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the-magnus-archives-archiver · 5 years

Text

Infestation

Case: 0120606 0162907

Name: Subject: Prentiss’ attack on the Magnus Institute Archive in July of 2016. Date: July 29th, 2016 Recorded by: Live recording of incident at the Magnus Institute, London

[WRITHING WORM SOUNDS]

Sasha: What are you doing?!

Archivist: Almost...

Sasha: Leave it, it’s not—

Archivist: I got it!

[PULLS SOMETHING FROM THE MORASS]

Martin: Guys? Is everyth— OH CHRIST!

Archivist: Shut up and get the extinguishers!

Martin: What?

Archivist: The CO2! Get the goddamn CO2!

Martin: Right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, yep.

Archivist: NOW!

[WRITHING CONTINUES AS EXTINGUISHER SPRAYS]

Martin:There’s too many...

Sasha: Just keep spraying!

Archivist: We need to go!

Sasha: Where?

Archivist: Uh... Uh...

Sasha: Damn!

Archivist: I just... uh... let, let me think!

Sasha: Do you see Prentiss? If we could get her—

Martin: I, I, I don’t see her! I don’t see her! I don’t see her! I don’t see her!

Archivist: Uhhh...

Sasha: John? John!?

Martin: This way! Come on! Come this way! This way, this way!

[RUNNING, PURSUED BY WORMS]

Archivist: Erm... LOOK OUT!

[CRASH] [CLICK] [CLICK] [SOUND CUTS IN MIDWAY THROUGH THE ARCHIVIST SCREAMING]

Martin: And... there we go. Recording again. Did you get it?

[PAINED CRY FROM ARCHIVIST AS SASHA EXTRACTS WORM WITH A SQUELCH]

Sasha: There. And I just want to point out that I didn’t make this much of a fuss.

Archivist: [Breathing heavily, aggrieved tone] I think your removal was substantially cleaner.

Sasha: I’m still not sure why you have this. Drinking in the archives?

Martin: What? No, no, it’s for worms.

Archivist: What?

Martin: For pulling the worms out of people. Like now.

Sasha: You, er... what?

Martin: I used to carry around a knife, but I started thinking that, well, cutting into someone laterally wasn’t really the most efficient way to get them out, and besides which, they seem to be quite slow burrowing in a straight line so, given their size, th-the corkscrew just seemed to be the better option.

...

Look, you guys got to go home every day, okay. I didn’t! I’ve been thinking for a long time about what to do when... well, y’know, this happens.

Archivist: [Softly] Well... thank you.

Sasha: That’s why we’re here?

Martin: Yeah. The room’s sealed, I checked it myself when I moved in.

Archivist: Climate controlled, as well. Strong door. Soundproof. [Sigh] These old files are far better protected than we ever were. Alright, I’ll grant you it’s a good place to lay low, but—

Sasha: They could still come in through the air con.

Archivist: Not easily. And... not en masse. It is actually safe.

Martin: Ha!

Archivist: Except, of course, that we’re trapped.

Martin: Ah... yeah. Sorry.

...

Sasha: Why record it?

Archivist: What?

Sasha: Before, in the office. It, it was stupid going for the tape recorder like that, and then when you dropped it out there—

Archivist: I said I was sorry. If I’d known Martin had another one stashed in here, I never would have...

Sasha: No, it’s, it’s fine, just... I just don’t understand. I thought you hated the damn thing. You’re always going on about it.

Archivist: I do! I did. I just... I don’t want to become a mystery. I refuse to become another goddamn mystery.

Sasha: What?

Archivist: Look, even if you ignore the walking soil-sack out there, and the fact that we are probably minutes from death, there is still so much more happening here.

Martin: I’m not sure we can really ignore the—

Archivist: Every real statement just leads... deeper into something I don’t even know the shape of yet. And to top it all, I still don’t know what happened to Gertrude. Officially she’s still missing, but Elias is no help and the police were pretty clear that the wait to call her dead is just a formality. If I die, wormfood or... something else, whatever, I’m going to make damn sure the same doesn’t happen to me. Whoever takes over from me is going to know exactly what happened.

Sasha: You don’t think that would... put them off?

Archivist: [Bitter laugh] I hope so. Only an idiot would stay in this job. Martin: [Chuckles] Wouldn’t that make you an idiot?

Archivist: Yes, Martin, that was my point.

...

Sasha: Can you see what’s going on out there?

Martin: Ish. When did we last clean these doors?

Archivist: What can you see?

Martin: Worms seem to have backed off a bit. There’s a few lurking in the corners. Ooh, ooh hey, there’s the other tape recorder!

Sasha: Any sign of Prentiss?

Martin: No. No, it looks like they’re... waiting, I think.

Archivist: For what?

Martin: I don’t know. Tim, maybe?

Sasha: Oh god!

Martin: I think he was out at lunch.

Sasha: Quick, someone call him. Tell him not to come back inside.

Archivist: There’s no signal in here. We just have to hope he heard the noise.

...

Sasha: John, what did you mean by “real statements”?

Archivist: You know what I mean. The ones that have weird wrinkles, or that just seem to have something solid to them. They all have one thing in common.

Sasha: They don’t record digitally.

Archivist: And we have to use the tape recorder. At this stage, if it records to my laptop I almost don’t bother. I don’t—

Martin: There! There, there, there! I see him!

Archivist: What?

Martin: Tim. Tim’s outside.

Sasha: Oh god, he doesn’t know. He doesn’t see them.

[SASHA AND MARTIN BOTH START CALLING OUT TO TIM] TIM, LOOK OUT!

Archivist: It’s soundproofed. He can’t hear you!

Sasha: What is he doing? No, Tim, just run! Leave it alone!

Martin: Oh no, no, no, no...

Sasha: Turn around. Just turn around.

Martin: Oh god. There she is, there she is.

Archivist: [Muttering] There’s nothing we can do.

Sasha: Ah, screw this.

Archivist: What, Sasha, NO!

[DOOR OPENS]

Sasha: Tim, look out!

Archivist: Watch out for the tape—

[CLICK]

Tim: ...still working? Ah, okay. Test, test. What are you doing on the floor? Huh. [Imitates Archivist voice] Statement of Joe Spooky, regarding sinister happenings in the downtown old—

[DOOR OPENS]

Sasha: Tim, look out!

[WORM SOUND INTENSIFIES]

Tim: Sasha?

Sasha: Behind you! Run!

Tim: Oh...

Prentiss: [Slowly intoning over worm sound] Do you hear their song?

Sasha: TIM!

[IMPACT, WORMS AND SCUFFLING] [SASHA BREATHING HEAVILY AS SHE STUMBLES THROUGH DOORS]

Sasha:Damn it!

[CLICK]

Archivist: Right. There we go. Martin, what do you see?

Martin: Hm? What?

Archivist: I can’t really stand up yet. I need you to describe what’s going on. For the record.

Martin: Ah, yeah. Sure. So, um, Sasha tackled Tim and there was kind of a struggle, but she made it out of the Archives. That, that was about two minutes ago and she’s gone to get help. P-Probably. I mean, she, she couldn’t... she wouldn’t just run so...

Archivist: Did it look like any of the worms... got her before she left?

Martin: No. I don’t think so. Tim neither, I think. It was hard to tell after she tackled him. There was just a lot of movement and, and shouting and, and wriggling...

Archivist: Stay with it, Martin. Tim. What happened to Tim?

Martin: They got split up and he ran into the office. You said that’s where you made the hole. When you were recording. And they all came through, so... he’s dead. He’s dead in there and he’s covered in worms and that’s it.

Archivist: We don’t know that.

Martin: ...Maybe. Maybe, maybe he found the spare CO2.

Archivist: Spare? What? Where? I never saw any.

Martin: Oh, I, er... I, I hid them in old casefile boxes.

Archivist: What, why?

Martin: Well, so the worms didn’t know they were there! Look, I know it’s stupid.

Archivist: Yes. Yes it is. They’re just... they’re just unclassified parasites. They don’t have consciousness, they can’t plan, they’re just an unthinking infection.

Martin: Seriously?!

Archivist: What?

Martin: Why do you do that?

Archivist: Do what?

Martin: Push the sceptic thing so hard!? I mean, it made sense at first, but now? After everything we’ve seen, after everything you’ve read! I hear you recording statements and y-you just dismiss them. Your tear them to pieces like they’re wasting your time, but half of the “rational” explanations you give are actually more far-fetched than just accepting it was a, a ghost or something. I mean for god’s sake John, we’re literally hiding from some kind of worm... queen... thing, how, how could you possibly still not believe!?

Archivist: Of course, I believe. Of course I do. Have you ever taken a look at the stuff we have in Artefact storage? That’s enough to convince anyone. But, but even before that... Why do you think I started working here? It’s not exactly glamorous. I have... I’ve always believed in the supernatural. Within reason. I mean. I still think most of the statements down here aren’t real. Of the hundreds I’ve recorded, we’ve had maybe... thirty, forty that are... that go on tape. Now those, I believe, at least for the most part.

Martin: Then why do you—

Archivist: Because I’m scared, Martin!. Because when I record these statements it feels... it feels like I’m being watched. I... I lose myself a bit. And then when I come back, it’s like... like if I admit there may be any truth to it, whatever’s watching will... know somehow. The scepticism, feigning ignorance. It just felt safer.

Martin: Well... It wasn’t.

Archivist: No. No, it wasn’t. Still, it’s not my fault we’re going to be eaten by worms. Speaking of, can you see anything?

Martin: Not much. They’re just... there.

Archivist: How many?

Martin: Too many. And more keep coming up through the floor. I didn’t think they could get through.

Archivist: Prentiss?

Martin: No, I can’t s... Oh, there she is.

Archivist: What’s she doing?

Martin: I don’t know. She’s messing with the boxes. She’s holding one up and... ahh!

Archivist: What?

Martin: She’s... She’s destroying them. Sort of.

Archivist: Sort of?

Martin: Well, I don’t really know what that stuff coming out of her mouth is, but I think we should probably burn them.

Archivist: Right. Right. ... Why are you here Martin?

Martin: Well, well, Prentiss is out there and you can’t run so—

Archivist: I mean at the Archive in general. Why haven’t you quit?

Martin: Are you giving me my review now?

Archivist: No... We’re clearly doing a whole heart-to-heart thing and, truth be told, the question’s been bothering me. You’ve been living in the Archives for four months, constant threat of... this. Sleeping with a fire extinguisher and a corkscrew. Even you must be aware that that’s not normal for an archiving job? Why are you still here?

Martin: [Considering] Don’t really know. I just am. It didn’t feel right to just leave. I’ve typed up a few resignation letters, but I just couldn’t bring myself to hand them in. I’m trapped here. It’s like I can’t... move on and the more I struggle, the more I’m stuck.

Archivist: Martin...You’re not, uh... You didn’t die here, did you?

Martin: What? What? N-No... what?!

Archivist: No, I just... No, just the way you phrased that...

Martin: Made you think I was a ghost?

Archivist: No... it’s—

Martin: No, no... it’s just that whatever web these statements have caught you in, well, I’m there too. We all are, I think. [Sigh]

...

A ghost? Really?

Archivist: [Tiredly] Shut up Martin.

[CLICK]

[FIRE ALARM IS SOUNDING]

Elias: Right, tell me again, please.

Sasha: You’re kidding.

Elias: You did bring a tape recorder. I just thought John would appreciate as many supplementary recordings as possible. For the record.

Sasha: Well, for the record, if we don’t do something now, it won’t matter either way.

Elias: So... these are the worms he and Martin have been going on about?

Sasha: The ones terrorising us for months? Yeah!

Elias: To be honest I always thought they were just... overreacting. Other staff have seen them around, but no-one’s reported any aggressive behaviour or anything like that. You know how those two are... John puts on a good show, but sometimes I swear he’s worse than Martin.

Sasha: Look, Elias. I don’t know what you think is going on, but I have just seen thousands of... fleshworms pouring out of the wall! God knows how long they’ve been hiding! Tim might be dead, and the others...

Elias: Of course. The fire alarm was a good move, but it does mean most staff have evacuated, so we’ll deal have to with them ourselves.

Sasha: There are thousands of them, Elias.

Elias: Not quite what I meant. On John’s insistence I recently changed the Archive’s fire suppression system to use carbon dioxide. Should have done it years ago, really—

Sasha: So why hasn’t it gone off?

Elias: Because there isn’t an actual fire.

Sasha: Right, right. Can we set it off manually? I think John’s got a lighter somewhere.

Elias: He’s not smoking again, is he? Anyway, it shouldn’t be necessary. There is a manual release, a few floors down.

Sasha: Wait. Wait. Will it hurt Martin or John?

Elias: Almost certainly. Er, I’m not a doctor, but I know dumping a lot of CO2 on people isn’t generally considered a good idea. I really don’t want to have to find another Archivist so quickly after Gertrude, but from what you say... it might be a mercy. You know the situation best, so...?

Sasha: Let’s go.

[CLICK]

[FIRE ALARM CAN BE HEARD... AS CAN SOUND OF BANGING ON WALL]

Martin: I thought that wall was meant to be solid?!

Archivist: So did I. We don’t have any sort of weapon, do we?

Martin: I mean... I mean, I suppose we could use—

Archivist: Don’t say the corkscrew!

Martin: Okay.

Archivist: How many of them are outside of the door?

Martin: I don’t know. I can’t see because the window is covered in worms.

Archivist: Right. Right. Damn. Well, Martin I guess this is—

[SOUND OF PLASTERBOARD AND TILE BREAKING]

Tim: Hi guys!

Martin: Tim!

Archivist: Tim?! What the hell? I thought... how did you...?

Martin: You made it!

Tim: Funny story really. I ran into the office, worms everywhere, horrible death and everything, tripped and fell in some boxes and there were like 20 cans of gas in there.

Martin: Are, are you alright? You seem a bit...

Tim: Fine! Fine! Gas... bit light-headed. Not a lot of ventilation in the tunnels. Come on!

Archivist: In-Into the tunnels?

Tim: Yeah! Actually, not that many worms in there anymore. I think they’ve mostly gone into the Archive. Although the ones down here are faster for some reason. And quieter.

Archivist: You’re not bitten, are you?

Tim: No, I don’t think so! Have a look!

Archivist: Yes, alright Tim, you look fine. Put them back on, please.

Martin: Can can you walk, John?

Archivist: No, I can limp.

Tim: Then let’s go!

Archivist: Martin, could you pass me the tape recorder?

Martin: Sure. I think it’s running out, though.

Archivist: Fine. I suppose I can turn it back on when we’re being eaten alive.

Tim: Why do you have a second tape recorder, Martin?

Martin: Oh, um... well, I’ve been using it to record myself. I write poetry and I think the tapes have a sort of... low-fi charm.

Archivist: ... I see.

[CLICK]

Sasha: [SPEECH IS ECHOED FROM THE ROOM AS SHE WALKS]

[With some despondency in tone] Okay, John. I know you’ll want to know what’s been happening. If you’re still alive after this. The worms are on the upper floor. Not as many as down in the Archive, but enough.

I set the fire alarm off, so everyone’s evacuated except me and Elias. I didn’t see any signs of the fire brigade, but I haven’t been near a window in a while. There was a... I guess you’d call it a... a wave of worms. I got cut off from Elias. I hope he made it to the fire system, but who knows. Maybe everyone’s dead already.

I’ve had to retreat into Artefact Storage. That should tell you something about how bad it is out there.

God, I hate this place.

Did I ever tell you I first joined the Institute as a practical researcher? I had to analyse and investigate all the stuff in here. Take notes after sleeping in the rusted chair, write in the memory book, all that sort of thing. I transferred after three months. Would’ve quit, but couldn’t afford to back then.

Never understood why they keep this stuff secret. I mean, we’ve, we’ve enough here to send any sceptic packing, but it’s just locked away. I... I asked Elias about it once, but he just muttered something about funding and mission statements. He’s good at changing the subject, isn’t he?

Sorry. I’m rambling. No worms, though, so that’s good.

Oh, hey. I’ve found... I’ve found that table you were talking about. Don’t really see what all the fuss is about. Just a... basic... optical illusion. Nothing special... just... just a... wait...

[Hushed and panicked] John! John, I think there’s someone here. Hello? I see you. Show yourself.

[DISTORTION INTENSIFIES] [SASHA SCREAMS, TAPE RECORDER DROPS] [DISTORTION FADES TO A CRACKLE]

Not-Sasha: [Words warped] Hello? I see you.

[FOOTSTEPS]

[Clearly] I see you.

[CLICK]

[WATER DRIPS]

Archivist: Update. I don’t know how long we’ve been down here. These tunnels are a maze, and we don’t know where we are. We have four of the--

Tim: Martin’s gone.

Archivist: I’m getting to that. Martin has disappeared. Tim was right about there being fewer worms down here, but they are much faster. More aggressive. None of us have been hit yet but... during one of the more alarming encounters, Martin ran off.

Tim: He thought we were behind him, I think.

Archivist: He didn’t think at all. Tim was with me, and my leg slowed me down. He must have taken a turn we didn’t see or something. We lost him. But, Tim has managed to find what looks to be an actual trapdoor, so... we won’t need to bludgeon our way through any more drywall. I’m recording this in case—

Tim: In case the trapdoor opens back into the Archives and Prentiss is there to kill us.

Archivist: In as many words, yes. Tim?

Tim: Alright

[TRAPDOOR IS PUSHED OPEN TO SOUND OF FIRE ALARM AND LOTS OF WRITHING]

Prentiss: Archivist

Tim: Ah.

Archivist: Shit.

[CLICK]

#the magnus archives #magnus archives #MAG #MAG39 #MAG 39 #Investation #Statement #The Corruption #jane prentiss #the magnus institute

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the-magnus-archives-archiver · 5 years

Text

Lost and Found

Case: 0120606

Name: Andre Ramao Subject: A series of misplaced objects lost over the course of three months Date: June 6th, 2012 Recorded by: Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London

Thank you for lending me your pen. I thanked you when you handed it to me, but I don’t know if you’ll remember. I wonder, will you... forget you lent it to me and believe that it was my pen all along? Maybe instead you’ll forget that I ever had one to begin with, and think of me as an idiot who turned up to give a statement without a pen, so you had to lend me yours. My own fault for putting it down, really. Assuming I did ever have one. I’ll try to keep a slightly closer hold on this one.

I’ve been in the antiques business for a long time. It’s not what it used to be.

[Nervous chuckle]

I’m sorry, I know. I always did that, try to make myself feel more comfortable with jokes. There’s a follow up to that one, you know. Something along the lines of the joke being so old only an antiques dealer would be able to sell it. I love that one; I think it’s clever, but in my whole life it’s only ever gotten a laugh once. That’s why I remember buying the vase so clearly. I remember that the seller laughed.

In the old days, I never would have considered buying wares from the likes of Mikaele Salesa. He has a good reputation for quality, but a... bad reputation for legality, as it were. I’ve had more than one acquaintance sell on a particularly valuable find they got from him, only to discover that it didn’t have proper import papers, or that it had been reported stolen years before. Charlie Miller even did some jail time over a Georgian brooch he bought off him, so as a general rule I’d have given Salesa’s stuff a wide berth, but... Well, the antiques business isn’t what it used to be. That isn’t a joke. I had to close up my shop a few years ago, you see. Actual antiques don’t sell to the mass market anymore. Oh, young people will snap up vintage clothes or have any number of cheap faux-antique replicas strewn about their living rooms, but as soon as they get a look at the price tag for the real thing? They’re out of there like a shot.

So I went the same way as a lot of my peers. Lose the premises, start selling only high-margin goods direct to specific clients who can afford them, or shift a few guaranteed sellers on the auction. It’s the only real way to stay afloat in the business nowadays, but the competition is intense, and getting the calibre of artefact you need has become a more cutthroat affair. I’m not the only one in the business to recently soften their attitude towards buying from people like Mikaele Salesa.

It was my first meeting with him, back in March, and I was nervous, so I told my joke. Just off- hand, almost a reflex. I didn’t expect any reaction, really, I... I certainly didn’t expect him to laugh. But he did, this sudden, deep, throaty laugh that seemed to come out of nowhere. He didn’t say anything afterwards, just continued discussing business. But it stayed with me. There was nothing particularly strange about the laugh, not really. Why do I remember it so clearly?

