Work Text:
[CLICK]
ARCHIVIST
Statement of Miceál Crowley, regarding a book he received from a friend. Original statement given April 22nd 2017. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.
Statement begins.
ARCHIVIST (STATEMENT)
Alright. First of all, I apologise for the handwriting. I’m just so mad about this book, all the time, and thinking about it just makes me
Sorry. Didn’t realise that pen was so fragile. I’ll be more gentle with this one. I suppose I had better start from the beginning, as instructed, but the problem is I don’t exactly know when the beginning was. I remember… well, I think I remember hearing about the book for a few months before I actually got my hands on it, but that can’t be right, because—well. You’ll see.
I might not know when I first heard of the book, but I know where I first heard of it. I had a group of friends, back before my attitude went to hell anyway, and I would meet with them every Thursday night at our local pub. It’s in Twickenham, called The Alexander Pope, it’s a pretty nice place if kind of expensive like everywhere in Twickenham. Anyway, the group consisted of a strange and eclectic mix of people, and I knew them from various places – work, friends of friends, other people in the pub we’d got chatting to a few weeks or months ago and kind of adopted, other people’s work colleagues… that kind of thing. We had a real breadth of experience there, too, like we always won the damn quiz and I’m pretty sure it ruffled some feathers, but that’s what happens when the youngest in the group is in their early twenties and the oldest remembers World War Two first hand. What I’m trying to get at here is that we were a real esoteric bunch, and for us to have many strange interests and odd habits between us was totally normal. Like, there really wasn’t much that could shock any of us, and we were all pretty open and highly entertained by the weird and the taboo and the uh. Well, perverted. That’s not to say we were all perverts, swinging around one another’s houses and doing God knows what (I would like to note that the idea was laughable, considering the group contained at least two septuagenarians) but it is to say that we would talk about pretty much everything if it meant we could have a laugh.
It was on one of these nights that I first heard about the book. It came up when we were talking about terrible books, the ones we hated or the worst we’d ever read (which, surprisingly you might find, are not always the same book), and one of the guys there – his name was Andreas Valstad, but looking back now I don’t think that was his real name – brought it up. I didn’t really know Andreas that well, because he was pretty busy and he didn’t show up every week. I would say he probably showed up once a month, maybe once every six weeks? That was the only time I saw him, too, aside from if I caught him on the high street and gave him a quick wave, but yeah. He kept himself to himself, and he was a very odd guy. I mean, not outside of the realms of what you’d expect from our group, but I think the main thing that struck me about him was that he was very quiet. The rest of us, we were a real rowdy bunch, which perhaps one or two exceptions which usually had more to do with amount of weed consumed than personality, but Andreas was very quiet. He would just sit and watch us all talking, and sometimes I’d get the impression he wasn’t even listening at all, but then he would abruptly lean forward and he’d always drop something good. Some juicy bit of information, some crazy story, some great joke. So it was well worth having him around, and we were always eager to see him, pleased when he stepped through the doors and half-raised a hand in greeting as he spotted us at our usual table. He was good for a round, too – generous, sometimes would even get a couple of rounds in a row, which you know. For a table of up to ten, in a Twickenham pub? He must have been making some mad cash. I was further convinced of this when I saw his tattoos. He didn’t have many, but the ones he had were well done, and they clearly wouldn’t have been cheap. I don’t remember all of them – he told me a few of them but I didn’t see them, so they didn’t stick in my memory – but one of them was a full sleeve, looked like a stark forest at night, pretty spooky actually, but when you looked closer you realised it was all one single line weaving around and doubling back and creating the one solid image, kind of spiky and with visible “joints” where lines had crossed back over and joined on. Kind of like a spider’s web, really, I guess. it was pretty cool, and I remember he could close his eyes and draw it from memory, the pen never leaving the page.
