Chapter Text
April 2015
From: [email protected]
Subject: Greetings from the Usher Foundation, Washington DC!
Hello Mr. Sims,
First things first, congratulations on the promotion! I hope that you’re having an easy time adjusting to your new position.
As you know, the Usher Foundation and the Magnus Institute are closely connected in origin and purpose, but our management is not always coordinated. In recent years especially, it seems that relations between the Institute and the Foundation have been somewhat neglected. In order to start remedying that, Mrs. Eleanor Allan, Head of the Usher Foundation, has recommended that I reach out to you following your official instatement as Head Archivist.
My name is Charis Preiss, and I am currently serving as the Foundation’s Chief Curator. As far as I understand, my position in the records office is very similar to yours in the archive. I am also relatively new—I was promoted in the autumn of last year, and it’s quite a responsibility. I think that pooling any relevant knowledge or unexpected experiences we come across could be a big help. Please let me know if you are interested in keeping up this correspondence!
On that subject, I’ve already been running into some peculiar obstacles in my curating duties.
The records office keeps primarily digitized versions of our documents, although hard copies of any statements given within at least three years of the current date are filed as well. After three years is up, any paper files marked “dead-end” are cleaned out, leaving only the digital copies. All of this is quite routine. The issue came up when I discovered a number of files which refuse to convert into any digital format without significant corruption. The same has begun to happen occasionally when I interview live statement givers. It’s honestly really unsettling. Have you run into any similar problems?
Congratulations again, and if you have any questions of your own that I might be able to take a whack at answering, feel free to email me anytime!
Yours, Charis Preiss
April 2015
From: [email protected]
re: {Greetings from the Usher Foundation, Washington DC!}
Ms. Preiss—
I appreciate your effort in reaching out. Upon consideration, I believe continuing this correspondence will be beneficial to both of our work.
The corruption of digital files has been a continual issue in the Archive as well. I find that any statements which do not translate well to digital recording are nonetheless still functional when recorded via magnetic tape. It’s an unfortunate complication, but one of my assistants has located a sizable supply of blank tapes and several recorders which I have begun to make regular use of.
Best, Jonathan Sims
[TAPE RECORDER CLICKS ON]
KNIFE
Okay but, like, are we sure this thing is even gonna work? Have you tested it out at all?
CHARIS
This is the test.
KNIFE
So you don’t know it’ll work.
CHARIS
It worked for Jonathan Sims.
KNIFE (overlapping)
Yeah, but like, you don’t know—
CHARIS (overlapping)
No, Knife, I don’t know for absolute certain. That’s why you’re trying it. Happy?
KNIFE
Well, I’d be happier if you had Lois do it.
CHARIS
(amused) Why, you have something better to do?
KNIFE
(feigning innocence) Oh, you know, I just thought she’d be interested. This is exactly the type of… y’know…
CHARIS
Boring drudge work?
KNIFE
…boring drudge work that she’d be into, right?
CHARIS
If you’d rather reorganize the storage room while she records a statement, I’m sure I can arrange—
KNIFE (interrupting)
Nope! No, ah, point taken.
CHARIS
(smug) Hm. If you insist. I picked the Gilligan statement. It wouldn’t record digitally when I tried to do it earlier.
KNIFE
It better not have any long words in it.
CHARIS
No promises. (paper rustles as she hands it over) Have fun. And see me after you’re done, I have some follow up I want you to do on the Blakewall statement, too.
KNIFE
(muttering) Sure, sure. Now leave me with the spooky stories and go tyrannize someone else.
[DOOR OPENS]
CHARIS
Hey, if you don’t like your job, you can always go back to couch surfing.
KNIFE
(“absolutely not” scoff) Lina would kill me.
CHARIS
If your mother doesn’t get to you first.
KNIFE
Mm. No thank you.
CHARIS
Happy reading!
[DOOR CLOSES]
[PAPER RUSTLES AND CHAIR CREAKS AS KNIFE GETS COMFORTABLE.]