Salesa was taking me through his ‘showroom’. There was a fancy-looking sign above the door, but it didn’t do much to hide the fact that it was basically a warehouse. More of the antiques were still in their packing crates, and I couldn’t help making a note of how quick and easy it would be for him to pack everything down and disappear if he needed to. Still, I’d made a few good purchases already and was cautiously optimistic. I’d bought a pair of cavalry sabres from the Revolutionary War, absolutely excellent condition, and a British artilleryman’s tunic from World War I, a few other bits and pieces as well. I recall I felt a moment of relief that I didn’t deal in books, as I caught sight of several crates packed to the brim with heavy-looking volumes. I was looking for something big, though. Something that would make an actual dent in the mountain of debt I’d been piling up.

I found it in that old Chinese pot. From the Jiajing period, so Salesa said, and the construction seemed to back him up. The glaze and the workmanship fitted with mid-to-late Ming dynasty, but there was something... off about the actual design. Instead of the pictures or scenes common to the ceramics of the period, the blue glaze was painted on in crisp, thin geometric lines. They repeated perfectly and seemed to get smaller and more intricate the closer I looked, but the shapes they formed never lost any of the precision, seeming to continue on however closely I looked. The effect was disorientating, and made the vase seem smaller than it actually was. It made my head hurt a bit when I looked at it for too long. It was amazing.

When he saw me staring, Salesa clapped me on the back and named a price that almost made me choke. We haggled a bit, and eventually reached a price I considered only a little bit unreasonable. I hurried my purchases home, feeling slightly soiled by my visit to the warehouse, and very much hoping it would be a good few months, if not years, before I was in such dire straits that I needed to go again. I got home, had a shower and some food and immediately started to look into finding a buyer for my latest acquisitions. I remember I was planning to make a few calls, but my headache got so bad that I had to have an early night.

The problems started soon after. It was little things at first. Like my shoes. I’m not a particularly fashion-conscious man at the best of times, so I have three pairs of shoes. Comfortable loafers for everyday use, a pair of walking boots for hiking, and some well-shined, polished, leather brogues for fancier events. Well, I had a rather upmarket auction that I needed to attend, so I went to put on my nice shoes, but they were nowhere to be found. Not the shoes, not the box I kept them in. Instead there was bag containing two shirts that I know for a fact I threw away the year before. When I asked my husband, David, about it, he told me point blank that I had never had any such shoes. Claimed I always wore my loafers when I went to auctions or parties.

I know that compared to some of the ghost stories you must hear in this place, a pair of misplaced shoes seems perfectly trivial, but something felt so... wrong about the whole situation. In the end I did go in my loafers. I don’t remember if anyone at the auction noticed.

It was about a week later that I got the invoice from Salesa. It was a pleasant surprise, far less than I thought we’d agreed on. That feeling lasted until I looked through the itemised list and realised why the cost was so low. He hadn’t charged me for the Ming. I’ll admit that I was somewhat conflicted over whether to raise the issue, but in the end I decided that even if Mikaele Salesa did work with thieves, I was not going to be counted among them. So I phoned him to try and explain the mistake.

He seemed to be in a fine mood when he answered the phone, and asked me if I’d had a chance to try out the sabres yet, which I’m pretty sure was a joke. I told him that there was an item he’d missed off the invoice, and he said that no, everything had been double-checked and was correct. I was getting suspicious at this point, and thought he might be trying to pull a fast one of some sort with me, maybe get me to take the blame for some illicit scheme gone wrong. I told him so in no uncertain terms, and described our encounter and the vase in minute detail. He was quiet for a few seconds, and then asked me if I could send him a photo of the pot. His tone was different, and he sounded oddly wary when he made the request. I was very on edge by this point, but could come up with no good reason not to agree, so I took a few pictures with my phone and sent them through to him.

It was a long time before he spoke again, and when he did he sounded... different. Almost scared, I thought. He told me that I could keep it. No charge. I began to protest again, but he ignored it. I remember his exact words: “I do not remember having that thing, which means it belongs to you.” Then he hung up.

This was all very strange, of course, but even then I wasn’t worried. Not like I should have been.

It was my book next. A signed copy of Catch-22, my favourite book. Vanished from its place on my bookshelf, leaving only an empty space behind. David just gave me another blank stare when I asked him about it. I admit I almost lost it at him then. Shoes were one thing, but that book meant a lot to me. I accused him of playing some stupid joke, and tried to remind him what I’d gone through to get it, flying over to America for Joseph Heller’s last book tour, queuing for hours and then that dreadful evening I thought that sudden rainstorm had ruined it all. By the end he was looking... very alarmed indeed and started to ask me how I was feeling. He wanted to know if I’d been under a lot of stress at work, if there was anything I wanted to talk about. I left.

Maybe he was right. Maybe I am crazy. It makes a lot more sense, doesn’t it? It would make it neat. Except no. No, I would need to have gone mad a long, long time before this for the idea of it being in my head to hold up. My perceptions are the only ones I can trust. Maybe. I don’t know.

This went on for months. The tie I got for my last birthday, my grandfather’s teapot, the tunic I bought from Salesa, things just kept going missing, and every time David would tell me that whatever it was didn’t exist. Or it wasn’t mine. Or I was misremembering. For a while I thought he was actually trying to gaslight me, make me think I was losing my mind, but when the tunic went missing I called Salesa again. This time he laughed when he told me that he didn’t remember selling any World War I items to me on my visit. I checked the invoice, and it was no longer listed there. Just empty, accusing paper where the words had been.

I know these things were real. I know they existed. Why won’t anyone just believe me?

This is where I started to come undone a bit. To be honest I don’t think anyone would do much better in my situation. I hadn’t made any connection between the old Chinese pot and the disappearances. I mean, why would I? But I also hadn’t been able to sell it. Whenever I tried, something would get in the way. The other person would forget to send through a crucial email, or they’d stop responding. Once I managed to get it as far as posting it out to a buyer, but it was returned immediately with a note asking why it had been sent to her. Gradually, I began to get suspicious of the thing. Sitting there, with its cascading, maddening patterns in that vile cobalt blue. Trying to tell me that I things didn’t exist, that they hadn’t vanished when I know they have.

I took to watching it. I wasn’t getting much sleep and David was worried sick about me. I know he was talking to various doctors about getting me help. There were certainly a couple of points I was worried about him having me sectioned. None of it helps in the end.

It was about a month ago. I had placed the vase in the centre of the table, and was sat staring at it. Keeping an eye on it. Checking for... god knows what. This had been my ritual for the previous week, keeping my vigil into the small hours, but that night... that night I fell asleep in front of it. I don’t remember my dream. Running, maybe? I know I woke with a start sometime around 2 in the morning. As I tried to rub the sleep from my eyes, I heard a sound from the table in front of me. It was the dull thump of a heavy book hitting the tabletop. I looked and, sure enough, there was my copy of Catch-22, just lying there in front of that strange ceramic thing. And not just my book, there was a small pile of objects around the base. My shoes, a tie, things I don’t even remember losing. One by one they rose up out of the mouth of the vase and tumbled to the table. It didn’t matter how big they were, they all seemed to fit.

And then came the moment when everything had been disgorged. I saw all the things that I had lost, and I thought it must be over. It must be done. What else could possibly come of there? And I saw the pale shapes of long, thin fingertips begin to creep above the lip of the pot. I remember thinking that it couldn’t be a normal person living in that pot, because the fingernails were too dirty. Isn’t that an odd thing to think at a time like that?

I ran, of course. Turned around and sprinted out of the door and into the street and didn’t return until morning. Maybe I should have called the police, but I was in no state to do much of anything except shiver under a tree for hours. David was gone. I allowed myself some brief hope that maybe he’d just left me, maybe he’d escape with just a divorce. But no. One call to the housing association confirmed that, as far as they were concerned, I’d always lived alone.

I want to smash that thing. I want to dash its maddening patterns to the ground and stomp on it until there is nothing left but powder. But it’s also disappeared, of course. I can’t find it anywhere. It’s still taking things, though. Sorry about your pen.

Archivist Notes:

Before I dig too deeply into the background of this statement, I feel I should mention something that puts much of it in a slightly different light. Tim actually managed to find a copy of Mr. Ramao’s marriage licence. It exists, is signed, dated and official, and half of it is blank. Only Mr. Ramao’s details are on the document, and if it wasn’t for the context of this statement, it would appear he was married to nobody. But he was married.

This is not the first time Mikaele Salesa’s name has come to the attention of the Institute. Even discounting the incidental role he played in case #0112905, he appears to have something of a knack for locating objects displaying more... disconcerting phenomena. I believe some of the more bizarre things in the Artefact Storage area were purchased from him. It has been something of a—

[Urgh. Urgh.

[SOUND OF CHAIR SCRAPING]

I see you...

[THUMP... THEN SOUND OF COLLAPSING SHELVES] [NOISES OF EXCLAMATION] [DOOR OPENS]

Sasha: Alright?

Archivist: Ah... Yeah. A... spider.

Sasha: A spider?

Archivist: Yeah. I tried to kill it.... the shelf collapsed.

Sasha: I swear, cheap shelves are... Did you get it?

Archivist: Ah... I hope so. Thinks so. Nasty, bulbous looking thing.

Sasha: [Chuckles] Well, I won’t tell Martin.

Archivist: Oh, god. I don’t think I could stand another lecture on their importance to the ecosystem.

[SHUFFLING NOISES]

What?

Sasha: Look.

Archivist: Oh... uh... Got dented when the shelf collapsed, I guess.

Sasha: No, it, it goes right through. I, I thought this was an exterior wall?

Archivist: It should be.

Sasha: Hmm. I, I think it’s just plasterboard.

[LOW NOISES OF DEBRIS]

Do you see anything?

[QUIET, BUILDING SOUND OF WET WRIGGLING]

Archivist: No, I don’t think so, it...

[WORM SOUND INTENSIFIES]

Sasha, run. RU—]

#the magnus archives #magnus archives #MAG #MAG38 #MAG 38 #LostAndFound #Lost and Found #Statement #Mikaele Salesa #The Spiral #The Distortion #The Twisting Deceit

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the-magnus-archives-archiver · 5 years

Text

Burnt Offering

Case: 0090608

Name: Jason North Subject: The Discovery of an alleged ritual site found near Loch Glass in Scotland Date: August 6th, 2009 Recorded by: Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London

[Archivist (John): Tell me again.

Martin: Again?

Archivist: I want it on tape.

Martin: What? Why?

Archivist: I just want a record. To make sure I have something I can check.

Martin: Okay, fine. There were two delivery men. They were big, and they spoke with cockney accents that might have been fake, and they delivered a package for you. I don’t remember anything else about what they looked like.

Archivist: Nothing at all?

Martin: [Exasperated] They looked normal. Like you’d expect. They looked like two, huge, cockney delivery men. I don’t know what else you want?

Archivist: What about the table?

Martin: I didn’t see the table. I guess Rosie must have signed for it. I mean, it’s her office on the way to Artefact Storage, that makes sense.

Archivist: She says the same as you. Two men, doesn’t know how they got in, too intimidated to ask, looked “exactly like you’d expect”. Useless...

Martin: Sorry... Look, John, I do think we should destroy the table, though. I mean, if it’s the one from Amy Patel’s statement. Just in case.

Archivist: Elias told me the same thing. Luckily he phrased it as advice rather than an instruction, so for now I’m more inclined to keep studying it. We’re not in the business of destroying knowledge.

Martin: I suppose. Can I go now?

Archivist: Yes, go on.

Martin: Thank you.

[DOOR OPENS]

Look, you need to get some sleep.

...

I’ll see you later.

[DOOR CLOSES]

Archivist: Waste of tape, really. He’s right. Might as well get some use out of it. Statement of Jason North, regarding the discovery of an alleged ritual site found near Loch Glass in Scotland. Original statement given August 6th 2009. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London. Statement begins.]

I just need to know if you can save my son. I’ve asked and asked and your people only ever tell me to write my statement. Put it down on paper for investigation. Is that going to help? No. Of course it isn’t. Even if you had the power to do something, would you? Or would you rather watch my son burn so you can take notes.

I’ve been drinking. You can probably tell from the stains. Well, I don’t plan to apologise for ruining your precious paper, and I don’t plan to stop. Only way to keep the fear from settling in. If I’m scared I’m going to lose Ethan like I lost everything else, then I’ll curl into a ball and never get up. I won’t be able to do anything to stop it. I won’t let my son burn, even if you cowards don’t have the guts to step up and do something.

I’m sorry. I know. There’s no-one to blame by my own stupid self. Blundering in where I had no right to go. But yes, I know, you want the whole goddamn story, don’t you? So you can look over it in ten years and go “Hmm, interesting” long after Ethan and me are dead. Well, fine. There’s not much to it, really. For everything it’s done to me, I didn’t really do anything at all. Just messed around in the wrong clearing.

I’m an ecologist. Was an ecologist. Working for the Forestry Commission up in Scotland. It was a great job. For me, at least. I suppose if you don’t like hiking or being alone you’d have a hard time with it, but for me it was a great fit. Now, up in the north of Scotland, the bit without all the people, there are plantations of evergreen trees. Huge ones. And their job is the same as pretty much any other tree – to get cut down for wood. Trouble is, a lot of animals make their homes in and around those trees. Badgers, red squirrels, even pine martens. Do you know what a pine marten is? It’s a wee bear. An adorable wee bear that needs to be protected. Because the pine marten, like a lot of other species that live in those areas, is protected by conservation laws; can’t be legally killed without the sort of special permissions logging companies rarely have. So it was my job to walk through all these plantations with a clipboard and note down what animals had made their homes where.

You don’t need me to tell you that the job can me a long way from civilisation at times. Some of these plantations are... off the beaten track. Everyone gets so caught up on how small Scotland is compared to other countries, but it’s still huge compared to a single idiot wandering through the forests. And there aren’t so many people, so you have large areas all but devoid of human life. It wasn’t uncommon for me to find myself an hour or more away from a town or main road or any other human life at all. I didn’t mind being alone, though, because I knew I had my little boy Ethan waiting for me back at home. Four years old and already sharp as anything. And my wife Lucy. She used to be waiting for me as well.

You see... plenty of strange things out here. That far from anywhere, a lot of folks use it as their own personal dumping grounds. Fridges, microwaves, barbed wire, all sorts. Occasionally strewn throughout the forests and over the hills. I even found a corpse once. Not as exciting as it sounds – they were far too decomposed for me to tell anything about the death. Could have been a mafia hit or could have been a hiker having a heart attack. Result was the same for me: radio it in and then lose two hours of light babysitting a dead guy while I wait for someone to get up and take charge of it.

So when I saw the clearing in the trees near Loch Glass I wasn’t worried. I figured I’d seen everything messed up the forest had to offer. Heck, I even saw a friend of mine get impaled on a falling tree once. I reckoned there was nothing left to shock me. It didn’t matter that the hairs on my arm began to stand up, or that I started sweating through my coat in the middle of February, or that that dry acrid taste at the back of my throat made me want to gag. I still headed on over to investigate this odd-looking clearing.

It wasn’t man made, or at least nobody had cut trees down to make it. It looked as though the trees had been deliberately planted in a circle. If that was the case, judging by their growth they must have been planted like that almost fifty years ago. In the centre was a large piece of stone, crudely hacked into what looked like a small seat or... maybe an altar. As I stood there on the edge, I realised the trees around me were completely silent, and after a few seconds of examination saw that it didn’t look like there were any animals at all around this clearing. It was... unsettling, sure, but it also meant that I had all the information I needed for my survey of that area. I could tick the boxes and move on. I didn’t need to enter the clearing. But I did.

The moment I crossed that threshold I knew I had made a mistake. It was like an electric shock rushing through my body, and my already warm skin began to prickle and burn. I stripped off my jacket with sweat dripping from my fingers, and reached for my water to try and get rid of that foul taste in my throat. I pulled the cap off and took a long swig... half a second before I realised the water was boiling hot. I screamed; well, it was more a gurgle, really, and fell to the floor in agony.

I lay there for almost half an hour, collecting myself and just breathing in the cold winter air of the Highlands, waiting for the pain to die down. Eventually, I managed to compose myself and stagger to my feet. The strange sensations were still there, but I was able to mostly choke them down, at least until I had a proper look around the clearing. The altar was the focus of the whole thing, but in many ways it was the least interesting part. Clean, smooth stone. No markings of any sort, nothing on top. Just... a rock. Around it, though, on the ground were scorch marks. They didn’t seem to radiate out from any one angle, they just covered areas of the forest floor. There was no ash, though, or debris, or anything that might have meant a fire, just the burn marks.

It was following these scorches that led me to the really messed up stuff, because what I saw around the edges of the clearing put them to shame. See, it looked like there were animals in that place once, but now each one lay just beyond the edge. On all of them, the fur or feathers had been burned away, and all that was left was their skin, scalded a vivid, angry red, like they’d been badly sunburned. They were dead, every one of them, though none seemed to have decayed any more than their compatriots. Either they had all died together, or something in that place was keeping them fresh. Neither option sounded grand to me.

Finally, I looked at the trees. There was nothing wrong with the trees themselves, not exactly. Driven into the trunk of each one was a heavy-looking iron nail. I didn’t count how many there were in total, maybe a couple dozen. Each suspended a worn and dirt-caked glass milk bottle that had clearly seen better days. My eyes fell on the string used to suspend them, and I couldn’t help but notice it seemed far cleaner and newer than the bottles or their contents.

What was inside each one seemed to vary, some had pine needles and twigs, some were full of dirt, and one or two even held what appeared to be rainwater, though looking closer I could see that it bubbled very gently inside those bottles in an endless simmer. In each I could also see a small photograph, half-buried in dirt or almost boiled clean. They all looked to be the same photograph, though it was hard to tell for sure. An old woman, probably in her fifties or sixties, wearing reading glasses and grey hair curled into a tight bun. She stared out disapprovingly from every bottle.

Weirdest of all, on the bottom of each was tied a lock of hair. It was long and grey, in poor condition, and I reckon it must have belonged to the woman in the photograph. It was tied up with the same new string as held the bottles, except for the fact that it was burned, ever so slightly at the ends.

I was still in quite a lot of pain from the water earlier, but I’ve always been too curious for my own stupid good. I took a few pictures on my phone, but I wanted some clear shots of the photograph inside to show my friends. God knows I should have just left; it’s not like there weren’t plenty of warning signs. I just chose not to pay attention. I picked up one of jars filled with twigs and took it off the nail, trying to angle it in my hand to get a better shot of the contents.

Then my fingers slipped and I dropped it. I watched it plummet towards the hard winter ground, willing it not to shatter, not to break. It was falling so slowly, but I was even slower. It exploded into a thousand glass shards and instantly I knew that I had meddled with something I should have left alone. I turned tail and ran, stopping only to reach down and pick up the photograph. I don’t know why, I suppose it felt so weird all of a sudden that I didn’t think I could get any more cursed. And I wanted a copy of that picture just to prove to myself that what I had found was real. It was real. You can have the damn thing now, though. I’ll leave it with my statement. I know in my heart getting rid of it will make no difference but I have to try.

Because from that moment on, everything I love and value has burned or been destroyed. My car overheated on the way back to the Forestry Commission, and I barely got out before the engine caught fire. My house was a smouldering heap of blackened rubble before the end of the week. Electrical failure. I don’t want to talk about what happened to Lucy. I don’t want to think about her face at the end.

Now there’s only one thing I have left that I value. That I love. And I cannot lose him. I can’t lose Ethan. I shouldn’t be in this mess. It’s absurd. I didn’t do anything wrong. I just dropped a bottle. That’s all! I don’t deserve this. I don’t.

I asked about who might have gone to the area, but aside from some middle-aged businessmen on a hiking trip no-one’s been anywhere near that clearing for years. There is no reason this is happening, but I’m still going to lose everything. I am so scared.