Anyway, it was that bastard’s fault I got into the whole mess. He piped up during the bad book discussion, told us all about a friend of his online. Didn’t give us a name then, guy was an online friend so it was just “my friend” this and “my friend” that, but I’ll get back to him in more detail later. What’s important for now is that this friend of his – of Andreas’s, I mean – was reading this utterly terrible book that Andreas had read about, or heard about, or something. I don’t know. It’s all kind of muddled in my head, but basically Andreas had heard of it from somewhere and it was supposed to be utterly diabolical. Terribly written, cringey sex scenes – it wasn’t supposed to be erotica, apparently it was supposed to be this deconstruction of capitalism, some dystopian criticism where people could sell themselves into slavery to pay off inherited debt, set some time in not-too-futuristic Maryland, but despite this claim it was apparently just bad sex and worse characterisation. Disastrous writing. Like the worst of fanfic managed to get published professionally, you know? I don’t know how much you people know about fanfic, actually. I can’t see many of you wasting your time, or having any time for it at all, but you never know. Maybe one of you is out there writing a 100k-er on AO3 or something. Well, I’m sure you’ve at least heard of it, but what’s important to note is that fanfic is known for its tropes, and while that works great in fanfic – you can know exactly what you’re going for – it doesn’t work so great in published fiction. And the suspension of disbelief is much more lax in fanfiction, I find. What I’m saying is that in fanfic you could get away with a finger-locking anal plug or whatever, but you could not get away with that in a published book, and certainly not if you never actually go into any detail about HOW IT WORKS.
Alright. I’ve taken a breather. I’ll try and write a little more neatly. I apologise to whichever of you has to read this. Or try to read it.
So Andreas found out about this book and he told his friend about it, and his friend asked him if Andreas was going to read it and Andreas was like, hell no, why would I do that? Which, after hearing all these horror stories, you couldn’t blame him, right? Well, most of our table understood, and had no desire to witness this horror for themselves, but here’s the thing about me. My fatal flaw – an even more apt term, it seems like these days – is that I have to know. No matter how horrible something is made out, no matter how many times I’m told something is awful, disgusting, disturbing, terrible, whatever, I have to know. I have to. It’s pathological. I don’t know why, and oftentimes I find myself asking what I’m doing or if it’s worth it, and my mother always said it would get me into trouble one day, this insatiable curiosity of mine, but I can’t help it. Everything I do whenever I have an iota of spare time – and sometimes even when I don’t – is dedicated to just… finding stuff out. Having new experiences. I read hundreds of books a year; I watch endless documentaries; one of my hobbies is actually urban exploration, you know, breaking into abandoned buildings just to look around because I just have to know what it looks like, have to see what I can find there… one time I found this house that had absolutely everything still left in it, and I spent three days going into that place and meticulously going from room to room, reading—it sounds bad, but reading like, the letters they left behind, their journals, all the newspapers left there. Can I rephrase that, actually? I never break in, I always find a way in without causing damage, but you know. Abandoned buildings, lots of ways in without technically doing any damage. What I’m trying to say is that I’m very nosy, and I frequently let this nosiness lead me into dangerous situations. I always thought, if I was going to have some kind of paranormal experience or whatever, it would be in one of these places. Turns out you cannot predict these things at all, and when something supremely messed up finally walked into my life it was on a warm bright summer evening at my local pub. Who would have thought?
What does this tangent have to do with anything? Well, it means that when I heard about this terrible book, I had to read it. It wasn’t even like it would be a waste of time, because as I said, I’m a very voracious reader, and I’ve been known to read three books a day when I get going. So this one single, average-length, badly written book? With vocabulary as simplistic as what I was hearing, I could manage it in a couple of hours. Needless to say I was profoundly curious about this book, and I expressed some of this curiosity – I remember I didn’t outrightly say I wanted to read it at that time, because I remember thinking it was odd, like something was holding me back from saying it, but I did say that part of me really wanted to know, and that even if it was terrible it was driving me mad only being able to imagine. Andreas assured me that no matter what I was thinking, it was so much worse; needless to say this increased my curiosity, but before I could say… whatever it was I was going to say, probably something about where I could get it (Andreas hadn’t given a title even at this point, which I only found odd later when I tried to search for it myself and realised I knew nothing about it) Andreas glanced at his phone and, making his apologies, said he had to leave.
