Work Text:
Statement of Vorna Clark concerning her father’s charity work and subsequent demise. Original statement given May 5th, 2007. Audio recording by Lexus Wright, assistant archivist at the Magnus Institute, Birmingham branch.
Statement begins.
...
I loved my dad. I really did. I say this because I'm probably going to say some bad things about him and I want you to know that it doesn't come from a place of anger– but sometimes to tell the truth you have to say some ugly things. Honestly this story doesn't make me sound very good either but I need to tell someone about what happened and, well, this is cheaper than therapy.
It's a hard thing, losing a parent... but maybe it was harder for me because I felt like I never really had him. But I'm getting ahead of myself here, I should start at the beginning.
You know those silly commercials on the telly where they play sad music and show pictures of crying animals and ask for money? If you’ve ever wondered what kind of person would actually call in to one of those, it's my father. He never saw a cause he wasn't prepared to champion– the man was funding more organizations than the government, it's been sixth months since his death and I'm still getting thank you letters from charities I've never heard of.
And it wasn't just money! He worked for a nonprofit that did disaster relief so helping people was literally his job too. He specialized in construction and any time there was an earthquake or a tsunami or whatever anywhere on the globe, my father would be there with a hammer ready to start rebuilding, and he'd have a huge smile on his face the whole time.
Sometimes you meet someone with jobs like that and you can tell that it's just, well, their job, but my father actually believed in all of it. Compassion radiated off of him, it was there in everything he did. He wouldn't just build you a house, he'd plant you a garden as well, and then bake cookies with you so the kitchen would feel like home again. And he'd do it a thousand times, for a thousand people, and put his whole heart into it every single time.
He looked at the world, saw that people were suffering, and said "someone has to help them, and I'll do it myself." I always admired that about him.
As a father, he was... less inspiring. See, he and mum used to travel together but when they found out that she was pregnant they agreed that the best thing to do would be for her to stay here in the UK so I would have a stable childhood; it was the right choice, but it meant that we didn't get to see him very much. He'd be home maybe two months out of the year, and we didn't get to pick the months either. But, well... someone had to save the world, so what could we do about it?
I think my mother assumed that he would eventually grow tired of jetting between distant locales and come settle down with us, but as the years wore on it became clear that she had lost that bet. It was hard on her because she really loved him– we both did –but how do you tell someone you want them to stop saving lives?
“I don’t see why you have to travel so much,” my mother would always say to him. “There’s children right here who need your help too.”
I think she meant me, but my father never took the hint.
Eventually, though, nature made the decision for him: as a result of the constant overwork he developed cardiomegaly, also known as an enlarged heart... the irony was lost on no one. He was in his sixties at this point and everyone could see the heart attack lurking on the horizon, so for his own good his organization reassigned him to a desk job right here in town. After all those years my father was coming home, and for good this time.
I have no shame in admitting that I was excited about the development. Sure I was in my thirties by then, but it’s never too late with family, right? When Mum and I greeted him at the airport and he wrapped me up in his arms, I really thought that everything was going to be different– but no, Mum messaged me the next morning to let me know she’d walked in on dad researching volunteer opportunities in the area.
Obviously, we were concerned that he was going to spread himself too thin and work himself to death for good this time so I came up with an idea– I sat him down told him to streamline his efforts: find one cause, and put all of his attention into that. You can’t save everyone, so you might as well do your best to help just one group. I'd even get involved with him– secretly hoping that maybe this could be the bonding activity I'd always craved. And to my surprise, he agreed with me!
He said he'd always loved children, so he told me he'd try looking into orphanages.
I did some research and apparently term “orphanage” is a bit outdated, as is the concept really. Nowadays the proper term is “children’s home,” and the majority of parentless children are placed into foster care anyways so there aren’t that many about; the government is working towards complete deinstitutionalization because studies have shown that growing up in these environments is bad for a child’s development. BUT my father had this romantic idea in his head of playing savior to a bunch of sad little orphan children, so he insisted on searching.
