Work Text:
[Recorder clicks on.]
ARCHIVIST:
Statement of Margo Tanner, regarding the end of her friendship with and the disappearance of one Syd Willson. Original statement given January 30th, 2001. Audio recording by the Archivist.
Statement begins.
ARCHIVIST (STATEMENT):
Everything I'm telling you is the very same thing I've already told the police. I don't know what happened to Syd and I didn't kill him… And either the police think that I did, or they just don't care about his death. I don't know if I blame them, I don't know if I care about his death either. I mean, I must care about him enough to make this statement. I don't know, I thought I knew. I thought I knew Syd, but I didn't. So what do I know now?
Syd and I were roommates all throughout university. I had known him just when he was really starting his transition, before he was Syd. Syd is- was trans. Not that it was anyone's business, but I guess it matters. He didn't keep a lot of friends because of it, and his love life took a hit from it too. I was always the first to defend him, you know? I don't know how I feel about those actions anymore, but… Back then I thought Syd was a great guy. He was funny and kind, hell if he liked girls I might have let myself fall for him. Maybe I did, just a little.
Despite his good qualities, Syd was… I don't know how to put it. He wasn't shy , but he sure as hell wasn't confident. He suffered from it, I'm not gonna lie. But he had lost many friends because he would cancel plans last minute or would just slowly edge away in a relationship. I seemed to be the exception. I was always proud of that, being the one that stuck around. I thought I got him, you know? I thought he got me.
We had each other all throughout university, but when we graduated things got different. It was the first sign that I so blindly ignored that Syd was slipping away. He threw himself into work, having gotten a job opportunity from a really good company before we even graduated. Meanwhile, I just tried my best just to stay afloat. That's what happens, you know? You lose touch with people who used to be your whole life. It happened to me when I graduated secondary school, but with uni I thought things were different. I thought Syd and I were different.
He kept busy, and I was equally busy. While he had taken the more practical route in studying advertising, which easily got him that good job; I was floundering around with my damned English degree and waitressing. Still, no matter how busy we were, we still saw each other. It obviously wasn't as much as it had been when we roomed together, but it was once a month or so. We called- or rather, I called him. He always answered… That was the thing. He never initiated the plans, but he seemed more than glad to do anything I suggested. Maybe that's why I never realized. Syd always did what I suggested when we were roommates. A day trip to a museum or trying out a new restaurant, he went along with all of my plans. So, nothing changed in that aspect.
But then he started to fall away from me.
I don't know what triggered it, but about a year after we graduated, Syd just stopped responding. It wasn't all at once, but- gentle. Like a slope. It progressed from canceling plans that he had seemed excited for, to never answering his phone when I called or even calling me back. I let it happen, I'm not one to chase after people who don't want me. But it hurt. It took Syd leaving for me to realize he had become my only real friend.
I trudged on, working my fucking ass off just to get by while I tried to land a job as a columnist for literally any paper. I fell into a cycle of work and sleep. Nothing else was there and I didn't even realize how fast the days were slipping by.
It was maybe after about 3 or 4 months of complete radio silence that Syd called me. I remember being surprised at the sound of the telephone. I was on the sofa, falling asleep with my half finished dinner spilling over my lap, and it woke me up. It seemed louder than it should have been. I don't have caller ID or an answering machine, so after I cleaned myself up, I answered the phone. It was still ringing after all. Someone staying on the line that long usually meant that the call was important.
I think I knew it was Syd before I even picked up the receiver, or at least before he said anything.
There's so much I don't remember about the conversation
Syd sounded… He didn't sound like himself. He asked me if we could hang out that night. I wanted to tell him to go fuck himself for blowing me off, but I still cared about him. He was my friend. I didn't know what had happened, what made him drop me, but maybe there was something wrong. Maybe I could help him. Even though it was already late and I had to open at the diner I was working at the next day, I told him we could meet up. As soon as I said that, the line went dead.
Less than half an hour later, Syd came to pick me up in his beat up, old beamer. He didn't tell me where we were going, he didn't say anything, really. He had leaned over the center console and opened my door for me, and before I could even close my door he had started driving.