Archivist Notes:

He didn’t, in the end. Lose Ethan, that is. Ethan North is currently a healthy eleven-year-old boy living with a loving foster family in Inverness. They declined to give an interview. I can’t say I blame them. The rest is a standard muddle – Tim couldn’t find evidence of the clearing, Sasha established all the accidents that befell Mr. North and his loved ones appeared mundane in nature. The set-up of the clearing matches rituals or spells in both voodoo and Wicca but nothing definitive and there is no hard evidence of anything supernatural occurring.

There’s no reason to believe that when Jason North doused himself in petrol on August the 10th 2009, then lit himself on fire, he was doing anything other than acting out the delusions of a paranoid alcoholic. Paramedics took him to Raigmore Hospital, where he died three days later. He never regained consciousness.

I suppose there is one piece of evidence. Mr. North did include with his statement the picture he found in the bottle. It is a photograph of Gertrude Robinson, my predecessor at the Magnus Institute, circa 2002 as best I can tell. I have no idea what this means. I have no idea what any of this means. I’m very tired.

#the magnus archives #magnus archives #MAG #MAG37 #MAG 37 #BurntOffering #Burnt Offering #The Desolation #The Lightless Flame

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the-magnus-archives-archiver · 5 years

Text

Taken Ill

Case: 0121911

Name: Nicole Baxter Subject: Visits culminating in the fire that consumed Ivy Meadows Care Home in Woodley, Greater Manchester Date: November 19th, 2012 Recorded by: Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London

Fear is a strange thing, isn’t it? What you’re afraid of. For most people, a corpse is at the least unnerving and, for some, outright terrifying. Or maybe it’s disgust. They are two very different feelings, aren’t they? Though they often bleed into each other, if you’ll pardon the pun. I work as a funeral director, so as you can imagine, how I feel about death and the body is a bit more... complicated and more immediately relevant than it is for most people. Dealing with cadavers day in, day out forces you to confront all manner of things about yourself.

Simply put, I have found that I do not believe in any sort of afterlife. I have seen people cold and lifeless upon the mortician’s table who I knew, who I remembered as vibrant and lively. There was no soul that had departed, no special spark that passed on to something else. Simply a body that no longer moved or spoke or thought. It feels odd to consider the fact that you will no longer exist some day, but you didn’t exist for billions of years before your birth, so, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to conclude that you will not exist afterwards in much the same way. I try to see life as a pleasant holiday from non-existence. It provides some comfort when the truth of my own mortality stares me in the face every day.

There is one thing about dead bodies that does bother me, though. One thing that... eats at me, as it were, and does give me that sick tightness of fear deep in my gut. It is rot. I don’t know why it gets to me so; perhaps it’s precisely because I don’t think there is anything beyond the body, and even dead and unaware, seeing a person’s form begin to putrefy and fester – becoming just a home for the crawling, feasting things – is too much for me. Perhaps it’s just an unaccountable phobia. Regardless of the reason, the fact is that to see the corpses decaying, to see their flesh corrupted, it is... the one part of this job that I find uncomfortable. So much so that I would describe reconstruction and preservation as my favourite part of the process. Making sure the cadaver looks as peaceful and lifelike as possible. Make them the person they were, or as close as they can be while cold and senseless. Fighting off the rot. The insects. The disease.

I don’t know why I wrote disease just then. They’re dead, so they can’t be diseased in the normal sense, can they? I suppose it’s just thinking about what happened at the Ivy Meadows Care Home links them in my head. But it’s not just that, is it? That... the fear, the feeling. That tingling, squirming fear at the back of my mind – it feels the same when thinking of the germs that corrupt and twist our bodies, lurking invisibly on any table or surface, or when I saw those swarming flies. How many more moved and buzzed just out of sight? I’ve never had any mental health issues before, but perhaps after my experience I should consult someone. I read once that OCD can come on later in life, if a severe experience sets it off.

I’m rambling. Disregard this first page, I’ll start again.

I work as a mortician at Baxter and Gordon Funeral Directors in Woodley. By rights it should now just be Baxter Funeral Directors, as William Gordon passed away himself about 5 years ago, leaving my uncle George running the place on his own. He kept the name though, as he always said it was one of the most respected in all of Manchester. God knows there was no sentimental reason to keep it. From the way he talked, he and William Gordon hated each other by the end, to the point where the will expressly stated that the body of William Gordon was to be handled and prepared by Fenchurch and Sons, one of my uncle’s great rivals. Maybe that’s why Uncle George is so keen to keep it in the family. He hired me and my cousin Josh to help, and now Baxter and Gordon Funeral Directors is entirely run by Baxters.

I’ve been there for almost four years now and have taken over most of the client-side arrangements of the business. My uncle has gotten somewhat brusque in his old age and is now more suited to organising things with churches and crematoria, rather than handling the recently bereaved. As such, I’ve gotten to know the various nursing and care homes around Woodley rather well. We generally get a few removals from any given one each year. Maybe as many as a half dozen if the winter is bad. It’s certainly our most reliable source of business.

Of them all, Ivy Meadows was my favourite. For a funeral director to say she has a favourite nursing home probably sounds a bit like the Grim Reaper talking about his favourite hospital, but it’s true. Ivy Meadows Care Home was on the outskirts of Woodley, where the suburbs gave way to pockets of green countryside. It wasn’t remote, exactly, but it was removed enough from main road that it stood alone, surrounded by rather lovely gardens on three sides, and a long, open field behind it. It had been a country house once, I believe, but not much of the original structure remains, having been modified and expanded to provide accessible accommodation for about thirty residents. It was an odd building, with modern glass and concrete sections sprouting from old turreted brickwork, like blocky stone tumours.

The look of the place wasn’t why I liked it, though. No, that was the residents. Ivy Meadows was almost entirely populated by those elderly who were entirely supported by the state. Most pensioners have some savings or property or family to support them, which means if they’re unable to live alone they can at least afford to pay for their own care or some of it. It’s rare for a person to reach that age and have literally nothing to pay for their care, but it does happen. In these cases, the state pays for them, but they have little choice in where they end up. Ivy Meadows was almost entirely populated by these. Old people without money or family, sent to be looked after by strangers. You’d have expected the atmosphere to be unpleasant, some morbid combination of prison and hospice, but it was quite the opposite. Something about the mutual loneliness seemed to lead them to create a real sense of community. It was the only place I ever went where the residents still gave me a smile. Hannah Ramirez, who ran the place, would always tell me a bit about the deceased and their time there, and I was inevitably shocked by tales of drugs, sexual escapades and other gossip that sounded more like a high school than a nursing home. I think Hannah enjoyed trying to get a reaction out of me when I was trying to be solemn. It was just a happy place, even if I was only there to do a sad duty.

It all started to change about three months ago, after Hannah left. I don’t know exactly when she left her post or why; we hadn’t had a call from Ivy Meadows for a couple of months, so it must have happened during that period. I don’t know where she moved to, either. It certainly wasn’t any of the other care homes around Woodley, and it wasn’t like I knew her personally. I’d gotten a call from one of the nurses, Alenka Kozel, who said that one of their residents had taken ill and passed away, a man by the name of Bertrand Miller. I asked her for a few more details; she started to say something else, but the call was cut off almost abruptly. I didn’t really think too much about it, most of the details could be worked out when we arrived, so I called Josh and loaded up the car for a removal.

It was a hot mid-August day, and the air was thick and humid, making everything feel sticky, like the whole world was running a fever. The sky was overcast, though, an orangey-grey that cast muted shadows and seemed to muffle the world. It was about a ten minute drive to Ivy Meadows, and neither of us said a word. I don’t know why, at that point we had no idea that there was anything wrong, but looking back it seems like we both felt there was something off about it. Or maybe we were just too hot for conversation and hindsight is colouring my memories.

When we arrived the place was silent. There were no cars in the parking area, which was not unusual, but I couldn’t see a soul anywhere on the grounds. Maybe they were simply staying out of the heat. Josh and I got out of the car and approached the door. I pressed the buzzer, as I had done so many times before, expecting the cheery voice of one of the receptionists. Instead there was just dead air, followed by the clunk of the door being remotely unlocked. I looked at Josh, who shrugged, and we went inside.

Ivy Meadows Care Home was usually much as you would find any other – air conditioned, and smelling faintly of cleaning products and cheap potpourri. This time it was different. The smell now was just as faint, but seemed... rancid, while the air itself was close and damp. The beige walls seemed dirtier than before, with dark marks at roughly hand-height. There was a faint buzzing, like a fly, but I couldn’t see any source for it.

None of it was so bad as to make us turn back, however, and we headed towards the reception desk. There was nobody behind it, and I rang the bell. I always wore gloves when on a removal, and was glad of that fact now, as I noticed a greasy residue on top of the small brass bell. The door to the reception opened, and a tall man stepped out. He was rail thin and wore a faded brown suit that seemed to have been cut for a much fatter man. His eyes were a watery blue and his dark hair stood on top of his head in an unruly mess. He must have been around forty, but had a nervous sort of energy to him. He was quite a surprise, to say the least.

Josh recovered faster than I did and asked the man, a bit rudely, who he was, where we could find Hannah. The man shook his head at this and said that Ms. Ramirez had left the position, and he was now Director of Ivy Meadows. He introduced himself as John Amherst, and held a hand out for Josh to shake. My cousin stood there for some time, staring at the thick, sweaty hand of this strange man, clearly not wanting to shake it. Mr Amherst just stood there, arm outstretched, apparently unconcerned. A fly landed on his face, and if he noticed, he didn’t give any sign of it, not even when it walked across his eye. Eventually, the now clearly shaken Josh stuttered out some semi-polite excuse and backed away.

At this John Amherst lowered his hand and turned to me. He asked why we were here. This took me rather by surprise, as there’s generally only one reason undertakers show up in such a place. We told him we had received a call and been told Mr. Miller had passed away. Amherst asked who had called us, but with such a sharpness in his voice that I lied and said the caller hadn’t given their name. He paused, clearly considering what to say next very carefully. Finally, he nodded, and said that yes, Bertrand Miller was dead. And we could have him. Then he gestured for us to follow and began to walk back into the main building.

As we walked, he began listing the details for Mr. Miller’s funeral, such as they were. No family or friends, no savings or insurance, simple cremation, as soon as possible. No service to be held at the crematorium. Ashes to be returned to Ivy Meadows in whatever the cheapest option was for an urn made of brass. At this I asked what he wanted the ashes for, and he simply waved his hand in a vague dismissal and said they’d be wanting to have a “private remembrance service”.

By now, we’d been walking for a few minutes, and I hadn’t seen another soul in the corridors. I thought I spotted one of the nurses at one point, but they had turned and walked away as soon as they saw us. We arrived at a room bearing a small plaque. It read ‘Bertrand Miller’. John Amherst opened it without hesitation and went inside.

The smell was what hit me first. I’ve smelled plenty of corpses in my time. I’d almost say I’m used to the smell. This was different, there was some deeper taint there than simply putrefying flesh, and it made me gag. By the look on his face, Josh smelled it as well. Then I got a good look at the body on the bed, and almost turned and ran.

Based on the colour of those sections of skin still whole and unblemished, Mr. Miller couldn’t have been dead for more than a few hours, half a day at most. You wouldn’t have known, though. Large sections of his body were covered in a wet, creamy yellow rash, which... I’m not a doctor, so describing exactly what it did to the flesh it touched would serve no purpose except to start me having the nightmares again. Let us just say that it gave a plentiful home for the flies that swarmed around his body.

We looked at John Amherst, utterly appalled. He said not to worry, that the disease that had claimed poor Mr. Miller wasn’t contagious. Even produced the recently signed death certificate, though it was stained with some dark grey fluid, so I did not examine it too closely. He then apologised that their air conditioning had broken. “I’m sure you know all about what heat does to cadavers,” he said. I just wanted to get out of there, and have never been more grateful to whoever designed care home beds so that we could remove the body with as little contact as possible. Even then, on the way out I felt a sudden tickling pain on the back of my left hand, and looked down to see the thick leather glove in contact with one of the patches of yellow. I nearly screamed and dropped the body, but did neither. Ivy Meadows did not feel then like a safe place to do either of those things. In fact, I kept my composure through the whole of the drive home.

As soon as we arrived, I ran into the bathroom, throwing my gloves into the medical waste bin. I scrubbed the patch of skin that still felt like it was crawling. I could see nothing wrong with it, but I kept scrubbing until it was bloody, then poured disinfectant over it until it went numb.

When I finally left the bathroom, I found Josh arguing loudly with his father. Apparently Uncle George was not satisfied with the explanation given for the state of Mr. Miller’s body. He turned to me, and asked what had happened. I told him the same thing Josh had, the same thing I’ve told you. We went over it slowly, point by point until finally he stood there silently, looking worried, but determined. He had us tell it to him one more time, before he nodded, told us to stay away from the corpse of Bertrand Miller, and left, telling us he had to make a few calls. I have never seen a cremation done with such a quick turnaround, and he was burned before the end of the day. I asked Uncle George about returning the ashes in a brass urn, but he shook his head, and said he’d already had them disposed of.

I knew my uncle wasn’t one to share his thoughts when he didn’t want to, and that seemed to be the end of it, save for those times throughout the day I would feel that tickling in my hand and run to scrub it away. I went on a couple of other jobs, and it seemed like we were expected to forget it. Josh didn’t talk about what happened, and I got the impression he was trying to ignore what he had seen. He always was a practical soul.

I... couldn’t let it go, though. It just kept playing in my mind. So when the phone rang two weeks later and I heard Alenka’s voice on the other end, my heart skipped several beats. What she said did nothing to allay my fears. The line was bad, very bad, but I could have sworn she said, “Come quickly. We’ve taken ill. We’ve passed away.” The words repeated, as though on a recorded loop, though they were no easier to make out than the first time. Finally, I put the phone down. I was technically off duty at that point, having just finished my shift, so I could have ignored it. I could have walked away. Instead, I put on my normal clothes, grabbed three pairs of gloves and got in my car.

The drive there was dreadful. Still hot, I kept looking at turnings and junctions, and imagining where I would go if I turned away from Ivy Meadows and just drove off. But I didn’t. I kept taking those old familiar turnings, moving inevitably towards that sick, old building.

When I arrived, it was quiet. The whole building looked filthy now, even from the outside, and the plants that bordered it had started to take on an unhealthy whitish colour. There was one other car in the parking area, a faded white Transit van I didn’t recognise. I got out and started to walk towards the front door. The smell was noticeable even from out here, and by the time I got close enough to reach the buzzer, it had become so strong as to be unbearable. I tried to bring myself to press the button. But instead I turned and half-sprinted back to my car, desperate to breath clean air again.

I stood there, torn between wanting to flee and needing to know. Then in the silence, I heard it. Tap, tap, tap. Someone banging rhythmically on a window. I scanned all the ones I could see, but they were dark.

Tap, tap, tap.

It showed no sign of stopping. I began to make a wide circuit of the building. It was on the other side that I saw it. A large, ground floor window showed what I think would once have been the lounge. The walls were dark, stained and smeared to almost black, but the windows were clear. Stood the other side of the glass, weakly banging her fist against it, was Alenka Kozel. Her skin was mottled, covered with that leaking yellow rash. She saw me, and as her eyes locked with mine she opened her mouth, and the buzzing of the flies that spewed out was almost as loud as her scream.

I turned and began to sprint back towards my car. I had to get away, to get out. Then, without warning, I felt something heavy hit me in the side and I lost my footing, falling to the ground. I looked up to see an old man pinning me to the ground, his long, white beard matted and filthy. I screamed and tried to escape, but his age seemed to have done nothing to diminish his strength, and he kept his grip easily.

Then he spoke in a thick Mancunian accent and told me to keep my voice down. I noticed that his skin was unblemished pink, and behind him stood a young woman, tall and lean with close-cropped hair and a deep scar over her right eye. She carried a large canvas bag, and was shaking her head, telling the old man to leave me alone. After a few suspicious glances, he got up. I could swear I recognised him from somewhere, but when I asked the two of them who they were, they just shook their heads and told me to leave. I asked them what was going on, and the old man looked at his companion, as if asking permission, said something about knowledge being a good defence here. She shook her head and said that leaving quickly was a better one. I didn’t need to be told a third time.

I got in my car, and I left them to their work. I didn’t turn around even when I saw the smoke start to rise behind me. And that was the last time I went there. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go wash my hands.

Archivist Notes:

The Ivy Meadows Care Home in Woodley was officially decommissioned in July 2011, a month before the first of these alleged calls came in. It burned down on the 4th of September that same year after a leaking gas main caught fire. If the gas was already leaking, this might have resulted in hallucinations or other problems during their initial visit. There is no record of the body of Bertrand Miller being processed, or cremated, by Baxter and Gordon Funeral Directors, but based on this statement that’s not necessarily a point of incredulity. Bertrand Miller was a resident at Ivy Meadows, but according to his death certificate he passed away on 19th July, a week before the home was decommissioned. There’s no record of any funeral arrangements or disposal of the body.

In fact, it seems the records from the closure of Ivy Meadows are... well, according to Sasha, calling them ‘patchy’ would be very generous. There are only transfer records for seven residents, whereas at last official count the home held twenty-nine. The others seem to have been lost in the system somewhere. The majority of the workforce also appears to be undocumented, and I can find no record of any ‘Alenka Kozel’ on the system. Martin’s research would seem to indicate the place employed a reasonable number of international staff they preferred to keep off the books, but it doesn’t explain why none of the officially-listed staff can be located for follow- up, except for Hannah Ramirez, whose brief interview simply established she moved to Brighton shortly before the closure of Ivy Meadows and hadn’t heard anything about it since. John Amherst, as best we can tell, doesn’t exist. We’re unable to locate anyone fitting that description anywhere within the care or medical sector, and he certainly never ran any nursing homes.

Another tale full of dead ends. We did contact the Baxters. Joshua Baxter repeated the first part of the above statement. George Baxter told us not to listen to tall tales. Nicole Baxter said she stands by her account, but aside from losing her left hand in what she calls “a workplace accident”, there have been no further developments.

Still, there��s a lot here the puts me in mind of other statements. Something in the way Ms. Baxter talks about fear. I can’t help but be reminded of statement 0142302, how Jane Prentiss talks about her own fears. And the old man and his companion... who does that remind me of? If he wasn’t dead I’d think it might have been Trevor—

[ [DOOR OPENS] Oh, er, yes?

Tim: Are you free?

Archivist: Yes... Yes, I’m just about finished here, what is it?

Tim: Oh, ah, nothing urgent, um, it’s just Elias was asking a couple questions about the delivery.

Archivist: Delivery? What delivery?

Tim: Ah well, that’s actually what he was asking, huh! Um, apparently Martin, uh, took delivery of a couple of items last week addressed to you. Did he not mention it?

Archivist: No, he... Oh, yes, actually. I completely forgot. He said he put it in my desk draw, hold on.

[SOUND OF PACKAGE BEING RETRIEVED AND OPENED]

Tim: Er, what is it?

Archivist: A lighter. An old Zippo.

Tim: You smoke?

Archivist: No. And I don’t allow ignition sources in my archive! Tim: Okay. Is there anything unusual about it?

Archivist: Not really. Just a sort of spider web design on the front. Doesn’t mean anything to me. You?

Tim: Ah no. No.

Archivist: Well... show it to the others, see what they think. You said there was something else as well?

Tim: Oh, ah yes, yeah, it was sent straight to the Artefact Storage, a table of some sort. Ah, looks old. Quite pretty, though. Fascinating design on it.

Archivist: Tim... Tim, it doesn’t have a hole in it, does it? About six inches square?

Tim: Ah... I don’t know. Maybe? Um, I’ll be honest I didn’t really notice. It was quite—

Archivist: Hypnotic, yes. Do you know who made the delivery? Did they sign in?

Tim: Um... ah no, ah sorry no I don’t know.

Archivist: I need to talk to Martin. Uh, end recording.]

