underneath the stink of him that’s on you – you really have drunk an awful lot of his blood – there’s something of him in the smell of you. Like he and Casper split it, when they were turning you. Goodness, your eyes are turning scarlet. Are you going to hunt me?

ALFIE
Oh, fuck you.

INNA
No thank you. You’re not my type. I prefer my men tall, dark and handsome.

ALFIE
Casper?

INNA
Does that bother you?

ALFIE
I mean I probably wasn’t even born so who cares? I fucked other people too.

INNA
Pragmatic. Alright. Yes. The appeal is becoming clearer.

ALFIE
Why did you come here?

INNA
You’re not being very careful.

ALFIE
I needed a laptop, I didn’t know where I was, I can’t—

INNA
Not just that. You’re charging all over the city last night, too. Looking for him, presumably. You’ve been noticed.

ALFIE
By who?

INNA
Me.

ALFIE
Why does that matter?

INNA
He should not have left you here alone, without explaining things to you. You’re too restless to follow instructions well enough to keep yourself safe. He asked me to come and speak with you last night and you weren’t here. I wondered if you’d seen sense, fled. I was willing to let you go. But then there you were, crossing the square in broad daylight, crisping up in the sun. Foolish.

ALFIE
Why would he want me to speak with you?

INNA
So I could show you how to conduct yourself here. There are rules.

ALFIE
About what?

INNA
Where, when, and who to hunt.

ALFIE
Why?

INNA
Because we’re not animals.

ALFIE
We are animals.

INNA
Ha. He would say that. Fucking terrifying and so banal all at once.

ALFIE

I do not find him banal.

INNA

Hmm. I suppose you wouldn’t.

ALFIE

What’s that supposed to mean?

INNA

No matter. You know, he slaughtered everyone I knew? He left one alive, one. Michel. And he took him away.

ALFIE

Wait. Fuck. You’re one of Claudio’s captains, aren’t you?

INNA

Don’t judge me. We can’t all choose our makers. Claudio made me with Neige’s blood. He picked me out to be a captain of one of his cells; all of us in positions of power were turned with Neige’s blood alongside Claudio’s own.

ALFIE

Like you said, before. When I turned myself, I drank Casper’s blood. But, at the end–

INNA

Oh yes, I don’t doubt the irony is apparent to him. He’s too clever to think it’s perverse, like a lot of the old guard used to.

ALFIE

Old guard?

INNA

The other ancients, when they were still alive. The idea of old blood being stronger predates Claudio significantly. The old guard built legitimacy for their attempts at control on the idea that their blood was simply more powerful than newer blood. Neige credits Claudio with creating the myth of him, but those ideas had been percolating a long time.  He proposed that there were several lineages, mutations, lesser strains of vampirism.

ALFIE

Strains. Interesting you use that word.

INNA

Hmm. He said you were smart but I think you might actually be, which is a first.

ALFIE

Uh, thanks?

INNA

You have no idea of your own privilege or context. Novotny worked hard to keep you secret and safe. Sang de Neige will have kept you blind for his own reasons, I’m sure.

ALFIE

I knew he’d killed vampires. Lots of them.

INNA

Did he tell you that he escaped Claudio purely because a new sect had formed who would not stand to see their new god so mistreated? A little cult of his own which bore him to safety, nursed him to health, served as his army.

ALFIE

You’re— lying.

INNA
Why would I lie?

ALFIE
To turn me against him!

INNA
Why would I bother doing that? My associates are about to tear off your head and drain you like veal.

ALFIE
Uh. What?

INNA
I’ve been speaking to you this long to distract you. But I’ve learned some useful things too. Thank you for oversharing. My associates on the roof, Mr Dellon. It’s really quite thin.

ALFIE
Oh— oh fuck—

[MOVEMENT, CLATTERING, TEARING, SPLINTERING WOOD. AUDIO CUTS OFF ABRUPTLY AS ALFIE SCREAMS]

[THE SOUND CUTS OUT ABRUPTLY]

END