The old car had terrible heating, and how cold the winter night was didn't help. I was freezing even in my winter coat, which I had thankfully put on on my way out the door. Syd on the other hand- he wasn't dressed for the cold, and he didn't seem bothered by it either.
Sitting in the car with him, I had thought that Syd was going to apologize to me. But as the minutes ticked by and he didn't say a word, I knew that wasn't going to happen. Something was wrong then. I knew it, but I didn't know what. No matter how wrong things were, I couldn't help but be mad. Syd had cut me off and then called to meet me in the middle of the night with no explanation whatsoever, and he wouldn't say a word to me.
The conversation… The more I think about it, the more it fades. It's like the cold in that car numbed my memory, like it's eating away at what I can remember. Like moths eating your mother's wedding dress.
I asked Syd what the fuck he wanted. The car had been silent until that point, and I hadn't noticed it- but Syd had driven out of town. The roads were dark, the only lights being the high beams of his car, and it was foggy. The fog looked almost too white, too solid in the car lights.
Syd didn't take his eyes off the road, but he sounded like he had been crying. "I've missed you so much, Mags." His voice was quiet, nearly drowned by the sound of the car engine. It made me stop. I wanted so much to be mad at him, but I just couldn't. Syd was my friend.
We talked, but the entire time he wouldn't look at me. The fog around the car swirled as he drove farther and farther into an area I didn't recognize. So much of what Syd said just didn't make sense. He- he wasn't right, he wasn't okay. I think he was having some sort of breakdown or really bad depressive episode, but in all my years of knowing him he had never acted like that.
He told me about how he had been in his flat unmoving every single day. All he did was stare at the phone and pray I'd call again. "It's been so hard, Mags. So hard."
I asked him if something had happened and the radio, which had been off, crackled to life. Weak static filled the car.
Syd looked away from the road, and I saw the fear in his eyes as he told me his mom had died. Syd used to be close with his mom, but since he came out, she cut him off and had nothing to do with him, no matter how many times he tried to talk to her. I didn't know what to say. Syd was always… He wasn't private about his mother, but it was only a few times that he had spilled to me what had happened between him and her.
I remember, he looked back to the road, almost like it was an involuntary action. Like he was forced to look away from me. "Every day I hear her, Mags." He had said. He told me how he heard his mother whispering such- vile things to him. Syd was trapped in his own apartment with hallucinations of his mother calling him such nasty things. Things he already thought about himself, things she had thrown at him in arguments before, and words that had been shouted at him by strangers on the street.
Yet his driving was so steady. As easy and calm as a Sunday drive through the country.
I asked Syd what I could do to help and he just went quiet. Somehow, the radio static in the car got louder.
Syd wasn't okay. He wasn't sane, something was happening to him. I don't know if it was a normal something, but it was something nonetheless. God, I just wanted to help. If you would have heard him, seen him, you would have wanted to help too. Maybe if I had been better at helping, then he would still be here. I don't know. I wish I knew. I wish I could ask him.
And then Syd told me that he knew how to make it stop. That all he had to do was just walk away from it. I didn't know what he meant then, but he made himself clear when he told me he could never see me again.
Do you know how it feels to be so worried for someone who just said they can't see you again? To be willing to do anything for that person and all they want to do is walk away from you for the second time? It hurts. Syd was my friend. He was my friend and I don't understand what happened to him. Maybe if I had just tried harder to keep contact with him. Maybe if I had just actually gone and visited him to check up on him… Maybe he'd be here.
A bunch of 'maybe's don't add up to anything though.
Before I could even argue with Syd, he slammed on the breaks of the car. I lurched forward. I didn't have my seatbelt on, but thankfully Syd wasn't driving very fast. I braced my arms against the dash as I was thrown and my neck ached from the sudden jerking movement. The radio even was louder now, that's what I remember the most. Neither of us had touched the dial, but the static just kept growing. It was more numbing than the cold. It fizzled into my brain and slowed my thoughts.