The book… well. It haunted me in the following three weeks. I didn’t have Andreas’s number, and it occurred to me that I really didn’t see him all that often outside of the pub quiz, and I didn’t know why that annoyed me so much but suddenly I felt stupid for not getting his number at least. The thought that I would have to wait until God knows when before I saw him again, and then even if he did tell me the book’s name I might not be able to find it easily or if I did I might have to wait for it to be delivered… it was infuriating. For some reason I had it in my head that it would be difficult to find, because I thought something so bad and so full of sexual content wouldn’t really be on the New Releases shelf at Waterstone’s, would it? Well, I did check, actually, but I didn’t know what I was looking for and none of the books I saw there seemed to fit the bill. I had to just wait it out, and finally Andreas showed up again. I was eyeing him up as soon as he came through the door, and—alright, this is going to sound stupid, but it’s about to get a whole lot stupider so what the hell. When he came in through the door he did his usual little half-raised wave, and as we all waved back and beckoned him over I saw his eyes linger on me for a moment and he… I don’t know how to describe it, but it was like his… like his grin sharpened, somehow. He looked like… like a fox who had just spotted the rabbit. I remember it made me feel cold, and then he was walking over and it was all normal again, and I brushed it off. I mean, right? I just brushed it off, and then he did something weirder anyway, so I guess I got kind of distracted.
He sat down next to me, and after the usual greetings and brief catching up the conversation went back to various topics, various people forming various little groups… Andreas turned to me and pulled his rucksack up from between his feet, putting it on his knees and unzipping it. He told me he had something for me, and he pulled out a book. It was wrapped in a bag – just a regular shopping bag, Waterstone’s as a matter of fact, and the bag was all folded and tucked over it so the book itself couldn’t be seen. He told me to keep hold of it for now, and when I automatically went to peek he shook his head and tapped my hand, telling me that… I don’t know, I can’t remember, but it was an odd phrase to use. He was essentially telling me not to check it here, not to start reading, but he worded it like… now’s not the time or this isn’t the place or something. I was a little confused and very impatient, but I figured he just didn’t want the book passed around and conversation to be dominated by whatever was in it, so I let it go. I stayed long enough to be polite, and shortly after Andreas made his own excuses and left, so did I. I got a few weird looks for this, because I usually stayed until closing, but I made sure to yawn a little on my way out and I think I managed to pull off I was just tired or whatever.
It was an agonising twenty minute walk back to my flat, overlooking Twickenham Green. I got back in, kicked my shoes off, and still in my jacket went and sat at the table in the living room. I had no idea what to expect, and as I pulled the bag away from the book I had a sudden moment, ever so brief, just before the plastic was pulled away, where I asked myself if I really wanted to do this. At the time I assume it was because I was going to read some terrible sex scenes that I’ll never get out of my head, but I’ve been spending far too much time on the internet for years now, so I thought you know, it won’t be the worst thing I’ve ever seen. Of course now I know that I was probably picking up on what was to come, but how was I supposed to know? I took the book out of the bag and looked at it.
