Episode 2:  The Cursed Pen

Scene 1 – The Game is Afoot

Inside Oscar Wilde’s study, a fire crackles in the hearth, casting a warm amber glow that flickers across the room like living brushstrokes.  Outside, the rain weaves the night into a silken curtain of silver, each droplet catching the occasional glimmer of a streetlamp through the rain-streaked glass.  Distant thunder murmurs low warnings, but within these walls, the study is a sanctuary of light—lamps ablaze, shadows held at bay.

Wilde sits at his desk, pen in hand, scribbling notes with restless energy as he pores over a stack of dusty books.  The city beyond is gripped by fear.  Jack the Ripper—so christened by the press—continues his reign of terror through the alleys of Whitechapel, while Scotland Yard remains baffled, offering neither clues nor suspects.

Oscar suspects there is more to the murders than meets the eye.  Arcane sigils and cryptic markings found at the crime scenes have been quietly dismissed by the authorities.  There are whispers of darker forces at play.  Fewer people stroll the streets at night, businesses close early and an overwhelming dread hangs in the air.  Londoners may delight in their séances and ghost hunts, eager to flirt with the veil between worlds—but this is something else entirely.  This is not parlor-room mysticism or the artificial thrill of a candlelit spirit board.  This is real magic; Old and dangerous and far beyond what the public is willing—or able—to believe.

Frank Miles wraps on the open door and leans in to announce a guest.

FRANK Hello, Oscar—I know you've been extra busy lately, but do try to muster a bit of courtesy for our guest this evening.  Allow me to introduce Agent Melville from British Intelligence.  It seems your recent articles are so bad, they’ve been deemed a crime of the state!

OSCAR Frank, if I wasn’t in some type of trouble, I’d either be bored to tears or dead, both of which are quite insufferable.  Now go fetch us some tea.

Dark mahogany shelves laden with carefully bound volumes and well-worn first editions line the walls, intermingled with artwork and curios from a life both scandalous and brilliant.  A heavy, intricately carved desk dominates the room, its surface scattered with notes, sharp epigrams, and the occasional, half-finished letter—a testament to his restless, creative genius.  An overstuffed leather chair is positioned close to the fireplace in front of two tall, narrow windows, which frame a rain-drenched London night outside.  Every detail of the space speaks to a man who straddles the worlds of art and debauchery with equal elegance, making his study not merely a working space, but a private stage where the drama of life itself is both contemplated and contrived.

MELVILLE Hello Oscar – sorry to stop by unannounced.  I assume you’ve heard there’s been another murder.

OSCAR Ah yes – but I’ve only just read the article in The Star, which is nothing more than a vulgar circus of ink and scandal.  It really has become a journalistic farce that panders to the lowest of tastes, William.

William Melville lowers himself into the chair across from Oscar, his movements deliberate, his expression unreadable.  He lets Oscar’s musings on London’s newspapers drift past like smoke—unacknowledged, irrelevant.  When he speaks, his voice is level and unhurried, slicing clean through the small talk.  Melville seldom participates in playful banter.

MELVILLE In my considered opinion, this latest murder carried an air of refined brutality.  It wasn’t the untempered chaos of an amateur’s crime but rather a study in calculated savagery.  The precise incisions—almost as if made by a disenchanted surgeon—hinted at a disturbing evolution in his dark artistry.  It was a chilling demonstration that this vicious killer was not content with a mere outburst of mayhem; he seemed compelled to perfect the macabre craft, leaving behind a signature as deliberate as it was ghastly.  Also, Scotland Yard found a possible clue not mentioned in The Star…

Melville rifles through his bag and presents an envelope.

MELVILLE This was found among the belongings of the latest victim.

Melville opens the envelope with clinical precision, sliding a single sheet free and placing it on the desk between them.  The paper is thick, official, its edges crisp as if it had been handled only by gloved hands.  He doesn’t speak.  Doesn’t gesture.  He just lets the letter sit there like a loaded pistol.

Oscar leans forward as his eyes flick to the addressee—Arthur Conan Doyle.  The name alone shifts the air in the room.  Whatever this is, it’s not routine.  Not gossip.  Not theatre.  He straightens in his chair, the weight of the moment settling in.  He picks up the letter, eyes narrowing.

WILDE Doyle?  That can’t be mere coincidence.  The man’s imagination is practically a séance in itself—always chasing phantoms and mysteries.  The handwriting… it trembles with urgency.  But more than that—it’s his kind of urgency.  Spiritualism, unseen forces, cryptic symbols… it reads like something torn from one of his own stories.

Without prompt, Oscar holds the letter up and starts reading aloud. 