I was still trying to work my head around what had happened when Syd opened the car door and stepped out. He didn't look at me, but at the fog. "I love you, Mags." That's what he told me. The bastard couldn't even look me in the eye when he said it. I wish he would have, I wish I could have seen him say it.
I watched Syd walk into that fog, I watched him go. I just sat there and I did nothing. How could I know he wouldn't come back? No, no, that's stupid. I knew what the weirdness of the situation meant, I understood the- finality of Syd's words. I just didn't do anything to try and stop the situation. Not until it was too late at least.
As Syd's body was swallowed by the fog- and I mean swallowed. He didn't just disappear into it, it wrapped itself around him like a coat or a blanket. Normal fog doesn't do that. When that happened, I finally got out of the car. The static from the radio was all I could hear. The car was still running and the headlights were the only light on that empty road. They hardly even made a dent in the fog. Things that are white, like the fog, they're supposed to reflect light while black things and dark colours absorb light. This fog though… It was so thick that it stopped the light, it dimmed it. For something so white, it just took the light away.
Like the dark side of the moon, I knew that the inside of that fog would be pitch black, but I could not just let Syd leave. Yes, I was angry and I didn't know what was happening to him, but we were in the middle of nowhere and I was not going to let him strand himself when he clearly wasn't okay. I got out of the car, my legs shaking and stinging. They had fallen asleep and I felt that radio static deep in my bones.
My staticy legs shook under me as I stepped towards the fog. I didn't call out Syd's name, but he was long gone by then. I couldn't see him at all, and the only thing I heard above my breathing was the damned static.
The fog was cold, so very cold. I remember reaching out towards it. I was already cold, but as soon as my fingers sunk into it, I felt a chill seep deep into my skin. Despite the freezing cold of the fog, I closed my eyes and stepped inside. I felt wet, like I had jumped into a tub full of ice water. When I opened my eyes, the space inside the fog was dark and damp. Air so cold had no right being so humid. I could feel the moisture in the air freezing into frozen droplets that coated the inside of my lungs. It was hard to breathe.
I called out Syd's name, but my words were absorbed by the fog. It sounded for barely a second and there wasn't even an echo. I put my hands out to try and feel around, but there was just that damp coldness surrounding me. It felt like a dream, a bad dream. Like the ones where you can't run or everything you do isn't what you're telling your body to do at all. I was stuck in that wet, cold place and screaming Syd's name, but I was getting nothing out of it.
I don't know if I was crying or if it was just the condensation on my cheeks, but my face was dripping with water. My throat ached as I shouted for Syd. No matter how loud I said his name, the words were silenced by the fog all the same.
At some point, I realized I couldn't stay there. I was basically blind in the fog and I'd probably freeze to death if I didn't leave. When I realized that, I noticed how much my body was shivering. I was wet all over and what little warmth I had in my body was being seeped out of me by the cold. I fell to the ground and the frozen asphalt split the skin on my knees through my trousers. I didn't even feel the pain in my knees, the cold had numbed me. But I felt the blood that oozed there. It burned hot before freezing into a cold goop.
I had to get out of there. I wouldn't be able to find Syd by myself, but if I left I could get help. He wasn't wearing a coat or anything to keep him warm, I had to leave and get help for him. So, I pawed at the pavement. I had gotten turned around in the fog so I had no idea where I was going, but I crawled. I crawled in the fog for what felt like hours. My teeth were chattering and I couldn't feel my fingers.
When I finally came through the veil of fog, it was like breaking the surface of a really deep pool after holding your breath too long. The air was warm- or at least warmer than it had been inside the fog. I gasped, feeling it burn at my body. You know how when you've gotten really cold and even mild warmness feels like it's burning your skin off? That's how it felt to my whole body. My lungs were shedding the ice that had grown there and I was shivering all over.