KNIFE
Alright. Still running? Good. Here we go. (deep breath)
Statement of Earnest Gilligan, regarding the disappearance of Millicent Grady and Anita Gilligan. Statement given June 19th, 1967, to representatives of the Usher Foundation, Washington DC. Recording by Lionel Abbot, on April 22, 2015.
Statement begins.
Look, not all of us knew about what was going on over at the Gradys’. I know folks around there can’t help their tongues flapping and their ears itching, but believe me when I tell you I had no idea. I mean, I knew that Jim Grady was a real mean guy, type of guy that had no business marrying up with a woman so small and pretty, to say nothing of having a daughter like Millie. But I swear I didn’t know the little one was being treated so bad. I know some people knew and just kept quiet about it. Their neighbors sure knew, but apparently they didn’t think it was none of their business telling a grown man to lay off bullying his little girl. There’s too many of those in this town, people who see everything and don’t say nothing.
Jim Grady worked in construction. I worked with him once on a project, back when I was still in plumbing. We were relocating the Scheider house. Not quite as tough as building up from an empty lot, I don’t think, but still real tricky work. You ever seen a house relocated? Ever seen them just pick the whole darned thing up on a truck and move it to a new site? Well, I suppose it’s a funny thing to see if you’re not the one who’s got to make sure nothing gets damaged when you put it back down. It’s stressful work. Still, though, even the other workers thought Jim Grady was uptight. Connie Henderson was working on the crew for the first time, getting some experience, y’know, and Jim told him off so bad he walked off the site and didn’t come back till the next day. Don’t even know what Grady was so mad for, since the boy would have done anything he was told the very best he could, I’m sure. He’s a good kid, Connie Henderson.
But it’s Grady’s daughter as started the whole thing. Little Millie Grady. She went missing one day all of the sudden. Leastways “sudden” is what I heard of it, but I remember thinking that it couldn’t have been the first time she’d run away. Otherwise they would have looked for her sooner instead of waiting till nightfall.
It was my wife Annie who brought word to me, and the both of us were right worried. We would have had sympathy for anyone whose baby went missing, but Millie was especially dear to my Annie’s heart. The little one would always come and sit next to her in Sunday morning church. When we asked her why she didn’t sit with her own mama, Millie replied that “mama don’t want no snuggling.” After that, my Annie used to hold the girl on her lap all through the sermon, and the little teddy bear just sat there, as happy as can be. Never seen a kid her age sit so quiet. Didn’t even fidget or nothing. Once or twice she might of fell asleep. Made me wish we had a daughter of our own. Not that we didn’t love our boys, but the littlest one was well nigh grown up by that time.
So when we heard Millie wasn’t come home yet by sunset, us both were raring to go out looking for her right away. It was about this time of summer, but Annie still took some extra clothes with her in case we found the little one in need of them. wind still gets chilly after dark, after all, and for all we knew she could have got into something wet. I lit us some lamps and we marched right out to help the folks who were already looking.
It was hours we spent out there. I forget by now how many places we looked before we found ourselves all the way uptown, approaching a construction site. They’d been digging a foundation for a new building on Locust Street, and there was still a great big square hole cut into the earth. It was roped off to warn folks from falling in, but that wouldn’t stop a person if she were looking to climb down in there on purpose.
As Annie and I made our way through silent streets toward that big black hole, the air was utterly still. The prairie breeze that rolls in all day and all night was gone. Even the breath pressing into my lungs felt sort of… heavy. Like a thick quilt had been laid over everything. There was no buzz of insects, nor any barking of dogs like there ought to have been. If there had been, we might not have heard her.
At the time, I think we both figured it was crying what we were hearing. It was like sniffling, almost, all short and sharp and strangled like someone was trying hard not to make a sound. We both hurried up and called out to see who it was, but no one answered. The breathy noises kept up.
As we came to the warning rope, I lifted up my lamp and peered down.
I thought it was crying. But sometimes… when I look back on that night, I wonder… if it weren’t more like laughter.
