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[ARCHIVIST]: Statement of Phil Watson, regarding the death of his son Wilbur Soot. Recorded direct from subject, December 12th, 2011. Now, I know this might be kind of hard to talk about, so take your time, okay dude? I get it, and we’ve got all the time we need. So just… relax. You got this.
[PHIL WATSON]: Yes, yes, of course. Thank you.
[ARCHIVIST]: Alright. Statement begins.
[PHIL WATSON]: So I just… talk? I– okay. Yeah, sure.
My name is Phil Watson. I was married to my wife, Kristin, and we have– er, uh, we had three sons.
I’m not sure where to start, really. I mean, people say start at the beginning but there are just… too many beginnings. I’m an artist, I should know. I draw, I sketch, I’m– I’m an architect. With a firm in downtown London, or, I was. I’m on leave now. It doesn’t matter, honestly, I just. I’m trying to say that I know that sometimes the beginning can start at an unconventional point in space.
It all started when I married my wife. It all really began when we adopted our eldest, Techno. Everything kicked into gear when Wilbur brought home a dead bird.
See? There are so many places to start. And it’s just… mate, none of them feel right.
But based on the look you’re giving me I have to start somewhere. Shit, I– can I swear?
[ARCHIVIST]: Yeah, it’s whatever.
[PHIL WATSON]: Hah. It’s definitely gonna slip out. Sorry in advance?
Uh… I guess I’ll start when Tommy was born. For all my stupid thing about beginnings, that was… that was really when it all started. We adopted, see. Me and Kris, we wanted to help kids find homes and help them where we could, so we started fostering. And that turned into adoption in three cases. Techno, uh, Wil, and Tommy.
Tommy was the youngest. I know I should be talking about Wilbur, but we’ll get there. Tommy was the youngest, okay, and we had adopted him as a toddler. So when I say born, I really do mean he was born and pretty much handed right over. Techno and Wilbur we’d both adopted at an older age– uh, Techno had been about six when we started fostering him, and the official adoption went through when he was seven. Wilbur was six when we adopted him, and then Tom came along. He was about two then, and Techno was ten and Wilbur was eight.
Bit of a gap in age between them, I know, and we were kind of nervous. We’d spoken to both boys beforehand, of course, talking about fostering or adopting a third, and they’d both been on board. Even so, kids can sometimes… have a different idea of how things play out. I was nervous they’d hate him, honestly. Especially with how little he was.
Turns out, we had nothing to worry about. Techno and Wilbur pretty much fell in love with Tom the moment he arrived– fawned over him, argued about who got to play with him more, argued over pushing his stroller, argued over who helped him go to bed and bath time and–
Hah. Sorry, mate. They argued a lot.
I miss it. I miss those days. I didn’t, um– I didn’t know it then, of course I didn’t how could I, but they’d be the happiest years of my life, easily. They were so good, my boys. All three of them. Not perfect, no, kids never are, but me and Kris– we loved them. And that was good enough for a while.
Tommy turned eight before that year. Techno sixteen, Wilbur fourteen.
That was the year, ah, things… changed.
Wil always had behavioral issues. A lingering effect from his early childhood. We had him in therapy, we had all of them in therapy and Kris and I went too, because it’s good for you. Someone unbiased to talk to. Fuck anyone who says therapy isn’t good for you, and it helped, too. But something changed when Tommy turned eight.
Wilbur started acting out more. It wasn’t– it wasn’t concerning, per say. Techno– that little fucker went theough a rebellious phase too when he was thirteen or fourteen, and was still in it at sixteen. But it had really culminated when he was thirteen and dyed his hair pink, see– Wilbur being combative wasn’t unusual. It wasn’t something unexpected. He was a teenager now– that’s what they do. But it got… worse. Worse than the normal shit teenagers do to defy their parents. Wilbur snuck out more than once and came home smelling like beer or weed, sure, but all that I can handle. Normal.
He came home with a dead bird that spring. Right after Tommy’s birthday in April– I remember it so clearly. He came home on a Saturday evening and the bird in his hands was– it was a crow.
I guess I should mention the crows, yeah? Shit, okay.
So I’ve got this thing with birds. Love ‘em. Always have, but crows– crows are my favorites. Kristin would get me crow-themed presents for birthdays and Christmas and such. And kind of unintentionally, I, uh, befriended the local murder.
Jesus christ that’s so fucking ominous, now that I think about it.
Befriended the murder, became the– murderer is such a strong word. I did this world a fucking favor, okay?
