Chapter Text
Now with audio recording for the Statement!
Listen on:
Case #0141407
Audio Recording Transcript
[Tape recorder clicks on.]
[Papers shuffle. JONATHAN SIMS (THE ARCHIVIST) clears his throat. A chair scrapes.]
JONATHAN
Statement of Charlie White, regarding their-
[A tentative knock at the door. The ARCHIVIST sighs deeply.]
JONATHAN
Come in.
MARTIN BLACKWOOD (ARCHIVAL ASSISTANT)
Oh-er- hi, Jon. Do you have a minute?
[THE ARCHIVIST inhales through their nose.]
JONATHAN
Yes.
[Tape recorder clicks off.]
*
[Tape recorder clicks on again.]
MARTIN
I-I can come back? If it’s a bad time I mean-
JONATHAN
No, no, now’s as good a time as ever.
[A silence. It stretches.]
MARTIN
So… [coughs] about that work trip to Manchester. I-I think we really need to talk about it. What happened.
[A dull sound, like someone swallowing.]
JONATHAN
Martin, I… I don’t know what to say.
MARTIN
Really? You have no idea what to say.
[JONATHAN coughs.]
MARTIN [frustrated]
Well, I don’t know, Jon, say… anything! It’s honestly ridiculous, you cold shoulder me for months when I first started working here and then you finally start to be nice about the whole Prentiss situation and you just stop talking to me. Again!
JONATHAN
Martin, I-
[MARTIN cuts him off, in a rush.]
MARTIN
-And I finally get used to that and then we’re suddenly all chummy on some “work” trip in Manchester staking out some falling-apart stage theatre. Oh, did I mention the creepy little girl that had all the ripped-off doll heads in a pentagram-
[JONATHAN attempts to interject. It is unsuccessful.]
- and she’s all “ring-a-ring-a-rosie!” and it turns out it’s just some overactive amateur theatre company’s end-of-year performance? What was that, Jon? I thought you were meant to… oh, I don’t know… “Know” these things?
[JONATHAN finally interjects.]
JONATHAN
Look, Martin, I really thought it was a Stranger situation- I can only see bits and pieces and I felt… something?
[A long, tense silence.]
MARTIN
So that’s it then? It wasn’t all just some excuse?
JONATHAN [speaking quickly]
I-uh-wha-what do you mean?
MARTIN [also speaking quickly]
The restaurant dinner and show… was it all part of… researching the Stranger? Was it?
[JONATHAN coughs and shuffles the pages of his statement.]
JONATHAN
Um, well—that is to say it—it was certainly a facet of attending—
MARTIN [scoffs in incredulous laughter]
I don’t believe this! Are you actually allergic to talking about feelings?
JONATHAN [defensively]
I-am not… allergic… I just… don’t really indulge that kind of talk in a professional environment.
[A long pause, incredulous on MARTIN’s end and slightly afraid on JONATHAN’s.]
MARTIN
So that’s it then. You take me out on some… bullshit “work” trip, invite me on a cosy date to the fraudulently evil cinema, flirt with me and then… we just don’t talk about it. God, you know—it really is like pulling teeth getting you to open up.
[A short, tense silence, and then it is broken.]
JONATHAN
Teeth. Sorry. Made me think of-
MARTIN [sighs]
-Case #0092302. Teeth in a rubbish bag. Yummy.
[JONATHAN chuckles. There is a small clatter, like glasses being placed on a desk.]
JONATHAN
I’m… sorry, Martin. You’re right. I don’t really like to talk about-feelings very much. And with all the Not-Sasha business… it’s been, well… rather more difficult than it usually is.
MARTIN [quietly]
[His voice gets closer and clearer.]
Hey. It’s been really hard, I understand-
JONATHAN [quietly]
-It was a date.
MARTIN [faintly]
What?
JONATHAN [very quickly]
Yes, it was a date. I had an inkling that there was some Stranger activity in Manchester, but as soon as I got there I Knew it was just a false alarm. And… well… Elias had already approved the expense and we were there and I couldn’t tell you so I just found something that would make do. Although I didn’t suspect that the actual performance would be that creepy.
[A long pause.]