OSCAR [clears throat], [reads aloud] Dear Mr. Doyle, I don’t know if this’ll reach you, or if you’ll even read it, but they say you’re clever with strange things, and I don’t know who else to turn to.  There’s talk in the streets—among the girls.  Not just about the Ripper, but about what comes before he does.  Cold air, even when there’s no wind.  Shadows that move wrong.  One girl said she saw marks on the wall near where Annie was found—like writing, but not in any language she knew.  Some say it’s just fear talking.  But I’ve seen things too.  Heard things.  I don’t sleep much anymore.
They say you write about ghosts and spirits and such.  Maybe you know what this is.  Maybe you can stop it.  Or at least understand it.
If something happens to me, I want someone to know I was scared.  Not just of him—but of whatever’s with him.  Signed Lizzie. Hmmm

MELVILLE She only reached out days before her murder.  It’s unsettling.  I  don’t suspect Doyle himself... but if anyone can decode these patterns beyond conventional logic—it’s you, Wilde.

OSCAR Well if you want someone who thinks outside conventional logic then you’ve come to the right man.  I’ve made a career of it, although not a very good one.  Reaching out to Doyle right before her death seems oddly literary of her.  Like a final act in a grim little play.  Also, I don’t suspect Doyle either—he’s far too fond of logic to be involved in anything so... CHAOTICALLY arcane.  Though, to be fair, his logic has always had a curious fondness for fairies and phantoms.

Oscar continues to study the letter, his gaze narrowing with quiet interest.  A flicker of intrigue dances behind his eyes—not quite surprise, but something adjacent.  The name Arthur Conan Doyle carries weight, though not intimacy.  Their acquaintance had been shaped by parlor smoke and claret, by half-remembered conversations at overlong dinner parties where wit passed for sincerity and everyone played at being slightly more clever than they were.

He wouldn’t call Doyle a friend.  Not truly.  They’d exchanged pleasantries, theories, the occasional barbed compliment.  Doyle had always struck him as a man both earnest and theatrical—too fond of moral clarity, too quick to believe in ghosts or governments.  Still, the fact that this letter bore his name suggested something more than idle correspondence.  Something curated.  Chosen.

Oscar is weighing possibilities now, and Doyle—however peripheral—has just become relevant.

OSCAR Still, if she believed he could help, perhaps we’d be wise to follow her lead.  Doyle may hide his convictions in the language of reason, but he’s no stranger to the strange.  Who knows—perhaps he can channel that sharp-minded detective he’s so fond of writing about.  Imagine it!  The brain behind Sherlock Holmes helping us untangle this madness.  Life, after all, doesn’t just imitate art—it insists upon OUTDOING it.

Scene 2: The Scholar and the Skeptic

The mahogany-paneled walls of the Authors’ Club bore the quiet dignity of a century’s worth of literary ambition.  Founded in 1891 by Walter Besant, the club had once been a haven for novelists, essayists and critics who preferred their wit sharp and their port sharper.  Even now, the scent of old paper and pipe smoke lingered in the corners, as if the ghosts of past debates refused to be exorcised.  The air is alive with refined conversation, punctuated by laughter and the soft clink of crystal glasses.  Intellectuals, explorers, and artists cluster around ornate tables, their voices weaving a tapestry of wit and speculation.

Oscar steps into the reading room, boots clicking against the parquet floor, his coat damp from the London drizzle.  A fire crackles in the hearth beneath a portrait of Besant himself, whose painted eyes seemed to follow each arrival with editorial scrutiny.  Shelves lined with signed first editions loom like sentinels, and the low murmur of conversation drifts from the far end—where two aging poets argued over the merits of blank verse.

Heads turn as he passes—his presence is part spectacle, part inevitability.  Across the room, Arthur Conan Doyle holds court at the center of a confident circle, regaling his companions with tales—likely of his adventures in the Arctic.  Wilde has already had to endure three dinner parties’ worth of stories about frostbite, polar bears and the noble silence of snow.

As Wilde approaches, the circle parts with a subtle shift of deference.  Doyle looks up, his expression brightening with curiosity and just a hint of amusement. 

OSCAR Ah, Mr. Doyle! The celebrated adventurer whose exploits have leaped from the printed page into the realm of legend.  Tonight, I trust you’ve set aside your heroic escapades to bask in some—dare I say, intoxicating—conversation?

DOYLE Wilde, my dearest companion in mischief—your entrance is like a sunbeam through the fog of my more tedious obligations.  Even the most storied legends, you know, must occasionally hang up their heroics and sip something warm.  I was just telling my friends here how I came of age at 80 degrees north latitude.