#the magnus archives #magnus archives #MAG #MAG36 #MAG 36 #TakenIll #Taken Ill #Statement #The Corruption #The Hunt #Trevor Herbert

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the-magnus-archives-archiver · 5 years

Text

Old Passages

Case: 0020406

Name: Harold Silvana Subject: Discoveries made during the renovation of the Reform Club, Pall Mall. Date: June 4th, 2002 Recorded by: Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London

I’m a builder. Sort of. I always find myself using the words ‘craftsman’ or ‘artisan’, but that’s mostly because of my client base. I specialise in renovation and alterations on listed buildings and those of historical or architectural significance. In simple terms it’s not much different to any other sort of construction work, except it takes about three times as long and costs ten times as much. That’s not to say I rip people off. You need to spend almost half the time just planning exactly how you’re going to tackle any given job, while preserving or recreating the original architecture as much as possible, and then you have to be incredibly careful when you’re doing the work. I’m quite serious when I say that if you’re not paying attention and keeping the alterations well-documented, you can get sued for millions over knocking out the wrong brick. Plus,the materials aren’t cheap. So yes, my services are expensive, but me and my team are worth every penny. And the sort of people I deal with, or should I say the sort of people whose personal assistants I deal with, can afford it.

I don’t have a company, per se. People hire me for me, and I have a small team I trust to help out with the work itself. They’re technically freelance contractors, but the pay’s good enough and, in London at least, there’s enough work that they’re happy to wait on my call.

I’ve found plenty of interesting things in this job. I suppose that’s not unexpected when you’re digging around old buildings. We got kicked off a job once when we found some bones under a very venerable country house that will remain nameless, as the owners contacted the British Museum, who couldn’t take over fast enough. There have also been a few jewellery pieces that found their way to other museums, and once we found a box of 17th century erotic poems that I think are currently languishing in the storerooms of the V&A museum. But I never found anything like what was under 100 Pall Mall.

We’d been called in to do some work on the basement and ground floor of the Reform Club. It wasn’t anything major. Some upkeep on a few of the historic pieces, replace a few of the earlier renovations.

The amount of actual work involved was minimal, but it was a Grade I listed building, so the amount of care we had to take stretched it into a week-long job. It didn’t help that we had to schedule around the fact that it’s still a very active social venue, so we could only actually come out of the basement when it wasn’t full of people too important to see builders. Grade I listing is a significant payday, though, so I certainly wasn’t going to rock the boat.

It was about two in the morning when the kid showed up. It was just me and Rachael Turley, who does most of our marble work, though we were mostly just doing surveying at that point. Alfred Bartlett was out getting coffee, though god knows where from at that time of night. We were mostly just kicking our heels really, since he’s the plumber and we needed his expertise. Now Alf has been in the business for nearly 40 years, and there wasn’t a thing he didn’t know about water or sewage systems, but we often joke that it’s pushed everything else out of his head. I think he must have forgotten to lock the door when he headed out, and that’s how the kid got in. That said, this was still the first week in March and it was pretty cold, so I’m surprised we didn’t notice the draught.

In the end I suppose it doesn’t matter. The fact is that Rachel and me had been sat there chatting for maybe five minutes when we noticed we weren’t alone. In the doorway leading back to the stairwell stood a thin figure. He looked to be in his late teens, I’d guess. He was dressed all in black, with heavy looking boots and a T-shirt with the logo of some band emblazoned on it, Megadon or Mastodon, or something like that. His hair was long and greasy, almost down to his shoulders, and looked to be dyed almost the same black as his clothes. He did not look like he was supposed to be skulking round the Reform Club, but I’d encountered more than one member whose rich children were going through a ‘rebellious period’, so couldn’t be entirely sure. I decided to be gentle in my initial enquiries and asked him if he was lost, told him this part of the basement was off-limits due to renovations.

The kid shook his head and asked if we’d found anything yet. Any of “Leitner’s pages”. Now this took me aback a bit. I wondered how long he’d been standing there, because Rachel and I had just been talking about the man. Jurgen Leitner was a businessman from Norway, I believe, who used to have offices in the ground floor of the building next to the Reform Club, 100 Pall Mall. I don’t know what his business was, but when I was first getting started, back in ‘87, we got a call from Mr. Leitner, requesting a consultation in his Pall Mall office. Back then it was just me and Rachel, and we mostly did stone restoration and alteration, so we assumed Mr. Leitner wanted our opinion on a property outside of London. Our reputation back then was not sufficient to get us access to any of the sort of Central London buildings we now work on.

When we first met Jurgen Leitner, he looked very much like I had imagined him. Portly, middle-aged, short blond hair in the middle of going grey, well-tailored business suit. His office surprised me, though, as it was almost completely bare, save for a desk and two chairs in front of it. There were no tables or bookshelves or filing cabinets or anything like that. He asked us to sit down, and though he spoke with a very faint accent, his English was perfect. We made small talk, but he seemed impatient, eager to talk about whatever it was he wanted us to do.

I asked him what the job was, and he stopped and looked at us closely. Then he said he simply wanted us to dig a hole. An unusual request, but not an unreasonable one, so I asked him where it whereabouts this was going to be. He rose, walked over to the corner and pointed at the floor. He said he needed a hole put through the floor. I thought there would have been a basement under there, and he said no, the building’s basement didn’t go under these rooms. He smiled an odd little smile as he said it, which put me a bit on edge.

Now, there was no way we could do a job like that without the building owner’s permission and I told Leitner this. He began to get shifty, then, and tried to tell us that he already had that permission. When we told him we’d need to confirm it with the commercial landlord, he got very defensive, told us that it was fine and he’d need to discuss it with some other contractors first. When we told him we’d just need to have a quick phone call with the owner, he started screaming that we didn’t understand what we were talking about, that he didn’t need to explain himself to the likes of us, and there were some things that were too important, too powerful to be owned. Then he just started yelling at us in Norwegian until we left. We didn’t bother contacting the owners of 100 Pall Mall in the end.

It was without a doubt the weirdest interview with a prospective client that we’d ever had, and being so close to the site of it had Rachel and I reminiscing when this teenage burnout turned up. I asked him if he’d been eavesdropping, and he shrugged, and again asked what we had found. I was just about done with this kid, and started to tell him that he was going to have to leave, when Rachel interrupted me and asked what there was to find. The kid laughed, as though he and Rachel were in on some private joke. “Can you smell it?” he said, and for a brief moment, I could smell something. Damp old stone and musty paper, just a faint whiff. It took me off guard, and I think that was why I just stood there as he walked past me and picked up the hammer. He strode over to one of the walls and, with a swing stronger than I would have thought possible from his age and skinny frame, he buried it into the wall. I heard a scream, high-pitched, but it definitely didn’t come from any of us.

This was enough to break me out of my stupor and I ran over and wrestled the hammer from the kid. He struggled and flailed, though he didn’t say anything. As I tried to calm him down, Rachel called over me, and I looked at where he’d hit the wall. In the centre of it was a neat hole; the other side was darkness. There shouldn’t have been anything behind the wall except foundation, but it didn’t look like this was a real basement wall. I let the kid go and walked over to get a closer look. Rachel started to examine it with her tools, before she confirmed what I’d already guessed – that it was a fake. It looked like someone had blocked off a passage, and then very carefully disguised it.

It was at this point Alf returned, and we had some considerable explaining to do. Through it all the kid, who said his name was Gerard, just sat their sullenly, listening to his CD player and waiting. When we asked him how he knew what was behind that wall he just shrugged, and told us that his mother knows all about this stuff. He didn’t elaborate as to what “this stuff” might have been.

We should have waited until morning and told the Reform Club staff what we’d found. We should have handed Gerard over to the police, but Alf was always too curious for his own good, and he suggested we have a look inside. Rachel and I half-heartedly tried to argue against it, but I think deep down we wanted to know just as much as he did. So in we went.

Knocking through the rest of the wall didn’t take long. It had been built to look like the rest of the basement, but hadn’t been constructed with the same skill. Ten minutes later our coffees lay forgotten on the floor and we stood before a passageway leading off into the musty darkness. A gentle breeze blew from this entrance, which didn’t make any sense at all. We had plenty of torches, as you often need them during night work, so we each took one large one and a smaller back-up in case the first had any problems. We tried to tell Gerard to stay outside, but I could see immediately that, short of tying him up, there was no way we were going to keep him out of there. Tying him up did feel like a step too far, so we settled for keeping a close eye on him as we went inside.

The passageway was cold, and the air thick with mildew, but the stone walls were in very good condition. Rachel said it looked to be from the mid-19th century, probably remains of the basement of the Carlton Club, which used to be located in what was now 100 Pall Mall. It was with a start I realised that she was right, based on where the corridor was going, we must have been underneath the building. Almost exactly where Jurgen Leitner had wanted us to dig almost fifteen years ago.

We walked for some time, longer than I would have expected, given how big I remembered the building above us being. Alf kept asking Rachel if the corridor was getting narrower, and every time, she would dutifully measure the width and inform him that, no, it was exactly five feet wide. I couldn’t blame him, really, I’ve never had any sort of claustrophobia, but I was finding it hard, at points to catch my breath, to dismiss the feeling that the walls were pressing on me. Gerard walked on ahead, seemingly unbothered by the place.

We came to crossroads. Or, more precisely, a star. The chamber was small, round and featureless, but there were doorways leading out in a circle. I counted thirteen, not including the one we had come in from. Looking down some of them made me feel oddly queasy. There was one that, for all the world, it felt like I was going to fall into it. Another was so dark that our torches didn’t seem to reach more than a few feet inside. In the centre, there was a datestone. It read: “Robert Smirke, 1835. Balance and fear”.

I don’t know how much you know about famous London architects, but Robert Smirke was one of the foremost proponents of the Gothic Revival in the early 19th century. His work was some of the first to use concrete and cast iron, and often described as ‘theatrical’, a description that makes a lot of sense when you look at the grand columns of the British Museum – his most famous building. Later, I would look up a list of his buildings and discover that he had indeed built the Carlton Club building in that exact spot. It had been destroyed in the Second World War, during the Blitz, and the club itself had moved premises, but it looked like the underground foundations, or whatever this place was, had not been damaged.

We stood there for some time as I explained this to the others. It took some time to do so as, with the exception of Gerard, I got the impression that none of us were in any hurry to go down the other tunnels. A deep apprehension eemed to have settled itself in the pit of my stomach; everyone else also seemed to feel it. Then, without warning, Gerard started running full pelt into one of the passages. I’m not sure which one it was of the thirteen. I called for him to come back, but got no reply and Alf took off after him, running into the darkness and quickly turning a corner. Rachel and I looked at each other for a few seconds, but we both knew what we needed to be doing. I followed Alf into the passage, while she headed back down to the entrance to get help.

This tunnel wasn’t as dark as some of the others, but it was damper, and the walls seemed oddly slimy. After a few yards, the stone became so slick that I found it hard to keep my footing and I fell. I put my hand onto the floor to push myself up, and it came away faintly tinged with red. I heard Alf cry out from further down the corridor. He sounded utterly terrified, and I started on towards him again. I saw lights from up ahead, and was about to call out when Gerard came running back out of the darkness.

He was clutching a book in his hands, and clearly wasn’t paying attention to where he was going. He barrelled right into me, knocking me to the floor again. He was only a skinny kid, but he was so strong, and kept his footing, disappearing back into the darkness, towards the entrance. As he passed, I heard a small clattering sound, as though something were falling behind him. I reached out slowly, to try and raise myself off the ground, and felt something small and oddly smooth lying there. I shined my light on it, and saw a small bone. From a bird, I think, or maybe a rat. I looked around and there were a few more scattered about the corridor.

I’d fallen harder this time, and had managed to hurt my knee quite badly. I managed as just about able to limp to the end of the corridor, and there I found a small, round room. Against the walls were old bookshelves, decayed and empty, save for a few mouldering pages. They were stained and rotten, and one of them looked like it had a mummified hand laying on it. In front of it, in almost the centre of the room, lay Alf. He was dead. I couldn’t see any injuries on him. He didn’t even seem hurt. But looking at how still he lay there, the terrified, awful expression frozen on his face, there was no chance he was alive. On his motionless chest, and around the base of the bookshelf, I saw more of those tiny bones.

That’s where my memory begins to blur. I know I made it back to the basement of the Reform Club, where Rachel was waiting with the police. But I think I got some of the wrong passageways first. I have the vaguest memories: flashes of a pile of paper, completely covered in cobweb; a figure stood in the darkness, a stranger I didn’t know but was sure meant me harm; my skin burning, hot, choking on smoke down there in the dark.

When I was out, I was questioned by the police, who followed Rachel in to retrieve Alf’s body and were successful, though they came back out pale and shaking. There was no sign of Gerard, nor had Rachel seen him. I was then questioned again by the staff of the Reform Club, who instructed us in no uncertain terms to rebuild the wall and finish our original job. We were given to understand that the police were handling the matter, and if we pursued it closer then we would not be getting any further work from members of the club. As this covers almost everybody who can afford our services, we complied. It makes me feel sick, though, like we’re just abandoning Alf, dishonouring his memory. It’s not even like he had any family to miss him, it just feels wrong. I guess, maybe, that’s why I’m talking to you. Do try to keep my name out of it if you follow it up though, okay?

Archivist Notes:

On the one hand, this statement represents a complete dead end, as no-one involved is both able and willing to talk to us. Over the last three months Sasha has attempted to contact Mr. Silvana, Rachel Turley, the management of the Reform Club and any of the police officers involved. All of them flatly deny any of this ever took place. Alfred Bartlett’s death was listed as a heart attack suffered during routine maintenance work, and none of the coroner’s reports provide any details out of the ordinary. The “kid”, who I think it is reasonable to assume is none other than Gerard Keay, remains just as impossible to contact as he ever was. From an evidence standpoint, this case is a complete bust.

However, too many of the names and features match with other statements for me to dismiss it, not to mention the fact that business records do list Jurgen Leitner as having hired out an office on the ground floor of 100 Pall Mall between 1985 and 1994. He was apparently one of the premier worldwide dealers in rare and antique books at the time, with items selling for the sort of sums where an office in Pall Mall doesn’t raise any eyebrows. If this strange basement is really there, then perhaps his choice of location was not simply a display of status. Clearly some of his books were there, and I can’t help but wonder whether that was where they were found, or just where they were stored.

The other major point of interest is the fact that this complex appears to have been designed by Robert Smirke. You should have seen Tim’s face when I told him. Architecture is one of his specialist areas, and he has always talked of Smirke as one that fascinates him. How did he phrase it? “A master of subtle stability.” From a professional standpoint, it also interests him that Smirke’s buildings have higher percentages of reported paranormal sightings than any other architect of similar profile. He hasn’t been able to find much out about the Carlton Club specifically, at least not anything relevant to this statement. In his later years, following Smirke’s official retirement in 1845, there were all sorts of rumours about his interests and religious preferences. If there was a scandalous sect or bizarre cult, his name would always be seen mentioned among those meeting with them. He also started putting his name forward to design churches, despite his claimed retirement. He was never taken up on these offers. Interesting, but fundamentally not that useful for the case in hand, especially since we have been unable to get permission to physically investigate whether this place even exists. It seems we’ve reached something of a dead end. No pun intended.

[End recor— Urgh! Goddamn it!

[SOUND OF METAL CANISTER BEING KNOCKED]

Martin!

[DOOR OPENS]

Martin, where did you put the rest of the extinguishers? Martin!

[SOUND DISAPPEARS INTO DISTANCE] [SILENCE, FOLLOWED BY HEAVY FOOTFALLS]

Martin: John, did you call fo—

Breekon: ‘scuse us.

Hope: Looking for the Archivist.

Martin: I’m sorry, are you two meant—

Breekon: Won’t take up your time.

Hope: Just got a delivery.

Martin: Look, you really can’t actually—

Breekon: Package for Jonathan Sims.

Hope: Says right here.

Martin: Well, I don’t really know where he—

Hope: We’ll just leave it with you.

Breekon: Be sure he gets it.

Martin: Okay, I will, but you really have to actually—

Breekon: ‘course. Much obliged.

Hope: Stay safe.

Martin: ...I’ll try?

Breekon: Your recorder’s on, by the way.

Hope: Might want to change that.

Martin: Oh... so it is. Thanks.

Breekon: No problem.

Hope: At all.

[HEAVY FOOTSTEPS RECEDE] ]

#the magnus archives #magnus archives #MAG #MAG35 #MAG 35 #OldPassages #Old Passages #Statement #Robert Smirke #Gerard Keay

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the-magnus-archives-archiver · 5 years

Text

Anatomy Class

Case: 0161207

Name: Lionel Elliott Subject: A series of events that took place during his class, Introduction to Human Anatomy and Physiology, at King’s College, London, in early 2016. Date: July 12th, 2016 Recorded by: direct from Dr. Lionel Elliott, under the supervision of Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London

[Archivist (John): Apologies for the somewhat archaic—

Dr. Elliott: No need to worry, I understand. Some things you just can’t trust to computers. It’s like I always say about those robotic surgery machines. It’s just not the same. If I’m going to be operating on a man’s pancreas, I want to feel that pancreas. Fiddling with a joystick just won’t cut it. As it were.

Archivist: I didn’t think you still performed surgery?

Dr. Elliott: I keep up with the developments. And I remember the feel of a pancreas.

Archivist: Well... quite. Now, if you’d be so good as to—

Dr. Elliott: You know you have an infestation, don’t you?

Archivist: Excuse me? I’m not sure—

Dr. Elliott: Yes, little, grey, maggot things. I saw a few on the way in. Don’t recognise the species, but I’d say you need to get the exterminators in here. Gas the little blighters.

Archivist: You saw them? You weren’t bitten were you?

Dr. Elliott: Bitten? They’re worms. Still, I’ll admit I didn’t like the look of them. I reckon the sooner you get someone in to kill them dead, the better.

Archivist: We’ve tried, believe me. Now, shall we?

Dr. Elliott: Oh, certainly. Where do want me to start? The bones? The blood? The... uh... the fruit?

Archivist: Right from the beginning. One second. Statement of Dr. Lionel Elliott, regarding a series of events that took place during his class...

Dr. Elliott: Introduction to Human Anatomy and Physiology

Archivist: At King’s College, London, in early 2016. Statement recorded direct from subject 12th July 2016.

Statement begins.

Dr. Elliott: Now?

Archivist: Yes, just start from the beginning.]

Right. Well, I shouldn’t even have been teaching the class, really. As far as I knew, I wasn’t going to be needed for any teaching on the Biomedical Engineering course this year. I can’t say I was particularly upset. The Human Anatomy module is where a lot of the engineers discover just how messy the human body is, and while the human heart is a phenomenal piece of machinery in terms of design and function, most of the students would be more comfortable holding a transistor. Not to put too fine a point on it, I get tired of... squeamish students, and was glad that I could avoid it this year.

You can perhaps imagine, then, that I was not best pleased when Elena Bower, the admissions officer, emailed me last November to say that there had been a mistake, and I was needed to take a ‘spillover class’. Apparently the system had accepted more students for the course than there were places, and they were trying to organise an additional class for the seven who were unassigned. It didn’t make a lot of sense to me, Anatomy class wasn’t until the second term, so surely this mistake should have emerged earlier, but Elena just kept saying she didn’t know, she just had seven students who needed tutorials. I won’t pretend I took the news gracefully. I have a lot of research due shortly and, well, you know academia – never enough hours in the day. Still, I was the only staff member both qualified to teach the class and technically free when it had to be scheduled. So I agreed, although that really makes it sound like I had more of a choice than I actually did.

I didn’t meet the students until the module started this January. I wasn’t responsible for any of the lectures, so the first time I saw them was in our initial class tutorial. They all sat there, all seven, staring at me, and I felt... oddly uncomfortable. There, there was nothing wrong with them, of course, nothing strange to see or to look at, just... well, this is going to sound stupid to say out loud, but I don’t remember what they look like. Any of them. I remember that each wore blue jeans and a white shirt, though they were all different makes and styles; I think one of the girls had a skirt, instead. I must have noticed that they were wearing the same outfits, but it didn’t strike me as odd. They all just looked so... normal. Unremarkable. I remember their names, though, from the register. They stuck with me – maybe because they were such an international group. There was Erika Mustermann, Jan Novak, Piotr and Pavel Petrov, who I think were brothers, maybe twins, John Doe, Fulan al-Fulani and Juan Pérez.