MARTIN
You- you do know that it’s almost more creepy to use your sinister powers from your patron to orchestrate a date?
JONATHAN [relieved]
Yes, yes, well I can see that now [pause]. Although… not “See”…
MARTIN [closer, clearer]
-I know [pause]. You’re kind of adorable, you know that?
JONATHAN
I- I, uh, don’t… er- no, I don’t Know that.
MARTIN [much closer]
Oh my gosh, you-
[Papers rustle in a flustered way and there is a sound like a polyester jacket schick-ing over more fabric. The glasses clatter on the desk again. There is a faint gasp.]
JONATHAN [slightly out of breath]
Martin!
MARTIN [smugly]
Jo-on.
JONATHAN
We— [cough] —can’t… do this in here. Elias might-
MARTIN
-Fire us? Creep on us kissing?
[A short pause.]
JONATHAN
Good lord.
MARTIN
-Yep, uh, you were the one who brought it up.
JONATHAN
Point taken.
MARTIN
Wait… is- is that recording?
[There is a scratchy, clacking sound like someone fumbling hard plastic. The tape recorder crackles slightly with the contact.]
MARTIN
Ah!
[annoyed, very loudly, very close to the tape recorder]
Elias, you really are a voyeuristic pervert.
JONATHAN [wearily]
Sorry, I did turn it off. I suppose Elias—it’s alright. Half the time they just appear in here anyway.
MARTIN
I’ll get you a fresh tape. You were recording a statement, right?
JONATHAN
Honestly, it’s fine. Once it’s recorded, throwing it out won’t stop Elias from Knowing anyway.
MARTIN
Alright.
[MARTIN’s footsteps get quieter again. There is another pause.]
You… really did ask me on a date?
JONATHAN [warmly]
Yes, I-I did.
[MARTIN laughs breathily. It sounds like he is smiling.]
MARTIN
Okay. I’m about to head back to the break room – do you want a cup of tea?
JONATHAN [chuckles]
When have I ever said ‘no’?
MARTIN [slightly incredulous]
Literally, lots! You’re ki-ind of a dick.
JONATHAN
Just because I on occasion fail to indulge your incessant need to make tea, does not make me “kind of a dick”.
MARTIN
Fine. Your usual?
[A slight pause.]
JONATHAN
Actually… could you please make me how you do it for yourself?
MARTIN
Got it. Peppermint, with milk.
[There are some faint sounds of disgust.]
MARTIN
Kidding! Kidding.
[A slight pause.]
Jon, I—I’m really glad we talked about this.
JONATHAN
Me too, Martin.
[There is a heavy, pregnant pause.]
JONATHAN
Can—can I..?
MARTIN [shyly]
Oh! Yeah.
[The faint sounds of scratching polyester fabric and rustling pages repeat, slower and softer than earlier. The sounds stop. A pause.]
MARTIN [a bit breathlessly]
Um—okay—one cup of tea, coming right up!
[Footsteps get fainter and the door closes. The long-forgotten statement rustles.]
[JONATHAN chuckles softly. He clears his throat, and begins again.]
THE ARCHIVIST
Statement of Charlie White, regarding their digital escapism and experiences of the television program "Hvalstat". Original statement given 14th July, 2014. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London. Statement begins.
THE ARCHIVIST (STATEMENT)
I had always loved fantasy. Grew up with it from a young age. I was always nose deep in some book, learning about goblins and fairies and the like, in the strange things that would happen in worlds that shimmered with magic. That was all very normal, I was told. Lots of kids have overactive imaginations.
On long, dull summer days, I would stay in the cool dark, blinds drawn half-closed to block it all out and immerse myself in a world so much more fantastical and wonderful than my dry, burnt reality. Words towered high into castles of black ink, or twisted into adventurous forests of warm oaks or whispered as mist across the surface of still, forgotten lakes. There were no cars, no barking dogs, no blistering sunburn in that horrible bright light. It was always soft and dark and quiet. I started to write about places like those in my books, those in my dreams.