Eventually he found one: St. Blandina’s Home For Youths.
I’d never heard of it before but, well, I wasn’t really in the market for an orphan at any point so that wasn’t too surprising. It was a local institution, housing twenty-seven children from the ages of six to sixteen, and most importantly, when my father e-mailed them asking if they accepted volunteers they were interested in meeting. Since I promised to be involved alongside him, I tagged along.
In my mind I was picturing, I don’t know, Oliver Twist, a big, cavernous building with cold empty rooms where the children wore rags and ate slop out of wooden bowls. The name implied it was a Catholic institution too which, well… do some research into that history if you have a minute, it’s not pretty. But I was pleasantly surprised by the place! It was a clean, modern facility– a bit tight on space (there were three beds in each room) but otherwise it didn’t seem like a bad place to grow up.
The staff there were very kind too, and very grateful to have received communications from my father offering his services. Like everything else in this goddamn country they were underfunded and all they could afford for repairs was prayer and duct tape, so the volunteer services of a local handyman came as a great relief to them. I didn't see any children while I was there but we met during school hours, so that seemed normal.
The visit was supposed to be a quick consultation but then the lights in one of the rooms started flickering and since my father had his toolbox with him, he offered to fix it for them on the spot. This was the first time I’d ever seen my father at work and it was such a joy to watch him– he zeroed in on the problem immediately (a touch of faulty wiring in one of the panels) and knew exactly what to do. And he even asked me to help!
Really all I did was hand him a screwdriver, but still… that was the first time in a long time I got to feel like his daughter. I had the feeling this was going to be a very good thing for us, and the staff apparently agreed because they asked him to come back the next day to take a look at some other things.
But that was the last time I set foot in St. Blandina’s until the incident. Believe me, I wanted to go back to spend time with my father, but life got in the way and I wasn’t thrilled about the idea of rearranging my entire schedule so I could stand around while my father worked. I apologized to my father and the staff when I missed the first appointment, then the next one, then the next one, then I just sort of… stopped bringing it up. I don’t think anyone minded that– I would have just been in the way, in more ways than one.
See, my father was being brought in strictly for repairs– he was a stranger after all, they couldn’t have him around the children for liability reasons –but after a few weeks of volunteering he had proved so reliable that one night when the staff needed help serving dinner to the children, they asked my father. And once those kids met him… there was no turning back. It was inevitable really, my father was just too lovable, and from then on out he was a regular fixture at the orphanage.
Apparently the kids called him “Pops,” which I thought was a bit of a silly nickname, but my father sounded so proud when he told me about it that I forced myself to smile. Whenever I managed to wrangle him into lunch or a phone call he’d talk my ear off about how sweet the children were, how he got to read them bedtime stories, how he would carry them around on his back… and according to my mother, it was all he’d talk to her about as well.
I think what he really liked was feeling needed, which wasn’t something I could give to him in the way that he wanted. It wasn’t that I hated him or anything like that, to the contrary I was desperate to get to know him, but that pure, unfiltered affection he seemed to crave… I was too jaded to give him that. I’d had to grow up without him, you know– I wanted him, but I didn’t need him. These kids did. They clung to him and he, well, he ate the attention up. He got to feel like he was saving them.
I’m ashamed to say that I started to tune him out– whenever he brought them up I’d just smile and nod. Hearing him speak so lovingly about children that weren’t me gave me some very funny feelings that I didn’t want to unpack. But he was still my dad after all, and I could tell how much it meant to him so I wanted to be supportive, and eventually I got the chance.
He mentioned off-handedly one day that he’d donated some of my old clothes to one of the girls at the orphanage, which came as a surprise to me because I hadn’t even realized that mum had held on to my old stuff from primary school. I joked that I felt sorry for whatever poor girl was now trouncing around in the abominations that she’d insisted on purchasing for me, but dad just smiled, and said that he was sure that she was grateful. And you know what? It felt good to feel like I’d contributed something.