I greeted them when I entered the room, and was met with silence. Not a malicious or angry silence, just silence. I’ve never been self-conscious when teaching, but walking to my seat with those fourteen eyes just... watching me... it made ever so slightly uncomfortable. I got the oddest feeling they were judging my walk.

[NERVOUS LAUGH]

The class began, and we started going over some of the basics of anatomy and how the body works. They started to talk then, and some of my unease left me. I don’t remember exactly what was said, after doing it long enough most tutorials just kind of blur together a bit, but I recall being struck by just how basic some of their questions were. The composition of blood, where in the body the various organs sat, the sort of thing that anyone who’s done a science GCSE should know. I was almost tempted to ask where they went to school. At the time, I didn’t question the fact that they must have all gone to the same school.

Aside from that it was mostly normal, except... about halfway through the tutorial, we discussed the lungs and respiration. Inhalation, alveoli, et cetera. As I said, basic stuff, but I paused afterwards, just to have a think about where to go next, and I heard the sound of them breathing. That’s not abnormal, I know, but it seemed to fill the silence so suddenly, and all at once. I could... I could have sworn that I didn’t actually hear it before that moment. Like they’d only just then started breathing. [Nervous laugh] Which is, which is absurd, obviously. I was probably just listening out for it because we’d been discussing the lungs. Even so, it was disconcerting, and I don’t mind telling you that I breathed quite a sigh of relief myself when the tutorial was over and I could get out of there.

Now, I consider myself a conscientious worker, and in all my years at King’s I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve called in sick, but when the time came for the next tutorial with this class, I had to stay home with a migraine. It wasn’t a lie, exactly, the thought of sitting there for another two hours with those staring, placid eyes gave me such a spell of anxiety that my brain felt like it was being stabbed with a shard of ice. I did have to teach them eventually, of course. I couldn’t avoid it forever. Re-entering that room, though... All of them were sat in the exact same positions, in the exact same clothes, their breathing deliberate and almost pointed. When Erika Mustermann – or was it Jan Novak? – said ‘Good morning’, the others followed suit, one by one, and I had to fight the urge to run. It struck me then that, despite how diverse their names were, none of them seemed to have any noticeable accent. Not that it did anything to reassure me.

There was no-one else who could take the tutorials. Believe me, I did everything I could to try and find a replacement. Still, once I got used to their stares, their silence, and the fact that their questions were both specific and oddly basic – one of the Petrovs once asked me “How sharp are the knees meant to be” – I swear, it was just about tolerable. I’m a bit ashamed to admit it, but I came to terms with the fact that I didn’t care if they passed any exams, and that actually made the whole affair more manageable. I just did my best to stop caring.

And then came our first of two sessions in the dissection room. We were looking at the skeleton. I had been dreading this. Given exactly how creepy and unsettling the students were just sat in a classroom, the idea of what they could do when given access to human remains made me feel quite nauseous. But I couldn’t bring myself to leave them there alone, so I went.

It was even worse than I’d feared, seeing them stood there over the bits of cadaver. Their faces, normally so neutral, were alive with... what was it I saw? Excitement? Curiosity? Hunger? Whatever it was, it didn’t reach their eyes, still staring and blank. I went through the procedures with them and tried my best to keep the trembling out of my voice. When Fulan reached for a scalpel and started cutting into our samples, I felt faint.

I was trying to keep an eye on everyone, but the dissection tables were arranged in a semi-circle around the lab, and each time I turned to face one of the students, I began to hear this cracking sound from whichever tables I wasn’t looking at. Like a snapping bone, or a ribcage being forced open. I’d turn back and see nothing untoward, just John or Erika or Juan or whoever it was, looking at me quizzically over distinctly unbroken bones. But it kept happening. Whenever I wasn’t looking, I heard the crunch and the crack of bone. I couldn’t ask about it. I knew the dead-eyed, mute stare they’d give me if I did, and I just couldn’t face that.

Finally, I managed to position myself so that I could see what was happening behind me in the reflective edge of the metal table. It wasn’t much, but I could see a slightly warped image. It was Pavel, in this case. I saw him pick up a bone – a radius I believe, from the forearm. He held it up next to his own arm, and then there came that snapping, crunching noise. I swear I saw his arm distend itself, the skin shifting as something inside changed and rearranged, until it matched the length of bone he was holding up to it.

I tried not to react, not to make a noise at this mad impossibility that I saw. I couldn’t help it, though, and my legs gave out. I collapsed on the floor with a whimpering cry. None of them looked at me, none of them offered to help me up, none of them gave any reaction at all. I shut my eyes tight as that cracking sound began to come from every direction, as all seven of them began to change themselves. It went on for almost half an hour, until our allotted time in the lab ended. And then they left, walking past me, still sat helpless on the floor. As they did, each of them thanked me for the lesson as though nothing had happened. And I swear that every single one of them was taller than when they started.

I started taking more sick leave after that. I avoided their tutorials as often as possible, and when I did go we largely just sat there in silence until one of them asked a question about human anatomy, which I would reluctantly answer. I know I should have just abandoned them entirely. If they were going to complain to anyone they would have done it already. But even then I was worried my colleagues might notice, and I really didn’t want to get a reputation as some absentee tutor. It didn’t help that a colleague of mine, Dr Laura Gill, once expressed surprise on learning I’d been absent the day before, as apparently she’d passed by my teaching room and my anatomy class had just been sat there, waiting quietly. The thought of them politely filing into every tutorial, just sat there, blank and staring, whether I was there or not, just waiting... To be quite frank I think that bothered me almost more than being sat there with them.

Still, I managed to largely avoid them until the 21st of March, when they had their second lab dissection. Hearts. I’m not an idiot. I was well aware of the sort of sinister nonsense that was likely to happen if I went, but I also knew by now that they would attend whether or not I was there. And to leave them in the lab unsupervised would be the sort of thing that would get me actually fired from my position.

It was a rainy morning. I remember that, because I deliberately didn’t put up an umbrella. Something inside me was so dreading what was going to happen that the very act of opening umbrellas seemed pointless, as though my being dry couldn’t stop what was coming, then there was no reason not to get soaked. So I was dripping wet when I entered the lab, and my glasses had steamed up to the point where I could no longer see through them. When I wiped them clean, they revealed those seven blank faces, utterly unconcerned with my sodden state. Each had somehow got the heart laid out in from them on the dissection tray. I decided not to prolong it, and waved them to start.

I don’t know what I expected. Maybe I thought they’d descend into some sort of feeding frenzy, but they didn’t. They just began to dissect the hearts, as any other class would, occasionally asking me polite questions. I was so taken aback at how normal the whole situation seemed to be that it took me some time to actually answer them. I did, though, and the first hour of the class almost put me at least a little bit at ease. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Maybe they were doing weird things to their insides, but if it was the heart, then I couldn’t see it and I couldn’t hear it. And I’d long since decided with this class, that if I couldn’t see or hear it, I didn’t care.

Then Erika Mustermann held up her heart and looked at me. I began to get that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach as she asked me “How does the heart pump blood?” I started to explain the biological mechanisms of the heart pumping, when she shook her head slowly and said, “What does it look like?” And then, when I didn’t answer, “Is it like this?”

The heart in her hand began to spasm. Not like the regular, rhythmic pulse of a heartbeat, but like a balloon being rapidly squeezed at one end. Bits of it swelled and stretched and distorted seemingly at random, and blood began to flow haphazardly from the ventricles, dripping down Erika’s forearm and dribbling onto the floor.

I stood there speechless, staring at this horrible miracle, from when behind her I see Fulan raise his heart, saying, “That’s not what it’s like.” And blood starts to gush from all over his heart in tiny geysers, shooting in every direction. Soon each of them is holding a heart up, each pumping and throbbing differently, blood leaking, spurting out of them in a different way, a different nightmare. They wanted me to tell them which was right.

[NERVOUS LAUGH]

I don’t know how long I stared before I finally raised my hand to point at Jan Novak, who seemed to have the closest to an accurate impression of a regular human heartbeat. Then I turned and walked out of the lab.

I spent the rest of the day sat in the staffroom, waiting for someone to come running in, screaming about the lab being full of blood. I expected questions I couldn’t answer and immediate termination. But nothing happened. No-one came. When I returned to the lab several hours later, there was no sign of any blood, except for the tiniest speck, dried into a tile crack in the corner. Unless that, that had been there before? I don’t know. My shoes were still speckled with blood, though, so I know I wasn’t hallucinating it. I checked with Dr. Gill, who confirmed that she could see the spots, though I neglected to tell her it was blood. I had no intention of inviting further questions.

I missed the next three tutorials. I just stayed at home. But something wouldn’t let me just simply let it go. Finally, I made a decision. I wanted to see where they lived. I felt like I needed to, for some reason. Needed to see if they existed outside of my class, outside of my mind. I asked Elena and, irregular as it was, she gave me the address. It didn’t surprise me to find out they all lived in the same place. A semi-detached house on Kingsland Road in Newham. I’m afraid I don’t remember the number, and the details have disappeared from the college systems.

The house itself was run down, as might have been expected, and I must have spent a good fifteen minutes just stood in front of it, waiting for the courage to approach. Finally, I knocked on the door. The wood was old and dry, and some flaked off under my knuckles. It opened immediately, and there stood Jan Novak. When she saw me, her mouth twisted into something I think was meant to be a smile.

“Hello,” she said, “have you come to give us more lessons? We would like to learn about the liver.” Her eyes locked onto my abdomen.

I was about to reply when a muffled scream of pain came from somewhere deep inside the house. It sounded ragged, like whoever was crying out had been gagged. I looked to Jan Novak, who showed no indication she had heard it, still staring at where I had taught her my liver would be. I ran, and she watched me go without moving.

I did call the police, but they just told me that the house was currently unoccupied, and they’d found no evidence that there had been anyone present. I took great pains never to see the class again. I avoided all tutorials, and simply waited until the end of term. I haven’t seen them since.

[Archivist: That’s it?

Dr. Elliott: Not quite. There was one other thing. When I went to the classroom shortly after what should have been their final tutorial, I found something on the desk. It was an apple. Next to it was a handwritten note that said “Thank you for teaching us the insides”. I burned the note, just in case.

Archivist: And the apple, did you... eat it?

Dr. Elliott: Do I look like an idiot? Of course not! I cut it in half, first, to check if it was... off.

Archivist: And?

Dr. Elliott: Human teeth. Inside were human teeth arranged in a smile. Here, I brought you the two halvesto see for yourselves.

Archivist: Oh good lord! That’s...

Dr. Elliott: Deeply unpleasant, yes. You can keep it, if you want. As proof.

Archivist: We do not want it. I’m afraid it isn’t really proof. Someone could have stuck those teeth in after the apple had been cut.

Dr. Elliott: [Somewhat distressed] You think I would do that?!

Archivist: I didn’t say you would, I just said it was enough of a possibility that I don’t think your... tooth apple has a place in our artefact storage. Also, it is technically medical waste.

Dr. Elliott: Fine. I’ll dispose of it myself. Now, is there anything else you want me?

Archivist: No, this should do. We’ll investigate and get back to you if we find anything.

Statement ends.]

Archivist Notes:

The first thing about this statement that makes me dubious is that it comes from a fellow academic. Historic and prestigious as the Magnus Institute is, there are still many within the sphere of higher education that do not grant it the respect it deserves, and some have been known to make false statements as ill-conceived jokes.

Another mark against the veracity of the statement is the names of the students. A quick Internet search reveals ‘Erika Mustermann’ as the official German placeholder name, similar to the English, well, the English name ‘John Doe’. The same is true the other names, ‘Juan Pérez’ is the generic name of choice in most Spanish speaking countries, ‘Fulan al-Fulani’ in the Middle East, et cetera. It seems strange to me that Dr. Elliott would fail to take note of this.

Still, Tim made contact with Elena Bower in the King’s administration office, and while she couldn’t find any actual records of them in the system, she does remember them being there, and confirms that she assigned them to Dr. Elliott last year. She could be in on it, of course, but Tim seems to believe her.

There’s also the matter of the teeth. I stand by my assessment that there is no evidence they were placed there by supernatural means, but it does seem an awfully long way to go for a bad joke. In the end we did send them off to a dental specialist, but they weren’t able to tell us much beyond the fact that they all seemed like healthy adult teeth, and most of them appeared to come from different people.

There’s not much more we can do to follow this up, without dedicating additional time we can’t afford. The only other lead was Sasha’s discovery that, early last year, Dr. Rashid Sadana took his own life. There’s no direct connection, except that he taught the Anatomy, Physiology and Pathology for Complementary Therapies course at St Mary’s University, and the only note found near the body simply read “NOT TO BE USED FOR TEACHING”.

#the magnus archives #magnus archives #MAG #MAG34 #MAG 34 #AnatomyClass #Anatomy Class #Statement #The Stranger

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the-magnus-archives-archiver · 5 years

Text

Boatswain’s Call

Case: 0110201

Name: Carlita Sloane Subject: Her work on a container ship traveling to Southampton from Porto do Itaqui Date: January 2nd, 2011 Recorded by: Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London

[Archivist (John): Look, Tim, I’d love to discuss this further, but as you can see, I have a recording to do.

Tim: Oh, come on. Look, it’s not a big deal. We just need to do a few of them again.

Archivist: Out of the question.

Tim: It’s just confusing if not. Er, like the garbageman’s statement.

Archivist: Mr. Woodward.

Tim: Yeah, so, you said that Alan Parfitt was reported missing... ah, in August 2009, which would actually be six months after the statement had been given.

Archivist: Obviously it should have been 2008. I misspoke an ‘8’ as a ‘9’. What does it matter?.

Tim: Well, someone noticed.

Archivist: Who?

Tim: Er, Josh Cole – great guy – he’s one of the students using our resources for a dissertation. Um... oh, and here, in Miss Montauk’s statement about her father’s killings. You refer to case, um, 9220611 as case, um, 1106922. Oh, and don’t get me started on the other case numbers around the Hill Top hauntings, they’re a mess!

Archivist: Alleged hauntings. And who honestly cares if I misspoke case 9220611 as 1106922? Another student?

Tim: Well, actually, yes. Um, Samantha Emery – she’s lovely – she’s actually doing a PhD in manifestations...

Archivist: I don’t care. It’s not enough that Gertrude left us with such a pointlessly awkward filing system. Half the time she doesn’t even stay consistent in her own records.

Tim: To be honest with you, er, I don’t really understand the system

Archivist: Last three digits of the year, then the day, then the month. I don’t know why she did it like that, but I can’t change it now.

Tim: Oh... okay... Alright, so what happens if more than one statement is given on the same day?

Archivist: I... don’t know. It never came up. Was there anything else?

Tim: Oh yeah, just one.

Archivist: Good lord.

Tim: So, in case 8163103 it isn’t clear if Albrecht’s wife is called ‘Clara’ or ‘Carla’ ‘cause you keep switching back and forth...

Archivist: Well, I’m sorry if I found it hard to read a 200-year old letter, written in cursive by a native German speaker. Who complained about that one?

Tim: Oh, it’s, it’s not a complaint. I just noticed actually. Um, look I know you’ve been under a lot of pressure... it’s not a big deal, I just think it might be worth re-recording these statements.

Archivist: No. I don’t have time. I still have a mountain of haphazard statements to get through, not to mention that I need to keep this wretched tape recorder on hand just in case I encounter one of the files too stubborn to work on anything else. And when I do, I have to actually read the damn thing, which is...

Tim (BACKGROUND): Oh, woah, woah... woah!

Archivist: Fine. It’s fine. I just haven’t been sleeping much these last few months, what with all this... worm business. Which reminds me, if you do see Elias, tell him thanks for the extra extinguishers.]

Tim: Oh, yeah. Yeah, sure. It’s getting bad. I mean, Martin keeps showing me his tongue and asking if it “looks infested”. Um. So what do you want me to do about these errors?

Archivist: I really don’t care. Put a Post-It on the tapes or something. I’m not re-recording them. Now if you’ll excuse me...

Tim: Oh, yeah, sure, yep, I’ll let you get back to it. [DOOR CLOSES]

Archivist: Right. Oh, still running? Okay. Statement of Carlita Sloane, regarding her work on a container ship travelling to Southampton from Porto do Itaqui. Original statement given January the 2nd 2011. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.

Statement begins.]

I’ve been working the shipping routes for years now, so I know there’s plenty of messed up things can happen out there. You remember the old saying ‘worse things happen at sea’? Well, let me tell you it’s just as true now as it ever was. But I’ve never seen weird like I saw when serving on the Tundra. I didn’t even want the job, really, but I didn’t have a lot of choice. We’d just hit Porto do Itaqui in Brazil in late November of last year when the ship I was on got stopped because of ‘cargo irregularities’. I don’t know what it was. Might have been drugs, human trafficking, might have just been a crooked harbour master looking for a kickback, but it didn’t really matter. Point was I had to jump ship.

This wasn’t an easy thing, though. A sailor’s union should be recognised anywhere in the world, but when it came down to it, my membership of Nautilus, a UK union, meant nothing when I was trying to get a place on a cargo run coming out of Brazil. Didn’t help that I’m a woman. A lot of people don’t think shipping is a job for women. Hell, a lot of people who work on ships don’t think it is. You don’t see a lot of us in the trade, and every ounce of respect I got, some dick-waving asshole probably bled for. But that’s fine, I can hold my own, and it hasn’t been such a problem since I shaved my head. It was enough to keep me on land for a good few days, though, as I tried to find another ship to take me on. Well, that and my bad Spanish.

I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how relieved I was when I heard that a British ship had made port. The Tundra. Now at that point I was starting to get a bit desperate, so I was keen to go to the captain and just about beg passage. Screw my qualifications, if needed I’d sign on as a workaway. I could find a better position once I was somewhere I spoke the language properly.

I eventually found the captain in a small bar in one of the seedier areas of the dockside. I’d been told his name was Peter Lukas, but to be honest I wouldn’t have needed his name – he was the only white guy in the place. Even by those standards he was very pale, weirdly so for someone who apparently lived their life on the sea. He sat there at a small table, completely alone, drinking a cup of black coffee. He was staring into the distance, and didn’t seem to notice anything going on around him. I sat down opposite and coughed.

His eyes only moved a fraction of an inch to focus on me, but it felt as though the movement had the weight of a heavy stone door. Like a tomb. Don’t know why that’s what popped into my head, but there you go. I asked if he was Peter Lukas, and he said, “Yes”. I’d gone blank on what to say next, and it was then that I noticed the silence. I looked around to see that the place was now completely empty. Even the bartender was nowhere to be seen, and the only sound was the whir of the ceiling fans above us. The captain was still staring at me, so I swallowed my unease and began to explain my situation to him. I left out the part about the criminal possibilities of my last ship, but was clear that I was in desperate need of a new post. When I had finished, he was quiet for a few minutes. Then he nodded.

“We have one space. Report tomorrow. At dawn.”

That was all he said. And it was all I needed. The Tundra wasn’t difficult to find when I headed to the docks the next day. It was big, already stacked high with an array of colourful shipping containers. I wondered if they’d loaded it up overnight, as there didn’t seem to be much activity from the crane. It was early, and I was glad I was leaving Brazil before the wet season really got going, as the sky was threatening to break. Making my way through the dock I asked around until I was finally pointed to the mate. He was a short man, heavy set with a thick, black beard. His warm, brown skin was stained darker by a life working in the sun, and he didn’t smile when he looked at me. Around his neck, I saw a chain ending in a small brass ball and stem. It looked like an old boatswain’s call, an antique sailor’s whistle.

I introduced myself, told him what I’d told the captain and gave my qualifications and experience. The bearded mate listened quietly until I finished. Then he shrugged, and said they were in need of an Ordinary Seaman, and I was welcome to the position if I wanted it. OS was a bit of a step down for me, as I’ve been pulling Able Seaman pay for these last few years, but it was a ticket out of Porto do Itaqui, so I jumped at the chance. The mate still didn’t smile, but he did offer his hand and introduced himself in a gentle Dutch accent as Tadeas Dahl, First Mate of the Tundra. I was surprised, as it seemed a bit abrupt to be leaving, and I hadn’t even had time to stow away the duffel bag that was my only luggage. Still, I wasn’t about to disobey the first order I’d been given on a new ship.

