A Flame Appears in the Darkness and Rapidly Grows As the Fire Takes Hold. the Figure Of

Pitch black.

A flame appears in the darkness and rapidly grows as the fire takes hold. The figure of a woman can be seen, tied to a stake, surrounded by the growing flames. She is about to be burnt alive. Once she starts screaming there is no stopping.

A Land Rover hurtles out of the darkness and screeches to a halt. A powerful looking but old woman, CATHERINE, jumps out and approaches the fire, desperate to save her friend. Another woman in a long trench coat, DAWN, steps out of the darkness. She tells Catherine that she is too late. She has a strong American accent. When Dawn holds up her hand and squeezes an unseen object Catherine stops in her tracks, falls to her knees, clutches at her chest. She still has enough breath to tell Dawn she is isn’t powerful enough to stop her but the younger woman smiles. She agrees she isn’t powerful enough alone but she has help. As she speaks several other trench-coated figures step into the light, surrounding Catherine. They each hold something in their hands. One by one they begin to squeeze. Catherine tries to stagger to her feet but as the spell travels around the circle she is forced back to her knees. She is choking, clutching her chest, rolling on the grass in agony.

The fire is at its fiercest. The staked woman is dead. Catherine, realising she is finished, makes one last effort. She speaks to someone unseen, calling out to OWEN, telling him it is his time and he must find the cauldron. She falls back dead. When Dawn is satisfied that she really is dead she nods to her companions. One by one they open their clutched hands to reveal that they are holding ... nothing. Dawn is the last to open her hand which contains a crushed and bloody animal heart. She drops it to the grass and grinds her heel into it. Dawn says she is glad the old bitch is dead and where she’s gone there’ll be no helping the others now. Soon they’ll be ready to take on the others.

Daytime on the outskirts of a busy town. A hearse is travelling along the road. It is being driven faster than usual for a hearse but not excessively. The driver is a beautiful young woman, LUCY. She has long flowing black hair and is wearing heavy Goth makeup. The hearse brakes and takes a left turn into the drive of NEWTOWN UNIVERSITY.

An overcast autumn day. A good-looking young man is walking amongst the gravestones in the local cemetery. He stops at a fresh grave. OWEN puts a single white rose on his grandmother’s grave. An older woman appears behind him, puts a hand on his shoulder. When he recognises CERYS he embraces her but the gesture is awkward. They draw apart. She begins to explain that Catherine wanted her grandson to take over as head of the Crows, a coven of witches. She has a lot or sympathy for Owen but there is resentment in her voice too. Before Catherine died she also made it known that Owen must work with Cerys to find an important mystical object, the Cauldron of Cerridwen. Owen starts to get angry. He didn’t come home to be head of a coven but to attend the local university. Cerys is welcome to head the Crows. He has no intention of claiming his magical heritage. Cerys thinks he is a fool and angers him even more when she suggests that Catherine was murdered by a rival coven, the Magpies. If it’s true he’ll kill them with his bare hands. Anyway didn’t Catherine die of a heart attack? His attitude is contemptible but there is something in Cerys’ eyes that reveal she also thinks he is hot. The pair are so angry with each other that they do not notice what’s happening to the white rose that Owen laid. One by one the leaves are turning to a deep blood red and falling from the stem.

Lucy gets out of the hearse, her heavy velvet coat and full skirts trailing behind her. She enters the atrium of the university where the Societies Fair is in full swing. Students throng around the many stalls. Owen is talking to an earnest young man, OLIVER, at the Computer Games stall. He’s a geek but Owen’s getting on well with him. A tall blonde girl, SANDY, interrupts them, kissing Owen on the cheek. He remembers his old girlfriend from school doesn’t he? Of course he does and her friend Lucy who is also approaching the stall.

There’s a stall for the Goth Society. Is Lucy helping them out? She says no, she’s too cool to belong to a society for God’s sake but she does mix with them from time to time. They all eye the pretty Goths, guys and girls. But who’s that mad looking girl dressed as a cheerleader all by herself at the next stall? Actually she’s very pretty when you look closely. The girl leaves her stall and starts to walk towards them. She’s wearing a very short skirt. Suddenly Owen and Oliver are more interested. Lucy explains it’s their American friend, CRYSTAL. She’s mad enough to think she can start a cheerleader team at the university but no-one’s taking it seriously.

Lucy is keen to talk to her old friend Owen about something important and all the others should know too. She drags them off to a quiet corner of the student union bar.

Lucy thinks one of her Goth friends, LUKA, has become involved in black magic through a mysterious group called the Magpies. Owen knows all about witchcraft, can’t he help? Owen gets angry. He came back to study for his degree, not to get involved in all this mumbo-jumbo again. First Cerys thinks the Magpies killed his grandmother, now Lucy thinks they are hurting her friend. If any of it’s true he’ll get the Magpies but not with magic. In fact he’s a good mind to go and sort them out right now. Lucy and Sandy exchange looks – Owen’s too wound up about this. Time to back off.