But then a friend from work was doing a book drive for her kid’s school, so I asked mum if she could dig up the chest of my old books from the attic, and she told me that dad had taken it to the orphanage a week ago, along with a bunch of other things she’d been keeping in storage for me– hadn’t he gotten permission, she asked me? And had I seen him? Apparently he hadn’t come home in a few days.
He wouldn’t resurface until a few days later, offering absolutely no explanation. Not that we really needed one, there was only one place he would have been.
Surely, he said, I wouldn’t miss some old toys and books and things. After all, I wasn’t using them, was I?
And I wasn’t, of course, but something about it still rubbed me the wrong way. I told him to please ask me first before giving anything of mine away, and he agreed, but I could tell he wasn't listening because the second I finished he just launched into this story about how he’d taken the kids to the park– the same one we’d gone to on his rare trips home when I was a kid –and how they’d all had such a wonderful time, and how sweet the children were, and how I'd just love them. I don't think even noticed that I left while he was still talking.
Perhaps it was petty of me to be jealous of a bunch of children I’d never met but, well, after being borderline abandoned by my father for decades I think I was entitled to a little bit of resentment. It’s not like it was hard to avoid talking to him about it anyways, it was becoming impossible to get a hold of him anyways. Just like when I was a child, I accepted that this was the new normal for me and my family.
Then mum called me and told me she was filing for divorce, and asked if she could stay with me for a while. “Don’t worry,” she said, “I won’t be a bother. I won’t be bringing anything with me.”
I was shocked– even with everything that had happened, I’d genuinely thought my parents still loved each other. Their marriage had survived decades being separated by continents, surely they weren’t breaking up over my father getting eaten up by a project? But she told me that something was different this time– there wasn’t room for both her and the children in his life.
I didn’t want to accept that– they were my parents after all –so I called up dad and asked to talk. He told me to meet him at their house that evening, and when I got there, I understood what mum had meant earlier.
The house was stripped completely bare, every single thing had been removed. Not even a display house would be this empty, it wasn't even abandoned it was just... it was like no one had ever lived here.
I felt like an intruder walking through the halls– even the lightbulbs had been removed so I wandered with just the dim light of the streetlamps to illuminate all the blank spaces that used to hold the pieces of my life. No pictures on the wall anymore, our family photos were gone. The kitchen table, where mum and I had eaten every night, gone. The couch in the living room, where I’d fallen asleep on dad’s shoulder, gone. Nothing to bring back happy memories; if there was an opposite of nostalgia, I'd found it.
Somehow my old bedroom felt emptier than the rest of the house, like even the warmth itself had been taken away. It was empty, of course, all of my childhood belongings taken away– whoever had done this had even gone so far as to strip the wallpaper, leaving the room a ghostly white. When I stood in the place my old bed used to be and looked up at the ceiling I swear, even the cracks I used to stare at weren’t there anymore. That didn't make any sense, did it? But it was like someone had plastered over them, just to be sure this place didn't feel like it was ever mine. I didn't belong in here anymore.
I almost cried when I walked into my parent’s bedroom and saw their bed because it meant at least something remained.
I collapsed onto it out of sheer relief, losing myself for a moment in the warm embrace of the big four poster bed. The eerie feeling that had haunted me went away for a moment and I felt... peaceful. When I was a kid, and dad was home from one of his trips, I'd wake up early in the mornings and snuggle up in between him and mum. For a moment, I pretended they were here with me; I was just a kid, and my parents were here, and they'd make everything okay.
A hand touched my shoulder and when I opened my eyes, my father was standing above me. The sight of him should have been a relief but instead I just, I don't know, I felt like I didn't recognize him for some reason. He always promised me that he would always be my father even if he was halfway across the world, but there in that empty house with his hand on my shoulder, he'd never felt further away.
I started to ask him where everything had gone but he cut me off and asked me if I could please help him move the bed out to his truck. Apparently, one of the kids back at the orphanage had outgrown theirs so he figured he’d just give them the old one he had at home.
