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[the-magnus-institute]

Bells - Statement 20170630

Statement of Dominica Smith, regarding her godmother and her religion. Statement given on the 30th of June, 2017. Included with original statement was enclosed a sharp, white feather and two printed images of two hands.

I want to start this out by saying that she isn’t actually my godmother. I have to say this every time I talk about her, which I’ll admit, isn’t that often, but I am very adamant about people knowing that I am not religious. I didn’t even have a baptism, thank you very much.

It’s kind of complicated, and honestly I am not entirely sure, come to think of it now. Last time I asked my mother she said Godmother was Grandma’s sister, I think. She helped Mum a lot when I was little, and so got the honorary title of Godmother. She is the sweetest person I’ve ever met, she knows languages I can’t even pronounce, gets on with anyone, and makes the best apple turnovers.

And I think she wasn’t always Catholic. She married Godfather and converted for him. Grandma said it was quite the shock, to see a woman who studied theology and specifically Christianity through and through pick up a new faith. And to me, it was strange to hear that such an ardently Christian woman had once been agnostic.

She was surprisingly good at being religious. Better than most of them, I’ll be honest. She went to church each Sunday, and sometimes I went with her, when I was staying at her house through the summer. I dangled my feet in the pews and watched her pray, watched her clutch her aging hands together, and always got the feeling that this was a game to her. Have you ever played a board game with someone who had read the rules like– well, excuse the joke– like they were scripture and knew them from heart? Those types always take great pleasure in winning too. She was like that.

She said grace, she went to mass, loved her neighbours, all that. And it will be no surprise to you that when the first symptoms of dementia crept up, she prayed twice as hard.

Godfather had passed long ago, and I was the only family she had in town, so bringing her to live with me was natural. I loved her like she had been my mother, and I was more than glad to care for her. The idea of sending her to some elders’ facility was something I wouldn’t even entertain.

I helped her move in, we decorated her room with dried herbs and old pictures, but she insisted something was off. We sat on her bed with our chins in our palms and thought long and hard about it. I think it was the wallpaper, or the curtains, but I’m not sure. It doesn’t matter. We put up the wallpaper, hung the curtains and from that day on it was her house too.

There were difficulties, of course there were. I had been taking the night shift before Godmother moved in, but to be able to efficiently care for her I had to switch. And I won’t lie, coming home starving and having to sit through grace before a meal was excruciating. But going on walks with her on the weekends and feeding ducks in the park made it worth the irritation.

I would wake up twenty minutes before her, count out her pills, and make sure there was a hot pot of water for her to make tea in. She was always very particular about it and insisted on doing it by herself. At least until she had an accident and got a good deal of boiling water on herself. Accidents. There were a lot of them and they got more frequent as time passed. First slipping, stuttering, spacing out. Then bathroom related ones. Then one day I couldn’t find her, only the door ajar. It was fine in the end, she had only wandered a few streets up East. I still tried to keep the door shut after that.

Years passed, and she got worse. You know, when you read about it, watch movies about it, it never quite gets through. Even here, in writing, I cannot convey the pain I felt. There is no way to describe the slow descent, the hope we felt on better days and the despair we did on worse ones. And really, the worst part is that it took years. When it flashes on the movie screen in a well edited montage, it doesn’t really sink in. But this person who I deeply loved was slowly dying, and even though I knew it would happen, I could not stop it, only hand her over to Death. Or the Lord, I suppose. That always made me feel slightly better.

She would repeat morning prayers and insist on going to Sunday mass, even though it was a Tuesday. There was a sinking pit in my stomach, the first time she asked for Godfather. I sat down next to her and asked her where she thought he was. “On a business trip,” she said, I think. I just nodded and told her she was right. And surprisingly, that was one of the very few times I remember her asking about him. She didn’t speak much towards the end.

But her thing, her thing, was angels. Each morning I’d walk in, draw her curtains open, help her dress, and ask how she had slept through the night. Sometimes she’d call me by my mother’s name, sometimes by her sister’s. But always, and I mean always, she would say that “the angels” had visited her.

This was interesting to me, and usually my one chance of having a conversation with her during breakfast, so I often posed questions to her. I never believed that Gabriel or whichever one was actually visiting her, but it made us both happy to hear her talk with such mirth, so I encouraged her to keep having conversation with her angels. I thought they were just dreams, or hallucinations, and she wasn’t hurting anyone or herself, you must understand.

She started to get cranky when she lost sleep, so we implemented afternoon naps. She told me with a dazed grin that she really liked those, because it meant she got to have afternoon tea with her angels. I just smiled and tucked her into bed. To think I left her alone in her room each day…

It happened when I accidentally left my phone in her room, and realised halfway through her nap that I was expecting a workplace call. I had been working from home at the time, and my computer was at the mechanic, so I did what meetings I could from my phone and felt awful for not attending the rest. But everyone at work was very understanding about our situation, and my real concern wasn’t missing the call. I was waking her up.