It was not what I was expecting. At first glance it looked like a relatively new publication, hardback and with a modern design, clearly done by a graphic artist. The cover was pale pink, kind of what you’d call a dusty pink, I guess; there was a well-dressed man in a bow tie and tuxedo kneeling on one knee, like a proposal, but one hand was reaching behind him or tucked into a pocket or something and his other arm was resting across his knee. Stylised white scribbles covered his face, and the title was at the top, in block capitals: DOCILE. Then across the man’s chest, in white, was the tagline I already knew to scoff at: There is no consent under capitalism. The author’s name – K. M. Szpara – was at the bottom, and it was not a name I recognised. Like I said, at first glance it was a very ordinary looking hardback book, around 500 pages but with fairly large text, but the more I looked at it the more it seemed… odd. It started to look kind of old, I suppose? I’ve seen old books before, I know the feel and the smell of them. The cover of this book felt the same as those older books did, the binding weaker, as though it had lost its binding totally and been rebound. The edges of the pages were gilded, but dully so, as though they’d been left out in the sun. The pages themselves were slightly yellowed, and the whole book had that musty, old-book smell. I also noticed an inscription on the inside, written in ink pen with quite a flourish – very curly handwriting, old-timey cursive I suppose, the kind they don’t teach anymore. I can’t remember the exact words, but it wasn’t a dedication. It was a property thing, a statement of ownership rather than a please return to. Something about it being from the personal library of, and then a name. I can’t remember the name, but it looked kind of German? Jan, or Jur… something Jur, I think. Hang on. OK. I just Googled names from that area beginning with those letters and saw it again: Jurgen. That was definitely the first name, but aside from the fact it began with an L I can’t remember the last name.
Anyway, I start reading. It was late, but I hadn’t had too much to drink, and by this point I was insatiably curious. At first it was… well, it was bad, sure enough, but it was funny-bad. You ever read something so bad you just have to laugh? Or see a movie so bad it’s almost good? Well, this book wasn’t good by any stretch of the imagination, but it was funny. It was just… it was so bad. It was terrible, in fact. I’ve read a lot of books in my time and I can now safely consider myself to be something of a snob, but even without my very high standards this was a bad book. The writing was very juvenile, there was barely any plot to speak of, the characters were one-dimensional and had the mental monologue of a toddler… it was just awful, and I remember laughing as I read through the first few chapters. It seemed so ridiculous; I could not believe this had been published.
I suppose I should try and explain something of the plot, if you could even call it that. I don’t know if this has anything to do with anything you might need from me, but I was told to make this thorough and well. You asked.
Basically, the plot follows two men: Elisha Wilder and Alexander Bishop the Third, even though he’s actually the second, because only he and his dad are named Alexander and the matriarch of the family is named AlexanDRA, but like whatever, it’s cool. It’s fine. It’s not like you need to keep your details straight in a story, is it? Not like it matters, does it? Not like
Sorry. I promise I’ll try not to break this pen too. Deep breaths. OK.
The plot follows these two guys, and basically Elisha has inherited three million dollars of debt because debt is inherited in this particular dystopian society, and Alex is the trillionaire who buys him because that’s a thing now. Yeah, slavery. You can sell yourself to pay off your debt, in any way you’re thinking. Yes, even that one. Also Alex’s company creates something called Dociline, which is the drug that the slaves – known in the book as Dociles – can take. This drug keeps them nice and compliant, and makes it so they can’t form long-term memories, meaning that once they stop taking the drug they’ll forget their entire servitude. Unfortunately, Dociline apparently has some nasty side effects, and some unfortunate people – like Elisha’s mother – never come out of this Docile-state. For this reason, Elisha refuses Dociline – which is his right, because in this world slaves have rights like being able to vote, being able to refuse drugs, etc – and this is a shame because Alex is obviously head of the company, and also he’s trying to work on the third new and improved batch of Dociline, and he was going to test it on Elisha but Elisha said no so now Alex has to “train” him without the drug and of course this means lots and lots of sex. I mean, right off the bat, the very first time they have sex? There’s a finger-locking buttplug. Like, this is apparently what futuristic technology here is doing. Oh and of course the scene is all sexy and Elisha has a great time, never mind that it’s his first time and ANYONE who’s done ANYTHING with the back passage should know that it’s not going to be all sunshine and rainbows, and also he didn’t wash his ass at all, and oh yeah Elisha is a literal slave so this is quite literally rape but all the narrative does is try to make you feel sorry for Alex because oh no, poor him, he has to rape his slave without drugs so now the slave will be aware and it’s so awkward for him, and GOD I can’t stand it but anyway anyway ANYWAY that’s the basic “plot”.