“But if you give the children your bed,” I asked him, “where will you sleep?” He just smiled at me, like nothing was wrong, and said this was more important.
The truth I had been avoiding clicked into place for me, and I felt sick to my stomach. Dad had always been the type of person who’d give you the shirt off of his back but this– this was something else. This needed to stop, I begged. He needed to stop helping people.
I don’t think I’m a bad person. I care about things, and other people, but it’s just… I just don’t go out of my way for it, you know? Most people are like that. That's normal. I have nothing but respect for people who want to do more than that but you have to hold back something for yourself or else you'll go mad. Dad didn't see it that way though.
He said he was disappointed in me, and then he asked me to leave. The last time I saw him he was staring at that bed, trying to figure out the best way to break it into pieces.
I was so mad at him I didn’t even try contacting him for weeks after that until it came time for our meeting with the lawyers. I’m aware it's very unusual for a child to be present during divorce arbitration but mum was feeling very vulnerable about the situation so I offered to be there to support her– and it’s a good thing that I did, because we sat waiting for him for an hour before she just sighed, picked up her things, and said she’d see me at home.
I was at the end of my rope here but I knew there must be some sort of explanation– my father could be flighty, but he wasn’t selfish. Surely he had a reason for abandoning us, I could just call him and he’d explain everything. Whatever else happened, he was still my father, and I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt.
When he picked up the phone he sounded sort of funny, like he was only half-listening. He said he was sorry, and he missed us, but something very important had come up and he had to be with his family. Then he hung up.
Well– I saw red.
I headed straight for St. Blandina’s. I didn't even know what I wanted, I just knew that I was furious; I didn't care if I had to yell at him in front of a bunch of children, I was going to be heard.
I hadn't been to the orphanage in months and so I was shocked when I pulled up– they'd done some renovations. The place had to be twice as big as it was before, but in a very strange way: pieces of it just sort of jutted out into space, placed haphazardly in ways that made no sense. I knew my father was a good builder, but getting that much work done in the amount of time he’d been visiting felt impossible.
It got even worse when I stepped inside. Have you ever gone into the house of someone with kids and seen that every single surface is covered in signs of their presence? Toys discarded on the floor, finger paint on the walls, clothes hanging from chairs, that sort of thing? This was that taken to the absolute extreme. I was practically blinded by the garish colors at first, but once my eyes adjusted, what I saw made my stomach turn. It seemed like my father had rebuilt the place into a giant play ground; like a Wonderland ripped straight out of a child's imagination. The kind of place that a kid would have a marvelous time in, but made adults shiver.
Now I knew what my father had needed all of those things for– he’d broken it all down into parts and reconstructed it into a twisted parody of what he thought kids would like. I was too angry to register how unnatural it was, all I could think about was how it was mine. Those were my books, my toys, my clothes– this was supposed to be my childhood. He was supposed to be my father, and yet he’d taken it all and given it to these children, these strangers. I think it was that anger that let me push through even as my mind screamed at the impossibility of it all.
The hallways seemed to stretch into forever as I stomped through them, kicking open doors as I searched for my father. Toys cluttered every inch of the floor, at times piling up so high to the ceiling that I had to bend down and crawl just to keep moving forwards, shoving aside teddy bears while fucking Lego blocks scratched at my knees. Dolls grabbed at my ankles, yanking me down so I stumbled, but every time I turned to them they just out of my grasp and stuck their tongues out at me. I just kept walking.
On every wall there was photo after photo of my father like some sort of demented photo gallery of the perfect childhood– images of my father at the playground, at an amusement park, at a school recital, always surrounded by a million smiling faces of a million horrible children who seemed to sneer right at me. I screamed at them, scratched at them with my fingernails like if I tore the pictures open I could steal the happy memories trapped inside but whatever it was that spilled out of them burned.
But the worst part of all though was the sound. The children's laughter was thunderous, so loud it made my ears ring and it drowned out the thoughts in my head, and with every step I took forward it grew louder and louder until my ears were practically bleeding. The dreadful cacophony made me sick; it felt like they were mocking me. Taunting me. "Listen to how happy we are," they were saying. "We've got your daddy and you've got no one, you stupid, lonely little girl."