I just– the birds. The birds. I would leave out peanuts for them, they liked to crack the hard shells and they knew when and where I’d put out food. In return they’d leave me presents– cigarette butts and bottlecaps, mostly, but one time they left a crisp twenty pounds. And a ring, once. We had an economy going in our backyard, and all the boys loved to play along. My boys loved those birds.
So you get why I wouldn’t question Wilbur when he came home with a dead one, tears in his eyes, talking about it getting hit by a car, right? Of course that makes sense, and Wilbur had never lied to me before, really, not about important things.
We dubbed him Brian and buried him in the backyard. Tommy cried for days. Techno said he was indifferent, but he would leave wildflowers from Kristin’s garden on the little gravestone we painted for the bird. It was sweet. It was… it was a lesson in death.
There’s this… thing about crows. They’re smart. People say they never forget a face that has wronged them and I think that’s true.
The birds never liked Wilbur after that day.
If he so much as looked at them through a window they’d take off or caw angrily– I never thought too much about it, honestly. I had other things to worry about, like Techno’s math competitions and Tommy’s school play.
I should’ve paid more attention. …God, I should’ve .
If I had noticed , if I had seen, if Wil hadn’t lied – He told me– he told me he was okay.
He gave me no reason not to trust him.
The bird was– was just the start. Our backyard became almost a roadkill cemetery until it really started to upset Tommy, and Wilbur had always been completely devoted to him so of course he stopped when Tommy asked. That phase lasted through that summer, until school started up again in fall and the boys were out of the house all day. I work from home and so did Kris– it was nice. We had time to see each other and time for each of our sons when they got home. It also meant that when Wilbur kept burying things in the yard, and he entered what Kris and I liked to call his emo phase. Black clothes, long jackets, the whole nine yards. It was cute, honestly. Things were fine for... well, a long time.
And then it was this October and Kris got hit by a drunk driver while coming home from picking up Wilbur after his band session.
I will never forget that phone call. It was Wilbur, he and Kris were already late coming home. I thought maybe they’d stopped and were getting food or something, so I wasn’t prepared to pick up the phone and hear my son’s voice with sirens wailing in the background.
All he said was: she’s dead, dad.
Things get kind of… fuzzy, for a while, after that? I don’t remember all too much. I remember the hospital visit. I remember Tommy crying, trying to console them all. I remember Wilbur getting stitches on his cheek– but other than flashes of specific moments, it was all a blur.
I lost the love of my life that day. I think that’s the one where I lost Wil, too, but. I didn’t know it yet.
He changed after that. I won’t bore you with the details of the aftermath of Kris’ death– more therapy, the family practically broke apart, the whole nine yards. It was a mess. A right fucking mess, and I felt so powerless to stop any of it. It felt like I was rolling down a hill on an out-of-control bike, and I didn’t know when I was going to fall off and scrape my face along the road but fucking hell I was going to at some point. Wilbur… I’ll focus on Wilbur. I can do that.
He was different. He’d been in the car with his mum when they– you know. So of course I was expecting him to be different. He’d just gone through so much trauma, but I was trying to deal with three traumatized kids, not just the one, so when the birds started coming back–
Right. The birds came back.
Not the regular crows– the dead ones. I didn’t notice for a while, so I have no idea when it started, really, but when I did it became obvious. The birds were coming back. The dirt in the backyard where Wilbur had buried them months ago was disturbed, fresh soil dug up in cemetary-like rows, grass haphazardly patted back down. And the birds that hung around our house were ratty and dirty, feathers out of place. They didn’t move right, either. Jerky and weird, and they were little shits. Swooped down and tried to peck you. Attacked Tommy, once, freaked him right the fuck out. Wilbur got upset and the next day, some of the birds were gone.
I think that’s when he realized he had limited time to…
He tried to bring her back, that’s my theory. All I really know is one night I walked into the kitchen and Wilbur was there, covered in dirt– absolutely coated in the stuff. Muddy stuff, so dark it was almost black. His jacket was smothered in it, and his face was gaunt and haunted. He grabbed onto me before I could even ask him what had happened– the dirt clung to me, too, smearing on my arms and it was cold. So cold it made my skin rise up with gooseflesh. And then I found my voice, and I asked him, y’know– Wil, what the hell are you doing? And he just looked at me with these wide, terrified eyes, and told me there was no point.
He said… a lot. He ranted, mostly. Raved. He didn’t look like my son anymore, like something had taken root in him and grown up through his mouth and came to me spitting weird shit and scaring the fuck out of me. Eventually I got him to slow down, and that’s when he told me he went and saw mum.
