Work Text:
Branch location: Usher Foundation Chicago, 1620 N Wells St.
Instance reported by: Russell Heller
Reporter initial and date: R.H. April 11 2014
Witness: Alex Rant ID#: 01273
Witness initial and date: AR 2014/4/11
Incident summary: Psychoactive candles that transported reporter to another plane of existence.
Description of incident: (attached)
[Transcript begins]
RH: So I work at the Old Town Psychic Chakra Boutique next door—
AR: Great.
RH: Do you have a problem with it?
AR: Not at all, except the fact that it’s racist bullshit with no other purpose than squeezing money out of gullible idiots. I don’t think I could live with myself, but you do you.
RH: Wow, okay. Yeah it’s kind of ‘eastern mysticism’ and it’s a disgrace to actual witchcraft, but it’s not like anyone but White people comes in anyway. And I’m kind of desperate for the money. Besides, this place isn’t any better. People are constantly coming into the boutique saying you refused to help them or said everything was in their head. They’re always really upset. You guys don’t even believe in the supernatural! You just want to go ‘hmm, interesting, psychology is so fascinating!’
AR: Telling people magic isn’t real is not on the same ethical level as cultural appro—oh, I don’t know why I bother. How would you summarize the incident?
RH: Um… psychoactive candles that transport you to another plane of existence. No, I know how that sounds, okay? But just because I believe in magic and I work in a fake magic shop doesn’t mean I’m stupid. This isn’t ‘I smelled a candle and went on a spirit journey.’ I’m here to prove to you that magic is real.
So. When you get hired at the boutique they give you kind of a signing bonus, which is just you get to pick a couple less expensive items to take home. Almost everything they sell is junk, like they sell wands made of colored glass for ‘balancing’ even though living wood works way better. Their candles are supposed to open your pores or your chakras or something and obviously they don’t do that but at least they smell nice. So unlike everything else in the boutique they have a practical purpose, and I picked out four of them for my bonus. The other three don’t matter because it’s the black, anise-scented one that’s weird. I’ve checked, and the other three are just normal candles. Lydia told me I could have an extra one of the black ones if I wanted because they don’t sell very well, I guess because they don’t really fit the image of the boutique, they’re a little too ‘dark occult magic.’ But I was happy. Five candles for the price of four for the price of zero, that’s pretty good. So I took them home and decided to burn them while I did my homework. I should mention that the reason I have to work at a place like the Chakra Boutique is because they pay me enough that I can afford rent and night school, and they’re willing to give me morning register shifts. So I get home at about three every day and cook and do homework until six, which is when I catch the bus to class. Anyway, I lit the candles and they were really strong. And normally I’m a fan of herbal scents but this one just rubs me the wrong way. It’s kind of metallic, kind of dusty, and really strong, so I cracked open the window a little, just a little because this was a couple months ago during the middle of winter, and put them on the windowsill. It didn’t really make the smell any less strong but I shrugged and got down to doing my homework.
I worked until about five o’clock before my weak shitty little desk lamp from Goodwill gave up the ghost and flickered out. I wasn’t that surprised because it had been getting dimmer for the past hour, so I got up to feel around for the light switch. But I stopped, because the two candle flames in the window… they were so weirdly steady they weren’t flickering in the wind, and they looked kind of like eyes? And then they both winked out at the same time and it was completely pitch black. I didn’t realize how weird that was at the time because I was just thinking, yeah it gets dark really early in winter. But I should have been able to see the streetlights outside, unless they were all broken. And I should have been able to see the blue digital clock on my microwave.
I kept my left hand on the edge of the table and reached out for the stove, which should have been about two feet away. I couldn’t find it. I went all the way around the table with my right arm stretched out—my kitchen isn’t big, and I’m a tall guy. At the very least I should have been able to reach up and touch the ceiling, but I couldn’t feel anything but the table. That’s another thing, there are three chairs at my kitchen table and I went all the way around it three or four times and I never found any of them. I was just about to start to panic when my right hand found a surface. I was beyond relieved… for the moment it took me to realize that it couldn’t be the wall of my kitchen, because it was smooth cold metal. There is nothing in my kitchen that’s like that. It wasn’t even that cold in my kitchen because I had the radiator on full blast. It felt like when you miss a step on the stairs and there’s that horrible jolt of surprise in your stomach and you can’t really move for a second because your knees have gone weak.
Then I remembered my phone and frantically dug around in my pocket to get it, and turned it on. When the screen lit up I was standing next to the doorway to the living room. No metal. No way to find out what it was. I went and turned on the light, tripping over two chairs on the way, and my kitchen was my kitchen again. I kind of freaked out and turned on every light in the house, but before I could think too much about what happened I realized I was about to miss my bus so I hurried to get all my stuff and out the door.
Obviously I looked online to see if anyone else had ever had something like this happen. Nothing. The next day I asked Lydia if she knew anything about stuff like that, because you know, maybe she knew something about real magic. I didn’t tell her it was related to the candles, though, because I didn’t want her to think I was saying the merchandise was dangerous. She got really agitated and started trying to come up with theories about, I don’t know, psychosomatic blindness and poor nutrition and bad feng shui. That just confirmed my suspicions that no-one in the boutique knew what they were doing in the slightest.
