Work Text:
XISUMA:
Seeing that our Head Archivist seems to be…unavailable, I figured I should give a statement in his stead. I’ve been deliberating over which one I should talk about, when I remembered a story I’ve heard many years before my time at the institute. This is a statement regarding a story I was told a decade or two ago. Statement given by Xisuma Void , though the story was originally orated sometime around 2008. It is possible that it may have come from before then. Audio recording by Xisuma Void, Head of the Void Institute, London.
Statement begins.
XISUMA (STATEMENT)
There was once a young boy who lived in a lazy, dull, and perfectly milquetoast town. He was happy, as were his neighbours and friends in this suburban land. Though the town’s residents were content, the whole population had an air of holding its breath. The single school located downtown had only started a month prior, yet all the children were anticipating the coming winter break. The boy would play with his friends after school and always checked to see if the ice cream shop had reopened yet. It never did. They always settled to playing in the abandoned lumber mill, the trash and chairs still left there from their yearly logging festival. Even while playing the boy was always quiet, never the one to lead the conversation. Most of the time he just wanted to listen to other people talk. This meant that he paid a lot more attention to his surroundings than most. Though there was nothing to quantify it, the boy could feel in himself, maybe even in his bones, that something was coming. A change was going to occur. All his neighbours seemed to chalk this up to the transition of the seasons, so nobody was concerned. This anticipation seemed to build in the boy for many days and many nights. Then, one day, just at the end of October, just at the brink of winter, it simply happened.
The leaves and foliage were long dead, and the lustre of their orange and yellow had long since faded into barren appendages grasping at the sky. The boy no longer felt that sense of sliding towards a tipping point. No, that feeling had left him. Now present, perhaps even worse than the anticipation, was the dread of not knowing what had changed. It frightened the boy. He couldn’t see what had happened. Nevertheless he needed to know . This unawareness continued until night crept in and dragged its starry rippling skin over the sky. Then the boy and his town all felt what had perhaps been present through all of their lives, lying dormant just beneath their conscious thoughts. The boy and his town shared a dream. In that passage beyond the vestiges of waking life, something stirred, and a maw opened. They could all hear its whispers, and its beckoning call. The boy knew now, and it was oh, so, terrible. The chill of a winter yet to arrive seemed to deepen, as if it was icy breath escaping from those lips.
None of the townsfolk thought much of it, but there were rumours of people waking up in the night to find their spouses and children all facing towards something off in the distance. When the boy asked around, no one – not even the wise and elderly – had an answer for why everyone dreamed of the maw, why everyone seemed to stare towards it every night. Even those who tried to stop it by tying themselves down and securing the doors were found with untied rope and open, swaying windows the next day. By the time the boy's neighbours and friends started going missing before dawn, it already seemed an oncoming certainty. What was there to be done except remain grateful that the mouth hadn’t taken everything? The boy’s best friend went missing this way when his room was found empty in the rising dawn.
Within a matter of weeks, most of the boy’s town heeded the maw's alluring melody. There was no hatred towards the mouth. Everyone knew it was inevitable. Then something changed once again. The boy, along with everyone in the town, dreamed together that night. They all dreamed that they left their beds, opened their doors, and set off into the chill of the dark. Under the moonlight they glinted in this dream, trudging towards a destination they knew would always be there. They started their pilgrimage on the pavement of streets, then through the itching, dead, grass of fields, to the roots and twigs and decay of the forest, which had fallen under the hoarfrost of the coming winter. None of them noticed the cold, the bleeding, the peeling skin of the night sky. What was the point? They would be gone soon; they would be gone eventually. Why resist? Why make the journey more difficult for themselves?
