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The Woman Who Called Tomorrow · The Midnight Archives

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  Speaker 1: The Midnight Archives. Season 1, Episode 1. File 001. The
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  Speaker 1: Woman Who Called Tomorrow. Every file has a story. Some
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  Speaker 1: should have remained closed. The Midnight Archives. File number 001.
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  Speaker 1: My name is Elias Vane. For 11 years, I have
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  Speaker 1: worked beneath an abandoned government records building, cataloging reports that
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  Speaker 1: officially do not exist. Missing people, unexplained sounds, and places
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  Speaker 1: nobody remembers. My work is simple. Receive a file, examine it,
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  Speaker 1: record what I find, and return it to its cabinet.
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  Speaker 1: One rule was given to me on my first night.
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  Speaker 1: Never answer the telephone after midnight. No one explained why.
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  Speaker 1: The file arrived on a Tuesday evening. It was waiting
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  Speaker 1: on my desk when I returned from the records room.
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  Speaker 1: A brown envelope with no delivery mark and no return address.
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  Speaker 1: My name was written on the back. Across the front,
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  Speaker 1: in black ink, were the words, File 001, The Woman
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  Speaker 1: Who Called Tomorrow. Inside were three cassette tapes, a police report,
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  Speaker 1: several photographs, and a handwritten statement. The statement belonged to
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  Speaker 1: Margaret Hale, a 34-year-old woman who lived alone outside the
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  Speaker 1: small town of Bellwether. According to the report, Margaret had
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  Speaker 1: contacted the police on November 16, 1998. She claimed a
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  Speaker 1: woman had telephoned her and identified herself as Margaret, calling
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  Speaker 1: from the following day. The police assumed it was a prank.
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  Speaker 1: Margaret insisted the caller knew private details about her childhood,
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  Speaker 1: what she was wearing and what she had eaten that evening.
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  Speaker 1: Then came the warning. At exactly 9.17 the next morning,
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  Speaker 1: a man would arrive at Margaret's front door. He would
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  Speaker 1: tell her that her younger brother Daniel had been found dead.
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  Speaker 1: Daniel had been missing for six years. The caller warned
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  Speaker 1: Margaret not to open the door. The visitor, she said,
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  Speaker 1: might look like Daniel, but it would not be her brother.
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  Speaker 1: I began with the first cassette. Margaret's statement began calmly,
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  Speaker 1: but her voice faltered as she described the caller. The
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  Speaker 1: woman had sounded older, exhausted, and frightened. Margaret had asked
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  Speaker 1: how the caller could know what would happen the next morning.
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  Speaker 1: The woman had answered that she already knew because she
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  Speaker 1: had lived through it. The recording ended with Margaret asking
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  Speaker 1: what happened after the visitor arrived. There was no answer,
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  Speaker 1: only static. The second cassette was dated November 17th, 1998.
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  Speaker 1: It contained a recording of another telephone call. The same
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  Speaker 1: woman was speaking. She repeated the warning and urged Margaret
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  Speaker 1: to stay away from the front door. Margaret asked whether
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  Speaker 1: the visitor could really be Daniel. The caller insisted it
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  Speaker 1: could not. It would only be something wearing his face.
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  Speaker 1: Then the caller told Margaret to look at the family
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  Speaker 1: photographs in her hallway. She said the face in those
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  Speaker 1: photographs would look different after the visitor arrived. Margaret asked
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  Speaker 1: what had happened to the older version of herself. The
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  Speaker 1: caller admitted that she had opened the door. Then she
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  Speaker 1: said that whatever entered the house had learned how to
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  Speaker 1: become her. I replayed it. Beneath the woman's voice was
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  Speaker 1: a faint sound, like breathing close to the receiver. I
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  Speaker 1: turned to the police report. At 9.17 on the morning
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  Speaker 1: of November 17th, a man had arrived at Margaret Hale's house.
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  Speaker 1: A neighbor saw him standing outside the front door. He
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  Speaker 1: wore a dark coat and carried a small envelope. The
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  Speaker 1: neighbor thought he looked familiar, but could not explain why.
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  Speaker 1: She also noticed that he never knocked. He simply stood there,
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  Speaker 1: smiling at the door. Margaret was never seen again. When
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  Speaker 1: police entered the house, they found the kettle still warm
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  Speaker 1: and the telephone receiver on the kitchen floor. The photographs
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  Speaker 1: had been removed from the hallway. There were no signs
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  Speaker 1: of forced entry and no evidence that Margaret had packed
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  Speaker 1: her belongings. The official report listed her as a missing person.
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  Speaker 1: The third cassette was different. It had no date. Instead,
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  Speaker 1: Someone had written a name across its label. Elias Vane.
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  Speaker 1: My name. I had never heard of Margaret Hale before
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  Speaker 1: that evening. I had never seen the file. Yet the
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  Speaker 1: handwriting on the cassette matched the notes inside the envelope.
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  Speaker 1: I placed it in the player. At first, there was
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  Speaker 1: only static. Then a woman spoke. She addressed me by
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  Speaker 1: name and said the file had finally reached me. She
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  Speaker 1: warned me not to let the man outside my office enter.