The Tundra was pretty normal. I’ve served on a half dozen ships almost identical to it, and I fell into my duties quickly. We set off almost as soon as I was on board, and it was only later I discovered we were heading across the Atlantic towards Southampton. I was very happy to find that out, as I had assumed we’d be making plenty more stops before crossing back to England. With any luck it wouldn’t be more than a couple of weeks before I was home, and those would be spent in maintenance, repainting and taking watches with ‘Iron Mike’, the autopilot.

So that was fine, but I did start to notice a few things on board which didn’t really seem to add up. The first was the crew. They were quiet. Very quiet. I mean, I’ve been on ships where I was pretty much the only native English speaker, and plenty of people prefer to keep to themselves. Hell, not being too comfortable around people is a damn fine reason to go to sea. This was different, though.

It wasn’t just that they didn’t talk much, they seemed uncomfortable with me. They’d avoid eye contact, and only barely acknowledge me if we were on a shift together. As first I thought it was because I was a woman, but then I saw that it wasn’t just me. They avoided each other just as much as they did me. Meals were always quiet, no matter how many people were eating, and there was no friendly games of cards or chat in living quarters. There was no real conversation in any language. It was like they were doing everything in their power not to think about each other. It took me less than a day of ignored hellos and grunted answers before I fell into line, becoming just as quiet as my crewmates.

The only person who spoke was Tadeas Dahl. The mate would walk among the crew, giving instructions and orders in a dozen different languages, as the crew scrambled to carry out his commands. He was just as composed as he had been when I met him, and it soon became clear that, if he had emotions, he kept a tight wrap on them. He would stride along the ship, his antique whistle swinging from his neck. He never actually blew the boatswain’s call, apparently preferring to summon the crew via the intercom or horn. It just hung there, its polished brass heavy around his neck. I didn’t see Captain Lukas at all that first week. I only knew he was onboard because every meal time the cooks would hand a tray of food to the mate, who’d take it up to the captain’s cabin. We never saw the man himself, though.

There was one crewmember who did catch my eye. He was a young guy, white and, from what I could tell, Scottish. I never really got more than his name out of him: Sean Kelly. He had the bunk opposite me, and we were on different shifts, so I would often see him lying there when I returned from my night watch. He didn’t talk any more than the others, but he also didn’t go around with that blank look on his face. He looked scared.

There were other odd things about the ship, but hands down the weirdest thing, I didn’t notice until a few days out into the Atlantic. Now one of my duties was to check the deck containers were securely in place, none of the twistlocks or lashing rods had broken or come loose. It was usually just busywork – I’d never been on a ship that lost a container, though it does happen. This shift, though, I noticed something wrong. I saw that one of the lashing rods, towards the stern, had broken. And not at one of the ends, or the twistlock itself, but right in the middle of what should have been solid metal. From a distance it looked fine, new paint shining in the sun, but looking closer I saw that it had rusted all the way through. Not just that, but checking out where the rod connected to the container, it became clear that they had rusted together. Fresh paint covered up most of it, but once I knew what I was looking for I saw it everywhere. The shipping containers, all of them, were rusted in place. How could this have happened, though, if they were being changed over at port? How long had the Tundra been sailing with the same cargo?

I decided I had to look inside. Stupid, maybe. If it was something illegal, they might toss me overboard first and ask questions never, but only if I got caught. And I was just about sick of nasty surprises.

I did it on my next late shift. I kept an eye on the rest of the crew and waited for my moment. I’d already marked out a ground level container where the padlock had practically rusted off. It wouldn’t be difficult to get it open. It was about 3am when I had my chance. I was alone on deck and the wind was howling loud enough to muffle the groan of the container’s rusted hinges. It took three kicks from my steel toecaps to get it open, but finally I was able to get the door ajar. It was so stiff it took almost all my strength to get enough of a gap to walk through, but finally I could see inside.

It was completely empty. There was no sign of cargo, or any markings or debris on the floor that might have shown there had ever been anything inside. I couldn’t believe it, a transport ship with nothing to transport? It didn’t make any sense. I managed to bust two other containers open, but they were the same. As far as I could tell, every container on the ship was empty. I was still trying to figure out what this could mean when I saw a couple of torches approaching. I almost panicked and ran, but where exactly was I going to escape to? The empty, uncaring ocean stretched out for hundreds of miles in every direction. So instead I swallowed my fear, and pushed the door careful closed, trying my best to hide the broken lock before making my way onto the deck.

I was met by the mate and a half dozen other crewmen behind him. He looked at me for a second, then nodded and told me to follow, then he continued walking. Confused, I headed after them as they made their way around the ship, silently collecting up or waking all the rest of the crew. I started to ask what was going on, but the glares I got shut me right up. Finally, when we had what looked like the whole crew together, we walked over to the lifeboat.

Now we definitely weren’t sinking, so I hadn’t really paid much attention to the lifeboat before, but now I looked at it, I realised it wasn’t what I’d have expected. Most modern container ships have a lifeboat that looks more like a lumpy orange blob than a boat. They’re designed to be quickly and safely dropped into the water and tough out whatever conditions the sea might throw at them. But this was an old fashioned boat, with oars and a winch mechanism for lowering it into the water. It didn’t even look like it had any supplies in it. Standing there in front of it was Captain Lukas, as silent as the rest of his crew.

The Captain nodded, and one by one the crew of the Tundra got on board the lifeboat. I got on too. I mean, what else was I supposed to do? I didn’t know what was going on and no-one seemed to want to tell me, but I sure as hell wasn’t getting left alone on that big empty ship. So I got in and sat down, as a couple of the crew began to lower the lifeboat into the sea. A few others took up the oars, and as soon as we hit the water, they began to row quietly away from the Tundra, which floated, motionless.

The sky was clear and the wind had died down, so the stars reflected perfectly on the still ocean surface. All the lights on the ship had been turned off, so the world and all the empty horizon was only lit by the moon. As we rowed, I looked around my companions on the lifeboat. Everyone I recognised was there, except for one. I checked each face in turn, but I could see no sign of Sean Kelly, my scared bunkmate. Had we left him behind? Was he still back on the ship, sleeping away ignorant of the fact that he was now utterly and completely alone?

Almost as though he knew I was about to speak, Tadeas gave me a warning glare. The mate reached down and took the old brass whistle from his neck. He pressed it to his lips, and blew.

I have never heard a whistle sound like that. It was shrill, so high and piercing that I felt my hair stand on end, but it also seemed distant. Like I was hearing it from far, far away. I don’t know how long he blew that boatswain’s call for, but by the end, I realised we were surrounded by thick sea smoke. We should have far too far south for it, but it rolled and billowed around the lifeboat, obscuring the Tundra. No-one said a word, but I could have sworn a few of my shipmates were crying.

I don’t know how long we floated there, sat in the dark water, but eventually the fog cleared and the mate sounded the boatswain’s call again, this time a short, sharp whistle. We saw the Tundra, dark and still upon the water, and began to row back towards it. The lifeboat was painstakingly raised and the rest of the crew returned to their positions. Sean Kelly was nowhere to be seen. And I never saw him again.

After that night, the atmosphere on board changed. People talked, and you’d occasionally hear actual laughter on board. Games were played, people drank, and there was this sense of relief to it all. I tried to join in, but got dark looks any time I asked about Sean. At one point the third mate, a man named Kim Duong, told me that I should shut up and be grateful, as it hadn’t been “an easy choice”.

I kept to myself the rest of the way, and left the ship as soon as we landed in Southampton. I didn’t even think about my pay until it came through a couple of days later: twenty-five thousand pounds. For barely two weeks work. I don’t mind telling you, it was almost enough to tempt me back.

Almost.

Archivist Notes:

An interesting statement, though difficult to investigate any potentially paranormal activity, as there does not appear to have been anything explicitly supernatural occurring in this statement. A lot of strange happenings and implicit weirdness, but nothing that can be isolated as a ‘supernatural event’. There’s also the fact that even a casual search of port authority records shows the Tundra is a currently active cargo ship operating for Solus Shipping PLC, a company founded and majority owned by Nathaniel Lukas. In addition to such business ventures, the Lukas family also provides funding to several academic and research organisations, including the Magnus Institute. Much as I want to dig further into this, especially given certain parallels with case 0161301, Elias gets very twitchy when we look into anything that might conceivably have funding repercussions.

It doesn't look like I’m going to be able to do any further investigations into this. Even though the official crew manifest for the Tundra has remained the same for the last ten years. Even though I can’t find any record of actual cargo being loaded or unloaded into it from any UK port. Even though Sean Kelly disappeared from the port of Felixstowe in October 2010, and his body washed up on the coast of Morocco in April 2011, six months later. According to the coroner, it had only been in the water for five days. Maybe I’ll mention it to Elias. Just in case.

#the magnus archives #magnus archives #MAG #MAG33 #MAG 33 #BoatswainsSong #Boatswain'sSong #Boatswain's Song #Statement #The Lukas Family #The Lonely

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the-magnus-archives-archiver · 5 years

Text

Hive

Case: 0142302

Name: Jane Prentiss Subject: A wasps’ nest in her attic Date: February 23rd, 2014 Recorded by: Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London

I itch all the time. Deep beneath my skin, where the bone sits, enshrined in flesh, I feel it. Something, not moving but that wants to move. Wants to be free. It itches, and I don’t think I want it. I don’t know what to do.

You can’t help me. I don’t think so, at least. But whatever it is that calls to me, that wants me for its own, it hates you. It hates what you are and what you do. And if it hates you, then maybe you can help me. If I wanted to be helped. I don’t know if I do. You must understand, it sings so sweetly, and I need it, but I am afraid. It isn’t right and I need help. I need it to be seen. To be seen in the cold light of knowledge is anathema to the things that crawl and slither and swarm in the corners and the cracks. In the pitted holes of the hive.

You can’t see it, of course. It isn’t real. Not like you or I are real. It’s more of an everywhere. A feeling. Are you familiar with trypophobia? That disgusted fear at holes, irregular, honeycombed holes. Makes you feel that itch in the back of your mind, like the holes are there too, in your own brain, rotten and hollow and swarming. Is that real?

I’m sorry, I know I’m meant to be telling you what happened. What brought me to this place. This place of books and learning, of sight and beholding. I’m sorry. I should. I will.

I... I haven’t slept in some time. I can’t sleep. My dreams are crawling and many-legged. Not just slithering and burrowing,. though it is the burrowing that draws me. They always sing that song of flesh. I hope you will forgive me for such a rambling story. I hope you will forgive me for a great many things, as it may be I do worse. I have that feeling, that instinct that squirms through your belly. There will be great violence done here. And I bleed into that violence.

Do you know, I wonder? As I watch you sitting there through the glass. Eating a sandwich. Do you know where you are? You called me “dear”. “Have a seat, dear.” “You can write it down, dear.” “Take as much time as you need, dear.” Can you truly know the danger you are in?

There is a wasps’ nest in my attic. A fat, sprawling thing that crouches in the shadowed corner. It thrums with life and malice. I could sit there for hours, watching the swirls of pulp and paper on its surface. I have done. It is not the patterns that enthral me, I’m not one of those fools chasing fractals; no, it’s what sings behind them. Sings that I am beautiful. Sings that I am a home. That I can be fully consumed by what loves me.

I don’t know how long the nest has been there. It’s not even my house, I just live there. Some sweaty old man thinks he owns it, taking money for my presence as though it will save him. I used to worry about it, you know. I remember, before the dreams, I would spend so long worrying about that money. About how I could afford to live there. Now I know that whatever the old man thinks, as he passes about the house with brow crinkled and mouth puckered in disapproval, it is not his. It has a thousand truer owners who shift and live and sing within the very walls of the building. He does not even know about the wasps’ nest. I wonder how long he has not known. How many years it has been there.

Have you ever heard of the filarial worm? Mosquitoes gift it with their kiss and it grows and grows. It stops water moving round the human body right, makes limbs and bellies swell and sag with fluid. Now, when I look at that fat, sweaty sack, I think about it, and the voice sings of showing him what a real parasite can do.

How many months has it been like this? Was there a time before? There must have been. I remember a life that was not itching, not fear, not nectar-sweet song. I had a job. I sold crystals. They were clean, and sharp and bright and they did not sing to me, though I sometimes said they did. We would sell the stones to smiling young couples with colour in their hair. I remember, before I found the nest, someone new came. His name was Oliver, and he would look at me so strangely. Not with lust or affection or contempt, but with sadness. Such a deep sadness. And once with fear. It didn’t matter, because no-one in the shop wanted to hear about the ants below it. I tried to tell them, to explain, but they did not care. The pretty young things complained and I left.

That was when I still called myself a witch. Wicca and paganism, I would spend my weekends at rituals by the Thames. I wanted something beyond myself, but could not stomach the priest or the imam or pujari of the churches. I knew better. I knew that it was not so simple as to call out to well-trodden gods. I never felt from my rituals anything except exhaustion and pride. I thought that those were my spiritual raptures.

I wish, deep inside, below the itch, that they were still my raptures. I have touched something now, though, that all my talk of ley lines and mother goddesses could never have prepared me for. It is not a god. Or if it is then it is a dead god, decayed and clammy corpse-flesh brimming with writhing graveworms.

When did I first hear it? It wasn’t the nest, I’m sure of that. I never went in the attic. It was locked and I didn’t have a key. I spent a day sawing through the padlock with an old hacksaw. My hands were blistered by the end. Why would I have done that if I didn’t know what I would find? The face of the one who sang to me dwelling within the hidden darkness above me. I had seen no wasps. I know I hadn’t. There are no wasps in the nest. So how else would I have known that I needed to be there, to be in the dark with it, if it had not already been singing to me?

No, that’s not right. The nest does not sing to me. It is simply the face. Not the whole face, for the whole of the hive is infinite. An unending plane of wriggling forms swarming in and out of the distended pores and honeycombed flesh. The nest is nothing but paper.

Was it the spiders? There were webs in the corners, around the entryway into the attic. I would watch them scurry and disappear in between the wooden boards. ‘Where are you going, little spiders?’ I would think. ‘What are you seeing in the dark? Is it food? Prey? Predators?’ I wondered if it was the spiders that made the gentle buzzing song. It was not. Webs have a song as well, of course, but it is not the song of the hive.

I used to pick at my skin. It was a compulsion. I would spend hours in the bathroom, staring as close as I could get to my face to the mirrors, searching for darkened pores to squeeze and watch the congealed oil worm its way out of my skin. Often I would end with swollen red marks where it had become inflamed with irritation or infection. Did I hear the song then?

Was it when I was a child, such a clear memory of a classmate telling me a blackhead was a hole in my face, and if I didn’t keep it clean it would grow and rot. Did I hear it then, as that image lodged in my mind forever? Or was it last year, passing by a strip of green they call a park near my house, after the rain, and watching a hundred worms crawl and squirm to the surface.

Perhaps I’ve always heard it. Perhaps the itch has always been the real me, and it was the happy, smiling Jane who called herself a witch and drank wine in the park when it was sunny. Maybe it was her who was the maddened illusion the hides the sick squirming reality of what I am. Of what we all are, when you strip away the pretence that are there is more to a person than a warm, wet habitat for the billion crawling things that need a home. That love us in their way.

I need to think. To clear my head. To try and remember, but remember what? I was lonely before. I know that. I had friends, at least I used to, but I lost them. Or they lost me. Why was it? I remember shouting, recriminations, and I was abandoned. No idea why. The memories are a blur. I do remember that they called me “toxic”. I don’t think I really knew what that meant, except that it was the reason I was so very painfully lonely. Was that it? Was I swayed and drawn simply by the prospect of being genuinely loved? Not loved as you would understand it. A deeper, more primal love. A need as much as a feeling. Love that consumes you in all ways.

You can’t help me. I’m sure of that now. I have tried to write it down, to put it into terms and words you could understand. And now I stare at it and not a word of it is even enough to fully describe the fact that I itch. Because ‘itch’ is not the right word. There is no right word because for all your Institute and ignorance may laud the power of the word, it cannot even stretch to fully capture what I feel in my bones. What possible recourse could there be for me in your books and files and libraries except more useless ink and dying letters? I see now why the hive hates you. You can see it and log it and note it’s every detail but you can never understand it. You rob it of its fear even though your weak words have no right to do so.

I do not know why the hive chose me, but it did. And I think that it always had. The song is loud and beautiful and I am so very afraid. There is a wasps’ nest in my attic. Perhaps it can soothe my itching soul.

Archivist Notes:

This is... uh...

Excuse me, reading that was, um... hmm. While I am pleased that we have... found the statement that Prentiss gave the Institute, it answers far fewer of our questions than I would have hoped, and gives us little new information about her than we had before, save for a snapshot of her mental condition before her hospital admission. We were already aware of her religious history, and her breakdown over an ant infestation that apparently led to her termination from her work at the Good Energies spiritual supplies shop in Archway.

The wasps’ nest is interesting. The paramedics report claims that when they and the police responded to reports of screaming at Miss Prentiss’ flat on Prospero Road, they found her in a loft space, passed out, with her forearm buried up to the elbow in “pulped organic matter”. This could indeed have been a wasps’ nest, I suppose, but no nearby residents reported to have seen any wasps in the area. Unfortunately, it could not be examined further, as later that night there was a fire that completely destroyed the flat and killed the landlord, Arthur Nolan. The fire service determined he had fallen asleep with a lit cigarette, due to the fact that he was found sitting in the remains of an armchair, with no sign he had made any attempt to escape.

Miss Prentiss was taken to the Emergency Department at Whittington Hospital, but she was already showing signs of the... infestation that would characterise her later appearances. Six hospital staff were attempting to treat and sedate her, when many of the worms were violently expelled from her body. They quickly burrowed through the soft tissue of the medical personnel – eyes, tongue, et cetera – and into the brain, killing them after roughly a minute and a half. She then walked calmly out of the door to A&E. A nurse attempted to run, but in his panic he tripped on the stairs and broke his neck. Then she was gone. The Institute was consulted, as apparently during her admission she had claimed that she was being possessed, but it was decided the situation was medical in nature and our involvement was dropped in favour of, what I can only describe, as a cover-up. If we’d known about this statement, perhaps things might have been different, but here we are.

Still anyone who’s familiarised themselves with her file could tell you this. We still don’t have any evidence that Prentiss is actually paranormal. It could just be an unknown, aggressive parasite. There are weird things out there that are perfectly natural. It’s not, though. I know it’s not natural. Somehow I... I feel it. I’m sorry, my academic detachment seems to have fled me. Something in this statement has got to me a bit. I’m... I’m going to go lie down.

Source: Official Transcript and Podcast (MAG 31 First Hunt)

#the magnus archives #magnus archives #MAG #MAG32 #MAG 32 #Hive #Statement #The Corruption

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the-magnus-archives-archiver · 5 years

Text

First Hunt

Case: 0100912

Name: Lawrence Mortimer Subject: His hunting trip to Blue Ridge, Virginia Date: December 9th, 2010 Recorded by: Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London

I always wanted to go hunting. It always seemed such a manly sort of pursuit. I mean, killing the deer or elk or whatever else was always beside the point; it was just the idea of setting off into the wild, surviving out there, cooking and eating what you kill – it all sounded like such an adventure. I mean, I’d thought about trying it in this country, but shooting pheasants with shotguns and riding down foxes all seemed too much the domain of, uh, nitwits in tweed. So, if I was going to go hunting, I would need to go to another country to do it. Somewhere where they had a few animals worth going after. Thinking about it, I suppose that is what happened in the end, in a perverse sort of way. And it did cost poor Arden his life.

Well, my desire to go hunting was always something of ‘someday’ project. I’m sure you know what I mean: those ideas you have, holidays you plan to do ‘sometime in the future’, but they’re never time- dependent and usually you just keep putting them off for more pressing things. So when I turned fifty back in February, I thought, ‘dash it all, I’m going to go hunting before I drop dead!’ When I told my friends they all thought I’d gone loopy, but I just reminded them that it isn’t just the young that can be impetuous and daft.