Later. Owen and Oliver have left the girls alone in the bar. Lucy says that the only way to find out what’s going on is to infiltrate. She can’t do it herself –the Crows know something about her but she is coy about saying what. Sandy can’t do it because the Crows must know she is Owen’s girlfriend. That leaves Crystal. Lucy knows how the Magpies recruit and that they usually take members from the Goth society. She knows how to get Crystal in but she’ll have to become a Goth. Crystal says there’s no way she’s going to dress up like a loser Goth girl but she’s wavering because she wants to help her friends.

Sandy and Lucy have great fun dressing Crystal up as a Goth girl and telling her how to act, what to say. Lucy somehow knows where the Magpies have their headquarters, Crendon Hall, and drives Crystal there in her hearse – it adds authenticity to Crystal’s story. Crystal finds herself on her own at the lonely hall where the Magpies are based. She’s afraid but determined to go through with it. She marches into the hall. It’s dark and furnished like an old library complete with reception desk. An older man, PROMETHEUS, is at the reception desk. He makes sardonic remarks about her appearance but calls the head of the order, ROWAN, when he’s satisfied that Crystal is at least half serious. Rowan is very cool, sophisticated and clearly in charge. A stilted conversation takes place with Crystal making a brave attempt to be convincing. Rowan and Prometheus can sense there’s something wrong but they eventually offer to initiate this strange girl.

Oliver, Sandy, Lucy, Owen are all studying in a half-hearted way in a deserted room in the university. Owen wants to know how they blagged the room in the first place and Oliver is explaining that he hacked the university system and removed the room from the system – they can use it whenever they want from now on. It’s amazing what you can find out from the uni records – for instance, at least three members of the Goth society have died in mysterious circumstances in the last two years. Owen scowls. He doesn’t want to hear this. But Lucy looks more than interested.

Crystal bursts in eager to report what happened. Lucy and Sandy signal, trying to stop her but Crystal misses their intent. The boys are dumbfounded to see her dressed in full Goth mode but then Owen starts to take on board what she’s done. He becomes angry again telling them all they have no idea what they are messing with, what they have to lose if this goes wrong. But it’s too late to change things if they want to save Luka. Very reluctantly Owen agrees to let Crystal go ahead but he will hide himself at the Hall and intervene if anything goes wrong. Now it’s all settled Crystal wants to know what it meant when they told her she would to go “skyclad.”

Back at the Hall, Prometheus wants to know what the strange Goth girl wanted from the society. He can’t believe that she really wanted the power to attract girls to her cheerleader team. Don’t the young have any real ambitions these days? Rowan is more interested in her real motives and it isn’t hard to follow the link back to Lucy. Didn’t she used to be a friend of Owen, the grandson of their chief magical enemy? When they make the connection they begin to see the opportunity to turn it to their own advantage. It was a mystery how the old witch died but if they can get to the grandson they can get to the Cauldron and that will increase their power to the max.

Owen has moved into his grandmother’s old cottage and taken over her old Land Rover. He’s drinking tea when Cerys burst in and starts to berate him again about his duty to head up the Crow coven and to keep his old friends out of this. He should be with his own kind and Cerys makes it clear that means she is available too. He’s trying to absorb this surprise when the old cat, VAN HELSING, meows a warning. Sandy and Lucy rush in saying they’ve got to get going so Crystal doesn’t get into trouble. Cerys sees what’s going on instantly. What kind of bloody fool does he think he is getting his friends involved? But Owen cuts her dead and leaves with Sandy.

Bouncing down the road from the remote cottage Owen explains the long-standing rivalry between the Crow coven and the Magpie coven. The Magpies have always been an evil bunch but he still can’t believe they’d kill his grandmother before they found out where the Cauldron was. It didn’t make sense. A bird crashes into the Land Rover windscreen making Owen swerve violently and scaring them all. There is no sign of it seconds later but they can hear a distant laughing which seems to turn into the sound of a magpie.

They arrive at Crendon Hall but it’s in darkness. Where is everyone? Where’s Crystal – if they’ve moved the initiation there’s no telling what might happen. They have to get Oliver. If he can trace who owns the hall maybe they can track down any other properties they own. They must be somewhere.

In an old gothic warehouse by the canal side the real ceremony is taking place. In a hangar like space a huge bonfire burns. Prometheus and Rowan aren’t so sophisticated and cool now but positively evil as they concentrate their fierce intent on the job in hand. Crystal is trying to bluster her way through, making jokes, refusing to go skyclad in front of all these losers. But Prometheus is having none of this, forcing her to strip. Crystal is crying. Rowan is shouting out the incantation and what’s that goat-headed figure materialising at the other side of the fire?