The car was still there, still running. The static from the radio filled my ears. It sounded so loud compared to the mind eating silence that had been in the fog. Burning and freezing all at once, I slowly stood up. I was shaking, but once I knew I wouldn't fall, I ran to the car. It was just as we had left it. The doors open and the radio static. I shut the doors and tried turning off the radio, but no matter what I did the static persisted. Instead of focusing on the static, I fiddled with the heater in the car. It had been off the entire time, but with shaking fingers I turned it on so that it would be blasting. The air was hardly warm, but it was blowing life into me. I coughed hard into my hands and for a second, I thought I had coughed up actual ice. The moment I looked at my palms though, the ice had melted into bubbly spit.
I wiped my hands on myself and did my best to drive the old car into town. I wouldn't go forward into that fog again, even in the car I knew I would not be safe inside the fog. I made a messy turn and tried my best to drive back the way Syd had brought us. I didn't recognize the roads, but as I drove the car heater warmed more and more. It took over an hour for me to find my way from the strange roads and into town. I was still shivering, I was still cold.
The clock in the car said 7PM when I made it to the police station. It was always wrong, even before Syd and I split ways, but it was still jarring to see it. I left the car running when I went inside the station. I tried explaining to the bored looking officer at the front desk what had happened, but she didn't listen. It was like she didn't hear me. I insisted that Syd was out there in that terrible fog and that he needed help, but she just slid me a missing person's form and told me to fill it out.
I was- I don't know what I felt. I was angry. So fucking angry. I was angry at the police for not caring and I was angry at Syd for just giving up and letting himself go into that fog. I took the form and I went home. I submitted it but… The police haven't been in contact with me. Syd hasn't either, I don't he will. If he was so reserved to walking into that fog- thinking that it would make everything better, then why would he come back?
I'm still so cold. It's been three days since I stepped into that fog trying to find Syd and I can't stop shivering. I don't have a fever and I'm not sick, I'm just cold. It's almost so unbearable that I can't do anything. I pile on sweaters and jackets and blankets when I'm home, and at work I stay constantly on my feet. None of it helps. I'm just getting colder. It's like I'm freezing from the inside out.
Syd didn't seem cold… That is something I remember. While we drove, he wasn't cold at all. Maybe it's because he accepted the fog and the cold. I hate the thought of it, but with Syd gone and how horrible it is being cold all the time, I might just accept the fog to be done with it. To be empty. Maybe I'll see Syd again if I do that. I don't know if that's what I want, but I know it's so lonely in that fog… I'd be happy to see just about anyone in there.
The cold hasn't gotten that unbearable though. My fingers are numb and I had the hardest time writing this, but I'm not so cold as to go back into that frozen hell. Not yet.
ARCHIVIST:
Statement ends.
(SIGHS TIREDLY.) The Lonely. I don't- This is what Martin is aligning himself with. He knows what it is, what that bastard Lukas does to feed it. Yet he- (SHARP INTAKE OF BREATH.)
There's no use talking about it when there's no one but these damned tapes to listen… We've… We've picked our alignments. I just wish- I just wish Martin would… I don't want him to die for the Lonely like I did the Eye. He still has a choice. It's not too late for him.
I'm not saying that the Eye is any better than the Lonely. They're both evil , but- the Eye is safer. I'm safer than Lukas. At least I care about him… about Martin.
(A PAUSE.)
Out of all these things I can Know, I can't See anything on what Lukas is planning. But I know- I know it's something. Elias- Jonah wouldn't have him here if he didn't trust him. It seems the fog is getting to me too, or at least I can't see through it.
(SOUND OF PAPER, MOST LIKELY THE STATEMENT, BEING PICKED UP AND TURNED OVER.)
(HEAVY BUZZING DISTORTS AIR, ARCHIVIST TAKES A SMALL GASP. BUZZING THEN FADES.)
It… It seems that the fog got to Margot Tanner, too. In the end she gave herself to it. (VOICE CHOKES.) I hope she's not… cold anymore. Hopefully I can learn from her, though. She got out of the fog because she was thinking of Syd… Maybe… Even though he was in the fog, it was the thought of him that kept her aware enough to eventually find her way out.
If Lukas- (EXHALES.)
I won't let this happen to Martin.
[Recorder clicks off.]