If I didn’t let her wake up on her own, she would often become disoriented and panicked. And it had recently gotten a lot more difficult to calm her down. There was a faint jingling coming from her room, and I thought that the phone had just rung. So as quietly as I could, I hurried in.

It was looming above her. It was looming, or floating, or bending, or– I don’t know. I can’t know. But it had a face, at least one, or a hole in my vision in the shape of it. And it was less than a centimetre away from my Godmother.

She, in her ramblings, had said the angels had the faces of handsome young men and pearly hair, maybe wings made of cardboard, I think? I– It had none of that. It– you’re going to think I’m fucking with you, but I swear, it was entirely made out of eyeballs. And gold. And feathered wings with claws at the ends, thousands of clawed fingers, in fact maybe it had claws instead of feathers. I– it might have been nails. And I could feel the space it occupied staring at her. It was too bright.

I don’t know which of my braincells thought that attacking it would be a good idea. But there I was, leaping to tackle the thing. It had halos, or teeth, or maybe spines wrapped into a loop and it sent sharp pain shooting across my palms. I tried to kick it, maybe even bite it? And then came the sound of bells.

It was so loud that I fell to the floor. No, I threw myself onto the floor and scrambled to cover my ears. And it just rang and rang and bellowed as it throned over my Godmother. And she slept right through it.

I woke up on that floor next to her, laying on my back. And I would have dismissed it all as a nervous breakdown or a dream, if it wasn’t for the scars still bleeding on my hands, and a single, large, white feather on Godmother’s forehead. She just told me she had had a wonderful chat with her angels, and although slightly shellshocked, I put on a pot of tea. It just seemed like the right thing to do, and I tried to forget about the accident the best I could.

I think her being gone is why I came to talk about it. Why I feel like I can finally talk about it. You see, she never took kindly to her angels being talked badly about. And each time I tried to bring it up, she got upset. I couldn’t do that to either of us.

The… angel accident was two months ago, and she died last week. She wouldn’t wake up when I went into her room, I checked her pulse, and she was gone. She’s buried in the church cemetery. The grieving isn’t easy, even though you’d think I would have gotten a headstart on it.

You won’t believe me, that’s fine. But I did bring you the feather from that morning, and I let your assistant take an image of my hands, just in case you want to at least try.

I don’t go to church, especially not after all this, so I have no priest to confess this to. I think this is as good of a place as any: I wholeheartedly hope that my Godmother is in Hell right now. Because if Heaven is full of those things, I dare not imagine what they are doing to her.

[the-magnus-institute]

Einstand - Statement 18490312

Statement of Maria Vaszoly Né, regarding her involvement in the Hungarian Revolution of 1848-49, and the oddities encountered there. Original statement written sometime in the second half of 1849, and delivered to London via mail. Statement retrieved from the personal letter collection of Jonah Magnus. Printed transcript made in 1997.

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Dearest Jonah.

I pray to the Lord above that this letter finds you well, and that it finds you at all. I also pray that in the slim chance that it does, you may be able to read it, for tremblements haunt my limbs. The winter is only starting to soften, and I am not welcome anywhere, not anymore.

There is no explanation in Heaven or Hell for what happened to me, for it has been such a series of preposterous happenings that not even the greatest hero would believe them. So I came to you, Jonah. You have a mind like no other, I have read your letters to my husband and back, it can wrap around such wondrous and complicated things. There must be something in that library of yours that speaks of the horrors I have endured. I desperately need you to tell me I am anything but alone in my experiences. I would rather be told I am mad, than that I am the one lone soul who must live through this.

I can barely recall how it started. The human mind is such a strange thing, isn’t it? It can get used to any kind of torture, if only it exists in it for long enough. It fools you to keep you alive, a horrific thing the mind is.

I had no part in starting the revolutions last year. Especially if the habsburgs ask. None at all, in fact I believed it was better to let things remain as they have been. You know I do not fancy the habsburgs, no more than anyone on these streets, but were we really in a state to complain? We weren’t. And regardless, we did. I had no part, but you know how the youth of Pesth is, they read their poems and sing their speeches, climb up onto monuments and struggle until the whole city can see them. And when you do see them, you fall enamoured and amazed, and the next thing you know, you’re being dragged along, shouting and chanting.

It was through several instances of being dragged along, that I ended up part of the regiment, which was set on claiming the Castle of Buda as our own once again. They were rather unfortunate instances, I can see that clearly now, I can see what a fool I had been, to let camaraderie and pretty words of heroism tame me. I left Gergely and I left our son, in favour of being able to say that I had taken part in our liberation.

The revolution was not meant for me. Stubbornly, I ignored this, and forced myself into the crowd, into front rows, into fights, until suddenly I had known the revolution better than the gentle life I had led before. I haven’t worn a dress in months, and it must have been even longer since I cared for corsets. For a short while I bandaged my chest and hollered like men do; it made little difference. I was someone willing to fight, and they needed as many hands as they could get, even if they were what they called “lady hands”, soft and manicured. They did not stay like that for long. This was how- in spite of my womanhood- I became a son of the revolution, through blood and sweat.

