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ARCHIVIST
Statement of Kendra Russo, regarding her time at the Caring Haven Orphanage. Original statement given April the 19th, 2011. Audio recording by Johnathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.
Statement begins.
ARCHIVIST (STATEMENT)
I was eleven when I found myself in the Caring Haven Orphanage. Before that, my father left us when I was a toddler, and it was only me and my mother since then. Sadly, she passed away in a fatal car crash, you know how it is. I didn't have any living family, so they put me in an orphanage. The first year was hard. You don't ever expect to be put up in a foreign environment, with kids of all ages, because your only family member dies. I had to deal with both change and grief, which isn't easy for an eleven-year-old, if you can imagine.
Anyway, it's not about me. It's about that girl. Her name was Clementine Winter. She came to the orphanage a year after me, it was 2004. She was barely two. I felt so bad for her. But at the same time, I was jealous. She was so young, she wouldn't even remember her biological parents, she wouldn't be sad about them. Every adult that came to the orphanage always looked for the young children, so I expected she'd be adopted soon anyway.
It didn't happen, actually. Adults came and went, but nobody really paid attention to Clementine, which was odd in my eyes. Well, time passed, and she was growing up in the orphanage, just like the rest of us. I tried getting closer to her after a few months but never managed to actually befriend her. Maybe it was for the better.
A few weeks after she appeared, I realised that something weird was happening around the orphanage. Toys started disappearing, and kids were crying about someone stealing their favourite plushies. The nannies often found them all next to little Clementine. It was weird. She was just two, she couldn't take them, so someone must have been doing it and placing them all around her, but for what? We never found out.
She turned 3 after a few months. Nobody ever believed me when I said it, but I hope you will. I'm telling you, she was not normal. This three-year-old child could open locked doors without even touching them. I saw it with my very own eyes. All the boxes and closets that the adults closed because we shouldn't look in there? She opened them. I know it was her, even if she wasn't even close to them. I just know it. I felt it.
All the vanishing toys? It was her. The adults didn't believe me, because she was just three. But I knew it. She was stealing them. The older kids were getting allowance every week, and I swear, she was stealing those too.
I never trusted her. She was weird. Unnatural. One day, she came to me to warn me that the older kids put something weird on the door handle of my closet and I shouldn't touch it, or something. I didn't believe her, she was three, for goodness' sake. I had rashes on my right hand for the next two weeks. I had no idea how she knew it, but she was right.
It wasn't a one-time thing. It happened multiple times. The stealing and the weird lock opening, and it always happened as if nobody ever did it, it just happened on its own.
I remember one day, the caretakers took us to the zoo. I think it was the Animal Centre Zoo? Something like that. Three adults and little more than thirty kids. Now that I look back on it, I'm surprised they even decided that it was a good idea, but whatever, I wasn't the adult to decide there. This little child somehow found her way to get into the snake enclosure. Can you believe that? Multiple closed doors, warnings, and protections so the visitors wouldn't walk in there, yet a barely four-year-old child just walked in and sat in between all the snakes. And she was laughing. I swear, she looked like the snakes were talking to her. Of course, everyone started panicking, the whole zoo staff came in to get her out, yet nobody could figure out how exactly she got in there in the first place.
One day, some guy came, saying that he was her distant relative and wanted to take care of her, or something like that. I was glad that she'll be gone, she was only trouble since the time she appeared. But the guy was weird too, I swear. His name was Thomas, but I don't know his surname... I just remember the adults referring to him as Mister Thomas. Well, they both were gone the next day. I never asked questions about them, I didn't care. I just wanted to share that whatever happened with her, it wasn't normal. I don't know who, or what, she was. But it wasn't a normal human. You can't explain it.
ARCHIVIST
Statement ends.
We tried looking more into the orphanage mentioned by Miss Russo, but we didn't get anywhere. What we found was that Caring Haven Orphanage seemed like the most average orphanage you could imagine. It closed in 2011 due to some funding problems. Its owner, Clara O'Shea, died in 2015.
Sasha did, however, get a hold of the orphanage's archives. We found Miss Russo on the list, as she was in the orphanage between 2003 and 2008, and then was adopted by Susan and Aiden Russo.
We also found the file on Clementine Winter. She was placed in the orphanage in 2004, after she was taken from her mother, Harlow Winter, as she was found unfit for taking care of her. She left the orphanage with Thomas Simons in 2006.
We tried to trace them both, looking for both Clementine Winter and Clementine Simons, but we couldn't find anything. It's possible that they moved out of the country, which is not our speciality.
We tried to reach out to the staff that worked in the orphanage during the years when Clementine Winter was placed there, but no one wanted to answer our questions. Martin said that Miss Edith Jennings, one of the caretakers that was on the zoo trip described by Miss Russo, had beaten him with her cane. I can hardly believe it, but he did have bruises on his arms. Maybe next time we should just write letters.
Recording ends.
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