Chapter Text
*Sound of an audio-recorder being pressed*
Statement of Ilya Rozanov regarding strange behaviours noticed in his partner, Jane, spanning several years. From September 2010 to July 2017. Statement taken from his private diary, which was sent in anonymously. The name was uncovered after we received it.
Entries are, for the most part, entirely in Russian. I have had the text translated and verified by two different parties so hopefully nothing is lost in translation.
Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, head archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.
Statement begins.
7. August 2010
Dear diary
This is so stupid.
I went in for my baseline testing today and was reminded by one of our team doctors, sorry I can’t remember your name, not that it matters you will never read this, that I should write a diary. It’s apparently “good for my mental health” since I’ve just moved to a new country. I don’t see how or why this would help but since my
What do you even write in a diary? This is stupid.
I’m excited to start the season. Boston is nice? Maybe.
17. December 2010
Dear diary
I asked what you write in a diary and apparently you can write whatever you like. Which is not helpful.
25. December 2010
Everyone’s celebrating Christmas today. They have all gone home to their families
I don’t
26. December 2010
Tried making mulled wine today. It is fine.
Eggnog is weird. Will never have for breakfast again.
Going to bed early tonight since we have a game tomorrow.
3. January 2011
I am going to the All-Stars game. I think it will be fun.
H…. will be there
13. February 2011
I am in trouble.
23. December 2011
Jane texted me today. Out of nowhere. He was Pittsburgh where he hit his head and was sent to check for a concussion.
The emergency room was apparently too quiet for him, would have thought he’d have liked that but peace and quiet when you have a possible concussion is clearly not it for Jane. He said he wanted to call but couldn’t. We don’t call each other so that makes sense, but why did he need to say he wanted to?
He said some burn victims came through at some point. I think it freaked him out more than he wanted to admit.
I’m glad he texted me, I think.
Tuesday 11. September 2013.
Jane has bought a sex-building. A SEX BUILDING! A whole building, for sex. I don’t know how I’m supposed to react to that. I am so shocked that I have taken up writing again apparently, since it’s supposedly good for sorting out thoughts.
It seems like overkill, what’s wrong with hotel rooms? I guess we can be as loud as we want at least, with no neighbours.
No neighbours!
The whole building!
To ourselves!
I think I should maybe not have made fun of Jane when he kept checking for security cameras in the hallway or always insisted we use the stairs, so we didn’t run into other guests. He says he’s been thinking about getting a building for himself since last year and seriously started looking at the beginning of this year. I think he’s more freaked out about being discovered than I realised.
I guess I feel a bit bad about that.
I hope this lets him relax more. It’s more fun when he’s relaxed.
Thursday 19. December 2013
I HAVE BEEN TO THE SEX BUILDING!
IT IS MAGNIFICENT! WE COULD BE AS LOUD AS WE WANTED!
IN ALL THE ROOMS!
Jane was normal again, not anxious or nervous. He didn’t check the hallway three times or double check that the door was locked. He didn’t even close the curtains!
I think I should have him against some of those windows next time.
I still don’t know why he won’t just invite me to his own place. Seems that if hotel rooms weren’t safe, his apartment would be the obvious choice?
I really want to go to his apartment.
5. Febuary 2014
Dear diary
14. June 2014
I can’t believe he let me
I don’t think I can write this down anywhere actually.
He said the windows were too much again. Or too many of them. And too large. I didn’t ask if he’s talked to anyone else about this, how he gets so anxious. I don’t think I can talk about it to him. I don’t have the right to tell him what to do or worry about him.
He wanted to talk about Russia and I just¨
25. December 2014
Merry Christmas
15. April 2015
Our house was always crawling with spiders when I grew up. Or – that is not completely accurate – my mother’s bedroom was always crawling with spiders. I use the word crawling because there were never just one or two, and whenever I visited my mother in her room there was always movement just out of the corner of my eye.
I don’t think I ever spotted a spider elsewhere in the house before I was a teenager. All my childhood I thought that spiders only lived in bedrooms, specifically in the bedrooms belonging to mothers.
They were always just sort of there. I would get up in the morning and go play by myself for a while before going to see if my mother would wake up. As I opened the door there would always, without fail, be a spider or two running across the floor. I guess I became very used to them. I know now there’s this thing called arachnophobia, fear of spiders, where people will scream and not dare to even get close. I don’t have that. They’ve always been around, existed alongside me.
I think the first time I realised that house spiders could live anywhere was when I was 6 and visited a friend’s house. His big brother screamed and cried because a spider was standing in the corner of their kitchen. His mother, to my utter horror, squished it with a newspaper. I did not know you could do that.
My mother told us to never kill spiders.
Looking back, I think she might have been afraid of them. She’d never complain about them or talk about them unless we asked. But I remember her eyes – following them as they moved across the floor. Me and Alexei would mirror her when she did that. We would stand completely still by the edge of her bed, watching her. We wouldn’t even breathe.
