At the New Regency Theatre, Jago is hard at work hosting his variety acts. He introduces his next act to the audience. A man he introduces as the supreme seer of psychoanalysis – Doctor Sigmund Freud…Only problem is that Doctor Freud has missed his introductory cue and Jago hastily ushers the psychologist onto the stage along with his prop – a cage draped in a cloth. Freud pulls the cloth off the cage and discovers an angry baboon inside, much to his surprise. Jago excitedly tells Freud that he must wrestle the baboon for the audience’s amusement. Freud refuses to fight the baboon for one very strange reason…for he is naked and so is Jago…
Jago awakens with a start after hearing a loud knocking on his office door. Litefoot enters and Jago mentions he is rather relieved to still be fully clothed, much to Litefoot’s confusion. Jago has been plagued by some rather strange dreams. He relays his dream to Litefoot and tells him to keep the embarrassing conclusion a secret. In order to get to the bottom of his dreams, Jago has been seeing psychologist Doctor Sigmund Freud. But he doesn’t believe he’s getting any better and fears the worst. Litefoot assures Jago that the therapy will take time and that he must be patient, as Freud is still perfecting his research. Nonetheless, Litefoot speaks highly of the psychologist for his work into uncharted territory in medical science. The two leave the office and walk to the box office. Jago notices a veiled woman at the box office, but notices something strange about her hands – the fact that they are incredibly hairy. Litefoot assumes the woman has a rare skin condition, but Jago leaps to the conclusion that another supernatural mystery is on their doorstep. Jago untactfully approaches the woman and demands she unveil herself. Litefoot desperately tries to keep Jago from upsetting the woman and apologises for his behaviour. Jago, desperate to get to the bottom of his ‘infernal mystery’, unveils the woman himself to discover something incredibly strange…the woman is an ape!
The scene cuts to Jago lying on a couch in Sigmund Freud’s office. The two men have been discussing the events that had just transpired. They were all in fact dreams. Jago was having a dream within a dream to be precise. Freud is intrigued by how Jago kept on dreaming even after seeing something as disturbing as an ape in dress. He asks Jago to continue recalling his dream…
After Jago unveiled the ape woman, the woman ran away and hailed a cab while desperately reapplying her veil. Jago hailed his own cab and instructed he give chase to the ape woman’s cab. A few moments later, the ape’s cab stopped, and the ape woman was ejected from the cab by the bewildered cab driver after seeing the passenger under the veil. The ape woman ran along the streets and jumped onto a newsstand, helping herself to a copy of The Strand magazine and sat herself on top of the newsstand reading aforementioned magazine while smoking a cigarillo, not paying any mind to the crowd gathering before her. After a while, the ape discarded the magazine and her clothes, and climbed up a drainpipe. With Jago in hot pursuit.
Freud is more intrigued by something Jago said while in his dream – ‘I wish I could do this while I was awake’. He concludes that Jago must have been lucid dreaming, which is a rare case. He asks Jago to continue…
Jago recalls the ape disappearing through an apartment window. He followed the ape inside but at this point, Jago is hesitant to continue as it concerns family matters. Freud deduces that the apartment must have been a place Jago once lived, to which Jago confirms as a place he lived during his youth. At Freud’s request, Jago describes the room in great detail, but mentions that there were things in the room that he didn’t recall owning. Freud further deduces that the room must be a combination of places and a particular breed of flower indicates that the dream took place in the summertime. Jago continues his description…
He describes the room with great detail in regard to the air humidity to the smells of coffee. He hears a sound coming from his mother’s bedroom. He enters the room and finds the windows open, but the curtains drawn to keep the heat out. His pet parrot squawking loudly under the cloth-covered birdcage, only except the parrot isn’t inside the cage but on the wash-stand next to him. Jago deduces that the ape must have released his parrot from the cage and squeezed itself inside. He walks slowly back into the kitchen to retrieve the coffee pot and use it to scald the ape inside the cage. Jago walks back into the bedroom, coffee pot in hand…but can’t bring himself to harm the creature. At this point, his mother enters the room and angrily demands he put the coffee pot down. Using this as a distraction, the ape pounced out of the cage, knocking the coffee pot of the startled Jago’s hands and made for the window to escape. Jago catches the creature, all the while noticing a disturbing smile on his mother’s face…