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  Speaker 1: I stopped the tape. A recording from 1998 had no
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  Speaker 1: reason to know who I was. I pressed play again.
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  Speaker 1: The woman continued. She said the visitor would look like
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  Speaker 1: Arthur Bell, the archivist who had occupied my position before me.
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  Speaker 1: Arthur had disappeared 11 years earlier, on the night I
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  Speaker 1: began working at the archives. I had been told he
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  Speaker 1: resigned without notice. His office was cleared, his personnel records sealed,
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  Speaker 1: and his name removed from the building directory. The woman
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  Speaker 1: on the tape insisted Arthur had never left. She warned
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  Speaker 1: that the visitor would tell me the archives were closing.
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  Speaker 1: He would say I was free to go home. I
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  Speaker 1: was not to believe him. The recording ended with one
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  Speaker 1: final warning. The visitor already knew my name. I tried
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  Speaker 1: to convince myself it was an elaborate joke. perhaps arranged
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  Speaker 1: by someone with access to my employment records. Then the
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  Speaker 1: telephone rang. The clock above my desk showed 11.43pm. I
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  Speaker 1: stared at the receiver. It rang again. I remembered the
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  Speaker 1: rule about answering telephones after midnight, but midnight had not arrived,
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  Speaker 1: and I had already spent the evening listening to a
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  Speaker 1: voice that knew my name. I picked up. A woman
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  Speaker 1: was on the line. Her voice was frightened and exhausted.
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  Speaker 1: I recognized it from the tapes. It was Margaret Hale.
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  Speaker 1: She warned me that someone was standing outside my office.
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  Speaker 1: I turned toward the frosted glass and saw a tall
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  Speaker 1: figure in a dark coat facing the door. I asked
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  Speaker 1: whether it was Arthur Bell. Margaret said it was not Arthur.
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  Speaker 1: It only looked like him. Three slow knocks came from
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  Speaker 1: the corridor. The visitor began calling my name. The voice
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  Speaker 1: sounded exactly like Arthur's, familiar enough to make me believe,
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  Speaker 1: for one brief moment, that my predecessor had returned. Then
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  Speaker 1: the voice changed. It became my own. Margaret warned me
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  Speaker 1: that the thing had learned to imitate me. It wanted
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  Speaker 1: me to believe it was someone I knew. She told
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  Speaker 1: me not to open the door, no matter what I heard.
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  Speaker 1: The handle began to turn. I dropped the receiver and
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  Speaker 1: ran into the records room. I locked the inner door
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  Speaker 1: and waited in darkness. Footsteps approached. They stopped outside. Then
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  Speaker 1: everything went quiet. When I finally returned to my office,
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  Speaker 1: the corridor was empty. The entrance was closed. The telephone
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  Speaker 1: receiver rested neatly on its cradle. I checked the clock. 11.51pm.
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  Speaker 1: Eight minutes had passed. There were no footprints or signs
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  Speaker 1: of entry. but a photograph lay on my desk. It
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  Speaker 1: showed me sitting in my office, holding the telephone receiver.
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  Speaker 1: The picture had been taken from somewhere inside the room.
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  Speaker 1: On the back, someone had written, The archivist has answered.
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  Speaker 1: I did not sleep that night. At 9.17 the following morning,
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  Speaker 1: another envelope appeared on my desk. It was addressed to me.
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  Speaker 1: Inside was a photograph of a village. The streets were empty.
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  Speaker 1: The houses stood open. Every clock visible in the picture
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  Speaker 1: showed the same time, 3.17 a.m. There was no police
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  Speaker 1: report and no location, only a handwritten note. The village
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  Speaker 1: disappeared overnight. I placed the photograph beside Margaret Hale's file.
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  Speaker 1: The cases seemed connected, and the archives appeared to be
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  Speaker 1: collecting them for a reason. Then I noticed a figure
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  Speaker 1: in the photograph. At the far end of the empty street,
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  Speaker 1: stood a man in a dark coat. He was looking
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  Speaker 1: directly toward the camera. He had my face. That evening,
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  Speaker 1: I returned to the office and found the cassette player
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  Speaker 1: switched on. Margaret's recording was playing, although I had removed
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  Speaker 1: the tape before leaving. Her voice was quieter now. She
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  Speaker 1: said File 002 was ready. Then she added something that
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  Speaker 1: had not been on the earlier recordings. The man outside
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  Speaker 1: my office was not the first person to wear Arthur
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  Speaker 1: Bell's face. He was only the latest. The recording stopped.
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  Speaker 1: The telephone rang. The clock showed 11.43 p.m. I did
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  Speaker 1: not answer. I watched the receiver until the ringing stopped.
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  Speaker 1: The Midnight Archives. File number 001. Status, unresolved. I have
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  Speaker 1: since learned that the archives do not simply preserve records
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  Speaker 1: of the unexplained. Some files appear before the events they describe.
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  Speaker 1: Others arrive after the people inside them have vanished. And sometimes,
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  Speaker 1: the files know who will read them. If a telephone
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  Speaker 1: rings at 11.43 tomorrow night, do not answer it. Some
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  Speaker 1: calls are not meant to reach you. Some are meant
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  Speaker 1: to find you. out where you are.