#submitted-statement

[the-magnus-institute]

Pinch - Statement 20141210

Statement of Abby-Lynn Grace regarding her experiences with an anomalous mirror. Statement recorded by the Usher Foundation, directly from subject, October 12th, 2014. Statement transcribed on 24th of March, 2019.

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[Statement Begins.]

My mama’s always called me a bit vain. Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve liked to look at myself— in spoons, in windows, in the bathroom mirror. My brothers used to tell me to get out of the shower when we were school-age. I’d just turn the water on and let it run and run while I sat on the counter and preened.

It wasn’t always self-indulgent. Sometimes it was like a– a compulsion, I think Frankie called it. That’s my husband, Frankie. He’s always been real good about keeping my head on right, God bless him. He’d come in sometimes, find me cryin’ in front of it. If you look at yourself long enough in the mirror, things start to warp, look all out of sorts. Your face stops lookin’ like a face and starts lookin’ like a problem.

This all started a few months back. That’s why I’m here. Frankie’s been worried, says I haven’t seemed myself lately. To be honest, I haven’t felt it, either. I think… Now, this sounds silly, but I know you all hear all manner of silly things, so I’ll come on out and say it. I think it’s the mirror’s fault. No– I know it is. I know it’s that mirror’s fault.

Me and Frankie got married in April– you see this ring? He bought it himself, I told him not to get one this big, but he insisted. I’ll get him somethin’ real nice soon, make him treat himself. Anyhow, we moved into my granddaddy’s old place. It’s small, but it’s real nice, especially in the evenings. All the lightning bugs and the crickets come out, you can sit on the porch swing and listen to the whipporwill. We had fun paintin’ all the walls bright colors, plantin’ trees out front, diggin up Granddaddy’s old garden beds. We even cleared out his old attic, made it into a nice guest room, just in case, you know. It gets awful hot up there, we’ll have to keep company strictly to the fall and winter [laughter].

But, ah. The attic is where I found it.

It’s this big ol’ mirror. Taller than I am, wider than I am, too, though I’ll outgrow it soon enough if June Harris keeps makin’ lemon bars for the church potlucks. It’s got this pretty gold border, all swirls and roses. Frankie said it was gaudy, but Frankie gets the basement for his model trains, so I got the mirror in our closet. I keep thinkin’ about what might have happened, if I’d just taken it to the Goodwill, left it on the street, smashed it to bits and buried it.

But I didn’t. I used it to get my face beat in the mornings– before church, before my shift at the Piggly Wiggly, takin’ all my makeup off at night before bed. Sometimes, I’d see somethin’ out of the corner of my eye in the mirror, but my imagination’s always run a bit wild, and so do the cats, so I didn’t think anything of it.

It hung there for weeks, until they turned into months. I noticed– well, no, that’s not quite right. It was Frankie who noticed. He told me I was lookin’ in the mirror too much, that he was worried I was havin’ one of my moments. That’s what we call them– my moments. When I look at myself too much, and it makes me miss church and meals. I’ve got help for them, so I told him he was bein’ overprotective, and that I was fine.

But then I started noticing, too. I’d be talkin’ on the phone– you know how people walk around when they use the phone?-- and I’d end up smack in front of that mirror again. It’s not like it’s easy to get to, either, it’s in a closet I get to through the master bathroom. Two doors, and I’d breeze by both of them like they were nothing. 

I’d clean, and there I’d be, wipin’ down the mirror like it wasn’t already shining. Sitting in front of it after I was done beatin’ my face up pretty, just staring. If I stared for long enough, it felt like I would fall right through.

I started doing odd things. I’d eat in front of it, when Frankie was out of the house, then when he was in the house. He noticed– I told him to mind his own. I’ve been awful to Frankie, he’s been onto this thing since the beginning, but I only just– 

[Soft breathing, sniffling]

Anyhow. I’m fine, put that away. I’m fine. 

It was a couple weeks ago, I think. Right after Suzanna’s baptism. I went into the closet at night, and I just sat right down on the floor in front of it.

At first, it was just like normal. I looked like me, a bit more tired, a bit less sunburned, but I was me.

I kept lookin, and it started to do that funny optical illusion. My nose started lookin’ a little too big, my eyebrows started seemin’ all wampus. I started pushin’ and prodding at my face, and… it stuck.