Back in Freud’s office, Jago fears that this dream is slowly killing him and voices his fear of dying inside his dream to never wake up. Freud dismissively makes detailed notes from Jago’s testimony. He asks Jago if he has ever seen or touched an ape in his life, to which Jago denies. Freud assumes that Jago’s dream concerning the ape is in relation to a form of wish fulfilment and asks what Jago wants. Jago pleadingly wishes to not die. Freud decides to conclude the session and arranges to meet with Jago the next day for another appointment. Jago leaves the office to meet with Litefoot. Once Jago leaves the room, Freud whispers to a mystery third party that it is safe to emerge now. The third party is Litefoot, who suggests that they take another approach. He suspects that during the events of ‘The Skeleton Quay’, Jago became infected with something that is gnawing at his mind. Freud is dismissive of Litefoot’s theory of the occult and refuses to believe it unless proven otherwise. Litefoot grows concerned and wonders what will happen if the dream kills Jago beforehand, to which Freud simply states that Jago will just die…
At a restaurant, Jago meets with Litefoot. He relays the details of his appointment with Freud and believes it to be all nonsense, even calling Freud’s methods maddening. Litefoot is apologetic that he can’t do anything to help Jago. Jago believes that he can see the veiled woman from his dream in the room, but Litefoot refuses to entertain his delusion to risk further embarrassment. He suggests that he and Jago visit the zoo to take his mind off of his appointment. Jago wearily agrees and they both leave. As they leave, a mysterious woman dining in the restaurant enquires to a waiter as to their identities, as she believes she has seen them both before. The waiter hesitates to give any information, but the woman allows him to keep the change to loosen his tongue. The waiter states that Jago is visiting an Austrian by the name of Freud…
At the zoo, Litefoot regales Jago with the zoos in China where he grew up. Jago asks Litefoot if the zoo happens to have any baboons or parrots on display, as he doesn’t wish to see them. To compromise, Litefoot suggests they visit the aquarium area, to which Jago agrees. Litefoot notices that he has left his cane in the pavilion and leaves Jago to go and retrieve it. Not long after Litefoot leaves his friend, Jago is shoved into a monkey’s cage and surrounded by a pack of panicked monkeys. Jago himself panics and calls for help as a crowd of onlookers watch with amusement. A woman’s voice calls out from the crowd and Jago instantly recognises her as the veiled woman from his dream. She confirms as much and draws a gun and fires two shots…
Litefoot hears the ruckus from inside the pavilion, but is more preoccupied by the fact that his cane has gone missing. Suddenly, a woman shrieks in terror as an angry baboon jumps onto Litefoot’s back. Despite the circumstances, Litefoot remains surprisingly calm and coaxes the rabid creature off his back by offering it muffins to eat. Litefoot talks with the baboon as if it were capable of understanding English, and the baboon reacts accordingly to Litefoot’s attempts at conversation, even acting surprised when Litefoot mentions that it has escaped from its cage and is walking amongst the humans. He continues to talk to the baboon and the baboon excitedly grunts in response to him, Litefoot even mentions that he feels that he and the baboon are beginning to understand one another. The shrill sound of a police whistle fills the air as several officers enter the pavilion and see Litefoot with the baboon. The officers warn Litefoot to step away from the baboon, but Litefoot calmly refuses to take notice and advises the baboon to do the same. One officer tries to forcibly remove the baboon but is bitten. Litefoot is hardly sympathetic to the injured officer and he hands the officer’s truncheon to the baboon and demands he strike the officer as hard as he pleases. The baboon does so as Litefoot calmly watches on while making plans to escape with the baboon and get it to a tailor…
Back at the monkey cage, the baboons have escaped. The gunslinging woman tries to direct the panicked patrons to safety from the rampaging baboons. It is revealed that she in fact just shot the lock on the cage in order to free Jago. She introduces herself to Jago as Madame Anna. Jago is less than enthused by his rescue, and upon hearing the sound of the police whistles, suggests that he and the woman wait for them to arrive so she can explain what she did and her whereabouts over the past few days as he was aware of her following him and he suspects that she also has an accomplice that shoved him into the cage. Anna instead demands to know everything Jago told Freud during his appointments, particularly the contents of his dreams. Jago’s foul mood suddenly turns bright and cheerful as he immediately assumes that he is in another lucid dream. Unamused, Anna slaps Jago out of his rant.