OSCAR Ah yes, the Arctic again. I do believe if I had a shilling for every time I’ve heard you “come of age at 80 degrees north,” I could fund my own expedition!

He offers a warm smile, tinged with just enough irony to keep the room attentive.  A few of Doyle’s companions chuckle, their laughter low and familiar, as they reach to pat his back with the easy camaraderie of men who’ve shared too many late-night debates.  Oscar, ever the practiced raconteur, knows precisely how to hold a room—his timing impeccable, his charm effortless, his wit just sharp enough to draw blood without leaving a scar.

OSCAR Come now, Doyle.  Let’s give your admirers a moment to recover from the frostbite of your adventures.  I’ve something rather curious to discuss—something that might even tempt the great mind behind Sherlock Holmes away from the warmth of his own legend.

He gestures subtly toward a quieter corner of the salon.

OSCAR Join me for a drink?  I promise no polar bears—only puzzles.

The two men drift toward a secluded table in the corner of the salon, order their drinks with the ease of habit, and slip effortlessly into the kind of spirited banter only old friends can share.  Two craftsmen of conversation, plying their trade with laughter and knowing glances.  As the evening winds down, Oscar leans in and lowers his voice…

OSCAR Sometimes, Doyle, fate—always the showman—won’t let us settle into our routines.  It barges in, uninvited, and turns the ordinary on its head.  Just recently, I stumbled upon something that might shake even your famously steady nerves—a letter. Not a polite note or idle rambling, but a cry for help.  The handwriting trembles with fear.  It speaks of magic, mysterious shadows, and symbols scrawled near a murder scene.  And the most chilling part?  It’s addressed—by name—to you, Arthur Conan Doyle.  Have a look.

Doyle takes the letter and slips on his reading glasses.  He spends several moments reading it.

DOYLE I’ve known my share of eccentrics and occult enthusiasts, but I can’t recall ever receiving something quite this breathless.  It’s less a warning and more a theatrical outburst—like someone scribbling their fears at midnight with shaking hands.  Frankly, it feels more like panic than prophecy.

OSCAR Well, it seems her panic was justified—validated, in fact—at the very moment of her death.  Tell me, Doyle—since you’re always the playwright of your own legend—don’t you think destiny might’ve picked this exact moment to nudge you into a real adventure?  Something wrapped in mystery and shadow, rather than just retelling your greatest hits to a room full of admirers?

DOYLE You make it sound so simple, Wilde—just leap into the shadows and hope for meaning on the other side.  But I’ve seen what real darkness looks like.  It’s not always a puzzle to be solved or a story to be told.  Sometimes it’s just… tragedy.  And I’m not so sure I’m eager to chase it again, no matter how poetic the invitation.

OSCAR Arthur, you speak of darkness as if it’s something we must always fear, always flee.  But isn’t that precisely why you write?  To shine a light into it?  To give it shape, meaning—even if only for a moment?  You say this might be tragedy, not mystery.  But what if it’s both?  What if someone out there needs you to look, not because you want to, but because you’re the only one who can?

Arthur shakes his head, a quiet gesture laced with reluctance—or modesty, perhaps a touch of both.  It’s the kind of refusal that doesn’t seek attention, only distance from it.

DOYLE I’m not some oracle, Wilde.  I write stories—I don’t chase shadows through alleyways hoping they’ll explain themselves.  This feels more like a cry for help than a call to action.

WILDE And yet, here it is—a cry for help addressed directly to you.  Not metaphorically, Doyle.  Literally.  Your name, in ink, on the envelope.  If that’s not an invitation into the fold, I don’t know what is.  You can’t very well ignore a summons from fate when it’s delivered to your doorstep.

DOYLE But tell me this, Wilde—why in the world are you so involved?  Since when do you chase ghost stories through fog and alleyways?

WILDE Ah, Arthur, I don’t chase ghosts—I entertain them.  But this… this feels different.  The letter found its way to someone I admire, someone who’s danced with the unknown before and lived to write about it.  And perhaps, just perhaps, I’m tired of watching the world unfold from the wings.  Every now and then, even a playwright steps onto the stage.

DOYLE Alas, dear Wilde, I think I’ ll leave this one to the shadows.  My adventures, after all, are best when bound between pages—where the danger is thrilling, but never quite real.  I do appreciate the offer, however please accept my humble declination.