When I got older one spider moved into the corner in the ceiling across from my mother’s bed. It built a large web of silk strings that sparkled ever so slightly in the light from the sun. The spider itself, with its black and brown body and long hairy legs settled itself into the middle of the web, where it remained perfectly still, every time I visited my mother.
I would always glance at it, when I entered and when I left. Its thin legs spread out across the web.
I asked Alexei about what he thought about it and he said he tried to ignore it. He didn’t like how big it was. On really bad days me and Alexei would take turns checking in on our mother, we knew if we both went it would be too overwhelming, so I never got to see for myself how Alexei acted around the spider in the corner. I wished we’d gone together. We drifted apart towards the end, with our made-up visiting schedule, school, hockey….our father.
I don’t want you to think she was weak. She was strong, beautiful and full of life. On good days she wouldn’t even sleep in her own room. She’d crawl into bed with me or Alexei, or we’d build a fort out of pillows in the middle of one of our rooms and have a camping trip, for days on end.
Once when I was really young, she found me drawing on the wall of my bedroom, she’d just laughed, picked up a crayon and drawn a flower next to my tree. When Alexei eventually poked his head in the room, she hugged him and told him to draw whatever he wanted. He drew a dog in the garden we had covered my wall in. Alexei forced me to his friend’s house to eat dinner and watch a film when our father came home, even though I didn’t want to go – I wanted to stay with mama. That friend had a dog I got to play with though, so I was happy he forced me. In hindsight I think I knew why Alexei dragged me out of the house.
I used to have this dream, when I was younger. Of my mother. It was the same, every single time.
I would walk up the winding stairs to our apartment. Sometimes taking two in a stride, even with my short legs.
The light in the hallway outside flickered and buzzed. I noticed a lone moth, throwing itself against the glass. Desperate for light. It’s a strange thing. That some insects will destroy themselves trying to reach the warmth they think exists somewhere.
Other than the moth and the buzzing, the staircase was quiet. I opened the wooden door to our apartment as carefully as I could. It would normally squeak on its hinges but for some reason it opened without a sound. I kicked off my shoes, not bothering to place them with the neat line-up of everyone else’s shoes, before hanging up my jacket and dumping my school bag on the floor.
I tiptoed through the house. It was almost eerily quiet. No clinking from the kitchen from someone cooking. No sounds from the television in the living room. I tried to match the silence as I sneaked through the house, making my way to my mother’s bedroom.
The sun cast a gentle light through the windows. Everything was enveloped in a soft and hazy glow, in stark contrast to the entrance to the bedroom.
The door was open. Like a dark, rectangular hole in the wall. No light inside.
I walked through the door and felt the temperature drop. It was a warm spring day and the sun was out, but the curtains were drawn inside the room and no warmth or light from the sun seemed to reach inside.
I held my breath as I walked slowly towards my mother’s bed.
I could see the shape of her beneath the duvet.
Enveloped in a thick, white coat of spider web.
Trapping my mother.
I wanted to scream. To tear at the web, rip it apart.
Tear through the strings that were imprisoning my mother to her bed.
But I couldn’t move, I couldn’t talk and when my mother’s eyes found mine, she shook her head.
That’s when I felt it.
The slow descent of hundreds and thousands of spiders. Crawling down towards me, towards my mother. I felt the first spider land on my shoulder, and scatter across my skin. Then another, and another – another. Their tiny legs pricking my naked skin like needles. They were everywhere.
On my arms, in my hair, inside my clothes.
Crawling across my face.
They engulf the bed in the blackness with those tiny, hairy legs.
Then I would wake up. Not screaming, not panting. I would throw off my duvet because I had to check, had to see, had to know, that they were not still there.
I had to scrub myself sore in the shower to get rid of the feeling of them crawling.
I would also feel this deep, dreading sense of déjà vu.
This is not what I was planning to write. I don’t know where all that came from. I was just going say I saw a children’s book in Shane’s bag today. A children’s book with a picture of a spider on it.
29. October 2016
Recipe for Tuna melt
- 1 (5-ounce; 142 g) canned oil- or water-packed tuna, drained well
- ½ cup (120 g) mayonnaise
- 2 tablespoons (10 g) panko bread crumbs (optional)
- Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
- 2 (1-inch-thick) slices (for open-faced) or 4 (1/2-inch-thick) slices (for closed sandwiches) white sandwich bread
- Vegetable oil, clarified butter, and/or melted butter, for brushing the bread
- 4 slices Cheddar or American cheese
15. January 2017
For the first time ever I am not excited for the All Stars.
