Archive of Our Own

TW: Death and dying, Death of a younger sibling, graves, body horror, blood, unsanitary, gore, dismembered human and animal remains

[INT. MAGNUS INSTITUTE, ARCHIVES, GERTRUDE’S OFFICE]
[RECORDER CLICKS ON]

GERTRUDE

(Clearing throat) Let’s see, what do we have today… ah. Statement of –

[DOOR OPENS]

Excuse me, I-

(Long pause.)

Isla?

Heya, Grandma.

…How’re you-

(overlapping) No need to go for the gun, Gertrude, it’s me. Not some weak imitation.

Prove it.

I’ll take a damn blood test if you want. Not that I’m sticking around long.

Well. If you’re not here to kill me, and you’re not coming back to work, then why, might I ask, are you here?

Wish I could say. I didn’t want to, I just… needed to.

(A pause, then thoughtfully) I guess I wanted to see the stupid look on your face when you realized what you’d done, too.

Well, we’ve all had a laugh, I’m sure. Now if you’re not going to get back to filing, I ask that you leave. I’m in the middle of recording a statement.

Ooh, another spooky statement. Very compelling. Definitely important to me, I’m sure.

I’ve asked politely. If I have to ask again, I’ll be forced to-

(Overlapping) Surprised you don’t want my statement, Gertrude. After all, you’re the one who got me here.

… Is this a request, or just a waste of my time?

Guess that depends on what you think it is.

(sighing heavily) Take a seat, then.

[CHAIR SCRAPING]

Go on. Do your little Archivist thing.

…Statement of Isla Buchanan, regarding… what I can only assume is her reappearance? Statement recorded direct from subject on January 1st, 2009.

Hm. Very vague of you. Sounds about right.

If this is just for your own personal record to squirrel away, then you don’t need to know my whole stupid backstory, but just in case some idiot stumbles onto this… well.

(She gets closer to the tape recorder for a moment) It’d be good for you to get out of Gertrude’s hair before she gets you killed.

Anyway. I was born in Kirkaldy, Scotland. Right in the coastal middle of Fife, so there’s always a ton of people around there – I guess it used to be known for exporting linoleum. It’s a pretty unremarkable town, nowadays; just a thoroughfare for the greater area. I spent most of my time outside of school wandering with my little brother on the outskirts of town, especially out around Ravenscraig Castle – little bastard liked playing knights out on the green that stretched between the beach and the building. God, he’d be at it for hours.

I guess there’s one interesting thing about Kirkaldy. There were a bunch of cist burials that happened around that area in the Bronze Age, I think. Ones around this area are usually called kistvaens. They’re pretty old news by now, so they’ve been clearly marked for a while. Any research that’s been done on them has been thoroughly exhausted, and the ones that are actually open are definitely empty. It’s usually not even that big of a deal, they’re just a little hole in the ground with a rock over the top of it. But, at some point, we were out there again, just messing around… I watched Caleb tumble into one while running away from me in a game of tag. I took my time walking over to him – sure, he was tiny, but he could crawl out of those holes easy. They’re supposed to be so shallow, just something for storage of ashes or a folded corpse, but… he never came out. And when I started getting nervous and went to look directly into the hole, there wasn’t even a tunnel underneath it. It was like… he just slipped into the earth. There wasn’t even a single trace of him being there in the first place. I don’t think my parents ever quite forgave me for letting something happen to him like that, especially when he just… went missing while I was standing right there. They knew I’d seen him when he vanished, I told them that much when I ran to them in a panic, but… from that point on it was just me. The irresponsible big sister.

Ugh. This is all a long way of saying that I became very… distrusting of graves, and did a hell of a lot of research into them. I looked up phenomena that could possibly explain the whole situation, but all of them were too specific; a peat bog definitely wasn’t in that area, and there was no way a tiny localized earthquake just… opened and closed the ground. I ended up here because I still couldn’t find any logical, or even an illogical answer to that.

I don’t know what I was expecting from a place with as dubious a rep as The Magnus Institute, but it definitely wasn’t this; for a while, it seemed almost mundane. Boring, honestly. You’ve kept this place so much of a mess that it seemed like filing wasn’t really a priority, even though it’s a big part of the job. Took me a while to figure out you were doing that intentionally. Well, no skin off my back, it certainly made my life easier in between the routine investigations. Made for decent reading material, too, since easily over half of it is complete nonsense, just an attention seeker prattling on about a bit of fog, or a disjointed account of an elderly senile person misremembering something. It felt like a good way to relax when I wasn’t running around talking to those same exact people.

Some of it… some of it was different, though. And when I finally needled you enough about it, you spilled everything, and… I could never unlearn it. Thanks for that, by the way. I’d been managing to somehow stay ignorant to the themes running through all the stuff you were giving special attention to, but now I couldn’t unsee all of the patterns there. As much as it bothered me knowing this stuff, though, it did finally give me a place to start when it came to the information I was looking for. So, I started digging into these… monsters more.