Look, here, my nose. It used to be crooked right here, and now it’s straight as an arrow. The mirror did that. My eyebrows are thinner, my lips are bigger. I was ecstatic; Kathy Lee spent three grand on her nosejob, and I’d just gotten one for dirt cheap. Cheaper, even. 

Frankie looked at me a little weird, that next morning, but I was over the moon. I’d go into the closet, push and poke, and come out a little more perfect than I had before. It got to be that I couldn’t go an hour before lookin’ at myself, making sure it’d stuck, that I looked alright. 

Then, about a week ago, I had one of my moments. 

I woke up, and I could tell it was gonna be a rough day. Frankie was already off to work at the power plant; he leaves early on Wednesdays. I didn’t bother makin’ myself pretty. I put on Frankie’s old sweatpants and my college hoodie– they’re my favorites for when I have my moments. They hide me away in folds and bags, and Frankie knows it’s my outfit for bad days, so we usually cuddle up on the easy chair and watch whatever’s on.

But the mirror was close, and I wanted to see if it worked on all of me. I wouldn’t have done it except for that I’d been cryin’, and I was all puffy, and nothin’ felt right.

It was hangin’ there, same as ever. I lifted up my shirt, sucked in my stomach, and… it stuck. No battlin’ with crunches, nothing. I turned, and it’d really stuck. That’s when things started goin’ wrong.

I started small. Just little pinches, like sculpting clay. Tuckin’ things in, pokin, lifting. I didn’t want Frankie to notice anything too different– he knows me, he’d notice if I suddenly looked like a Wal-Mart Megan Fox. I started to get frustrated; I pinched harder. My left leg wouldn’t match my right, I had to make ‘em even. I got so mad, I…

Lord, help me. I scrubbed my hands over my face. I didn’t mean to, it was just habit.

I screamed when I opened my eyes back up.

I looked like I’d melted. My nose was stickin’ straight up, my cheeks were dripping like candle wax. My eyes… You know when little boys get mad, and they pull their bottom eyelid down? Like that, but stuck, and I reached up, and that’s what they felt like, too. 

My heart was fixin’ to burst. I tried my best to fix it– I got out my phone, looked for a photo of myself. I tried to put everything back right, set my face back, but I’ve never been a very good artist. I look off. Like a twin, or a sister.

I went to bed early. When Frankie came in, I told him not to turn the lights on, that I felt sick. He believed me. 

He screamed, the next morning. He thought a stranger had snuck into his bed. I had to talk to get him to believe it was me. I told him everything– he broke the mirror. He wants to take me in to a doctor, one of those psychiatrists. Told me it’s for the best, that I need to talk to someone professional. Lord knows we don’t have the money to burn on useless things like that.

That’s why I’m here. I figure… you all have heard all manner of odd things. Surely I’m not crazy. 

[Cell phone buzzing]

Oh– that’s Frankie. I’m supposed to meet him for dinner. I’m trying to get out more.

Don’t tell him this, but… I’m not proud of this. I couldn’t take the chance. I have to be able to fix myself, somehow.

I stole a broken piece. It’s fitted into this compact blush. I need to fix it– I’m gonna. 

It can’t hurt, right?

[Statement ends.]

[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]

Snowfall - Statement 20201122

Statement of Alice Whittaker, regarding a sudden snowstorm. Original statement given November 22, 2020.

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It just seemed like a regular day, y'know? Woke up, headed outside, there’s untouched snow on the ground, and it’s simply peaceful. There wasn’t much for me to do, you know how it’s been lately, so I thought I would head into the woods for the day. I’ve been doing that a lot recently, just enjoying myself in the wilderness. See, I haven’t been able to keep in touch with many of my friends, but being in the woods was… it’s hard to put into words, “peaceful” isn’t quite the right one. “Fulfilling”, maybe? 

Oh, I’m getting off topic. Anyways, I went into the woods, intent on exploring my usual haunts and excited about seeing them in the snow. There’s just something magical about fresh powder coating everything, the silence filling the air and the cold on your skin. I love just wandering through and seeing everything just slightly changed, looking at familiar trees, with the snow adding something more.