29. July 2017
I think the cottage is my favourite place in the whole world. There are windows everywhere, and Shane let me push him against them and kiss him in full daylight, on display. I haven’t been allowed to do that for months. In his Montreal building he always closes all the blinds and for the past months he won’t even let me turn on the lights, only a single lamp is allowed in all the rooms. I was really worried about him. It’s not even anxiety anymore, it’s full on paranoia! But it was fine at the cottage.
It’s not as private as he claimed since David caught us, but that was fine and they are happy for Shane, and they like me a little bit? I don’t think we will have time to go there during the season, or pre-season, but we will go next summer. I can’t wait! And we have a plan. An actual plan.
His library exists. I don’t really want to think about it, it’s not a nice room.
A single room, without any windows, dedicated to all his books. It’s not very large, but there are bookshelves on all the walls, and even though the shelves are not filled to the brim with books he has more books than I would have expected.
I didn’t know he read much outside of hockey facts.
I only went in there twice.
The first thing I noticed was the difference in the air. It was like stepping through a wall separating the rest of the cottage from this specific room. The air was thick, I could almost feel it pressing against my skin, like it was hugging me, enveloping me, swallowing me. It smelled sweet, like a dying flower.
I don’t think the room had ever been aired out.
The rows of books were stacked neatly on the shelves. Sorted after size and alphabetized. The single source of light was a lamp on the wall, that emitted an incessant buzzing. It bore into my brain, and I remember wondering how Shane could stand it.
I really don’t know how he could. I found myself staring at the lamp, emitting that low, orange glow. Flickering, ever so slightly, in tune with the buzzing. The air grew thicker and I had to focus on taking deep enough breaths, it was like it became syrup in my lungs. I found myself scanning the shelves, trying to read the titles. Some were English, some were in Latin, and some were in what I think was Japanese. Most of the books looked newer, but some were old.
I don’t even remember picking a book from the shelf, but suddenly I had a paperback of newer quality in my hands. I turned it over. The cover was blank. On both sides. Just a grey book. No text.
Inside, on the first page was a stamp telling me that the book had belonged to the Library of Jurgen Leitner. I flipped through the pages, and I honestly don’t even remember what language the book was in because I have never been so dizzy in my life. Clutching the book I just stood there, as the room tilted on it’s axis around me.
I had to close the book and steady myself against one of the shelves. I didn’t think much of it at the time, I was just glad I was able to stay upright, but the dizziness went away the moment I closed the book. I have tried to think back if maybe I became dizzy before I opened it or stayed dizzy after, but no, I am convinced it was because of that book.
I just stayed there, leaning against one of the shelves. Focusing on breathing and let my eyes wander over the books in front of me, looking for one I would at least be able to read, when the tingling just at the top of my neck began. It spread down my spine, and I shivered.
Even though I knew I was alone, the room was in no way large enough for someone to hide anywhere, that familiar prickling at the back of my neck like someone was boring into the back of my head with their eyes was impossible to ignore.
My breath came easier the moment I stepped out of the room. The sound of the lamp almost forgotten. And that prickly feeling that had spread out from the back of my neck and shivered down my spine was completely gone, like it had never been there in the first place.
I ignored the room for the next few days. Getting lost in Shane and making up for seven years of wasted time. Until curiosity got the better of me. The memory of the library had become hazy and vague. It felt, unnatural, like I should remember what it felt like to be in that room.
So, while Shane was out for a morning run, I walked down the stairs and stood in front of the door to the library. It looked like a normal door. Same as any other in the house. Made from the same light wood as the rest of the cottage. I turned the handle and opened the door. It looked like a room with books. The lamp placed just right so it enveloped the room in a comfortable, soft glow. Perfect for reading.
I must be misremembering, but I it doesn’t feel like I imagined it. I have asked Shane if I should look for any books to add to his library, but he’s told me it’s not necessary. He doesn’t want me to worry.
Isn’t that an odd choice of word?
Worry
Statement ends.
That’s the end of the entries available to us. The last 15 pages of the diary appear to have been ripped out. This was sent to us anonymously, but there was a return address. In Boston. We reached out to the current owners at that address, who could provide little information about the previous owner. They did however give us the contact information of the real estate agent who sold them the property, and it appears to have belonged to an Ilya Rozanov. Martin has, so far, been unable to find any information about him online, and no information about an Ilya Rozanov living in the Boston area in the past couple of years.
He did find an old Russian newspaper from 2002 with an article and picture of an Ilya G. Rozanov on a U12 hockey team in Russia. The article talks about young up and coming Russian talent within the hockey world and features a photograph of a line of young boys in hockey gear, with what I assume is their parents. Ilya G. Rozanov is noted as number third from the left. The photograph is not the best quality, but you can make out that he has dirty blonde curly hair, blue eyes and a mole on his left cheek. Behind him, is what I assume to be his mother, Irina Rozanova. Further research produced an obituary from the year after about the death of I. Rozanova. If it is the same Rozanova is uncertain.