I was sociable enough at school, intelligent but not particularly outgoing, and teachers were pleased by my work. Reports would be modestly complimentary, apart from their exaggerated and inexplicable praise for my writing. I was horrified when one day, a teacher produced my writing at a parent-teacher interview, to gloat to them of my progress. It hadn’t really occurred to me until then that my refuge wasn’t… my own. That by reading those same words that I had written, others could learn of my sacred places and desecrate them at their will. It was… violating.
My parents, for once, were delighted. That afternoon was the first time that I remember in my life that they actually smiled and showed attention, instead of dismissing me and complaining that I “read too many books”. They took me out for icecream. I ignored the feeling that the icecream curdled in my mouth, thinking about these loud, vulgar tourists that I had let into my refuge, into my forests.
But despite my own disgust at betraying the guardianship of my worlds, my parents’ sickly-sweet praise was intoxicating. It was insidious and addictive, and it just felt so… good. Quiet as I was, desperate to retreat as I was, I nevertheless quickly became dependent on the nicotine hit of their approval, which could only happen under the spotlight to which I was so very unaccustomed. “Our-
[The door quietly creaks open, followed by soft footsteps.]
MARTIN [softly]
Here’s your tea, Jon. Sorry, Tim was hogging the kettle.
JONATHAN
That’s quite alright, Martin.
[There is a sound of gently sipping tea.]
MARTIN
I-er-made you a lemongrass and ginger with honey. Good for keeping your vocal cords hydrated for reading statements. Learned that at a poetry slam, actually- though it was a pretty bad poetry slam-
[pause]
You look like you’re in the zone though, I’ll let you get back to it.
JONATHAN [with some warmth]
Thank you, Martin. It’s very good.
MARTIN
Oh-oh, that’s oka- you're welcome. I’ll get going. Bye, Jon.
[The footsteps become more distant and the door shuts again. There is a long pause.]
THE ARCHIVIST [crisply]
Statement resumes.
THE ARCHIVIST (STATEMENT)
“Our child will be the next…” was my parents’ constant refrain, as they dragged me to a merry-go-round of award ceremonies and spelling bees and poetry competitions. The faces of laughing, smiling adults in cocktail dresses and important-looking suits faded into a sickening blur, on this ride I could not get off. I remember cameras flashing in my face as I held ribbons or trophies, smiling the smile my mother had told me to and trying to not feel so very alone.
I managed to perform the whole “gifted child” act until I was sixteen, when I experienced depression for the first time.
I stopped writing then. I watched my parents’ façade of love wash away in the first rain of sadness, first exposing a peeling layer of false concern for my writing and my “future”, before rotting further to expose the same hard detachment I had known so long ago. The same that I knew was always there, under the thin veneer of glamour and awards.
The words that simmered and shimmered at the surface of my mind were… gone. And in their absence was horrible, empty space, like falling.
I reached for my books again and they were… forgiving. I did not deserve it, I knew that, in the way I had prostituted my language into a self-serving thing for praise and admiration instead of its divine purpose. I sank back into their familiar pages, my mind stepping surely through the predictable corridors and passageways of words, knowing full well where the maze would end - happily ever after. When my mind had finished its journey, I would awake back in my body that repelled me so. It didn’t take long for me to reach for the same books again and feel their warm, kindly embrace, my mind racing faster through the twisting and turning passages every time.
An English teacher eventually noticed and sent me to the school counsellor, who was warm and gave me pamphlets with different iterations of bright smiling teenagers on them and told me to come back in two days. I did, and maybe some of the colour stuck to me, like crumbles of watercolour on a washed canvas.
I got better, anyway, and once I graduated school and got a casual job at a café, I came out to my parents. My mother had tears in her eyes and begged me to reconsider my lifestyle, my self and my father said nothing at all. I turned my back on them and walked out, closing that chapter of my life, to be torn from the pages and held to a flame.
I applied for a Bachelor of Arts. I was mostly happy, working part-time at the café, going to the queer community club and studying full-time.
I was doing really well, at first. But as anyone who has been to university knows, it doesn’t take long before things begin to pile up and overwhelm, and it- it is relentless. Things started to slip through the cracks. Assignments, being late to shifts, tests… I felt like there was a hole in the ground that I couldn’t see, not until I made one wrong step and it swallowed my whole life. And what was worst of all was… nobody noticed. I was nobody. At least when I was in school, back in those days of being a prized dog jumping through hoops with ribbons in my hair, I was… special. Even though I hated it. Even though I craved it.