All of that rage and hatred was swirling around inside of me, sharpening every nasty thought that I was readying to unload, and I was prepared to throw the full weight of decades of resentment behind them. I didn't care if I had to yell at him in front of a room full of innocent children, he was going to hear me and he was going to understand my pain. When I finally reached the door at the end of the hallway, I practically battered it down.
And when I saw my dad, every word died in my throat.
Unlike the rest of the building, this room was a very ordinary playroom, and my father sat at the center on a stool with a gaggle of children all around him, smiling up at him. He was himself, but he was sort of... blurry at the edges? Like the so much that had been inside of him was finally starting to leak, spilling out into the air around him and wrapping around the children like a warm blanket. All of that love had always been inside of him, so much love, was overflowing.
Seeing him like that... it all clicked into place for me and I realized how selfish I'd been. How could I have thought I was entitled to all of that? I was just one girl, one insignificant little girl. My father needed a whole world to love, and that was exactly what he gave to these children. I froze in the doorway, not wanting to intrude on their private moment, and I just watched.
He was reading to them from a picture book– The Giving Tree, it had always been his favorite –when it finished, he closed the book and looked down at them with a funny sort of look upon his face. He looked so happy and so sad at the same time. Then he spoke, and that was... that was a father speaking. He told them that he'd given them everything that he could, and now that their time together had to end, he had one last gift for them.
He said that they’d always have a little piece of him to carry with them. And he told them to come closer.
Now, they were just children, I don’t want to make it sound like they were monsters. It was almost innocent, really, even though they were tearing him open there was no blood. He broke apart like a gingerbread man on Christmas morning, crumbling into dry pieces. I think if he’d screamed or if he’d been in pain they would have stopped, but instead he was just… laughing as he disappeared bit by bit. In the thirty three years he was my father I’d never seen him smile like he did as their teeth sank into his flesh. And the children... they smiled too.
Sometimes I feel a bit guilty about how I just watched, about how I didn’t try to stop them or anything like that, but I know that’s not what he would have wanted. He was such a generous man, he wanted to give until there was nothing left… and I suppose that’s what he did in the end.
I think the thing I was most upset about was that no one saved me a piece.
...
Statement ends.
Another tricky one. My first instinct was to stick it with the other “Flesh” statements because, well, a man was eaten, but the meat of the statement doesn’t really match. They explained the whole “fear entity” thing to me when I got here but some of these statements they have me reading don’t feel like that at all, no one in this story was scared. Frustrated, maybe, but if anything a lot of them were happier by the end. Well, everyone still living I suppose.
I’ll send another e-mail, but I suspect they’re just ignoring them at this point. What’s going on over at the other branch?
Anyways, as for the statement itself, the story checks out. A Vernon Clark was reported missing on January 21st in 2007, with St. Blandina’s Orphanage being his last known whereabouts, and no body was ever recovered. The police report Ms. Clark gave is consistent with the events described in her statement, though obviously the police didn’t believe her when she said father had fed himself to a pack of hungry orphans. St. Blandina’s was, in fact, closed, and the children were scattered to the winds. Given how seriously the government takes the privacy of children in their care, I don’t believe I’ll be getting into contact with any of them.
However for once the number left with the statement was still in service so I was able to speak with Miss Clark who, refreshingly enough, is alive and well. She said she’d be happy to share any information that I thought could help but, well, the case is long closed so I just offered my condolences. She thanked me but apparently she doesn’t harbor any ill will towards the orphans– in fact, she’s started her own youth outreach program! Apparently her father’s charity work inspired her to, quote, “follow in his footsteps and do some good in the world,” which I think is very admirable of her.
The pictures on Facebook of her and the kids are quite adorable, though I hope she’s taking care of herself… I noticed in the most recent photo that she’s missing a finger. Some sort of accident? At least the children look healthy.
End recording.