And then… you finally asked. You asked if I wanted to help you save the world from one of the entities manifesting with one of these vague-ass rituals. The Flesh. The Last Feast, you called it. It sounded so simple, the way you put it… I thought we’d be doing something really good for the world, and all at the cost of some C4 and a couple dozen cultist’s lives. Easy choice, when you laid it out the way you did.

Of course, you know how well that went. The Last Feast was blown to bits, sure, but not before you left me to die there. “Just set these in place, and I’ll retreat to rig up the detonator,” you said. “I’ll give you five minutes.” You were my supervisor, someone I trusted, and you just –

(Overlapping) For what it’s worth, I’m sorry –

(Overlapping) Shove it. I don’t want to hear your excuses. Anyway. I was far enough away that I wasn’t just vaporized on impact, but… it wasn’t exactly pretty. The explosion was massive, and it… it threw me into the pit. I don’t know how long I just… laid there, stunned, surrounded by this unending, awful, bloody pile of discarded parts from carcasses I wouldn’t in my worst nightmares want to identify. Not that I really get a choice in the matter, since that wet, crawling sensation just comes over me sometimes and I can’t not think about it.

Like I said. I don’t know how long I was there. I’m pretty sure that part of my arm was lost to the pit. It didn’t even register that it was gone until way later. And I’m not sure what made me snap out of the daze, either; maybe it was just the sense of impending doom as the mouth – pit – whatever – collapsed in on itself while it was trying to desperately swallow the last meal it’d be getting for a couple hundred years. All the sudden movement just sort-of shook me out of it a bit. That whole sequence gets a little blurry; I think I used a… what was it, a tooth…? Something on the edge to haul myself out and just ran. I didn’t even look in a direction, I just picked a hallway and kept running, trying to outpace the building starting to crumble.

Eventually, my body gave up on me. It had to at some point with how much blood I’d lost. I just… collapsed, in some corner, in some part of the catacombs. And I thought that was where I was going to die, lost and forgotten and almost certainly covered up by the person who’d tricked me into helping her. Probably written out of everything possible. Buried alive. At least then I’d get to know how Caleb felt.

But… after a while, I realized I just. Wasn’t dying. And instead of the dust and faint scent of iron, it smelled almost wet. Not warm wet, like... like a cave. All cold, with the kind of damp that seems to seep into your bones and stay there, icing you from the inside out.

Do you remember the Nathaniel Thorp statement? I can’t remember the number for it, but… at that exact second, it was all I could think about. It just sort-of popped into my head, and maybe it was because of that, or maybe it was because of the massive blood loss, but I wasn’t at all surprised when I wrenched open my eyes and saw a hooded figure in the opposite corner.

We stared at each other for a long time. I wasn’t begging for my life; it wasn’t begging for a game. Death… death has never scared me. It’s the lead up to it, the thing that could cause it, that frightens me, but the actual concept of ceasing to exist? It’s just an inevitability. I wonder if that threw it for a loop or something.
Finally, I asked if it was actually going to kill me anytime soon or if it was just going to sit there staring at me with its stupid skeleton eyes, and it shrugged at me. Death fucking shrugged. For some reason, that pissed me off more than anything that had happened that day, because like, how could it be so blasé about my death? Even if it doesn’t scare me, it’s still important to me. So, I asked if it was just… not going to leave until I quit or until I asked it to play a game, and it just… didn’t move. At all. At that point, I was just thinking I wanted something to distract from the nightmare that was happening on my arm – I’d made a point not to look at it yet – and asked if I could play something. And it took forever, but it nodded, and it said the thing that made me even more sure it was the same sort of creature from Thorp’s statement: “If you win, you shall not die.” It even pulled out the chess knight, the domino, and the dice, the whole bit.

Unfortunately for Death, I remembered the hell out of how that ended, so I hounded it for a bit. Trying to negotiate contract details. “Shall not die? Does that mean I get to live my own life, or do I turn into you?” I asked. It seemed… taken aback by that. I’m guessing it doesn’t get haggled with on life or death stakes that often. “If I get to keep living, I want to live as I was before all of this fucking nonsense,” I added. “Maybe that’s not possible for you. But if that’s not possible, then I don’t want it. I don’t want to become whatever you are, just bringing misery to other people.”

It kept staring at me, and eventually, it tucked the domino and the dice away back into its… self. I don’t know if it was its ribcage, or what. All that was left was the chess piece. “Win against me at this, and you’ll go back to living as you were before. Human and all. No strings.”

I told it that I’d hold it to that. I’ve always been alright at chess, but I doubted I could actually do anything against Death personified. Still, there wasn’t any other option. So, I pushed my way up over to where it was, and it pulled a chessboard and box of pieces out of… somewhere. I got black.

The thing with chess is that if everyone involved knows the rules, it’s incredibly hard to cheat. People don’t turn away from chess boards. There’s no chance of being able to swap out a card, or switch in a rigged die, or swipe a piece; anyone who’s even paying a modicum of attention would notice something so obvious. I guess that’s why Death picked it. It’s a game that takes actual skill to beat. Something that would make me have to earn what I wanted. And honestly, it wasn’t even something I wanted at that point, I just wanted the pain to stop. One way or another. Either way out, I’d be earning something better than the weird purgatory I’d ended up in. At that point, I wasn’t sure if my heart was still even beating, and there was no way to keep track; it wasn’t one of those timed chess games. It could’ve been five minutes, or five months, and I’d never be able to tell you.

