Statement of Harold Smithson
In regards to an unsettling coworker.
Statement begins.
She just showed up one day, said her name was Alex, and asked if we had any open positions. That's what Jim told me, at least. Showed him some of her work, and she was hired on the spot. Never gave him any reason to regret it, either. Not at first, at least. Her work was good, not cutting edge, but more than passable for our little shop. You see, I work in the film industry. Or, well.
Worked,
I suppose. After the fire… Well, I'm sure you've heard about that. It was all over the news. When the studio of the late Neil Lagorio burned, everyone was scrambling to report on it. It was the only way, though. I
had
to do it.
Alex started off normal enough. Polite, kept to herself. I began to notice that when she talked to people, her tone and posture would change, depending on who it was. Sometimes, it was subtle, a slight shift in pitch or volume, but occasionally, it would seem like she was a totally different person. I figured I was reading too much into it, though. Hell, I wasn’t even sure she noticed herself doing it. As long as she kept putting out good work, it didn't matter if she had a few quirks. It was a load off our shoulders to have another pair of hands around, to help with the fussier detail work that Jim and I didn't really enjoy anyway. She was quick to learn, and worked hard. But what she really excelled at were masks. We always gave those to her when they came in, and her eyes would always light up. I think she would actually get bitter when she was handed anything else, really. Though she never complained, I could see it in her eyes; a soft resentment, as if anything else was beneath her.
Sometimes I'd watch her, hunched over the clay, face inches from it as she tried to shape it in perfect detail. I could practically feel the frustration radiating off her as she worked to get everything just right. It always looked just fine to me, but it was like she could see something I couldn't. Some hidden imperfections. Eventually, being on tight deadlines as we were, she would have to let it go, unsatisfied. That's how it went, really. Until she found the book. I believe the title was “The Art of Weaving Clay”, though I never did get a good look at it. I just know it showed up on her desk one day, and when it did, things started to get, well…
Weird.
For starters, she never let anyone touch it. One of the shop guys, I think it was Mark, tried to pick it up, making small talk, and she slammed his hand into the table with more force than I knew she was capable of. It immediately brought to mind someone trying to swat a fly or mosquito, though I’m still not sure why. Mark yanked his hand back, cradling it against his chest as he spewed a stream of curses at Alex, shouting that he'd only been curious about it. She gave him a cutting glare that left no room for argument as she gave her curt reply.
“No one touches my book.”
As if the matter were settled, she simply turned back to her work, ignoring Mark’s incredulous stare. When he turned to me, I simply shrugged. None of us had ever seen her that mad before. I figured the book must have been expensive, and she didn't want anyone dirtying it up.
After that, though, her work started to improve. And I don't just mean at a normal “oh, it seems you're getting the hang of this” sort of way. I mean like, her masks went from cool and creepy to downright unsettling. I don't know how to explain it without sounding mad, but… Well, there's no other way to put it. They looked real. Now, I know monsters aren't, real, but looking at her masks, it felt like they could come to life at any minute. Like they could just start moving, and looking, and being. I couldn't help it, I was curious, so I started sneaking glances of her working. I'd make it out like I was just passing through her area to grab a tool or something, but I really just wanted to watch her work. I needed to. I thought I was seeing things at first, so I had to keep coming back, keep checking to make sure I hadn't lost it. I'd never seen anyone work clay like this before. Alex would roll it up into tiny strands, so thin and delicate that I was sure they should have crumbled between her fingers long before getting that small. And she would work those strands into her mask, layering them and smoothing them out so carefully, with such precision. That, I could have passed off as normal enough, a new unusual technique, maybe learned from her book, if it wasn’t for one thing.
Her hands moved so quickly, I could barely see them. Her fingers were so quick and blurred, at times, I couldn't tell if she had the right number of them at all. Darting around, bending at odd angles… I had to have been seeing things. She was just moving too fast for my old eyes to count right. That was it.
That had to be it.