I… I don’t know how long I was out there, actually. I vaguely noticed when it started snowing again, filed it away in the back of my mind, but I was more focused on my trek through the woods and taking it all in. At some point though, it started falling faster and heavier, and when I couldn’t see my footprints after backtracking I knew I was in trouble. The forest I was in wasn’t small by any means, it’s a good 30 miles in any direction, and I didn’t know where I was. I just had to pick a direction and hope. So, I did.

It was difficult to tell what I was doing at some points. The wind had picked up, tossing flurries in my face and I had to constantly squint. It would blow so hard that I’d stumble backwards into a tree that I had passed, and I had to concentrate solely on putting one foot in front of the other. Time passed, and I had no way of telling it, other from the soreness of my feet and the stinging in my eyes. 

At some point I noticed that I wasn’t seeing any trees anymore. Eddies of snow were curling across my vision, so I couldn’t tell if I was just missing them or if I’d stumbled onto a neighbor’s field. I was exhausted, though, and I just stopped where I was. The storm could take me for all I cared, I couldn’t do it anymore. 

And then the wind and flurries were gone. All I saw around me was snow. Pristine, untouched, for miles and miles. Which simply wasn’t possible. None of my neighbors had a field this size. There was just a flat surface to the horizon. Not a single tree in sight, not a single plant breaking the surface, not even my footsteps that I had just taken.

I was alone.

I’ll admit, I was scared. Completely. I had been walking for what must have been hours through a storm, and now it was unnaturally gone. There weren’t any signs of civilization. There was just me, and the snow. I had a gut feeling that staying and hoping someone would appear was useless, and trying to find someone myself was equally useless. Whatever had happened, whatever was playing tricks on me, I just had to wait and see what would happen next.

I think it really hit me then. Just how alone I was. Not just being away from other people, but how far I was from everything in the world- no, in the universe. We don’t understand much of our world, do we? So how can we expect to know the universe? We’re ants, scurrying over the playground of giants. That’s what I had stumbled into. I was just an ant, cowering in the middle of everything. Insignificant in the course of the universe.

And I was strangely alright with that. I’d been scared just moments before, but it just felt right all of a sudden. Like a switch had flipped. I was tiny, but so was everything else. Just a constant variable in the equation now. Where before the endless snow had been frightening, I now took comfort from it. 

I stood there for a long time. The vast emptiness made me feel strangely at home. The endlessness of it all was like nothing I’d seen before, quiet overtaking everything and leaving nothing in its wake. The sky was dull gray, but open and welcoming nonetheless. I lost myself in the view, feeling that it was mine, and mine alone.

I don’t remember much after that. The wind picked up again, snow eddied from the ground, and when it cleared I was back in the woods. I recognized the old split oak I was next to as being a few minutes from my family’s house, and just went home. The rest of my day has seemed normal. Although, I don’t know how I found this website, but it felt right to write everything down. There should be some sort of record of my experience.

I think I’m going to go back to the woods today. I have a feeling I’ll learn something new.

[the-magnus-institute]

No Trace - Statement 20010211

Statement of Lawrence de Boer, regarding the events leading up to and the disappearance of Arytom Tade in 1994. Original statement received in mail, on the 2nd of November, 2001.

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Through all of this, I’ve tried not to keep count of it. Maybe if I pretend that it isn’t my last thought each night, and that I don’t check the bed every morning to see if he is there, maybe then he’ll come back. It’s a bit like convincing myself that I am not looking for the piece of script I desperately need to memorise, and then it will turn up in the corner of my eye.

I’ve tried not to keep track, but it’s been an awful, empty seven years and three months since Arytom disappeared. I know what you’re thinking, and I promise I’m not writing to you about a mundane missing person’s case, my partner didn’t just go off the grid in an overnight frenzy. You don’t understand. In the simplest, most quintessential sense of the word, he disappeared.

And I would have written sooner, I really would have, but you must understand, when so many policemen and search and rescue officers tell you that your partner has most likely fled the country or died in a ditch somewhere, you start to believe it. It was easier than hoping for the impossible, but my heart wouldn’t let my mind rest. I heard of your institute from a friend, she’s really into the occult and all that, and I figured that if anyone had something intelligent to say about all this, it was you. Let me try and be more concise, from the beginning.