Anyway, over the past few years I’d become great friends with an American. Arden Neeli was his name. We’d met on a sceptics message board and got on like a house on fire. When I mentioned I was looking into impetuous hunting trips, he asked how averse I was to hiking. I said not at all, I’ve a been a very active sort, and he told me that in Virginia, his home state, there were a lot of excellent places to go hunting, providing I didn’t mind waiting until October or November. I wasn’t exactly expecting the Grim Reaper to come knocking in the intervening months, so I told him it sounded lovely.

We spent a good long while discussing it, and finally decided to take a three day hike into Blue Ridge on the Appalachian Trail, and see if we could find a deer or an elk for me to shoot. Nature, seclusion and guns – to my ears it sounded just perfect.

So, early last month I packed my bags and caught a plane over to Virginia. The weather was cold but otherwise pleasant, and to be honest I was surprised how similar it felt to Torquay in November. I normally live in Torquay. I think I put that on your form there. If I did, it won’t hurt you to have it written down twice. I wasn’t, however, fully prepared to meet Arden in person. I’d never met an Internet friend in real life before, and he was far louder and more outgoing than I was prepared for, based on the well thought-out and considerate communications we had previously exchanged. He kept laughing at everything I said as though it was a joke, even when it wasn’t a joke, and would not stop going on about my accent.

Still, all was forgiven when he showed me his gun cabinet. They were beautiful, and while I’m a member of a few shooting clubs over here, you’ve always got to keep your rifles under lock and key, hidden away out of sight. To see a dozen, well-cared for weapons displayed proudly, well, it was just lovely.

We set out the following day, driving up to Blue Ridge from his home in Richmond. It took some time to get there, as everything is so much further apart in America, but we parked at Crabtree Falls shortly after midday. We had our tents and our supplies. I was very excited to don my hunters orange, and to take up my rifle. I was carrying a Winchester M70, which I had read was very good for beginners, while Arden carried a Remington Model 673, his preferred firearm, which he talked about to me at great length. And off we went up the trail.

Our first day was unsuccessful. I was something of a blundering presence, and though Arden was at pains to assure me that our failure was simply due to being too close to a road, I was sure that it was my own crashing footsteps scaring away the creatures. I mean, we hadn’t gone far compared to our proposed route, but we were already several miles from the nearest road.

As the day wore on, we began to look for somewhere to set up camp. We were attempting to “Leave No Trace”, as the Americans say, so we were likely going to set our tents up on the trail itself, but as we began to get them out I heard the strangest thing. It sounded like somebody whistling, a slow version of The Farmer in the Dell or, as I believe it’s more commonly known, A-Hunting We Shall Go.

I looked over, and by the expression of puzzlement on Arden’s face it was clear he heard it as well. I was just about to call out to whoever was whistling, when a figure wandered very casually through the treeline and onto the trail. He walked out of thick woodland as though he were strolling down a promenade. He was short and lean, with long, shaggy black hair and a slightly unkempt goatee. His clothes were the rugged, durable sort you’d expect to see on a hiker, but he had no jacket or coat. He carried no backpack or kit of any sort. In fact it seemed like he was just wandering through the woods with the clothes on his back.

Arden was quicker to pick up on this than I was and asked the man if he needed any help. The hiker stared at him for several long seconds, as though trying to deduce something, then smiled and said, “No”. I didn’t like that smile one bit. Far too many teeth to it, I’d say. He asked us where we were heading, how long we were on the trail for. There was something ever so slightly odd about his intonation, and he dragged the Rs somehow when he spoke. We answered as vaguely as we could without being rude, since neither of us felt comfortable near this man.

The hiker shrugged, and started to walk across the trail, between us. As he did so, he paused for a second, and took a deep breath, and it seemed for all the world like he was sniffing us. Then he said something, I forget exactly. “Tomorrow will be a good day for a run,” or something like that. And then he just started whistling again, and wandered off into the forest behind us. I think both myself and Arden wanted to stop him, it was so clear something wasn’t right with the situation, but we were both... astounded with his manner and I don’t think either of us could have thought of how to do so. And then he was gone.

I needn’t tell you that sleep came difficult. The sounds of the forest at night were far louder than I had ever heard them back home, and every cracking branch, every rustle of leaves, set my nerves on edge. It was an overcast night, and outside the tent was almost completely dark. Around two o’clock in the morning I could have sworn that I heard someone laugh, slow and softly, outside my tent. It sound like it was right by my head, just the other side of the thin nylon wall. By the time I’d managed to get up the courage to check, of course, there was nobody there.

The next day we packed up the camp and set off hunting again, donning our lurid orange vests and rifles. I must admit, I felt ten times better with the weight of the gun in my arms, and was inclined to put the events of the night before behind me. In fact, after a morning spent walking and joking and, on two occasions, damn near bagging an elk, I thought we were both having a splendid time.

It was about four in the afternoon, the sun just starting to begin its descent towards an early autumn dusk, when I saw my elk. I don’t know why, but when I saw him through the trees I knew that he was mine. I told Arden and we started to creep towards it very slowly. He had been teaching me since yesterday, and it wasn’t long before I had my position, and raised my gun. I sighted it just below the ear, and there was a moment, when its head turned right towards me. I could have sworn it looked me in the eye as I prepared to pull the trigger.

A gunshot rang out, but it was not from my gun. The elk startled and ran, and I spun round, but Arden was nowhere to be seen. The shot still echoed through the trees, but he seemed to have vanished. I began to search frantically for him. Had he... Had he been lured away by an elk of his own? Had he been accidentally shot by some other hunters? I called out his name, but there was no reply.

Eventually, after several minutes of desperate searching, I came to a small clearing. There, slumped against one of the trees was Arden. He was dead. The tree behind him was painted in a spray of crimson, and there was a messy hole in the centre of his throat, as though it had been torn out entirely. His rifle lay next to him on the ground, also coated in blood. It seems silly to say now, but my first thought was to check his pulse. So I put my gun down to do so. Obviously he didn’t have one, but I couldn’t understand what was happening. I’d been with him not three minutes before and he had been alive and unharmed. It didn’t make sense.

Then I heard that whistling. That infernal whistling from the treeline. I turned and there was the hiker. His right hand was coated in Arden’s blood, and he grinned at me. Then he began to sprint. His speed was incredible, and he loped from side to side with a sort of zigzag motion. I ran. I know I should have picked up my gun, but you can’t understand just how frightening it is to have something like that, a true predator, running at you full pelt. Your death charging towards you like freight train. You can’t understand what it is to be prey. So I ran.

I turned tail, leaving my pack and my gun behind, and sprinted into the woods. I didn’t look back, I couldn’t. It took all my concentration to keep my footing, to not trip. I could hear him occasionally behind me, as he charged through a bush or scratched against a tree. I think he did it deliberately, you know. To let me know he was still there. There’s no way I could have won that footrace, but I think he must have been toying with me. After a while I could no longer hear him directly behind me, so I slowed to catch my breath. I’m in good shape, as I say, but I’m not a young man and I was dizzy with the exhaustion.

I sat there, so intent on listening out for any sign of danger, of this man, that I barely even noticed night fall. There were no clouds that night, and I was glad, since I had left my torch along with my pack. If I was to run at all during the night, I would need the moonlight to see by. Of course, any experienced hiker would tell you never to travel the woods at night, and certainly not to run through them, but I hardly had any choice if it came to it. And of course it did. The night was barely half an hour old when I heard it again, that... whistling, then the words floating through the trees, but with an low, bass tone to them. “A-hunting we shall go, A-hunting we shall go”.

And once again I ran. By all rights I should have broken my neck, charging off into the darkness like that. I should have tripped on a root or put my foot in a rabbit hole. I should have at least twisted my ankle. Somehow this didn’t happen, though; I ran and ran and, well, I just kept running. It didn’t seem to do me any good, of course. I was still far slower in the dark than I had been during the day, and it was obvious my pursuer could easily outpace me if he wanted to. So many times I’d hear that song coming from in front of me, and turned sharply to avoid it, until I was utterly lost.

Finally, I broke through the treeline. I thought at first I’d found another clearing, but looking down, I saw I was next to Arden’s mutilated body. The wretched thing had just sent me in a circle. For fun. For the chase. I was tired, scared, covered in scratches and bruises over my entire body, and for nothing. I was still going to die.

I turned to face my fate, and for the first time that night got a good look at my hunter. The moonlight shone on him in full and what I saw was not human. It’s hard to describe exactly, but everything about him was sharper. His fingers, his teeth, his face, his eyes. His skin.

As I looked at him, the strangest thing popped into my head. Have you ever read The Duchess of Malfi? I had to study it for my O-Levels, many years ago. Dreadful play, as I remember, the worst sort of old revenge tragedy, all incest and murder and madness. But there’s a line that stays with me, a doctor diagnosing the Duchess’ brother with lycanthropy. As I recall it goes, “Once met the duke, ‘bout midnight in a lane behind St. Mark’s church, with the leg of a man upon his shoulder. Said he was a wolf. Only difference was, a wolf’s skin is hairy on the outside, his on the inside”. Looking at this thing that wanted to kill me, it’s the only way it’s the only description that feels right.

He didn’t charge this time, but slowly stalked towards me. I was... acutely aware of the loaded guns by my feet, but I’d seen how fast it could move and I didn’t rate my chances. It got close. Close enough that I could smell the foetid breath. Close enough that I could see the most disturbing thing illuminated by the moonlight: the slick drool on its lips as it salivated in anticipation of a kill. Then it attacked me.

I am, in some ways, very proud of how I acted during that encounter. You see, as long as the thing didn’t think I was any sort of threat, I hoped it might get sloppy and clearly telegraph its strike. I was right; it drew back its arm and swung a clumsy, triumphant blow. I forget, did I mention my military background? Well, I used to be an officer in the Air Force. Now, it’s been a long time since the Gulf War, and I didn’t do much in the way of hand-to-hand fighting even then, but the training is something that stays with you. It certainly served me well for this one, desperate move, as I caught his arm and pitched his motion around. His claws dug into my shoulder, but missed my neck, and he fell to the floor, tripped by his own momentum. He began to get to his feet almost immediately, but it brought me the precious seconds to grab my rifle and press it to his chest. I didn’t hesitate.

The shot ripped through him and he jerked in pain. Not wanting to take any chances, I fired again and again and again until my rifle was empty. Then I picked up Arden’s rifle and emptied that one into him as well.

Even after all of that, he still wasn’t dead. He had three bullets in his heart, two in his head and many more through the rest of him, but still he writhed there, making weak noises. I didn’t know how long this would slow him down for, but I hoped it would give me enough time to escape properly. I looked back as I left the clearing to see him slowly and painfully pushing his claws into his chest, digging for the bullets.

It was luck that saved me, in the end. Some park rangers were driving past our trail on a road about two miles distant. They were coming to investigate the gunshots and I stumbled on to the road through sheer good fortune. I never saw that thing again, or Arden, unfortunately, though they managed to find and recover his body about a week later. I don’t think I’ll try hunting again. I know the thrill of power that comes with the ability to end the life of something weaker than you, but... I can’t forget what it’s like to be the hunted.

Archivist Notes:

Hunted. Yes, I think I’m starting to know the feeling.

Arden Neeli was found dead half a mile off the Appalachian Trail in Virginia on 1st December 2010. His death was ruled a wild animal attack. Mr Mortimer was treated for physical and mental trauma, but was not implicated in his death. Quite frankly that’s all the investigation I’m willing to do on this one.

‘Wolfmen in America’ is too far-fetched and too far away for me to care about. It’s... been two months now since Martin returned and we became the ones being... hunted. Are we being hunted? Martin’s still living here, and I’m leaving less and less. The worms keep turning up. We kill them, but there are more each week. What is she waiting for?

Source: Official Transcript and Podcast (MAG 31 First Hunt)

#the magnus archives #magnus archives #MAG #MAG31 #MAG 31 #First Hunt #FIrstHunt #Statement #The Hunt

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the-magnus-archives-archiver · 5 years

Text

Killing Floor

Case: 0130111

Name: Davis Laylow Subject: His time working at an industrial abattoir near Dalston Date: September 1st, 2013 Recorded by: Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London

I used to work at a slaughterhouse. A ‘meat processing plant’. I won't say which one. I don't want to get in any trouble. It was up near Dalston, though, so you can probably figure it out. Not so many around out there as to make it hard. Not so many around anywhere. It's not something most folks want nearby. It smells awful if you're not used to it and people tell me they get a weird vibe. I never did, at least not before all this happened. Maybe that says something about me, though.

There's not so much difference between people and animals, you know? Not saying that I'd be keen to kill a person, or that humans are all stupid. No, I'm saying that animals are smarter than you give them credit for. They look dumb, sure, but I know what I'm talking about when I say that every damn animal in that place knew exactly why they were there. You don't need to be smart to know when you're surrounded by your own mutilation.

When I first started I did a lot of the driving, and right from loading them up, you can hear it in their whining. They know what’s going on, they know where they’re going. I’ve heard a lot of engineering oand science types talk about “stressors”, “novelty” or “cortisol levels” when discussing how best to avoid “triggering fear or flight responses”. If it lets them keep enjoying their steak, they can use whatever words they want to, but every wide-eyed cow I’ve ever put into a squeeze chute knows exactly where that ride ends.

You hear grisly tales about the torment of animals in the slaughterhouse, and the things done to them by the cold, relentless machinery, but so often the casual human brutality is overlooked. A worker and an abattoir are rated on many things, and one of them is how cruel or distressing they are for the livestock passing through. If you’re abusive to your animals, you won’t get as high a rating, but that’s about it. You’re not going to lose your job unless you really overstep the line, and sometime you have a bad day. The sort of day that it feels good to work out on a bit of pig flesh, as it goes towards its end.

I mean, I wouldn’t really have said that sort of cruelty was common beyond the occasional kick or sometimes using an electric prod when it wasn’t needed. It was just that, if you did see it, you didn’t care. And you knew that no-one would care if they saw you do it. For all the braying and whining and screaming, in the end it was all just noisy meat.

Weirdest thing is, you start to kind of see people as meat too. Not in a food sort of way, you know. I don’t wanna eat my co-workers. It’s just that, when you spend all day taking these living, breathing creatures – animals that move and cry and tremble in fear – and you turn them into lifeless blocks of dead flesh, it’s hard to believe in any special spark that makes us humans any different. We run and shout and file on through our lives as simply as any cow, and after a while you can’t help but realise that we could turn into a lifeless carcass just as easily. Easier, even, given how much smaller we are. I mean, I’m not some weird killer or anything, but after a while it’s hard not to see everyone as moving meat.

I used to work on the killing floor, you know? Not long. You’re not allowed to work on it for long. In your whole life, I mean. I don’t know what the exact amount of time you’re allowed to do it for is, but it’s pretty short. I only worked it for a few months, and now I can’t work on any killing floor anywhere. Ever. It’s actually a weight lifted, the knowledge you don’t have to do it anymore, but you’re still there, aren’t you? It’s not like you’ve left the slaughterhouse. I heard once that those rules came in after they did some research in America. This must have been sixty years back now, but they started to look into the crime and murder rates of abattoir workers who manned the killing floor. Of the people who’d worked the killing floor for over ten years, do you know what percentage went on to commit murder? One hundred percent.

I don’t know if that’s true. Tony Mulholland told it to me once, when he quit the place. Maybe he was just trying to mess with my head or make a point, but it feels right. I mean, I only did it for a few months, but you kill enough things that don’t want to be killed and you start to look at person’s head and wonder where you’d need to place the bolt gun.

I’m sorry, I know this isn’t why I’m here, I just feel like I’ve got to try and make you understand what it's like, killing things and butchering their flesh for a living. I mean, I don’t do it anymore, obviously. Still, you’ve got to understand where I’m coming from.

It all started on the killing floor. I was in charge of the bolt gun. Technically, the animals we slaughter are killed by bleeding them out, something about the meat quality, I think, but it’s the bolt gun that means they don’t notice. They call it “stunning”, but that’s never sat quite right with me. You drive a bolt right into the animal’s brain, destroying just the right part of it so that they can be bled without resistance, and apparently without pain. I’ve only ever done the stunning; I’ve never been on the bleed crew, so I guess in some ways you could say I’ve never actually killed any of the animals. And sure, maybe they might still have a bit of movement in them after the bolt, and maybe their heart still beats, but for all they talk about “stunning” or “irreversible brain damage”, pulling that trigger sure felt like killing to me.

There was another man who worked the floor, bleeding the animals. His name was Tom Haan, and I had never really spoke to him. For the longest time I wasn’t even sure how much English he spoke – he was from China, I think, and hardly ever said a word. The first time I really heard his voice was that day, the day it all started. I’d been feeling strange about work ever since I started on the killing floor, and had finally asked to be moved positions. Now, the official company policy was that any request to leave the killing floor has to be granted, but in practice no-one asks to be moved. It shows a weakness that most of the people working there aren’t comfortable with. I did it anyway, and had just received word that, from the following day, I was being moved to butchering the carcasses. I don’t remember how I felt. My feelings weren’t really working back then.

Anyway, it was as I was processing the last of the cows for that day that Tom Haan came over. I didn’t really pay him much attention, but he leaned close, gripped my shoulder and said to me in perfect English, “You cannot stop slaughter by closing the door.” I felt a chill pass through me, and I wanted to turn round and demand to know what he was talking about, but he’d already returned to the bleeding crew. I was a bit shaken for the rest of the day, and knowing that these were the last animals I’d need to actually kill made each pull of the trigger harder, not easier. I just turned off my mind and let my mechanical motions take over. Cow into the holding pen, lock its head in place, gun against temple, pull the trigger. Over and over again, until I felt like I was almost in a trance.

It was the silence that finally brought me back to myself. I was waiting for the next in the line of cattle to be herded into the room, and I noticed that I couldn’t hear anything. There wasn’t the scared lowing of the animals, the far-off whine of saws or the rumble of any one of the hundreds of machines that hum and churn to keep the abattoir running. I waited and waited, but no more cows came. Looking around I couldn’t see anyone. There was no clock in that room, nor did I wear a watch. A buzzer would usually sound when breaks rolled around, and I hadn’t heard anything.

No more cattle seemed to be coming, so I put down the bolt gun, and walked over towards the bleeding area. There was nobody there, and more than that, the place looked clean. Spotless. As though no blood had ever been spilled there. Had I stood there, passed out or something? Had the day ended and the place been cleaned and I hadn’t even noticed?

I headed towards the exit door, deciding that I’d either find someone to ask what was happening, or I’d just go home. The door opened onto a corridor that I didn’t recognise. It looked like any other corridor in the slaughterhouse, except that it wasn’t the one that lead towards the exit. I went to try the other doors that lead out of the killing floor, but none of them went to the places I remembered them going. Behind each was another hallway that seemed to lead deeper into the abattoir. I stood there for a few moments, and I genuinely pinched myself. I had to be dreaming or hallucinating or something. It wasn’t a dream, though, or a vision. Everything had changed, and I was somewhere new.

I surprised myself a bit with how quickly I accepted this situation. I went out the door I originally went towards, thinking that if I didn’t know the layout of this building, then I might as well start by trying to follow the old route out as much I could. The corridors just seemed to lead into each other, though, and soon I was completely lost. I did notice, though, that some of them appeared to have rails along the top, like those used to move the hanging carcasses. Some of them even had hooks on, shiny and clean. These rails would never normally follow the passages of the slaughterhouse like this, and that fact bothered me, though I’m not quite sure why.

I called out, at least at first, hoping that there was someone, somewhere in this maze, who might hear me and answer. There was nothing. Some doors led into empty rooms, containing only still clean machinery. Meat-bone separators, splitting saws, scald tanks, each standing there, shining and silent. Waiting. I didn’t hang around long in those rooms. As I said, I don’t wear a watch, so I don’t know how long I wandered. It felt like hours, though.

Eventually, I turned a corner to see a small, metal staircase spiralling upwards. I had no reason to think I was below ground level at all, but it was the first thing I had found that wasn’t just twisting corridors and silent rooms, so I went up. The stairs curved upwards for a very long time.

