Work Text:
[Recorder clicks on.]
ARCHIVIST:
Statement of Sylvia Williams, regarding her dreams about her childhood home in Cotswolds. Statement originally given November 5th, 2005. Audio recording by the Archivist.
Statement begins.
ARCHIVIST (STATEMENT):
I've been dreaming about my old house a lot lately. I've never dreamed about that house before, and I've never really been one to remember my dreams- but I remember these dreams. It's like they're projected against my eyelids whenever I close my eyes. The moment my head hits the pillow, I am in that house again.
I've never really remembered my dreams before. Sure, there's the snippet here and there of the absolute abstract weirdness that only comes with dreams. The sort of thing that has you wracking your poor brain in the early waking hours as the little dregs of the dream fade away before you know it, leaving behind only confusion and a wanting to know and to remember. But I don't have that. I remember everything. It- they feel so real. I wake up and I'm shaken not to find myself in that old house, following out the pre-written plots of the dream.
The dream is the same, too. I should say that. It doesn't differ, doesn't change. Yet, it leads me. I follow its whims every night like it's the first time I've ever dreamed of it. I don't try to fight it. I'm much too intrigued to ever dream of that.
I didn't live in the house long, maybe just three or four years. I wasn't very old… Just around 11 when we moved there, and barely 15 when I moved out with my mum. It was out in Cotswolds. 1031 Ridge Street . Isn't it funny that you can always remember the addresses of places you've lived no matter how many years it's been since you've actually been there? It's like a little ping… something you engraved in your memory in such a habit that it can never be polished or scrubbed away.
The house was old and big. Much too big for my little family of four. Even now I can see it in my mind… Not how it was then, but how it is now. I don't know how I know what it looks like now, I just… My dreams show me what it looks like. I see the shadows of the living room and the dining room, what they used to be. But they're faint. I feel and know everything as it is now, decaying and rotted. It's not like the house was in a very good state when we had it anyways… But at least it was maintained. It was whole.
It was old, like I said, a farmhouse. I think the property used to be a sheep farm back in the day, before the second World War took away the able bodied hands that could keep it running. But considering the state of it at the time, it was cheap for my parents to buy. The house had been between renovations, the previous owner got bored of working on it just a year or so after he bought it. So, when we moved in, it looked worse for wear. The walls in the living room were gutted; the carpets torn up; and the wallpaper in the bedrooms was half peeled or covered in a splotchy and weak paint job.
I hated the bathroom in that house, though. Out of everything, it was the worst. It was big, but so wrong. It was larger than my tiny upstairs bedroom, but it was also constantly the filthiest room in the house. Out of all the rooms that the previous owner could have started fixing up, the bathroom needed it the most. The single window in the room was boarded up; pink insulation stuck naked out of the wall; and the old plastic tiles on the floor were peeling around the dirt stained tub.
I hated that tub the most. I always had from the moment we moved in. It made me feel sick. I didn't feel clean when I looked at it, and I certainly didn't feel clean when I bathed in it. If anything, bathing in that bath made me feel even more filthy than before.
Water would always get down under the peeling tile and rot the wood with a constant and slow deliberance. It was black and mold eaten, weak and soft to the touch and always damp. It grossed me out to no end. I hated knowing it was there, even when it was hidden under towels meant to catch whatever bathwater spilled. It was so gross to me. So nasty. How could I be expected to clean myself in that tub? How could I feel clean knowing that the floor around me was black and rotted?
I tried not to touch the mold, to not even get close to touching it, even through the towels that lined the floor. If the tub was dry, I'd hop into it from as far away as I could manage so I wouldn't have to feel the softness of the rotting wood beneath my bare feet. This solution worked for me, it helped me be able to face the tub despite my hatred for it and its mold.
However, a new fear grew in me when my mother told me to stop how I entered the tub. She had caught me one day, jumping into the bath and told me something that haunted me for the rest of the time I lived in that house. Do you know what she said to me? 'Sylvia, don't jump into the tub. The floor is rotten. Too much force will cause the bath to fall through the floor to the basement. ' I don't know why she told me that, why she'd put that fear into my head. It made me hate the bathroom, hate that tub even more. I started bathing less because of it. I didn't want the rotting wood under the tub to finally give way and for the tub to plummet with me in it, to the even filthier floor of the basement.
I was not safe from the tub or the mold that grew with it. I couldn't jump into the tub and I couldn't dare stomach the thought of touching the mold. I was stuck. In the end, I just felt cleaner when I stopped bathing. I washed in the bathroom sink. I only ever dared step foot in the bath when my parents threatened me. Still, it wasn't more than one bath a month… One bath too many.
I moved out of that house when my mum and dad got divorced. Their marriage was rotting just like that old house, it was for the better honestly. If I hated the fearful thought of the moldy bath, I hated their daily fights even more. When their moods were bad, the house showed it. It would grow filthier and the air was evil and stale. I think the house liked it… I don't know. Maybe its rot infected them and their anger fueled it to fall apart more. A constant cycle of fear, filth, and hatred.