Tyoma never chatted much about his childhood. But it doesn’t take a genius to guess that growing up in the USSR was suboptimal. He had always made a point to add after whatever horrid story he was telling that he had gotten the better of it, that there was always worse. He often mentioned him and his mother standing in lines in the freezing morning, in front of grocers, waiting to get a cut of fresh meat. It was always frozen, salted, and smoked black, which I guess was as fresh as it got in soviet Hungary.

I only got to know him in 1989, when the first thing he did was scrape all his money together and hurry to the Netherlands. He always joked about having feared that the country would be shut down again. He always got a nervous twitch in his leg after that.

Overall, he was a bright young man, and I am almost certain that he made a living out of translating from French to English and back, before his plays got picked up. Surprisingly, out of the two of us, I had been the one living from paycheck to paycheck. Come to think of it, it’s not that surprising… the only artist poorer than the poet is the actor.

I met Arytom Tade while I was performing at a community theater in Leiden. It was some philosophic piece, about morality, or perhaps mortality, dragging on and on, the kind of theater that you left feeling worse than when you had entered. I had found it hard to relate to my character, and to be passionate about the play. He was too much of a stickler.

On the third night of performing, I peeked out through the ruffles of the cheap, flaking curtain. The fancy folk always sat in the front rows, back when people still dressed up to go to the theater, they sat in the front row, to be looked at. It was why I never did. And generally it could be said that there were always empty seats, and even if people had bought a place to sit further back they would often sit closer, a few minutes before the show. So generally I was acting to the first six rows out of twelve.

That night, there was a man sitting, all the way in the back. Perhaps my mind deceives me, but it is entirely possible that he was also in the corner. Naturally, this perplexed me. And then someone had moved a prop and we had to rush to help the prop manger find it, leaving the curtain to sway shut.

During the performance, my eyes kept darting to him, across the room. He kept watching me, which yes, it was what he had come there to do, but there was such a strange quality to his eyes. Of course it seems foolish now, knowing Tyoma as well as I do, but I couldn’t help but fall out of character for a moment as I quickly snapped my eyes away from him.

After quite a rocky show, that might or might not have had something to do with the handsome stranger in the corner, I got out of makeup, out of stage clothes, and headed for the bus. I usually slept on the way home, because I didn’t get much of a chance to do anytime else. You can probably guess who I found waiting at the station.

He was looking up at the arrival time tables, with a brimmed hat on his head and a coat hugging his torso, like it had been sewn right onto him. He looked at me, and I almost walked into traffic. In clumsy Danish, he complimented my performance, and I asked which bus he was waiting for. He smiled and we kept conversing on the bus which we apparently both took.

He was tall, and the kind of lanky that could only be the result of a lifelong hunger strike; you should have seen what he called cooking. He wore turtlenecks and that godawful coat that could vanish him into the crowd of street dwellers seamlessly.

There was a sort of charm to everything he said, and how he managed to pack as much meaning into as few words as possible, even when we transitioned to English. He could use silence to communicate just as well as he used words, perhaps even better. I told him I was short on money, and he told me he was short on roommates, and before the end of the month he was helping me carry my things up the stairs to his flat.

Of course, I’ve always known something wasn’t quite right with him. He was jumpy, and if I stared long enough, I could swear that his pupils had melted into the dark colour of his eyes. I felt as if we both were to go mute the next day, we would have still perfectly understood each other. 

And of course, I’ve always known of the things that had made him so. He had told me, not long after starting to live together, how he had been a journalist, back in his homeland. How he had been greatly unfavoured by the government. This was especially unfortunate, considering that they had no restraint when it came to the matter of bugging entire houses and telephone lines.

There were nights when he woke from a dream, and shortly after I woke as well, to the sound of him rummaging through clothes and items, looking for wires and mechanisms. Once he had gotten close to ripping the wallpaper off. It wasn’t sleepwalking, or psychosis. He was awake, but it seemed like this intense state of paranoia had taken such hold of him that he had forgotten of his less imminent surroundings.

“They can see me, they can hear me,” he kept repeating, until I took his arm each time and shook some sense into him. I told him that this was the Netherlands, not some fascist nightmare behind God’s back, led him back to bed, and waited until he fell back asleep again. Often I slept next to him, dreams claiming me first.