But here… everyone was special, more intelligent, more attractive, more extraverted… better than me in every conceivable way. When I entered my worlds, all I could think was that they were wrong somehow. People’s faces and anachronistic details would flicker, small and irreparable tears in the fabric of the canvases I lovingly stitched and it would all be… fake. How could I find comfort in worlds that were so hollow and false? And worst of all, when I read my friends’ work… theirs was just better. Even at my best, it just wasn’t enough. I wasn’t… enough.
That was about the time I found my television show. Well, I suppose I should more accurately say that the television show found me. It was called “Hvalstat” and it was based in the fictitious village by that name in some unknown part of Northern Europe.
It had been a hard day, and I had had several customers passive-aggressively whine and snipe at me about their coffees, as though a slightly too cold coffee truly ruined their day. I had got results on my last assignment back too. Seventy-one percent. I had been really proud of that one, and I had really thought that this would boost my grade up to that fabled High Distinction. But just like everything I had written, it was disappointingly middle-of-the-road, even at my best.
I sat on my bed, wrapping myself in blankets, mindlessly flicking through harsh previews of people’s false smiles and canned laughter on some streaming channel. And just like that, I landed on Hvalstat, nestled between the garish, oversaturated tiles in its own little square of soft, grey comfort.
The preview of this was a fairy tale log cabin, windows lit warm and yellow from the inside, the stars in the clear, unpolluted sky twinkling above a cool, misty forest. A warm, gentle voice said: “Welcome to Hvalstat. Population twenty-one. Nine humans, seven elves, four dwarves. And now you.”
I couldn’t even tell you what it was really about. But it sounded wonderful, and straight out of my childhood fantasies.
I watched four episodes that first night. The protagonist remained unnamed, and the characters would simply refer to them as the “Newcomer”, if they had to use their name at all. It was shot in a kind of point-of-view, first person style that was only briefly jarring in the first few minutes, until it soon seemed as natural as breathing.
This protagonist – I – quickly made friends though. There was Mrs Baker, the smiling, homely elf across the leaf-strewn path who brought over some jam when I moved in; or the gruff dwarf Borid who always smelled of woodsmoke when I passed him on my morning walk. I don’t even remember what those episodes were about. I dimly recall some kind of light domestic tasks, where maybe the primary narrative conflict was something as simple as getting a set of keys for the cabin, or running out of eggs. Something like that though. I couldn’t really say.
I slept in the next morning, tired from staying up late. I managed to drag myself out and was almost twenty minutes late for my lecture on some pompous framework of literary analysis, given by another middle-aged white man. It all seemed so hollow, so pretentious and was yet another of the disappointments to which I was becoming familiar. As the day stretched until the shadows lengthened on the pavement, I caught the bus home, a little prickle and squeeze of excitement at the thought of rugging up in front of the tv and watching more Hvalstat.
I don’t remember how many I watched the second night, but it was well past three am when my eyelids finally drooped closed, embraced by the warm release of sleep. To my delight, my experience got to continue, my dreams filled with autumn leaves and warm, crackling log fires, the menagerie of Hvalstat characters smiling cheerily at me with baskets of red berries and gingham overalls.
I slept later again, and this time did not bother attending my eleven am lecture on contemporary film analysis. I told myself I would just catch it up online anyway. Out the window, the cold, gloomy piss-grey of the suburban winter loomed overhead and I felt something in my stomach curl, an animal instinct to burrow myself away in the warm and wait for kinder days. I didn’t feel well, anyway. My depression was creeping in through the cracks in my mediocre grades and less frequent hospitality shifts. I told myself that I needed this, a mental health day, to rest, even as I reached for the remote to keep playing Hvalstat.
Nothing could compare to the euphoria I would feel when I settled in for the evening for my familiar, safe world, blanketed tightly, even as the strewn soiled paper bags of cheap takeaway were starting to pile up. My toothbrush sat in a mug of dirty water from where I placed it next to my bed, trying to keep the habit.