On to the—well, the paranormal stuff, I guess. This book, as you can see—it makes me so mad. It makes me so, so mad. I can’t—I can’t keep it in, I can’t stop thinking about it. I want to stop reading it but I can’t. At the moment I’m only about a third of the way through, I think, because I’ve been trying to read as little as possible each time, and I just—there’s this scene where the rich people take their “Dociles” or whatever and they dress them up like horses and race them around a track and the slaves are wearing stuff like thigh high boots that end in horse hooves and one woman is described as “clopping” into the room and there was also this other scene where like they were at a party and Alex brought Elisha along to show him off and there was a writhing orgy pit of Dociles in the MIDDLE OF THE ROOM and people were just walking past it and it was NORMAL and I mean, just listen to this. ‘...I clench around the anal plug, suddenly grateful for its presence.’ This hasn't been mentioned at all up until this point, might I add. And do you know something else? It's never mentioned again! Not once! Apparently it's still up there, because the author never sees fit to—
[MUFFLED LAUGHTER]
ARCHIVIST
Oh, what now?
[FOOTSTEPS]
[DOOR OPENS]
ARCHIVIST
Do you mind, Tim?
TIM
Sorry, did I just hear you say—
ARCHIVIST
It doesn't matter what you think you heard me say, you shouldn't be listening in to—
TIM
—that the anal plug is—
ARCHIVIST
Shut up. Don't you have anything better to—
ELIAS
What's going on? I can hear you yelling from— Tim, are you crying?
ARCHIVIST
Elias. Thank God. Will you tell him to go and mind his own business?
[DOOR SLAMS CLOSED]
[HEAVY FOOTSTEPS]
[SIGH]
ARCHIVIST
Statement... regrettably... resumes.
ARCHIVIST (STATEMENT)
Apparently it’s still up there, because the author never sees fit to mention that it was ever removed after the party and also it was literally said that the air smelled of sex which everyone knows is NOT a good smell but it was written to sound so sexy and alluring and then there was a bit where people sat down and the Dociles were described as “descending on them” and “diving up skirts” and I’m sorry for the detail but this is just engrained into my head, I can’t stop thinking about it, I can’t stop memorising it even though I want to and it’s all so stupid! It’s so stupid! When the Dociles are doing that everyone is sat around the table just talking like it’s not happening and WHAT’S THE POINT? This is supposed to be a deconstruction of capitalism or whatever but it’s just bad sex and I cannot stop reading I can’t stop even though I want to and every time I go a few days without reading it the book just… I don’t know, it makes me sit down and read it and I don’t want to, the other day I really considered just putting my eyes out because I was so frightened of that stupid book, and it sounds so stupid I know because it’s just a bad erotica book disguised as something deeper but I can’t stop! And the worst part is part of me still wants to know, part of me knows I would never do that because I want to know and also who the hell goes right for gouging their own eyes out? Why don’t I just throw it out? Give it back? I haven’t seen Andreas for weeks but that’s not unusual; maybe I can just give it back? You’re probably still wondering why I’m even here so whatever. Whatever. I’ll just write it down it’s crazy but that’s what you’re here for right?
I looked it up online. I needed to know if more people were seeing what I was seeing. I found a Goodreads page for it, but it wasn’t as popular as I thought something so terrible would be. There were actually some glowing reviews online, even some interviews with the author, but the Goodreads page was strangely empty. I kept an eye on it for a couple of days, reading the reviews that were there over and over because they were so positive and I was trying to see if we had read the same book, or if I got an advance unedited copy or something, but no. There were people out there who thought it was good. And then one day there was a one-star review there, and I managed to catch it before it was deleted. It was deleted because… god, this sounds crazy, but the review just linked to an embedded video of someone like. Well. They killed themselves. Like, on camera. Obviously it was all taken down quickly, and nobody seemed to see it but… well, then it happened again. I watched for a couple of weeks, and it kept happening. I saw three videos where people you know, exited stage left, and one further video where somebody appeared to burn their house down with their family inside? All of them giving this book one-star reviews, all of them with no comment except the video.