The siege of Buda was a long fight, going on for sixteen miserable days and fifteen miserable nights. The castle is a poor old thing, it had already been crumbling away in the last century. It is in no shape for war, but the habsburgs had nested in there. You are familiar with vermin making their home wherever they can, yes? They stuck their weapons out through the keyholes and rained bullets onto us. Many great men met their death on their way up the mountain.

It was us, at the bottom of the hill, and the habsburgs, in the castle we had built. It is our castle and it broke my heart to see it bombarded by our own cannons, to see it shot at by our own sons. The enemy was resilient, but they were the ones locked in there, trapped, like rats in a cage, and so we pushed forward. It was at an excruciatingly slow pace, but we pushed and we persevered. We crushed what we could, and the glorious flag had once again flown over Buda Castle.

We took prisoners too. You and I both know, Jonah, that in war all is fair, and you know me, and so you know I was itching to throw them off the mountain and see how far they would roll in one piece. But the biggest, dumbest one in our squadron said not to, so I didn’t. It didn’t stop me from eyeing those devils, though. 

They were all habsburg boys, little kids with golden hair and big doe eyes. They could have been mine, or yours, they looked like they had never held a sword in their lives. I sat and watched as they squirmed in the corner, and I smoked. It was the last of good tobacco I had, the last of what I had sneaked from Gergely’s bureau. I know you have always told him it was poison for the lungs, and the only reason I tried it was because I had expected a bullet to pierce through me, or a sword to pin me to the ground.

There was one of them, one of the boys, who I could not dismiss as easily, though. He looked like the rest, golden and azure, with an upturned nose, freckles, and ears like shovels on either side of his head. But there was a singe in the air around him, and I swear to the Lord above I heard the sound of bells jingling in the distance each time I looked at him. I felt the Devil tingling up my spine, and I could not but notice how his comrades cowered from him as well. Unlike them, he sat completely still, and stared. He stared. And stared, until I could not but bark at him.

“What’s your name, boy?” Was what I must have asked. “My name’s Maximillian.” Was what he replied, and he must have done so in butchered Hungarian, because I remember spitting and repeating the phrase back and forth until he got it right. I have gone soft, Jonah.

I should have known there was a reason why they sent schoolboys into our arms. And I did suspect, although my guess was kingdoms away from the grotesque truth. I had speculated that it was to remind the soldiers of their own youngling; it certainly worked on me. I had to kick myself several times, to treat the lad worse, to treat him like I would never even dream of treating my own son. I should have been wiser. But you, of all people, surely know how quick and easy power gets to people’s heads. 

He kept talking, quieter and quieter, and now I see that he was steering me closer to himself with the volume of his voice, like a sick beast. And closer I crept, like a fool. And then he asked me whether I knew what einstand was.

I spat again and said of course I did, it was what their hog kind lived off of, that and blasphemous, inscenstious, damend relations. Einstand is– I’ll write it here for you, Jonah, before I run out of ink, for you are too just a westerner– a simple rule of nature. Whoever is stronger, gets to take what he wants from the weak.

I said that, flicked him on the forehead so it hurt, and took his hat from him. It was a shitty little hat, coming apart in all its corners. It was strange, the quiet that suddenly overcame him and his peers. Like the quiet before a storm.

And he asked again. Do I know what einstand means.

I looked down at him again, and the boy was gone. I found myself staring back. He took my face, Jonah. There is no better way of saying it. 

She had my eyes, my brown hair, even my clothes, I could even see the chain of the necklace I keep my son’s hair in. I felt frozen into place, and could only watch as she easily undid the knots, and freed the soldier boys. She then grinned, took my pipe from me, waltzed out of the room, and the kids followed after her, like a pod of golden ducklings. She walked like me too, like she was used to much lighter boots.

I do not know what she did, Jonah. I do not know what she told my comrades to make them hate me so. They came for me with swords and guns, and shouted until I ran. I ran out of the newly claimed castle, and I ran until I could no more.

There, I saw her in the crowd. It was undoubtedly her, I swear it to you and to the Lord both, Jonah. I jumped at her, held my knife, and I slashed. My teeth still hurt from gritting them so tight. 

I saw my own face spurt blood, turn pale, cough, wheeze, and die. It is not something that any human should see. It is not something we are meant to remember. I felt my own hands clutch at my wrists and good God, I feel that I will be sick again. I feel as if I had died the moment I killed her, and now I must continue life as a corpse.

None of my comrades dare talk to me. The habsburgs won’t talk to me. Gergely won’t talk to me. He has taken our son to his mother’s estate. I do know that I am in no place to ask for favours, but if you can find the time, I beg you, talk some sense into him.

I’ve been spending my time on the streets, doing what I can, living from day to day. There have been moments, evil, cowardice moments, when I thought of delivering death unto myself. The city is forever cold, and people are cruel to a woman with no husband and no comrades. And the Danube is always right there, so easy to drown in.

But Jonah, it’s not something I can do.

You couldn’t either, if you had seen your own face distort upon death.