When I reached the next floor, my heart sank to see more corridors stretching away from me, though these ones all had the meat rails snaking along the ceilings, and many of them were unlit. I stayed out of the darker passages. One of them had a window looking out, and all I could see outside was a metal abattoir roof stretching away to the horizon. The sky was a dull pink – the colour of blood being washed into a drain. I left the window very quickly. Finally, by complete chance, I noticed a door I recognised. It was the dark green exit door that should lead out of the building. I didn’t even stop to consider that it might not lead outside; I just opened it and stepped through.

My feet didn’t land on the tarmac of the outside. They didn’t land on the concrete or metal or tile of the slaughterhouse floor, either. It was dark, so I didn’t immediately realise what I was treading on, except that it shifted slightly under my weight. I looked to either side, and saw the metal barriers penning me in, and the conveyor belt beneath me began to move. I realised where I was, where it would lead, and I screamed.

Turning to run, I almost expected a horde of cattle behind me, pressing me onwards as the runs are designed to make them, but there was nothing there, and I fled out the door. I slammed it behind me and... and I began to cry. It was like something numb within me had shattered, and I couldn’t... I just couldn’t.

It was as I sat there, collapsed against the wall, that I started to smell it. The coppery-sweet scent of blood. It had a strange sort of comfort to it, as it was the smell of the slaughterhouse as I had known it, before I found my way to wherever I was now. I began to follow it, just walking along, turning wherever the odour of blood was strongest. And it did get stronger, much stronger. As I turned corners and walked through dark rooms, the smell became thick, pungent, far more than it had ever been before. By the time I stood outside the dull steel door it came from, I could barely breath. From the other side came a loud, mechanical churning. I shouldn’t have opened it, but where else was I going to go?

It led to a small catwalk, around the edge of a large, circular room. No, large doesn’t do it justice. It was... immense. I could barely see the other side of it, far in the distance. All around the edges were the ends of conveyor belts, and I could see butchered carcasses rolling off them, feeding into the vast pit that took up the rest of the room. The pile of stinking, bloody bodies, more than I could count. Pigs, cattle, sheep, I think I even saw a few humans in the pile, though without heads or limbs it’s hard to tell the difference between them and pigs. The vast heap shifted and moved, as something mechanical far below chewed through it, but it was always being topped up, fed by those conveyor belts, carcasses falling limply on top of each other like dolls. I couldn’t see the bottom, though whatever was processing the pile was so loud as to almost drown out my thoughts.

What else could I do, but turn around once again, and run?

I don’t have the faintest idea how long I ran for. All I know is that eventually I fell to my knees in the dark and I lay there for a while. The sound and smell of the pit had faded away, and I began to hear another sound, the chunking thud of a bolt gun. At this point I was just about sick of following strange noises and smells around that goddamn place, so I turned around and started walking the other way. It didn’t help. Whichever way I went, the sound just seemed to get louder, echoing through the empty hallways.

When I opened the door back onto the killing floor, I just didn’t have any surprise left inside of me. Sitting there, in front of the stunning box, was Tom Haan. He was facing away from me, but I could see him, slowly and deliberately, placing the bolt gun against different parts of himself – his legs, his stomach, his shoulders – and pulling the trigger. By the time I reached him, he was little more than a mass of bleeding wounds. He mutely handed me the bolt gun and I took it. With his one working hand, he guided my arm until the gun rested against the centre of his forehead. But he didn’t make me fire it. I did that myself. He fell limp to the floor. I don’t know if he was dead, but I hope so. I’d hate it if that place had to bleed him.

The door behind him led to a corridor I recognised, and the next door I found marked ‘Exit’ opened to a sunny day so bright that I could barely see. There were people there, other workers, but no-one paid me any attention. I left the slaughterhouse, and didn’t go back. I kept expecting the police to call me about Tom, but I never heard his name mentioned again. Not even when I handed in my resignation. I wish I felt bad about his death, but I don’t. I don’t feel anything at all.

Archivist Notes:

Hmm. More meat. Interesting. I had Sasha do some basic corroboration of the particulars of Mr. Laylow’s tale, and everything appears to be more or less accurate. He was employed by Aver Meats in Dalston from April 2010 to the 12th of July 2013, at which point left his post, which was confirmed to be the stunning the cattle for processing, in the middle of his shift, along with Thomas Haan, one of his colleagues. They left through the main entrance, ignoring the other workers, though no-one reported them acting strangely aside from that. Neither returned to the abattoir and Tom Haan has not been seen since.

We contacted Mr. Laylow for a follow-up statement, which he gave readily enough, though it largely deals with his lingering problems eating meat, which I would say are symptoms of PTSD but he has strongly declined to seek treatment.

Tim and Martin had a bit more luck investigating Tom Haan, though only really enough to confirm that he seems to have completely vanished following his departure from Aver Meats on the 12th of July. No missing person report was filed, and he appears to have had no friends or family. The landlord of the house he rented in Walthamstow, claims that the last rent he received from Haan was at the beginning of July. This landlord was quite put out when he disappeared, as apparently he had been renting a house in Clarence Road for almost a decade, and it was in quite a state of disrepair when he left.

Immigration authorities are somewhat useless. They have informed us that he missed a meeting with his advisor later that year, but it wasn’t until October, so gives us little to go on. His bank account has also registered no activity since July the 6th. No official effort has been made to locate him, and the police were reluctant to open a new case, so we didn’t push it.

There’s little else to be looked into, as Mr. Laylow’s description of an endless slaughterhouse is, to put it generously, unverifiable. That said, there have recently been moves by Aver Meats to extend their Dalston plant. They have planning permission, but are apparently having trouble retaining builders, four of which have already quit. Only one of them, Darren Lacey, agreed to talk to us, but all he would say to Tim was that the building “already seemed to be way too big.” And he said he couldn’t get over the smell of blood.

Source: Official Transcript and Podcast (MAG 30 Killing Floor)

#the magnus archives #magnus archives #MAG #MAG30 #MAG 30 #KillingFloor #Killing Floor #Statement #The Slaughter #The Flesh

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the-magnus-archives-archiver · 5 years

Text

Cheating Death

Case: 9720406

Name: Nathaniel Thorp Subject: His own mortality Date: June 4th, 1972 Recorded by: Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London

Are you interested in folktales at all? I know I'm here to provide a statement of my own experience, and I will, but there's something so revealing in the stories that grow up in a culture, wouldn't you say? And I promise it will be relevant by the end. I can guarantee it's not in your library, either, because as far as I know this story has never been written down. I'd do it myself, but there's a reason you're having to write this for me. One of these days I'll get around to learning my letters. Probably.

But I'll still wager, illiterate or not, that I can tell you a story you haven't heard before, though the themes are some that dance their way through many of the oldest folklore you can find: death. And games of chance. Well, if you want to win, anyway. Unless you fancy your chances of beating it at chess. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Once there was a soldier. A bold soldier. The sort you could find in any army, in any war, at any time. Fond of drink, fond of dice, fond of whatever nocturnal pleasures might be offered. He was bold as brass, yet bold is not the same as brave, and rarely did he take to the field of battle without somehow finding himself at the rear of the charge, where cannon and musket ball were less likely to find him. As I say, he could have been fighting anywhere, but this story is in New England, during the time of the Revolutionary War. Whether he was British or American or even French, it means nothing. What matters, is that at the Battle of Bunker Hill he found himself alone.

The night before had been wasted hard carousing, and what money he had not lost betting on faro had quickly been spent on drinking and pleasant company. So it was that he took to the field of battle with his head already swimming and eyes a stinging red. He had neglected even to bring gunpowder enough to reload his rifle, having filled his pouch instead with playing cards, and with every boom of the cannon the soldier's head pulsed in such pain that he thought himself shot.

The smoke was coiled thick around him and the acrid stench of gunpowder and blood made him retch. He fired his one and only shot and it disappeared into the roiling fog of war. He tried to advance, but he did not know which way was towards the enemy, nor could he see any others amidst the chaos of battle, enemy or comrade. For all the muskets and cannons he could hear, it seemed he was alone. As he stood there, the soldier saw that some of the blood that fell into the sodden soil was his own. When he had been shot, he had no idea, but the pain that surged through him as touched his wounded chest left no doubt.

The bold soldier considered returning to his lines, to find a doctor, but he remembered all too clearly the mouldering filth of the medical tents, the ranks of infected fools wailing out their last doomed cries. He would not die like that. He would not choke out some feeble plea for his mother in some grime- encrusted infirmary. He turned, threw down his rifle, and began to run. He did not know in which direction he was going, and simply prayed that it was not towards the enemy or the sea. Blood flowed freely from the ragged wound in his chest, and his breathing was laboured, yet he pushed on. He ran until the mud turned to soil and the soil turned to grass, until the smoke turned to fog and the fog turned to rain, and dusk came upon him.

Despite the balmy warmth of that June day, the night was bitterly cold. Perhaps it was the rain that pounded upon his tunic, or maybe it was the beginnings of a fever, but when the soldier finally stopped running, he was so chilled that it took all the energy he had left in him not to collapse. He was soaked through, shivering violently, and very aware that if he did not find somewhere to take shelter from the elements, he was going to die. And not a quick, clean death from a pistol or a sabre. A miserable, shivering death in some barren field near Boston. The soldier, whose boldness seemed to seep out with his blood, did not want to die.

And here there is something to be said on death. Everyone fears death. Of course they do. Even the most devout must have some apprehension, for however confident they are in a life everlasting with their deity of choice, the concept of eternity is one that the mortal mind recoils from. Be it bliss, torment or the senseless void, none can actually imagine what it is to die, so it's only right that all should have a healthy fear of it. There are some, though, for whom it is an enduring terror. Who cannot even consider the inevitable termination of life without a deepest panic, and can think of nothing in life that could be worse than its end. The soldier was of this cloth, and upon feeling his time drawing to a close, he began to cast about in fear.

He spied a farmhouse, dark and uninviting. The fighting nearby had likely scared off whoever lived there. Desperate to get out of the pouring rain, the soldier tried the doors, and found them locked tight. He broke a window, but with his wound he did not have to strength to climb inside. In despair, he looked around himself for another entrance and spied the cellar door. It was not locked, and lifted with surprising ease, given how heavy the wood appeared. He collapsed inside, half-crawling, half-falling down the rough earthen steps, until he found himself lying there in the dark, dry warmth of the basement.

The soldier lay there for some time, unmoving, eyes shut. Listening to the driving New England rain beating down outside. He breathed deeply, ignoring the pain from his wounded chest, and tried to gather his thoughts. What was important, he considered briefly, was that at that moment, he was not dead.

It was then he caught the scent of damp. Not the damp of wet earth after a hot day, but the cold damp of vaults and catacombs, slick with mould and glimmering niter. You would have expected Death to smell of decay, of rotting flesh and maggot meat, but it did not. And the soldier knew what it was immediately. Even before his eyes adjusted to the dark and looked to the table. Before he saw the figure that sat there in a moth-eaten monk's robe. There was no reason to assume that what he saw was Death, and not simply some forgotten corpse, but there was no doubt in the soldier's mind when he gazed upon it that he saw his doom embodied. Then it turned to look at the soldier, and what little resolve remained fled from his heart. He tried to run, but he got barely two steps before he collapsed again. Death waited patiently.

To describe it as a skeleton would be to do Death a disservice. For though the robe that sat in that chair contained only bones, it was not the skeleton that moved. It was Death. The bones were old, so ancient and brittle that the slightest pressure or movement would have rendered them down to dust. They did move; Death was no more a skeleton than you are a woollen suit. Above all it was old. Older than you could possibly dream.

And the soldier began to weep. He cried and begged Death not to take him, but Death was silent.

Now, as long as there have been people and games, there have been tales of those who gambled with Death. Some as metaphor, some as myth, but the soldier had heard enough of these tales to make his own last, desperate gamble, and he challenged Death to a game. There was silence for several long minutes before it nodded its head.

Reaching into its robe, Death pulled out three things: a chess knight, a domino and a pair of dice, each scrimshawed out of old bone. The choice presented was clear, but the soldier had enough wit about him to shake his head and reach into his pouch. He laid the cards upon the table, and asked Death if he knew how to play faro. Death paused, as though considering, before it nodded. “Very well,” it said, “and if you win, you shall not die.”

He replaced his totems within the mouldering robe, and pulled out instead a small hexagonal faro token, likewise made of bone. The soldier, starting to feel bold again as the wood of the table warped and decayed into the thirteen cards of a faro board, pushed it to the side and told Death, with the faintest hint of a smile, that he had brought his own. From somewhere, Death produced a dealing box and, placing the playing cards within it, it began to deal.

Faro, or ‘Bucking the Tiger’ as the carnival hawkers would have it, is not a complicated game. Bets are placed upon the cards and the dealer draws one card for the players and one for themselves. Bets matching the player’s card are doubled, bets matching the dealer’s cards are lost. There are a few other rules, of course, but if played honestly, then there is no betting game with fairer odds. The soldier had never before encountered an honest game.

He had before him a small pile of ivory sticks, not unlike those used for betting in mah-jongg, though the soldier had no knowledge of such a game. He knew that if his pile was gone, then his life was forfeit.

The game was slow and deliberate, and the soldier could not have said if they played for hours, for days or for months. The night outside showed no sign of ending, nor did the rain cease its drumming out a rhythm on the still open cellar door. The cards were placed slowly and deliberately by Death, and the soldier became more and more amazed with the revelation that this was least crooked game of faro he had ever played. Still, there was little scope to cheat, as there was none of the shouting or crowds that served as a distraction in every gambling parlour. The relentless hollow gaze of the collapsing holes of Death's skull were enough to keep the soldier almost from pushing his luck too far.

Then at last it reached what looked to be the final play. The deck was almost exhausted, and all the soldier had was piled upon the number three. As his reserve had dwindled, the soldier felt the wound in his chest begin to pulse with a dull ache, as thick beads of sweat rolled down his shivering face. If the final three came up for the dealer, he had lost, but if it came up for him, then he would finish the game with a higher stack than Death. Perhaps that would be enough for him to win? The rules of the wager had not been clearly explained, but as the shivering began to overtake him, the soldier clutched to this faint hope. And as Death reached its hand for the final cards, he placed his copper upon his pile, the six-sided token that reversed the bet. Now it was, if Death drew the three as the dealer's card, he would win.

Death turned the card to reveal... a King, and reached for the next one.

The soldier knew that he had made a mistake. When the three was turned, his would lose his bet and lose everything. He had only one chance, one thin sliver of hope, and even that would no doubt simply damn him further. But what else could he do? As Death turned its head towards the faro box to draw the next card, the soldier, in one practiced move, took the thin length of twine wrapped around his thumb and through the tiny, drilled hole in his copper, and pulled it taut. With an almost imperceptible flick of the wrist he pulled it back and into his hand, removing it from the board and leaving his bet to win when the three was drawn.

The terror that gripped him when Death returned its gaze to the board was deeper than any he had ever known. Every other time he had attempted that trick, the baying of the crowd and the heaving mass of patrons placing bets afforded him ample cover, yet in the stillness and dark, with just him and his endless opponent playing their game, there was surely no way such a move could go unnoticed. Death turned the card over: the Three of Spades.

It gazed at the card, then at the small pile of ivory in front of the soldier. It made no sound, and the soldier could not tell if what he heard was the rain falling outside or the beating of his own heart. Finally, Death nodded its head, and pushed its own pile of bone sticks towards the soldier.

“You win.”

Its tone was almost... happy. The soldier didn’t notice, as at these words a thrill went through his heart. He had beaten Death. He was going to live. He stood up, still giddy and feverish, but with such joy that he nigh on collapsed from the laughter that exploded from his lips. He staggered to the cellar door, expecting to see the sunrise after so long waiting in the dark, but the sky was still black. Behind him, Death waited.

The soldier noticed the pain in his chest was gone, and took in a lungful of air. It was cold, damp, and tinged with a faint whiff of something metallic. It was only then he really noticed the low, rumbling laugh that came from Death. He turned to see the figure still sat at the table, but now the old monk’s robes were soaked with blood. The bones of the figure were red and dripping, with patches of muscle appearing over them.

Then he felt it in himself. Something was very wrong. An itching, burning deep within him, then a flash of intense pain in his arm. He grabbed it instinctively, but where he touched it, the skin and flesh beneath it came away in his hand, like chunks of wet bread. Beneath it, he could see the yellow-white of bone. His bone. Old bone.

And the soldier began to scream.

As more of his body sloughed off of him into crimson piles upon the floor, he looked up at where Death had sat. In its place he saw an old monk, bloody but whole, smiling at him. The soldier held out a now bony hand towards him in supplication: “You said that if I won, then I’d live!”

The monk shook his head. “No, I didn’t.”

The end, I suppose. Thank you for indulging me, you’ve been very patient. I’m well aware I came in to tell you my own story, and instead have rattled off some old folktale, which you’ve dutifully taken down. I do feel now, though, that I’m at a place where I can tell you of myself. But for one final bit of context, I need you to watch this. Pay attention.

[John: Archivist’s note - after this point the rest of the page is covered in what appears to be a large bloodstain. The statement resumes on the page afterwards, in a somewhat shakier hand.]

Apologies for that. A bit dramatic I know, but I always feel a demonstration is best in these situations. Are you feeling better now? Well, regardless, I think I should continue; best get this down before someone comes to check on your scream. I’ve no interest in being becoming a resident medical marvel.

So yes, this is not a trick knife. You can check yourself if you want. Hell, stab me yourself if you care to. No? Fine. Perhaps I underestimated your curiosity.

After I won my game of faro, I spent almost two centuries in that unhallowed state. I remember little of that time. I was not the only one, nor was I the sole embodiment of Death. There were others, I think, in a similar state to me. I don’t know how many, but we didn’t come for everyone. I don’t know how we chose our victims, or whether we were at the whims of a higher power. I call them victims, as while we visited many a terminal or doomed soul, we did not only visit those whose time had come.

Some of them we killed ourselves. I remember my bone-sharp hands reaching into the throats of the old, the young, those who deserved it, and those who brought nothing but love to the world. Some would choose to gamble, of course. The foolish ones chose chess. I was a master of every game, knew every rule. To select the one game with no luck in it at all was always folly. In the end, it was roulette that released me. Luck bended in my favour when I played with victims, but with a game so pure in random chance as roulette, well, eventually, luck comes around, though I had to wait damn near two centuries for it to do so. I’ll never forget the look on that old man’s face when he won, and began to feel the change overtake him.

So now I’m here, and I cannot die. I can barely live, either. Food and drink make me sick, and I cannot sleep. There is an aching inside of me. A craving for something, but I don’t know what. I don’t seem to age, but I’ve only been flesh again for a few years, so can’t be sure of this. I have often wondered about whether I’m the only one like me in the world. I can’t be. It doesn’t make sense. I know there were others. But I don’t know where.

I can’t decide whether this existence I find myself in is better than the death I feared so long ago. I sometimes wonder, but have decided that it is. A living hell is, after all, still living.

Archivist Notes:

I’ve had the blood checked, and it appears to be real. O Negative. And that’s about as far as I can confirm anything about this statement, forty-four years after the fact. The details Mr. Thorp provided on his residence, occupation, et cetera, appear to have been accurate for the time, but we’ve been unable to track down any up-to-date information on him, if he even still lives.

Fiona Law, the research assistant who took the statement, passed away in 2003 from complications following a liver transplant, and with two exceptions no-one else working for the Institute at the time is still employed here. Gertrude Robinson was there, of course, but we can’t exactly ask her, and Elias was working as a filing clerk at the time. I followed up with him, and he does remember there being something of a commotion around that time about someone self-harming while giving a statement – rumours said they’d cut off their finger or something – but he wasn’t directly involved and didn’t know much more about it.

Aside from that it’s almost a complete dead end. The only other thing in the file can’t really be considered a lead, especially as it’s now gone. It was a small, hexagonal token, about an inch in diameter. There were no markings on it, but it appeared to be made of very old bone. I was unable to determine anything further, as when I picked it up, it simply crumbled to dust in my hand. Perhaps that’s fitting.

Source: Official Transcript and Podcast (MAG 29 Cheating Death)

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