At some point, I guess I must have run out of episodes, because I seemed to cycle back through the familiar scenarios, although they all blended together.
“Oh, I remember this one,” I thought, when Mrs Baker rapped on the door and smiled, bringing me an artfully latticed meat pie to welcome me to the town. Only, hadn’t it been jam? I told her as much and she laughed, throwing back her dark mass of curls, showing white even teeth.
“Don’t be silly, Newcomer,” she said, pinching my cheek with long fingers. “I’ve always brought you a meat pie when you move here.”
The next morning or afternoon or evening when I surfaced in my bleak, dirty share house, I had some trouble unlocking my phone. The Face ID wasn’t working, and it had been so long since I needed the passcode to get in that it was rusty in my head. I just wanted to look up the episode, I was sure that Mrs Baker had always brought me jam for our first meeting. I couldn’t even find the show though. I couldn’t find any producers, directors, actors, writers, anything at all on Hvalstat. Autocorrect just asked me if I meant a few other villages of similar names.
Her meat pie was delicious though, and comfortingly familiar. I ate it with Borid after our evening walk, after putting the kettle on the crackling fire. To my surprise, though, there was a small bleached white thing sunk into the rich, buttery pastry, wet with gravy.
“What’s this?” I asked him curiously, and he chuckled a deep throaty laugh, before replying:
“Oh, a knucklebone! Aren’t you lucky? It’s always good luck to find one of those in a pie!”
It seemed normal, of course. It was a village tradition.
After our meal, I walked through the oak forests surrounding Hvalstat, the leaves twisted and narrowly lobed in ochres and ambers. A sense of peace filled my heart. It was quiet and the sun had set, the red moon rising over the hills and washing it all in carmine glow. A few birds sang, some small, sweet things whistling their melodious songs, fluttering and skipping through the trees. I saw one alight on the branch nearby and I watched it in fascination as it watched me with sharp, black eyes. It started to choke on something and my heart was suddenly pierced with fear at losing this precious creature. There was something small and white lodged in its throat as it desperately wheezed and coughed it up in front of my eyes. It was a knucklebone.
But there was still something in its mouth, and I carefully crooned to the distressed creature to hold still while I tried to clear the rest of the obstruction. To my surprise, there were several lines of sharp white teeth on the inside of its beak, dark with blood.
The next day, I was making a cake for Piyr’s birthday, the strawberry and ginger one I remembered making so many times. How many times had I experienced this episode? I knew how my hazy day would unfold, knew the beats and timings when Borid would stroll past the window with his axe on his way to chop wood; when Mr Baker would walk arm-in-arm with his wife to pick berries of crimson that grew along paths as I tossed scraps of meat to the birds. Or hadn’t it been bread crumbs?
I hummed the tune I knew so well as I stirred the rich batter, sugar and butter and flour swirled together in a creamy mix. I faithfully trotted the path to the fridge and opened the carton of eggs, knowing what I would find. Empty. I nodded, relieved at some normalcy in my life, as I crossed the weedy path over to Mrs Baker’s. She opened the door quickly, her smile of pointed teeth stretching all the way to her black, bright eyes.
“Hello, Charlie, whatever is the matter?” she asked in concern, and I breathed a sigh of relief at the familiar words.
“Oh, Mrs Baker, I do hope you don’t mind, would I be able to borrow some eggs? I’m making a cake for Mr Piyr’s birthday and I’ve just run out,” I recited my lines faithfully.
“Of course, dear! Have a dozen, my hens just won’t stop laying.”
I thanked her for her generosity and found myself back at the battered kitchen bench, looking over the cake mix. The bench was quite worn now, scratches in the wood from all the wear and tear of my cooking. I thought fondly of Borid and remembered him offering to make me a new benchtop. Humming the tune that wound through my head, I cracked an egg into the batter.
The thick smell of rotten decay immediately hit me, the dark and wet malformed body of some small lizard that lay sticky in the batter. I cracked another, and another, in desperation although the batter was no longer salvageable. Inside another was a bloodshot eye that glistened wetly, crimson black. Only one seemed to have anything that resembled a chicken egg. It was the embryo of some bird, like the one I had seen in the evening, a disfigured wet thing with several rows of sharp teeth that seemed to have been the only thing that had formed.