I was glad to move, to get out of that house.
With how much of a fixer-upper the house was, no one bought it when my dad tried selling it. By the time that he moved out, the bank had claimed it. I don't think anyone actually owns it now, it would be too much money to own it. Too much of a loss. It's cheaper to leave it empty and infested with decay, rotting from the inside out.
I haven't thought of that house in 10 years, I haven't stepped foot in it in even longer… But it's begun to haunt my dreams. They started last month and haven't stopped since. It's a routine now. They're not bad dreams, they're just- I don't know. They fill me with the oddest sense of deja-vu. I haven't done what I do in the dreams before, but I know that I will. How can I not when it feels so right?
The dreams are always the same. It's a tape, a script that does not change. I am on the old, concrete porch of the house. I am in front of the scuffed front door and I open it. It is unlocked. The inside of the house is falling apart from years of no care and from people breaking in and keeping up its rotting ruins for fun. The floor creaks, it's termite eaten and weak underfoot. The walls are carved with the initials of broken up couples and the names of the young and foolish. Blue and red spray paint decorates the walls in symbols and words in fonts I cannot read. Windows are smashed, glass glittering the floor. The old furniture left behind by my father is alive with mice and eaten and pulled apart by their living, squeaking nest. I feel their black, beady gaze on me as I travel to the place that still fills me with fear.
It's a new fear I feel in the bathroom. One of awe and anxiousness rather than the disgust and unease that it used to trigger inside me. The tub is black with the dirt of many years and the smell of the rot is whole and bountiful. The tub is slick and filthy, sagging in the floor with the weight of the gross, stale water within it. I do not know where the water came from. I do not need to know to understand the raging foulness that grows peacefully inside. The water is dark, rotten like coffee and swarming. I know it's swarming. I see the movement, dark and hypnotizing under the still surface.
I reach, and my movement is slow like all movement is in dreams. I reach, and before I can even skim the surface of that vile and inviting water, my eyes open and it is gone. My hand stands straight in the air, seeking the dirt and grime of that rotted tub, and I feel an ache, a homesickness for the decay.
I'm sorry for the smell I may leave behind. I have stopped bathing again. Not because I'm afraid of falling through the floor, or because the dirt disgusts me, but because I need it. I need to feel the dirt. The grease in my hair. The warm, comforting grime on my skin. The honest rot that covers me like a warm blanket and makes me feel at home. I need to feel it. Soap and chemicals, hot water and perfume, they take that away. They take me away from the safety of it all. From the beauty of the tub and the movement beneath its surface.
I am going to visit that house. I know it. I am not afraid. Something about it feels right. I was meant to visit it, meant to breathe in the filth and decay. It has been waiting for me to come back all of these years. Falling into more ruin, growing more unkempt while the things inside the tub grow and bide their time patiently. I would hate to keep them waiting any longer. I feel it deep inside of me that this is right. That I belong there. That I need to go. That I must visit the tub… Get in it and submerge myself within it, let the utter rot infect my bones and become one with it. It is my pilgrimage and it will make me holy.
Thinking back now, I want to laugh. How was I ever afraid of that tub? Disgusted by the dirt and the mold that I now so crave? I was too young and didn't understand. I don't think even now that I truly understand. There is so much beauty in rot, the glorious decay that festers the world and infects hearts. I was so afraid, but only because I didn't understand it. The rot is within us all, we need only to accept it. It's such a lovely rot, too. I can't wait to be surrounded with its perfect embrace.
I am going home, home to the dirt and the rot and the filth of that house. I hope it forgives me for all I once held against it.
ARCHIVIST:
Statement ends.
Well, little follow up is needed for this statement, as it seems Gertrude and our very own Gerard Keay saw to that already. I don't- Gertrude left a note here with the statement, explaining that they visited the house in Cotswolds and found Ms. Williams dead in the bathtub, but she left out a lot. A lot.
Clear as day, the Eye shows me what happened at that house. I can See the Rot, it's so real in my head that I can almost smell it, almost feel it. Looking at the note that Gertrude left behind and comparing it to what I Know- it couldn't be different. It makes me wonder how many of these notes Gertrude left behind were watered down. How if they weren't… the information would've helped us to do things better.
(THERE IS SILENCE, THEN THE ARCHIVIST SIGHS.)
Ever since Martin left that tape for the others, letting them- letting them know how I was sustaining myself, I've been trying to staunch this odd feeling of hunger inside me with only statements. It's hard, it's so hard. Newer ones, well- they work best. They tide me over for longer. Satiate me. While this one isn't terribly old, it could be fresher.
I had the idea that perhaps different statements, ones supporting different fears, might hold me over differently, might taste differently. They don't. A part of me is disappointed in that. But I suppose it makes sense. Fear is all the same. It doesn't matter what inspires it, just that it's there. That it's raw and that it's terror.
I'm… I think I'm going to try and get some sleep. Sleep is good for getting over the hunger. I don't feel it when I'm sleeping, not as much at least.
[Recorder clicks off.]