The salon stirs back to life around them, its rhythm returning in soft waves—fragments of conversation drifting through the air, mingling with the gentle clink of china and the occasional ripple of laughter from across the room.  A low piano note plays over a steady clatter of whiskey being poured.  A waiter passes by, carrying the warm scent of roasted meat and wine, while the gaslights overhead flicker faintly, casting restless shadows across the polished stone floor.  The two men continue to trade stories back and forth as the night wears on.  The crowd starts showing signs of thinning as the two men laugh their way through whiskey slurs and stories.  Though Doyle has declined, the letter’s presence lingers—unspoken and unresolved—a quiet thread of tension woven into the evening, waiting for its moment to return.

DOYLE  Before I take my leave, allow me to share one more of my prized relics—a curious artifact from one of my recent excursions.

With deliberate flair, Doyle produces an odd, ornate pen.  Its surface is covered in intricate, almost otherworldly engravings that glint in the subdued light, hinting at a storied past.  Wilde raises an amused eyebrow, his tone playfully dismissive.

WILDE A relic, indeed?  One might say that even objects can carry a curse these days.

DOYLE Legend has it that this pen once belonged to a long-dead occultist.  They say that anyone who dares write with it loses control over their own words while destiny scribbles its own narrative.

Doyle offers the pen toward Wilde with a roguish flourish.  Oscar takes the pen in one hand, tests its weight and texture with an air of unconvinced amusement, and returns it to Doyle with a slight chuckle.  His eyes never leave Doyle’s.

WILDE Tempting, but I think I prefer to keep my destiny written on my own terms tonight.

Doyle shrugs casually and tucks the pen back into his jacket pocket.  His voice remains lighthearted.

DOYLE Suit yourself.

As Doyle slips the pen away, a subtle flicker crosses his expression—an almost imperceptible flash of something darker, more uncertain, that vanishes as quickly as it came.

Wilde’s gaze catches that transient moment—a glimpse of vulnerability or perhaps a secret too weighty to voice. It lingers, unanswered and uncanny, in the charged space between them.

For a long moment, the only sound is the ambience around them and the quiet heartbeat of the evening, leaving both men with a sense of foreboding that promises the mystery is far from over.  After some quick goodbyes, the two men bid each other farewell and part ways.

Scene 3 - Scriptum Obscura

Doyle sits alone at his desk in his cluttered study bathed in the flickering light of a solitary candle.  The room is filled with relics from his peculiar past: a weathered deck of tarot cards once owned by a mystic whose predictions only came true after death, a pocket watch that ticks in reverse, an emerald that gleams strangely beneath the candlelight and the cursed pen, motionless on the desk as though waiting for its next command.  His eyes are heavy with weariness, resignation and a bit too much whiskey.

The air is stale with smoke and something more coppery—unplaceable, yet familiar.  His eyes stare blankly at the page before him.  He has the notion that he might record his thoughts on this evening spent with the unusual yet extraordinary Oscar Wilde, however his thoughts drift to the murders.  Although he wanted nothing to do with Oscar’s proposition, he can’t help wonder if he might be of any help or even if he had made the right decision to not get involved.  Though Doyle summoned murder time and again as a narrative puzzle for Sherlock Holmes to decipher, the notion of brushing too near its grim reality unsettled him profoundly—fictional intrigue was one thing; the flesh-and-blood specter of violence, quite another.

His fingertips hover above the pen like a pendulum before descent.  As he touches the pen, the surface feels cold—too cold, like metal pulled from a grave.  The pen lifts of its own accord, and Doyle’s grip tightens around it, knuckles whitening.  When he touches it, a chill courses through his hand and up his arm.  The pen moves, not by conscious will, but like it is being pulled by something deep beneath the skin.  His wrist tenses.  His eyes roll back and his head tilts upward, gazing blankly as the ink flows.

The nib meets paper with a sound like skin tearing, and the ink spills not in lines, but in tendrils—black and writhing. The sigils emerge, not drawn but summoned, sharp and cruel in their geometry, whispering echoes of the grotesque markings from the alley on Fleet Street.  The lines are archaic, jagged forms that hiss against the parchment like whispering teeth.  Doyle doesn’t blink.  His breaths are shallow and involuntary, as if he were sleeping.

Doyle sits hunched at his desk, the flickering gaslight casting erratic shadows that jitter like marionettes with severed strings.  The air is thick—acrid with pipe smoke and something beneath it, a rot that hadn’t come from anything living.

The flame in the gaslight flares blue, then sputters.  Shadows writhe along the walls, converging behind him, not cast by any natural light but seeming to seep from the corners of the room like a fog with purpose.

The air grows heavier.  In the pooled ink at the edge of the blotter, the darkness does not reflect—it absorbs.  It is spreading, hungry.  Watching.