Freud is writing a letter to his wife Martha. In his letter, he writes about the appointments he’s been having with Jago and assumes that there is something much darker than he anticipated working inside his head giving him bad dreams – particularly something brutish and hairy jumping inside. Nonetheless, he remains confident that he can get to the bottom of curing Jago. Just as he finishes writing his letter, Litefoot enters in a panic asking if he has seen Jago. Freud denies that Jago has been to visit and notices Litefoot is stressed, to which Litefoot tells him that a baboon is on the loose in the streets and its wearing tweed. Litefoot mentions how idiotic he felt when he bought the baboon its clothes under the guise that they were for his son. Freud misinterprets the baboon as an English idiom, but Litefoot is adamant that it is real, and it escaped from the zoo. Freud is outraged once Litefoot tells him that he took Jago to the zoo as he explains that a baboon in Jago’s mind is a signifier of repressed desires and a symbol of his own psyche – and Litefoot took him to a place full of them! But the strange thing is that Litefoot can’t remember whose idea it was to go to the zoo. The door to Freud’s office opens and a familiar baboon in tweed enters the room. Litefoot calmly engages with the baboon as if he understands what its saying, but Freud is confused and bewildered by what he is seeing…
Meanwhile with Jago and Anna. Anna explains her reasons for pursuing Jago – his dreams are the key to her own fate. Jago explains that Anna is in his dreams, but she is much hairier. He muses about how he can dream of a woman he has never met before and how she is aware of his dreams. Anna asks about what she does in his dreams. Jago reluctantly explains that in his dreams, he believes Anna to be a threat and he tries to take off her veil only to find a monster underneath. She would run away and the chase would end in Jago’s childhood home. By this point, Anna has transformed into the form of Jago’s mother. Before Jago can continue, Anna finishes his dream description by describing the presence of two animals – a bird and a monkey. Jago is puzzled and asks how Anna could know these things – to which she responds that she is experiencing the same dreams…
Back at Freud’s office, Freud tries to get Litefoot to explain what his relationship with the baboon is. Litefoot responds that he only met the baboon earlier in the afternoon, but strangely he feels like he has known the creature for years. He comes to the assumption that he must have fallen asleep at some point an is currently lucid dreaming like Jago. Freud decides to take a different approach and hypothesises that Litefoot is in fact the delusional one and is fixated on Jago’s afflictions by acting out his dreams. The ape grunts and Litefoot translates to Freud that the ape wants to go to the New Regency Theatre to meet with Jago and wants Litefoot and Freud to join it. Litefoot deduces that this must be the way to cure Jago of his peculiar neurosis. Freud is understandably reluctant to follow through with the baboon’s demands, but Litefoot passive aggressively threatens Freud by asking him about the details of a baboon’s mouth and teeth. He also reminds Freud that the baboon is also armed with a truncheon stolen from the police officer it attacked earlier. Freud eventually caves in and decides to join them.
Anna takes Jago to the neighbourhood from her dreams. Jago points out several places that were pivotal to him during his youth until he eventually points to a small apartment above a butcher’s shop – his childhood home. But he is nonetheless curious as to why Anna led him here. She reveals that she was given an invitation earlier in the day to come to this neighbourhood at a specified time and to bring Jago with her. Jago reads the invitation and instantly recognises the handwriting as Litefoot’s.
Litefoot and Freud are riding in a cab to the New Regency Theatre. Freud, still under duress, tells Litefoot that he will call the police to arrest Litefoot as soon as he can, but Litefoot knows he won’t as Freud is just as intrigued by the circumstances as he is and the baboon snarls in agreement. The baboon tells Litefoot that it wishes to ride alongside the driver, and he allows it to do so as long as it keeps its hat down low so no one can see its face. With the baboon out of earshot, Litefoot returns to his senses and admits to Freud that he thinks the baboon didn’t in fact originate from the zoo or is even a baboon at all. He believes that the baboon creature has some sort of hypnotic suggestive influence over Litefoot while in his presence and encourages him to do things he normally wouldn’t do – such as condoning violence towards a police officer. Even though he is free of the creature’s influence, he can still understand it somewhat. Freud asks where the creature originated and Litefoot assumes that the creature originated from Suffolk – while he and Jago were investigating the Skeleton Quay. He deduces that Jago must have contracted a virus that manifests inner personas from the infected person’s mind into the real world, in this case – the baboon is the manifestation of Jago’s psyche taken form! Freud is bemused by Litefoot’s theory and mentions that he is aware that Litefoot didn’t request the cab driver to take them to the New Regency Theatre, but rather the baboon and they are clearly not heading in the direction of the Theatre. With that said, Freud tells the cab to pull over by the passing pub.