So by this point I’m freaking out, but I dig deeper. I know I probably can’t walk away at this point, and despite everything I’m still a stupid nosy idiot, so I went really down the rabbit hole. I found some cached versions of the page and through that I managed to find another one-star review I’d never seen before. This was from a guy called Tristan, and there was no video. There was a brief comment instead, saying that he was thinking about “dnf’ing” the book – Goodreads talk for did not finish. Then there was a dated edit, a short while later, and he’d apparently finished the book. He said he wasn’t going to bother commenting too much because it all sucked, but to summarise he said he’d never read anything worse, that it was so bad it was offensive, and this was the first book that had made him sincerely want to commit physical violence. I looked him up on Goodreads regular, like not the cache, and his profile was still live even though there were no other updates, and the comment about Docile was gone from his page. I managed to find his blog, and while it had also been abandoned at around the same time from what I could see, I was able to trace his progress as he read the book. For the most part he seemed to be entertained by it, like I had been, and then at around the same point as I was at the humour became less and less and then vanished. He blogged less often, and when he did blog about stuff he was clearly pissed off about something. Then the posts stopped, and I had to go back to digging, but it seems he vanished. I found one possible match – a guy from the United States, by the name of Tristan Townsend – who had been reported missing about two or three weeks before I got a copy of the book. I looked for evidence of the violence he mentioned, but I could find nothing solid. There was an… well, some kind of attack, close to the area, in a bookstore of all places, at around the same time, but there weren’t many details. They didn’t specify what the attack was, precisely, nor how many died or the status of the perpetrator. I mean, it could be something, but this is America – from what I understand, mass murder like this is a normal Tuesday, so it doesn’t mean anything. At any rate, Tristan’s missing persons case is still open, and he hasn’t been declared dead, so I don’t know. There is something strange about this, though: Andreas mentioned a friend named Tristan a couple of times, and I remember him talking about his online friend reading this book, and then also when he gave me the book in the pub I saw into his bag and there was packaging in there, torn away pretty roughly, but not so much that I couldn’t see the plastic packet taped to the back, containing paperwork that looked a lot like a United States Customs declaration form. I’m pretty sure it was that, because I’ve received a few things from friends in the States myself, and that’s… pretty much what it looks like.
Anyway… that’s about it. I’ve destroyed several of your pens telling you about what’s basically a terrible porno, and how I think it’s going to make me go crazy or whatever, but there’s something going on here. You have to believe me. How obsessed I am with it, how I can’t look away now even though I want to, those weird videos online, Andreas and whatever he’s doing, Tristan vanishing… I don’t know what you can do but I’m out of options here. I brought the book with me, you know? I was going to hand it over as evidence or something, get it out of my house and maybe out of my mind, but when I checked in my bag when I got off the bus it was gone. I know exactly where it’s going to be. It’s going to be on my table at home, and when I get back… I’m going to read more of it.
ARCHIVIST
Statement ends.
Needless to say I didn’t have high hopes for the investigation into this particular statement, but it was dutifully looked into and there are some oddities that appear to back up Mr. Crowley’s story… and of course anything potentially related to Jurgen Leitner is worth looking into with some diligence. I was hoping that it was some kind of joke – if Mr. Crowley reads as widely as he claims, it’s possible that he may have come into contact with Leitner’s name and reputation – but unfortunately it seems there may be some credence there. I could find no listing of the book with any publishers, but after sending Tim to ask around some of his contacts I have discovered that there is indeed a book entitled Docile, written by one K.M Szpara, due for publication in 2020. This statement, as noted, was recorded in 2017, which is… concerning.