He was never a people’s person. I always said that people just weren’t Tyoma people, but we both knew it was merely a kind gesture. He had little intention of getting to know new people, but came with me to rehearsals and dinner evenings each time I asked. He forced a smile but didn’t converse much, and his eyes kept darting around the room, like a trapped animal. He kept grabbing my arm, and took days to recover after each occasion. I suggested getting evaluated for asperger’s, but there was always such a reluctance on his part that I stopped pushing in fear of offending him.

It took almost a year of nagging him, but I had managed to convince him to take a play he had written to the director of Leiden community theater. He was adamant about only writing for himself, but you don’t understand. It was so simple, yet wonderful, I needed others to see it. I showed it to Grethe Selva, the director of the theater. Naturally, she fell in love with the script, like I knew she would. It portrayed the struggle of the working man beautifully, with fits of despair and short lived bursts of joy.

Back home, it took a good amount of apologising to get Tyoma to speak to me. I did manage to break even, when I reminded him that if it got put on stage, he would get to see me play in what he had written. I saw softness overcome his face, his eyebrows furrow, and I knew I’d won.

We prepared long and hard to have it put on stage, and Tyoma insisted on having me play the protagonist: it was his one request. On the opening night, I sat him down in the front row. Naturally, he whined about it, like I knew he would. He said it bothered him that people could see him, but he couldn’t see them. I said that if his play was good enough, no one would be paying attention to the back of his head anyway, and that seemed to calm him down enough to get the show started.

It was a success, of course it was. I had never doubted that. And still, I wish I could go back and wrestle the script out of my own hands before ever showing it to Grethe. I wish I could go back and slap myself.

At closing bows, in midst of the thunderous claps, I reached a hand out towards the first row, and beckoned Tyoma up. He seemed transfixed on my palm, as I helped him up onto the stage. My heart was overflowing and bursting with joy, and I spun him to face the audience.

I shouldn't have. I could feel that something was wrong the moment I saw the lights hit his face. He was pale, unnaturally so, even in the lights that already washed people out. His eyes were fixed at the audience, and I thought he’d never breathe again. And he had this terrified rigidness to him, this awful fear deep in his bones, I felt it with my hand on his waist, solid and shaking, I felt it in the frozen and hurried way he bowed when I lightly pressed at his back. 

I think this must have been when it really started.

I held his hair as he vomited in the dingy theater bathroom. Something was very wrong, and the only thing I could do was hold his soft brown hair and soothe a hand down his back, again and again. He emerged from the toilet, looked at me, and there was no recognition in his eyes.

I lived with a ghost for the next six months. Arytom woke up in the morning, did his tasks, wrote exactly ten pages worth of stage instructions, and went back to bed. It went like this until I looked at him one day, and not only realised that he didn’t recognise me, but also that I didn’t recognise him.

I took him to clinics, to doctors he had before refused. They couldn’t find anything wrong with him, but I knew that that man was not my friend or partner. After his work, he didn’t fall asleep. He just lay in our bed, and stared at the ceiling, the same way he stared at me, like I too were just plaster on a wall.

One night, as I got into bed, he spoke. 

“I hear something calling me every night. It’s like the buzzing of mechanical bugs inside of my walls. I heard it calling but I resisted.” 

I still remember it perfectly. I didn’t know what to do, so I leaned over and kissed him. He looked at me for a moment, his hand rested on my cheek, and there was almost a twinkle in his eyes. I had almost gotten through to him, maybe if I had just kissed him harder. But I hadn’t. And he wished me goodnight and went to sleep.

In the morning, he wasn’t there. I dug through the house, then the garden, then the city. I ringed him a thousand times. It was no use. All of our keys were inside, and all of the doors were locked. And I doubt he jumped from a fifth story window. The policemen came, and search dogs came, and they couldn’t find his scent. They couldn’t find any clue leading to him. The curve of the mattress that had formed under him was gone. The leaking ink pens he always left out were gone. It was as if he had never even existed.

It’s awfully lonely without him. I don’t know what to do with myself. I suppose that’s why this letter is getting so lengthy, it’s been a long, long while since I talked to anyone like this. I apologise, I know this is in no way concise, or of much use to you.

Who did Tyoma see that evening? I keep thinking of the way he had stared into the clapping crowd that night, terrified recognition rippling through his face, like he had seen an old friend he owed money to. I keep thinking of how afraid he had always been of his name being printed, of being known. I keep wondering why.

And I keep trying to ignore the feeling of being watched while I’m in the home I shared with him.

[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.