Jago and Anna have entered Jago’s former home and have met with the landlady. The current tenant is due to leave and the flat is on the market. Jago feels nostalgic at being inside the flat once more and notes the subtle changes made since he lived in it. The landlady mentions that the tenant kept no furniture of his own apart from a birdcage, a detail that piques the interest of Jago and Anna. Anna requests that she and Jago be left in private, to which the landlady obliges. Once she leaves, Anna notices that the lodger keeps a collection of works and essays written by Sigmund Freud. Jago is more alarmed by the fact that the lodger is in possession of Litefoot’s missing cane. Jago begins to suspect that he is being deceived, and Anna confirms that he is in fact being deceived by herself, Litefoot and Freud and that he must fight for his very life. To prove her point, she hands Jago her pistol stating that he will need it…
Outside the flat, Litefoot, Freud and the baboon have arrived. They notice the door to the building is open and they proceed to enter. They find the door to Jago’s former flat has been locked from the inside. The baboon beings to furiously knock on the door and eventually knocks the door off it’s hinges, much to the dismay of both Litefoot and Freud. They find Jago lying on the couch, where he invites Freud to conduct his final analysis. Litefoot explains to Jago that their baboon companion is linked to the events of Shingle Cove. While they were there, Jago was infected by the alien presence there, it latched onto his mind and created a physical avatar for his repressed desires – resulting in an ape-like creature. Jago asks Freud about what he dreamed about, but Freud is evasive of the subject. Jago knew that Freud wasn’t especially truthful with him during his appointments as Freud was the one who mentioned the detail of a baboon when Jago didn’t. He never mentioned to Litefoot about there being a baboon in his dream. Jago only specified that the creature was an ape of little description. Question is, why did Freud specify that the creature was a baboon? Plus when Jago was describing his childhood home, he merely mentioned china plates, whereas Freud mentioned vases where there weren’t any. Litefoot is surprised to find his collection of works on the bookshelf. Jago explains that Litefoot had a lease on the flat, to which Litefoot has no recollection. Jago explains that the landlady told him the current tenant was a medical man by the name of Henderson – an alias used by Litefoot. Jago offers Litefoot to lie on the couch and be analysed by Freud, who is reluctant to do so in the presence of the truncheon wielding baboon, but Jago implores him to continue.
Freud asks Litefoot about if he has seen a baboon before. Litefoot confirms he’s never dreamt of one, but he did see one during his youth in China. He remembers every Sunday, his father would visit the local commissioner while Litefoot would play in the garden with the two children of the local commissioner. A baboon owned by the commissioner had free reign of the garden. He further recalls a grizzly ritual that involved feeding live rats to the baboon and being forced to beat the it with a stick…
The baboon in the room makes a conversive noise. Freud asks Jago what the creature said, to which Jago hasn’t a clue. Freud finds this particularly interesting considering that Jago can’t understand the baboon, yet Litefoot has been talking to it all afternoon. Litefoot translates that the baboon remembers the memory as well. Litefoot also remembers that his mother would stay at home while he visited the commissioner because he once made an advance on her. At this thought, Litefoot angrily snaps ‘Filthy Ape!’ The thought of not being able to stand up for himself and the fact that his father willingly appeased the commissioner despite the advances on his wife angered the young Litefoot. The baboon in the room suddenly jumps on Litefoot and tries to attack him, the two struggle and break the window, only to be rescued by Anna from falling out of it. Anna reveals herself to Litefoot as his mother taken form from his subconscious mind as a representation of his order and logical side while the baboon is in fact a representation of his chaotic and disorderly side. Litefoot is in constant battle with himself to compose himself as a proper gentleman while keeping his aggressive side tempered within himself…She and the baboon are two sides of a single alien entity.
Anna reveals that she and her species crashed into the Suffolk coast several decades ago. She and her kind have been trying to use the fog to convey their fate to those who could witness it. In the process, they hitched a ride inside Litefoot’s head, where they unfortunately caused some unnecessary side effects.
Jago realises that Litefoot was the one who pushed him into the ape house. He leased the flat and told the cab driver to take him, Freud and the baboon to the flat. He also requested that Jago be the one to go under analysis in his place as an act of subterfuge so that he can pass on the influence to Jago, but the baboon simply wanted to escape. Freud reminds Litefoot of how he managed to return the baboon to its cage… by attacking it with a stick. He offers Litefoot his cane back and Litefoot chases the shrieking baboon into the cage in the bedroom. With the baboon now trapped, Anna merges with the baboon and transforms into a humanoid ape like creature similar to the one from Jago’s dream. She states that she intends to stay in London and lay low before taking her leave of the three tired men.
The next day, Jago is presenting his variety act. He opens his next act as a beastly woman who can scale walls like an ape and sing softly as a lark – Madame Anna! Jago sits in the private box with Litefoot and Freud and watches Anna perform her acrobatics and singing. Strangely, all three of them don’t have any recollection of her and Jago only just discovered her. Jago asks Freud if it is natural that he doesn’t recall all of the details of the previous day, but nonetheless doesn’t complain too much about it as he did have a good nights sleep. Even though Litefoot does note that Anna does wear her hair the same way his mother did…Rather than dwell on the small details, they decide to join in with the crowd as they sing.