Scene 4: The Spider and the Silk

He was born in the frostbitten silence of Siberia, where wolves howled like omens and the earth murmured secrets through ice and bone.  To some, he was a farmer—hands calloused, eyes downcast.  To others, a mystic monk who spoke in riddles and wept during prayer.  He healed the sick with touch and trance, spoke to spirits in candlelit rooms and claimed visions that would one day topple empires.  But long before the whispers of the blood-soaked twilight of revolution, before the czarina wept at his feet and the Russian empire cracked like ice—he was simply Grigori.  A Siberian farmer with dirt beneath his nails and visions behind his eyes.

They called him a healer.  A holy man.  But those who looked too long into his gaze saw something else: a flicker of hunger, relentless and unblinking.  He wore many masks, but none were ever truly removed.  Beneath the monk’s robes and the spiritualist’s charm, Grigori Rasputin was building something—a network of influence stitched together with fear, fascination and the kind of loyalty that only the damned understand.  Behind the mask, Rasputin was something else entirely.  A spider in human form, spinning a web of influence that stretched from the back alleys of St. Petersburg to the parlors of Paris. 

Rasputin wandered through frostbitten hamlets and candlelit chapels, his pilgrim robes stained with ash and wine.  He left behind whispered sermons, a trail of cured ailments, false relics and broken minds.  In the shadowed corners of Russia, some called him a savior.  In others, a heretic.  His early years were a haze of movement—driven not by destination, but by compulsion.  The road pulled him like prophecy.

And tonight, it has pulled him to Budapest.

Beneath the shuttered apothecary on a forgotten street near the old prison, Rasputin waits.  The cellar flickers with a single lantern, its flame guttering in the damp.  Icons hang crooked on the walls, their saints faded and eyeless.  Velvet drapes rot in the corners.  The air reeks of myrrh and mildew.  Rasputin stands at the center, tall and still, wrapped in a threadbare cassock.  His beard is wild, his eyes pale as frostbite.  He does not blink.

Before him kneels a woman in crimson silk.  Her veil is sheer enough to reveal the sharp line of her jaw.  She speaks with the poise of nobility, but her accent is borrowed—an affectation worn like cheap perfume.

She is Madame Virelle, though Rasputin knows the name is a lie.

Flanking her are two men in green masks that shroud their noses and mouths—smooth and featureless.  Their posture is still.  Their silence complete.

Rasputin steps forward.  The lantern creaks.

RASPUTIN You wear silk but your soul is stitched from ash

She stiffens.  He turns to the masked men.

RASPUTIN And you—my quiet ones.  My green-eyed ghosts.  You were born in darkness and shaped in silence.  You remember nothing, and that is your gift.

The lantern dims.  Rasputin lifts a hand, fingers crooked like the branches of a dying tree.

RASPUTIN A man slips through locks and lies with equal ease— a master of misdirection, drunk on his own legend.  He toys with memory, reshapes truth, believing no snare can hold him, no eye can follow.  But even the great escapist leaves fingerprints.  He will come, certain he’s exposing illusion.  His own arrogance is the very bait for our trap.  Let him come.  The performance ends in chains.

He leans in, voice now a whisper that seems to come from the walls themselves.

RASPUTIN Bring me the magician.

The lantern flares once, then dies. The room plunges into darkness.

Scene 5: The Ink that Binds

By the time the candle’s frail flame clings to the margins of dawn, Arthur Doyle lurches upright, heart galloping into wakefulness.  Before him lies a page, dense with symbols and phrases that shimmer with a logic both arcane and abhorrent.  It is his handwriting—of that he is certain—but the meaning recoils from comprehension, like a dream that decays upon waking.

The pen lies beside it, motionless, as if it, too, has borne witness to something unspeakable.  A heavy hush settles over the room.  With trembling fingers, Doyle fumbles for a match.  The flame catches with a dry hiss, and he watches in silence as the page blackens, curls inward, and vanishes into ash.  He sets the burning paper in the ashtray on his desk as it continues to burn.

Doyle stares at the flames as the final remnants of the forbidden script vanish into ash.  He exhales deeply, steadying himself against the turbulent mix of dread and resignation.  After a long, somber pause, he reaches carefully for a fresh sheet of paper and selects a different, more reliable pen from his collection.

With deliberate precision, he prepares to compose a final message—a measured farewell to the mysterious compulsion of the cursed relic.  His hand, steady now by conscious will, scrawls a few well-considered lines.

DOYLE Dearest Oscar.  After careful consideration (or perhaps too much whiskey), I have decided to accept your offer.  Sincerely, Arthur.

There is no further embellishment, no desperate plea for help in these final words—only the bare, sober resignation of a man who has decided to submit to the path fate has laid before him.