As they passed through that dead forest, through the rime-ridden landscape, they finally approached the end of their journey. The end of all journeys that have and ever will take place. The whole town waited on the brink of the jaws, everyone who had gone missing. Everyone who had been waiting for this moment to arrive. Then they started to plunge themselves in. The boy started the slow process of feeling the terror prick his fingertips, to wake from the numbness as he stepped off the edge. As the boy and his town reached the bottom of this hole, the crack of bone and tear of sinew was the only noise amidst the deafening silence of the town's absent cries. Those in the pit could have climbed and scraped their way out if the others would stop flooding in, the newcomers – oblivious to what they were doing – keeping those in the pit down and pushing them further and deeper into the throat of the world. The whole town clambered in that pit, waiting for it to stop.
The flow of people ebbed. The impact of body on bodies had ceased. There was now only silence, still, yet incomplete with the missing piece of its resolution almost within reach. Just as the boy had, the rest of the townsfolk woke from their daze. The pain of their voyage, of the fall and of despair set upon them. Cries and pleading rang out into the empty sky. The night had taken its skin away. The bottom of the pit fell out from under those townspeople and they tumbled into nothing. A black void was the only thing that met their eyes, but it was not just darkness. The void enveloped them, enveloped the young boy, and within that nothing was everything. Objects started to rush past. Pale asteroids of stillness where even the rock was dead and lifeless. This was a place of endings.
There was no future here, no set of intentions or accidents that could give this place a different path than the one it would always travel down. Staring at those floating monoliths, the emptiness of it all was so apparent. Those pieces devoid of anything blurred past until they were rushing, speeding, growing ever closer. The boy and the members of his life wept in terror as the cracked and bleached stone steadily sped towards them, nothing to save them in that insipid empty place. As the boy tumbled, he wished that he had known what to do, how to save his family, how he could have seen this coming. Then the boy's perspective changed, and his eyes opened. He could see beyond the blackness of the void, what lay beyond it. As they all smashed into the unforgiving terrain the boy woke up. He slid out of bed and pulled open his blinds. He was home, in a town that, he could see, would remain empty for a very long time.
XISUMA:
Statement ends.
Well, heh, that was a bit of an odd one wasn’t it? A place of only endings? I hope Grian enjoys this story after his time away. It is certainly too bad that he chose to take such an unexplained leave of absence, though I’m certain he’ll be back eventually. I am rather hesitant to give credit to this story considering the, let's say odd scenario. It also seems important to consider that it is just a story. Nevertheless I will hold my judgement until after research has been conducted. I’m not the Archivist after all. In that case I’ll be off, bye for now.
End Recording.
(ENDING CLICK)
(OPENING CLICK)
GRIAN:
Begin supplemental.
Though Xisuma brought up the fact that this could merely be a story, as Head Archivist I am required to follow up. When it comes to researching the boy and town, unfortunately, there wasn’t much to go on for exact dates and there wasn’t an exact area to look at. I tried to gather information on towns that had high reports of missing persons from 1990 through 2008. It was surprisingly not that many, and none of them lost everyone so- (DOOR OPENS) Mumbo? What is it?
MUMBO:
Very sorry to interrupt your recording, but I figured this was important information. I heard from Pearl that you were having her research missing towns around the early 2000s? Well when she was talking about it, I think some of the details are kind of eerily similar to something I heard when I was really young? I think there was a rumour going around about a bunch of people in a logging town that just kind of vanished? No one could name any names or show you where it had been on a map, but it’s really strange that it seems to have come up again.
GRIAN:
That’s certainly something to consider. Thank you Mumbo. Is there anything else important you’d like to tell me before I continue my supplemental?
MUMBO:
Oh yeah! Pearl also broke the record for the amount of M&Ms she can fit in her mouth!
GRIAN:
(very obviously unimpressed) Delightful.
MUMBO:
Anyways, I’ll leave now. (DOOR CLOSES)
GRIAN:
Sorry for that interruption, although there was some important info there. It seems that this story seems to be a rumour that went around in the early 2000s, though the date of its inception may be earlier. This also means that the boy probably didn’t exist either. Probably. Though there really isn’t a way to check if it was a rumour. I suppose that brings this investigation to an end until more info arises.
End supplemental.