Work Text:
MAG021 – Resident N/A – “Freezefall”
KEEPER
Interview with Robert Kelly regarding his criminal career and its end. Original interview taken October 20th, 2002. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Record Keeper of the Magnus Sanctuary.
Interview begins.
KEEPER (INTERVIEW)
Hey! Yeah so, I don’t actually like... Live here. My mum does, and I’ve been trying to get her to come up to live with me in Scotland, but she’s got Seasonal Affective Disorder and she says the dreary winter would absolutely kill her. It’s funny, really, ‘cause the “dreary winter” was exactly what saved me. But that’s a very long story. One I came here to tell you guys.
See, what happened to me was a tall tale that really just keeps getting taller. Which is ironic, seeing as the whole point of what I met was that it got… less high up. But I can promise that this all really happened. It’s the story of how something saved my life, and I can promise you that I’d be dead without it. And it’s a story I really need to tell.
So let me start from the beginning.
I was never really a brave kid, you know? Just… Kind of a stupid one. I got into a lot of petty crime as a child, stuff my mum would always condemn but never stop me from doing. Candy robberies with the gang of frankly rabid tweenage kids, and then graffiti on the walls, and then smuggling in cigarettes for some truly terrible friends of mine. All just dumb little misdemeanors, stuff that you could do if you were a kid and you didn’t had the brains to think about the consequences. Which, in case I haven’t made it clear, I really didn’t.
Once I got out of highschool things only went downhill. The crimes got bigger, and I got more reckless. The only thing that really changed is that… well I stopped telling my mum what I was really doing. I felt awful about hiding it, so I just kinda… Sent her money. Tons of it. I said it was from odd jobs I'd been doing, which, now that I'm thinking about it… Wasn't technically incorrect… 'Cause I'd been robbing banks. All across the world. The American Republique, The Empire of China, and even here in my good old home of The British Monarchy. Name a place that still has money to steal, and I was probably involved in the latest big heist there. Am I proud of it from a moral standpoint? No. I was an awful person. Am I a little bit proud of myself otherwise? Absolutely.
And here's where it all goes wrong.
See, usually stories like this end with "And then the Monarchy enforcers tore down my door and killed me". But see, I got even less lucky. Halfway through breaking into a really nice car over in Scotland, I realized that it belonged to something of a mafia boss. Like in those old American films. And as I soon found out, the car I had seriously damaged was a gift from a late lover of his.
So I end up thrown into a dark room with a couple other poor sods, waiting in cowering fear till my inevitable death. I was blindfolded when they took me out to die, but I could tell that I was being accompanied by an old man from his strange mutterings. And I'd have had to be eight types of deaf not to hear the helicopter blade spinning above my head. So as the telltale movements of a helicopter lifting from the ground began to rattle through my bones, I felt myself begin to panic. I’ve always been scared of heights, you see, and it was pretty clear that it was going to be a long, cold, fall. But as I heard the sound of the doors open, I felt the old man whisper something in my ear: “Keep calm.”
With that, the blindfold was ripped from my head and I was tossed out of the helicopter. For 10 meters I was in freefall, screaming in utter terror as my would-be killers sped off into the clear blue sky. I was terrified, frightened beyond all belief, and I was falling and then… Then I wasn’t.
Well, I should be clear: I was still falling. But the wind wasn’t whipping by my face. The ground wasn’t rushing up to me. I wasn’t so much falling as I was… moving downward. My flailing movements began to slow. Or maybe… Maybe everything else began to speed up. Watching the world around me felt like watching a timelapse, while I was stuck in a freezeframe. The crystal blue sky began to cloud over and turn gray. The world began to grow cold. And then it started to snow. The ground became a blanket of white, piling up until the mountain valley below had at least a meter of snowflakes set up to cushion my fall. I was reminded of an old myth I’d heard: If you landed feet-first into snow or marsh, you could survive a skydive without a parachute. It seemed ridiculous, but then again, I was currently floating through freefall as the world sped by.
The sky almost flashed then, light, then dark, then light, then dark. The snow piled higher and higher below as flakes came down around me. Days were passing as I came down in freefall, until I was almost painfully low to the ground. I closed my eyes, attempted to maneuver my legs down, took a deep breath and…
The next thing I knew I was buried in the snow up to my neck, in a state of shock. The next few minutes were a blur, really. A woman wrapped up in winter clothes pulled me out, and… Frankly I don’t know how I managed to explain away what the hell had happened to me, but she was apparently satisfied with it. She took me to this nice little cabin. Very cozy. Cluttered in a way that would make a minimalist’s head spin, but comfy. And even though I had a bit of a chill as I rested by the fire that he sat me down in front of, I wouldn't have had the weather any other way. It was like this place, this Home, was made better by the cold and chilly world around it. I… I felt at Home there. Shielded from the big outside world. From the heights. From the fall.
When I was out of shock, she struck up conversation, apparently ignoring the strange circumstances that had brought me to her door. She introduced herself as Harriet Fairchild, and said that she tended to keep to herself in this little cabin for weeks at a time, so the odd guest was always welcome. I nodded, and said that I’d just recently finished up spending a lot of time to myself. Which, technically speaking, was true. I then asked if she knew the date. And you know what she said?
December 8th. Two months after I’d been kidnapped. Two months had passed in what felt like half an hour.
I booked the quickest flight I could back to London. I visited my mum here, and I've been keeping contact as much as I can. She was worried sick about me, understandably so, and I came clean about everything. At least… Everything but what happened in the sky.
I feel guilty about spending so little time here. I try to stay in the big city, to be a good son. But there's nothing like being back up there in Scotland, at the cabin, with Harriet. There's nothing like being Home.
KEEPER
Recording ends. Before I address the newest supernatural claim made in this interview, there are some details that I feel should be noted. Firstly, while Scotland is known for its gang violence, the likelihood that Mr. Kelly so personally slighted a "Mafia Boss" as he claims is slim to none. This is likely an exaggeration.
As far as the supernatural content itself goes, I would say that there is nothing to corroborate this tall tale, but that would not be strictly true: Tim, in his ever-present quest to prove me wrong, outdid himself on this particular venture. He dug up Mr. Kelly's mailing address from his correspondence with his mother, and as it turns out, the location marches up perfectly with a small cabin in a Scottish mountain valley, prone to flash-snowstorms. On my desk is a screenshot of the cabin roof in Google Maps, with the penned-in caption of… (Sigh) … "How's this for empirical evidence, Jonny?"
Harriet Fairchild, however… The last name is familiar. Strangely so. In fact, I believe it may very well be-
[DOOR OPENS, CHAIR TUMBLES]
Wh- Martin?! What happened?!
MARTIN
(Incredibly weakly) Jon… I’m… I’m sorry to bother you but...
[HE SLUMPS TO THE FLOOR WITH A HEAVY THUD]
KEEPER
Oh my god.
[CLICK]