So when I got home I decided to do an experiment: I turned on all the lights and then lit the black candles in the kitchen window again. I waited while the metallic anise smell filled up the house, and then I blew them out. Even though it wasn’t quite sunset yet, it was like I’d blown out the sun. Everything went pitch black, and when I stretched out my hand I could feel that smooth metal wall. See, I was already pretty confident that as long as I had my phone with me I could break the darkness whenever I wanted. I guess I was sort of thinking of it as a protective talisman. A light in the darkness. So I didn’t have to be scared, and I could explore wherever the dark plane was. I could only touch one wall at once, but it seemed like they made corridors. They would turn corners and there would be breaks in the walls for new passages, and slowly I realized it was kind of like a maze. It was really, really cold in there, though. It was like being in a building where they hadn’t turned on the heating all winter, that kind of still lifeless cold feeling. And even though I knew I could get out I started to get kind of paranoid, wondering if my phone would work or not, so eventually I turned it on just to make sure. The screen of my phone was so bright it hurt my eyes, reflecting dimly off the stove and the chairs and the ceiling. The cold metal wall I had my hand on had already turned into the wall of my kitchen, though I didn’t notice when it happened. I checked the time and realized I needed to start on dinner right now if I wanted to eat before class. I don’t really know if it felt like I spent two hours in that place. It’s hard to keep track of time there. The dark has a way of… making it feel like you’ve been there forever. Like nothing outside is really real.
Well, I went back a couple more times. I couldn’t do it that often because of the way it eats up the time, but I was really curious to see if there really was anything in the maze. I’ve kind of stopped by now, for two main reasons. One is I don’t think there’s anything in the maze but more walls forever. There’s no real way to figure out where I am relative to anything, so I don’t think if there is a center or an exit I’ll ever be able to find it. The other reason is… I think there’s something else in there? It’s not that obvious, because the way sound works there it’s always kind of muffled and deadened so I can mostly only hear my own footsteps. But sometimes if I stopped suddenly I could hear something stop just a millisecond after me. And it was never right behind me. It was very quiet. But I think it’s been getting closer over all the times I’ve been in there. I’ve been trying to learn to walk silently so it can’t hear me, because I have this feeling that if I just didn’t make a sound it wouldn’t be able to follow me. If I just didn’t make a sound…
I mean, I guess that’s it. That’s the incident.
AR: That’s it.
RH: You seriously don’t believe me? You think I would make that up?
AR: You do apparently have a longstanding goal of proving to the Foundation that magic is real.
RH: You know, I thought you might not believe me. So I brought something to show you. [Sound of two glass objects being put down on the table in succession.] You ready?
AR: Sure. Uh-huh.
[Sound of a lighter flicking; a pause.]
What the hell? What did you—
RH: [Laughing] I told you, man! I literally told you and you wouldn’t listen! Get up and try to feel for the walls. Here, I found one.
AR: Okay, fine, I believe you. Magic is real, or at least some technology so advanced it’s indistinguishable. Can we go? I don’t have my phone on me.
RH: Sure. I’ll just…
It’s not working.
AR: Don’t fuck around.
RH: No, it’s not working. I’m not playing a trick on you. Come toward my voice, you can try it.
AR: Did you forget to charge it?
RH: Cross my heart and hope to die, I charged it to a hundred per cent at work—do you hear that?
AR: Do not.
RH: Shh! Just be… completely… quiet.
AR: I do hear—hey!
RH: We’re going away from the stalking monster thing. Come on.
AR: I don’t want to leave the tape recorder!
RH: Do you want the tape recorder more than you want to get away from that thing? And try to walk quieter for…
[After this Russell and Alex’s voices are too quiet to understand. The recording is silent for two minutes, and then the tape picks up quiet footsteps for thirty seconds. The rest of the recording, two and a half hours, is silent. Transcript ends.]
Follow-up:
About an hour after this interview was scheduled to begin, Xi Xi reports that she came into the interview room to see if they were done. The lights were off, and on the table were two unscented black candles in glass holders, the incident documentation, and a tape recorder that had run out of tape. Mr. Heller’s bag, containing his identification, was hung on the back of one of the chairs. Neither Alex Rant nor Russell Heller has been seen by anyone we contacted in the last week and a half, including family, friends, and employers (full list of contact information attached). I went personally to interview Ms. Lydia Frank, the morning shift manager at the Old Town Psychic Chakra Boutique, who said that the candles were a new variety from her normal supplier and she had gotten them at a discount. Investigations into the Scents & Sorcery perfume and candle company have turned up nothing out of the ordinary. To be safe, I obtained funding to buy up the Chakra Boutique’s entire stock of black candles at a bulk rate after telling Ms. Frank that someone had reported they were causing severe migraines with optical phenomena some took to be supernatural in origin. The candles have been put in storage in a sealed ten-gallon drum full of water, to ensure that they cannot be lit.
Recommendation: Keep. If nothing else I need the recording to justify why I spent $3000 on candles. But this incident report is also a piece of the puzzle that is the political situation right now. From 2012 onward we’ve seen a sudden upsurge in victims of the Darkness, which can’t mean anything good. Main branch doesn’t have any official advice so I guess we’ll just have to go it alone.
D.L. 2014/4/21