Chapter Text
There is a handwritten manilla note stickied to the front of this ledger. It is written in fading green ink, quickly, and with an unsteady hand.
No date is signed, only a set of initials at the bottom.
It reads as follows:
“I found these documents within a sealed room adjacent to the lower level of the Archive. Its singular entrance was very well hidden in the ceiling of the tunnels and took an impressive amount of force to open from beneath.
I do not know how or why, but this room was protected for some time by a presence of The Dark; no matter the mechanism through which this was accomplished, it seems to have been done in an attempt to shield this place from the sight of Elias Bouchard and his predecessors. After the entrance was breached, the Darkness quickly dissipated into generally mundane gloom after a few minutes. In an effort to honor the wishes of whomever hid these documents, I have moved the contents of the cabinet into my own safe room below the institute, which should, under most circumstances, provide adequate shielding from prying eyes.
The room itself was empty, aside from a small filing cabinet within which these documents could be found along with an… uncanny amount of cobwebs and a thick layer of dust. Dates on the documents themselves place these files neatly within the mid-twentieth century. Notably, there is not an absence of statements filed under this time period in the main archive; these papers do not appear to be official archival catalogue. They appear to have been transcribed by one Roxanne Pierce in regards to her time as a researcher in the Institute and certain off-record interviews. They also make frequent mention of Iris Emile; an ill-fated archivist who met their end some time before my own predecessor, Angus Stacey, took up the position. Official records of either of these people have either been stricken or simply do not exist; I may only corroborate the validity of these files by my own knowledge of Iris Emile as a cautionary tale, and by the modern understanding to which the Fears are held.
I find myself at a loss when attempting to explain why these files were so well hidden from the eyes of the Ceaseless Watcher. Their contents cast an interesting light on the nature of the Entities, their origins, and the development of modern Fear Theory, but nothing within them seems to be directly relevant to the greater agenda of the Magnus Institute.
My only conjecture is to the nature of the documents themselves. It is not a feeling that I can concisely describe in writing, but I feel as though these documents are somehow fundamentally different than the other statements, yet they still are not mundane. I believe it is related to their continued exposure to the Dark, but these documents feel… obfuscated, strangely, on a metaphysical level. As best I can tell, I can read and understand them just fine, but I can’t Know these documents in the same way I Know the statements which I feel the Eye feed upon. They feel like the tiniest pinprick of a blind spot in the greater eye of the Watcher. It is not a blind spot I ever would have noticed otherwise, but now that I am aware of its presence, it is just prominent enough to be noticed.
I have no idea what this implies.
Nonetheless, I have put as much time as I can reasonably afford into analysis of these documents and have found nothing. They are an enigma to me. I have dedicated a very nice drawer in my safe room to the ledger containing them, and until I stumble upon a miraculous piece of evidence shedding light upon them, they will remain there. Consider them unofficial archive catalogue; apocrypha to the ceaseless watcher’s refined metaphysical palate.
If my successor is reading this, I sincerely apologize for the world you have found yourself in. I pray that my actions will ensure I have no successor.
If Elias Bouchard is reading this, then I am certainly dead and my saferoom has been desecrated. Perhaps you will know why someone went to such great lengths to hide these documents from your voyeurism. I don't plan on asking."
- GR