It’s late and Owen and his friends are slumped in front of the fire at his cottage, defeated. They don’t know where Crystal is and it’s too late to help her. Lucy’s mobile rings – it’s Crystal, she’s shaken but it’s over and she’s safe. She’ll see them in the morning.

Early the next day and Sandy and Lucy are walking along a corridor. Several Goth girls seem to be hurrying in the opposite direction. Curious they turn and follow them to the sports hall. Inside a motley collection of Goth girls and at least one Goth guy are dressed in a weird amalgam of cheerleader uniforms and Goth ornamentation. Crystal’s back to her usual self – all blonde hair and legs that go on forever, leading them in formation. Sandy and Lucy start to laugh but then their expressions change. It should be comical but there’s something deeply disturbing about the way these heavily made-up Goths are moving about the hall. There’s none of the carefree movements and smiling faces you’d expect to see with cheerleaders. They are like glum-faced marionettes moving jerkily to the movements of an unseen puppet master’s strings. It’s as scary as hell and Crystal can’t seem to see it. Her friends grab her and pull her from the gym. It makes no difference to the cheerleaders – they just keep on dancing.

Cerys is back at Catherine’s graveside. Something’s bothering her. She bends and picks up the withered leaves from the rose that was fresh only yesterday. “What have the bastards done to you? What have they done?”

A ruined abbey is outlined against the glowering sky. Rain is falling over the rows of fishing cottages and shops that nestle below the cliff where the abbey is perched in the town of WHITBY. In the harbour, waves crash onto the pier and sweep along the walkways. It’s too dangerous to be out walking here. In the railway station a young woman, MAYA, is drinking coffee. At first she looks like a Goth girl but on closer inspection she is wearing dark makeup and is dressed more like a forties film star. She is as glamorous and as cool as it is possible for a young woman to be. It’s time for her train and she gets up to take leave of her companion. She embraces the woman who is wearing a trench coat. It’s Dawn, the woman responsible for killing Owen’s grandmother.

Crystal is explaining what happened last night to her friends. She makes light of how she was forced to strip. No-one did anything worse to her. She and Luka were forced to kneel before the goat-man and swear to pay a tithe in return for what they wanted. Luka wanted to screw the entire student population and Crystal wanted to be cheerleader goddess. Maybe it was worth it after all? There’s to be another ceremony tonight and she must be there to cement the bargain and complete the initiation. But there’s no way her friends are going to let her go through with now. Owen at last agrees it’s time for him to act. Luka’s in danger but they can’t risk telling him too. Owen will go in and try to save Luka but Crystal must stay in her own room. Sandy can stay and guard her.

Owen is visiting his mother, SAGE, who lives in a council house near the cottage. She wants to know why he isn’t going to lead the coven. Well, why doesn’t she take in on he wants to know. That’s different she just wants to be a herbalist. Good, because Owen just wants to be a student. He leaves. Sage tells Cerys she can come out now. He may not want to lead the coven but he’s up to something pretty dangerous and he’s better be prepared. Sage has every confidence he’ll pull through but

Night. It’s all going to plan. Oliver’s stationed at the Hall and he reports in that it’s deserted. Lucy’s by the warehouse and she phones Owen to let him know the coven is gathering. She’s about to leave when her mobile rings again. She quickly answers it before anyone can hear it. It’s her friend Luka. He sounds terrified. She tells him not to worry – she’ll help him. She looks desperately around – she has to get into the warehouse undetected.

Owen parks his Land Rover way back from the warehouse. He doesn’t see Lucy’s hearse. When he gets to the door he finds it locked. He looks frustrated but then a change comes over him. He seems to grow in stature, he is concentrated, poised. He uses a short spell to open the door and he’s inside, moving through the darkened rooms towards the loud chanting somewhere deep inside.

The old warehouse room is full of acolytes chanting. Prometheus and Rowan stand on a raised platform a makeshift altar in front of them, knives and magical paraphernalia laid out. A hush descends as Prometheus announces a sacrifice. Out of the shadows comes Luka. He seems in a stupor, hypnotized. Rowan takes off his gown running her hands over his naked body before pushing him back onto the waiting altar. She begins to anoint him with oils. When she steps back Prometheus raises his dagger, ready to strike. Owen runs forward pushing aside the acolytes shouting “NO!” He’s almost reached Luka, about to pull him to safety when Rowan pushes someone else forward into the light. It’s Lucy. She’s in a long gown like the one Luka was wearing. She looks drugged too. Rowan has a knife to Lucy’s throat. It’s a standoff – Owen can’t get Luka without risking Lucy’s life.