I also had Tim look into the claims surrounding the Goodreads website, and he quickly reported back that it appeared to be true – there were many cases of deleted files and videos, and after watching for only a couple of days, Tim was unfortunate enough to witness one of these instances live. There has been no sign of any Andreas Valstad in any of the Twickenham area pubs, which is perhaps unsurprising, but there is a missing persons file on one Tristan Townsend, with no apparent change in his status or any new information as to his whereabouts. As that is a little far for our budget to stretch in regards to an… admittedly adventurous yet undeniably atrocious erotica novel, I have concentrated our efforts on the possible whereabouts of Mr. Crowley, who vanished, according to police reports, roughly a week after giving his statement. Unfortunately it seems as though he won’t be able to assist with a follow-up statement any time soon – I dispatched Martin to go and speak to Mr. Crowley’s neighbours, figuring that an afternoon with him all the way out in Twickenham would improve all of our moods, and while they could tell us nothing new about the events Mr. Crowley describes in his statement they did mention something that the police report had left out. Upon leaving his house on the day he went missing, a neighbour – one Mrs Floorlayer – reported a brief conversation with him wherein he seemed to be elated. She was taken aback by his good mood so early in the morning, whereupon he said something along the lines of everything makes sense now, and – Martin says she stressed this particularly, as Mr. Crowley kept repeating it – “now I know”.
This would seem to be a dead end, if not for the information Tim was able to get out of another police report, clearly related yet not attached to the main file. I am unsure as to why this is being kept hushed up, but according to this report, roughly three days after Mr. Crowley was reported missing, a man matching his description threw himself in front of an Underground train in front of horrified onlookers at two fifty-three in the afternoon on April 25, 2017. This occurred at an unspecified platform on the Piccadilly line, from the looks of it either Piccadilly Circus or Green Park, resulting in several dozen witnesses confirming that this man most certainly went under the train and for all intents and purposes was killed instantly. However, when the platform was cleared and the train moved, there was no sign of any body, nor any biological matter that suggested a body might have been there. Tim managed to gain access to security footage of the platform at the time, and despite the crowds and the grainy quality – you would think with so many cameras around this city that they might be able to provide a decent picture or two – the person in question does seem to match Mr. Crowley’s appearance. He can be seen at the far end of the platform, standing by the tunnel where the train is due to emerge; he appears to hold up a book and while there is no audio he seems agitated and possibly yelling. Perhaps I am looking too deeply into it, but it seems he is trying to get the most attention on him as possible before he jumps—
[DOOR OPENS]
ELIAS
Oh! Apologies. I did think you would be done by now.
ARCHIVIST
Elias. Ah, no. Unfortunately not.
ELIAS
Is what I’m hearing from Tim true?
ARCHIVIST
I—it depends on what he’s been saying.
ELIAS
Something about finger-locking—
ARCHIVIST
I do not need to hear it again, thank you. …Yes. Apparently so. I would like to write it off, but a certain name has come up.
ELIAS
You can’t possibly mean Jurgen Leitner.
ARCHIVIST
Unfortunately I do.
ELIAS
Well. That does complicate matters.
ARCHIVIST
At this point in time, I’m unsure whether to believe that the reported reactions are because of the effects of a standard Leitner book, or if they’re just a natural reaction to what appears to be some particularly wretched prose. Perhaps Leitner found it and decided to keep it for his own collection because it was already about as evil as books get.
ELIAS
Oh, come now. Surely it’s not that bad.
ARCHIVIST
I have… seen some excerpts, and I can confirm it’s not good.
ELIAS
Ah. Are you talking about the diving up sk—
ARCHIVIST
Yes, thank you.
ELIAS
Goodness. You look absolutely murderous. I suppose I should leave you to it.
[DOOR CLOSES]
[LONG SIGH]
ARCHIVIST
Where was I? Yes, Mr. Crowley appeared to be trying to attract as much attention as possible, waving his arms around and gesturing wildly with the book… either way, most eyes are on him by the time the train comes, and then… well. We don’t get to see what happens next, because the moment of impact – as well as any clues regarding where Mr. Crowley’s body might have gone – was not captured on the recording. Instead there is a moment of heavy distortion and TV-like static, where nothing can be made out aside from an incredibly grainy close-up shot of what appears to be a human eye; when the picture comes back, the platform is empty, and there is no sign that anything happened there at all.
End recording.
[CLICK]