Honestly, I think I won by accident. I didn’t cheat. But I just… realized Death had pinned its king in between some pawns by accident, and I just had to move my bishop… and boom. Checkmate. It took me a minute to say it, too; I had to stare at it for a bit to make sure I’d actually gotten it right. Then I called it, and Death just… nodded. Like it was a little resigned, but almost… satisfied. I couldn’t tell you if it vanished, or what, but I blinked, and it almost seemed like it folded in on itself somehow. Just popping out of reality again. For some reason, it made the world seem… warmer? Less damp, at least. Like I wasn’t sitting in a crypt, just in a dusty room that was probably cut off by collapse.

At that point, I almost started to lose it, because what the hell had I been thinking? I was alive now, but at what cost? I was stuck somewhere where I was eventually going to die anyway, and I didn’t have an arm, and… I spiraled like that for a little while. It took me attempting to slap myself back to reality that I realized that I needed my right hand to actually do the slap I just did. So that meant… I had to have my right hand.

Part of the bargain had been to let me live how I was before. Not just to continue living exactly as I was. So I had my arm. Great. I was about to get up and leave the room, maybe to desperately search for a staircase, but kicked something across the stone before I really got the chance.

Where Death had sat, there had been a small, black chess piece. Ivory. A bishop. It had left it there, and somehow, I knew it was for me. So I kept it. No, I am not submitting it to Artifact Storage.

I wandered the corridors for a while. I don’t know how long. But I eventually found a staircase up and out of there, and I burst out covered in dust into the lobby of a hotel down the street. I don’t speak Turkish, so it was a bit of a hassle, but I got the date. It had been a full week. And knowing what you were like, I got my records checked at the embassy, and yeah. I’d been reported deceased. So that was a fucking hassle. It’s the only reason it took me so damn long to get back. Once my passport finally got cleared enough to take me back to London since I needed to work out my paperwork over here, I pretty much made a beeline here.
And… that’s it.

So you just. Survived death.

I guess.

Do you still have the –

[LIGHT CLICKING SOUND.]

Yeah. Think I’ll be keeping it around.

Have you in any way tested if you’re impossible to destroy in the same way Nathaniel Thorp was?

I might be a lot of things, but I’m not an idiot, Gertrude.

That, at least, I can confirm.

Gee, thanks. Anyway. I think I’ll be taking my –

[KNOCKING ON DOOR.]
[GERTRUDE GROANS]

(Adopting a frailer voice) Hello?

[DOOR OPENS]

Miss Robinson, I- Isla? What’re you – I thought you were –

(noticeably different voice tone) Michael! I… um.

(Worried) You’ve been missing for over a month, where’ve you…?

(Pause.) You… she didn’t tell you-?

(sharply) There wasn’t anything to tell, you vanished while we were travelling.

You old crone-!

[CHAIR SCRAPING]

…No. It’s not worth it. This… this isn’t worth it. I’m sorry, Michael, I didn’t want to… to do any of this. But… consider this my resignation.

You can’t leave.

Watch me.

Isla, wait –

[TAPE CLICKS OFF]
[INT. MAGNUS INSTITUTE, ARCHIVES, GERTRUDE’S OFFICE, LATER]
[TAPE CLICKS ON]

Well, that was a headache.

Obviously, there’s not much research to be done into this particular statement, since it’s from an assistant herself, and it’s regarding several things we already know the source of. And despite her attitude, I trust that she knows what she’s talking about. The only problem is that she’s now created me the problem of finding more… realistic theories to feed Michael. I wasn’t expecting her to crash in and almost disrupt his naivete.

The fact that an artifact of Death just came so casually into my office and left just as easily is a bit unsettling, too. Maybe in a couple years, I may be able to convince her to part with the thing; right now, it seems she just wants it out of spite. Understandable, I suppose.

[TAPE CLICKS OFF]
[INT. MAGNUS INSTITUTE, ARCHIVES, JOHN’S OFFICE]
[TAPE CLICKS ON]

As if I really needed more evidence that Gertrude Robinson wasn’t exactly kind to her employees. It is… interesting to know, though, that apparently cheating is what gets you transformed into, for lack of a better term, a Grim Reaper. Shame that Miss Buchanan had to get caught in the crossfire. Seems something of a pattern for Gertrude, willingly destroying people she’s close to for the ‘greater good’.

I have been unable to contact Miss Buchanan yet, though most recent records that I can see show her moving to the United States, where she currently lives in the New England area. Not that I’m particularly keen to travel back out that way, but it still would be nice to try and see if she knows anything – she seems to have been able to leave the institute without the typical negative repercussions, which is intriguing. And she at least doesn’t seem super aggressive.

Then again, people associated with the End usually aren’t.

[RECORDER CLICKS OFF]