The beam of my light fell dim over the edge of the hole. I blinked my eyes hard and squinted down, but it was no use. I should have been able to see the bottom, but I couldn’t. The basement weren’t meant to be as deep as that hole was. I’ve seen basements dug, and they’re not meant to be that deep. It weren’t right. Not right at all. There were no good, clean edges or sides. The opening was only square at the top. The inside sloped down with rough, steep sides. It looked like like it must come to a point in the middle where it was deepest, but the light didn’t reach that far down.
As I was staring, I felt the strangest sensation. It was like a magnet pulling me from deep inside, from the marrow of my bones. My body felt so heavy, and a rumbling sort of dread turned in my stomach. I swear I could feel a new gravity, something deeper and stronger than what’s keeping us all on the ground. Only this one was beckoning me all the way into the cold, dense cavern below.
It took Annie grabbing me by the arm to snap me out of it. I was shocked to realize that I was at the very edge of the hole, closer than I remembered stepping, leaning out over it like I was about to tip myself right over into the endless, crushing sea of black. I brushed it off quick, though, and yelled out to whoever was down there—because there was no doubt, none at all in my mind, that the sounds of hiccuping and breathing were coming from down below. I shouted out to tell us who was down there.
The fear that had crept up the back of my throat when I wasn’t paying mind was suddenly thick enough to choke on. I knew who it had to be. And I wished I could have been wrong. But when her tiny, broken little voice rasped out from far, far below, it couldn’t be anybody else but Millie.
She said, “hello?” Just that one word, all strangled-like.
Annie practically screamed in reply, telling her it was okay in the type of voice that would make anyone think it wasn’t. This time I grabbed her arm to keep her from jumping over the side just to get closer to the little one.
As much as I itched to do something right away, I knew it would be hopeless for us to try and pull her out of there in the dead of night all on our own. As there were two of us, Annie stayed behind with Millie to keep her company while I went to fetch all the help I could find. I found Jim Grady, as well as four or five others, plus a police man.
When I told them we’d found Millie in the construction site up on Locust, the folks seemed relieved at first. I said no, told them she’s stuck all the way down there in the pit. Still, no one seemed upset.
“Grab a ladder,” Grady said, “Pull her out. She’s got no business playing around there in the first place.”
I told him, “There ain’t no ladder in the world long enough to get down there. I don’t know how you dug it down so far, but there ain’t no ladder that can get Millie out.”
They didn’t understand. Told me the hole was just a basement, that it was only ten feet. I told them what I saw, that it was deeper than anything I ever saw. I tell you, I felt like a madman standing in front of those men, waving my arms and trying to explain to them how deep that damned hole was that had swallowed up little Millie, and them just staring back at me like they were struck dumb. Eventually, somebody was charged with fetching a ladder. At my insistence, they fetched a long rope, too, though I don’t think a single one of them believed what I said about the hole.
I led the pack as we all hurried to get there. The wind was sweeping through as always, and that heavy dread started bubbling in my stomach again as we got closer. There was something wrong about how normal it all was. It felt like something was missing. Something important. I told the other guys to hurry on up. The site came into view, and I scanned right away for Annie’s silhouette.
Nothing. She weren’t nowhere to be seen. I called out her name, but there was no answer. Grady told me to calm down, but I just swore at him and started running. The closer I came to the hole, the clearer it was in my vision that there was no hole. The site was still there, all roped off for warning, but there was no hole. The earth looked completely untouched, like there had never even been no shovel stuck in it before. Scraggly grass covered the wide area that should have been cut out into a basement-sized pit. There was no sign of Annie or Millie anywhere.
I screamed both their names into the dark. I searched and searched all night. I knew in the corner of my mind that the others were scratching their heads over the state of the construction site, because even if they didn’t believe me about how deep, they knew that there had been a hole there. I didn’t care, though. They could puzzle all they wanted about the damned hole. I needed to find my wife.
The sun came up, and they were still gone. I scoured that town until I couldn’t walk no more. I swear, I did everything I could to find her. I swear I did. If my Annie were anywhere on this earth, I would have found her. But she's down underneath now. Down underneath with little Millie. And I don't know what to do without her.