I'm not sure when the spiders started showing up. It was an older studio, so a few of them wasn’t too unusual, especially with the number of older props we had in storage. But these spiders were different. They felt different. Like they were watching us. Watching Alex. Her workroom was covered in cobwebs by this point, and she didn't even seem to notice. I commented on it once, and she looked almost confused, brushing it off and muttering something about me minding my own business. It was a while before I actually saw one, but when I did, I realized why. They were tiny. Smaller than my fingertip. Agile little things, too. I was actually rather impressed when Jim managed to kill one. Alex, however…
If I'd thought she was mad about Mark touching her book, well. I thought she might stab him with knife she'd been using when it happened. The moment she heard his hand slap against the shelf, she whipped around almost as if she were posessed, screaming at him as if he'd just murdered her child. We both stared at her, more shocked than anything. Blinking in the face of her boiling rage. I'm the end, she stormed off, muttering something about “seeing how he liked it". We thought it was weird, sure, but ended up brushing it off as another one of her quirks.
And then Jim went missing.
Just, didn't show up for work the next day, even though he was usually the first one in the shop. When asked, Alex just shrugged, said she didn't know. Said he must have called in sick.
After that, Alex was basically a recluse. I don't think I saw her leave her workshop once, and she kept the door locked. As far as I'm aware, she even stopped going home at night. I don't even know if she slept. When anyone knocked on her door, asking after her, she simply insisted that she was working on her masterpiece, and not to bother her. She wouldn't let any of us see it though. No one was allowed in, not even to bring her food or water.
When she finally came out, weeks later, her curly blonde hair was matted with clay, and she had a mad look in her eyes. It was done, she said.
Her masterpiece.
It wasn’t a mask. Or, that was to say, it wasn’t just a mask. The monster looming before us, suspended from the ceiling on too-thin strings reminiscent of a mannequin, was enormous, its many legs stretched out as if to start skittering towards us at any moment. Looking at it made every hair on my body stand on end. Eight glassy eyes stared down at me, and if I didn't know better, I'd swear I could see it breathing, but when I looked closely, it was clearly still. It wasn’t a spider, not exactly, the fur coating its body was too thick, the distorted face too human, but there's nothing else for me to compare it to, this beast that so deeply disturbed me.
And then it started to move. With an anguished cry, the limbs lurched to life. It was slow at first, as if the being puppeting it by those near invisible strings that held it aloft was still getting a feel for it, but then the movements became more fluid, More lifelike. You might laugh to know that wasn’t what caught my attention though. No, the monster was too lifelike for me to be shocked by its moving. It was the scream. I knew that voice. When you spend five years working closely with someone, you learn their voice well. And when you're in my line of work, you know what it sounds like when they’re in pain, too. All at once, the pieces fell together. I hadn't seen Jim since the day he killed that spider, after all.
My mind and body caught up with each other as the eight legged monster that had once been my friend began to advance on us, the thing that was an unholy merging of mandibles and mouth opening wide with another scream as it lunged at Mark, wrapping long, spindly legs around his body as that horrible mouth sunk into his flesh.
I ran.
I'm not ashamed to say it, I ran. I was terrified! Who wouldn't be, at something like that? It was as I was running though, that I passed the pyro can. An old shipping container we used to store all the flammable and exploding bits that you don't want laying around. I could still hear the screams of my coworkers echoing in the building. I won't go into detail on how I did it, but they had to call five fire crews to get the blaze under control.
I don't know if any of them got out.
I didn’t check to see.
I've gone into accounting now. A nice, quiet job in the city.
I still have nightmares about spiders.
Statement Ends.
It seems Mister Smithson put down a false name when he gave his statement. I can't find any record of him ever existing, much less working for Legario Effects. All attempts to locate or contact him have been met with dead ends.
However, many aspects of his statement do line up. I’d heard about the fire in late August, 2013. The authorities called it a pyrotechnics accident, and it resulted in the destruction of the entire building, killing at least half a dozen employees. An Alex Blackwall is listed as having worked there starting in early 2012, and though she is not listed as one of those killed, I can find no record of her activities after it occurred.
Though I did find something of note; an article on John Blackwell. He was a British naturalist who authored A History of the Spiders of Great Britain and Ireland, and was one of the first to study spiders of particularly small size, not unlike the ones Mister Smithson described. This may warrant further investigation.
I'll have Martin look into it. He might actually enjoy that.
End recording.