I hadn’t even known he’d left the house. But her gravedirt was all over him, evidently, and he was telling me about– he was telling me that just because something was dead didn’t mean it was gone, and he’d figured that out and then figured out if you followed the right… trails, you could find it again. That was the point where I started thinking he’d had some kind of break and told him so, but he argued no and reminded me of the birds, and then his tone kind of changed. Darker, less scared, more resigned.
He’d told me you can follow the trail, but you won’t always like what you find. That at the end of it, the end of everything, there’s a whole lot of nothing. And it’s all pointless. He hadn’t realized it was all pointless until he’d started messing with death, until he’d gone to see his mum tonight and I just… stood there and listened. It’s like he had strings around my limbs, fingers clutching me so tight I couldn’t escape. He begged for me to end it for him. He stood there and begged me, because nothing mattered anymore. People die, he said, and he couldn’t save his mum, he couldn’t bring her back, so what was the point?
And– maybe it was the grief. Maybe…
…
[PHIL WATSON]: I... started to see it from his point of view. The world, that is. The end. To Wilbur, everything was... pointless, in the face of an inevitable conclusion.
And then I realized, just as Wil did, that no matter what either of us did, there was no other outcome that we could force. Everything dies. It's not a matter of if but a matter of when and Wil had– he'd grasped that, in some desperate bid for control, and now we were here. And he wanted me to end it.
For reasons beyond me I couldn't see any reason why... not?
I stabbed him.
I stabbed the evil thing that was inside him, too. Whatever the fuck it was, I think I killed it. His own hands guided the blade but I put the force into it, I did the work. It was me. It wasn’t even a suicide, really, because I… assisted. Stabbing someone isn’t– it’s not as easy as the cinema makes it look. It takes effort to cut through skin and muscle and bone. But somehow, I did it. And I held–
I he–
[ARCHIVIST]: It’s okay. Take your time.
[PHIL WATSON]: [shakily] Hah. Hah. It’s not though, is it, really? It’s not okay. I killed him. I killed my son and I held his body for hours after. I kept holding him even when Tommy found us, when he started screaming, even after Techno called the police. The police–
You can’t– you can’t tell the police this. I– I don’t know how much you talk to them, but they have their own story they came up with about it and that’s fine, that’s okay, but it’s not– it’s not the truth . And I can’t lose my other boys. I promise I’m a good father. I just needed to tell someone about this, to know I’m not crazy.
[ARCHIVIST]: Whatever you say stays between us and the tape recorder, I promise.
[PHIL WATSON]: Yeah. Yeah, okay. Sorry, I’m just– I’m not usually like this. You understand I’d do anything to get him back, right? Anything. And I’ve tried. I know he was bringing the birds back, and I know he was trying to get Kris back. Whatever he saw when he tried made him think it wasn’t possible, but it has to be, yeah? The birds did come back. So there’s got to be a way, you know?
There’s got to be some way. And I think I’m close to finding out what it is. It’ll work eventually.
It will.
[ARCHIVIST]: …
[ARCHIVIST]: Statement ends.
[PHIL WATSON]: Thank you. Thank you. I… Is that all?
[ARCHIVIST]: That’s all, yep. Paperwork’s done, if you want to–
[PHIL WATSON]: I’ll see myself out, yeah.
[CLICK]
[CLICK]
[ARCHIVIST]: …
[ARCHIVIST]: [ exhales] Jeee-sus.
[ARCHIVIST]: That was a lot. Poor guy, honestly. Sounds like he’s been through a lot the past couple months. I… kind of hope he doesn’t figure it out, though. I know from other statements regarding the End sometimes people can serve as Death servants, and I think the Wilbur guy was close to that? I don’t know. Sounds like he got too existential in the… hah, end, to really get there.
I just feel kind of terrible now.
In regards to follow up, uh… I can say from local newspapers that Kristin Watson did die in a fatal car crash in October, and the article does mention her leaving behind three sons and a husband. It also mentions one of those sons being in the car with her, but surviving. There’s also a police report for a call to the Watson household, and Wilbur Soot’s official cause of death is listed as suicide. There’s nothing else I can really corroborate, though, since all of the supernatural elements aren’t exactly reported on in the news.
I believe him though. Of course I do. C’mon, it’s stupidly evident. We also don’t get a lot of statements about the End, so I’m kind of eating up what I can.
Literally. Hah.
I should talk to Q. Or Sapnap. Or even XD, as much as I don’t want to.
…well, I’m going to keep an eye on the news for any mention of the Watson family in the future, maybe. That’s all I can do at the moment. I hope…
I hope they stay safe.
[ARCHIVIST]: End recording.