The boys think I went crazy because of the grief. They still don't believe me that the hole swallowed our girls. When I took a shovel to the spot where they were, all I got were some blistered hands and a real sympathetic sheriff telling me to take some time and travel, it'll do me some good. I know it won't. They just want me out of town on account of what I did to Jim Grady when we were drunk, a few nights after the hole disappeared.
We were sitting out on his back deck, just him and me and a couple bottles to wash away the loneliness for the night. I tell you, the words he said to me as we sat there made my blood boil.
“Y'know Earn,” said he, “All the times we locked Millie out of the house for being a little bitch, she never went so far as to run away. She'd always stay right out in the backyard and cry all the snot out of her till she was right obedient again and lay down sleeping somewhere in the shed or the garden. Never caused a scene like this even when she was naught but four. I thought she knew better than running away and getting herself lost for good. I would have kept her inside if I'd'a known.”
I don't remember much else of that night, but according to Sheriff Grayce I bloodied Grady’s face up something awful. I'll do it again, too, if I see him outside of church. That's why the boys sent me out of state to talk to you folks, I’ll bet. They want to give me time to cool off, do some mourning and get over it all. Well, they can send me wherever they want, but I won’t cool off till I’ve got my Annie and little Millie out of the ground, and Jim Grady down in it instead. I know they’re still down there. They need my help.
Just as soon as I get home, I'm buying a new shovel. And if anyone tries to stop me finding my girls, they'll be joining the list after Grady.
Statement Ends.
Yikes. This one's a bit… well. Plenty of residents of Troy, Kansas, were willing to give interviews, at least. Unfortunately, there was some conflicting data in the follow-up.
There was definitely a construction site on Locust Street at the time of Mr. Gilligan's statement. But nearby residents disagree on whether or not the workers had even begun to dig out the basement yet when Millicent Grady went missing.
Interviewing people about the Gradys’ family life was a little bit of a minefield. James and Martha Grady both firmly refused interviews, but several of their friends and neighbors were willing to talk. According to the neighbors, Millicent Grady had been locked outside overnight as a… (distasteful) “disciplinary measure” on multiple occasions before her disappearance. And—contrary to what Mr. Gilligan's alleged quotation of Mr. Grady suggests—it looks like she often left the backyard in search of more adequate warmth and shelter on colder nights.
The police found no trace of Millicent Grady or Anita Gilligan, and most people assume them both dead. Mr. Gilligan has recently moved to Chester, New Jersey, to live with his brother at the insistence of his two sons, Edward and Brutus. He also declined a follow-up interview, and Brutus Gilligan went on record only to say that, after the Sheriff Christopher Grayce broke up the initial brawl between Mr. Grady and Mr. Gilligan, there have been no further incidents of that nature.
With no other witnesses to confirm his story about a… hole too deep to see to the bottom of, Mr. Gilligan’s statement can't be filed as a credited account. Although… there is one more odd occurrence reported about three months after Millicent Grady's disappearance.
A neighbor and family friend of the Gradys’, a Mrs. Chrystal Henderson, reported entering her washing room one day to see what appeared to be long, tangled, blond hair hanging out from the closed door of the washing machine. She was alarmed, of course, and rushed to open the door. It appeared to her that a small child was crushed inside the machine along with the laundry. When she tried to open the door of the machine, it stuck, and she was unable to free it. She left the room momentarily to call for help, and when she returned, there was no child and no blond hair. The door to the machine opened on her first tug. She thought that she heard a sort of quiet, breathy laughter as she dug through the wet clothing in search of a suffocating child, but upon further questioning admitted that she might easily have imagined it in her disturbed mental state.
[BEAT]
(uncertain) It could be a completely unrelated account. I mean, Mrs. Henderson’s experience isn’t any more credible than Mr. Gilligan’s. If anything, a little girl stuck in a washing machine would be a pretty easy thing for a mother of eighteen years to imagine. But… Millicent Grady was a very small girl, and her blonde hair was never cut.
[KNIFE BLOWS AIR THROUGH HIS LIPS. A FAINT CREAK AS HE LEANS BACK IN HIS CHAIR.]
KNIFE (cont.)
(muttering to himself) I hate it when it's a kid… that's so fucked.
(louder) Recording Ends.
[CLICK]