There was a knock at the door, as I saw Borid walk past the window again, this time dragging his axe. Mrs Baker rapped sharply again, then creaked the door open with an airy laugh, pushing it open with those long, thin fingers, the nails yellow and crusted with something.
“Here, for your strawberry cake,” she smiled, everything about her far too sharp and long. She stroked my shoulder with her bony hand and pushed several jars of dark crimson jam along the pitted and rotted bench, merry blue ribbons tied in neat bows on them, white lace trim along the lids. Her and Borid watched me, unblinking, as I opened the jar, seeing a clotted, tarry substance that I knew hadn’t come from strawberries.
“Here, taste it, it’s your favourite. Aren’t you always asking me for it? Don’t you like sweets?” she crooned, and plunged her hand straight into the jar, pressing her wet long fingers sticky with tarred blood into my mouth. My lungs drowned and burned with sharp, metallic blood, and I didn’t know where I began and her talons ended, scratching and reaching down my throat. Borid laughed.
“Nothing comes for nothing, Charlie, not without a little hard work,” he sneered, as he raised the rusted axe to my throat.
My hands were frozen on the table, trembling. The scratch marks that pitted my well-worn kitchen bench were the exact shape and spacing of my dark and bloody fingernails. Only I noticed that carved in the bench was a single word, irregular and deep in the wood. “Write.”
[pause]
I suppose I must have done that. Changed some narrative, I guess, that got me out of there? Maybe my words finally became paths that led me out, instead of deeper in. I really couldn’t say.
Things still aren’t right here though. The mirror doesn’t show me, or at least I don’t know what… that thing is in there, with hollow eyes, gnawing hunger and sharp teeth. It might just be who I am now. My housemates haven’t noticed anything different, when I finally dragged myself to the kitchen after what could have been days or weeks. I still can’t get into my phone.
I’m trying. I’ve started seeing a psychologist, but everyone still looks sharp and pointed. I went for a walk the other day, in the forest. I don’t know why. But I do know that the digitate lobes of those leaves were far too thin. The dry edges curled upwards, and I swear to you… that they were fingers.
Statement ends.
[THE ARCHIVIST deeply sighs and inhales.]
THE ARCHIVIST
There are several opportunities for details to be corroborated in this instance, but owing to the recent prevalence of statements of a similar nature, it seems unlikely we would be sufficiently fortunate as to have this statement confidently proven false.
At the request of the subject, no contact was made with Mr and Mrs White to verify details. However, Martin was able to obtain an old counsellor’s report from the school, which detailed a predisposition for depression, disassociation and maladaptive coping mechanisms including poor impulse control and escapist tendencies.
He has also conducted a search for Hvalstat and several different spelling iterations in media programming and community forums with no success. However, broadening the search to specific items mentioned in the statement has yielded some mixed success, as there were some recent observations in a Norwegian birdwatching forum of an unfamiliar bird species that appeared to have rows of teeth enclosed within the beak.
What concerns me in this statement is that it appears to contain several elements that pertain to different manifestations of Smirk’s Fourteen, although it is difficult to identify which of these may be predominant. I would suggest the Web, based on the increasing grasp of such media over the subject, but the Spiral may also be likely, based on the statement giver’s increasingly poor ability to distinguish reality from fiction. However, frustratingly, pervasive elements of the Stranger also present in this statement, based on the subject’s description of Mrs Baker and Borid and their… wrongness.
The Lonely also appears to have a strong connection with the statement-giver, based on the repetition of motifs of nature and isolation, particularly that of mist. However, Mx. White’s fondness for overwrought poetry and prose cannot be denied, and based on their literary background, such parallels may merely be the result of exaggerated artistic expression.
Could this describe a mental framework that could lead up to being victimised by the Spiral, in a descent into madness? Or perhaps could this represent the early markers of a victim’s transition into a NotThem, desperate to live as someone else?
Whatever the case, this statement adds to the increasing body of evidence pointing toward elevated activity across many of the Fears in the last several years.
THE ARCHIVIST
End recording.
[Audio transcript ends.]