My name is Salome Lukas, and I think monsters are real.
…I'm sorry. That was… blunt. Let me start again.
My mother and father died when I was four. I barely remember them. I still don't know how it happened; I didn't see them die, but I knew they were gone. What I mean is, they actually weren't there anymore.
And then I was alone. I don't know how long. I think one of the neighbors must have heard me crying at one point through the walls and called the police, because soon, I was in an orphanage in Liverpool.
I was born in Liverpool; you can still hear a bit of it when I talk, especially when I've been… Well, high. I know you have no reason to believe me, but I hope you will. I was fully sober when the later …incidents… took place.
I was six years old when my mum's brother took me in. His name is Peter Lukas. I don't like to call him my uncle, but I guess that's what he is. Technically, he's my adoptive father; the first thing he told me was not to call him that, though, so I haven't.
It's fine.
I wasn't around much speaking growing up. People on Peter's ship don't talk to me much… or really, at all. At some point, I started wondering if they had been specifically told not to interact with me, because for weeks at a time, the only voice that I'll hear is my own.
Captain Lukas only talks to me when he needs something, but it’s ...fine. I run whatever errands he asks, like handling correspondence between him and your Mr. Elias Bouchard. Aside from that, I stay alone and silent and only hear the sound of my own voice when I sing very quietly to myself at night.
I’ve recently turned eighteen, and I've begun staying in hotels across the UK. Alone.
Recently, Captain Lukas had me run some delivery or trade with… Some artifact dealer or other. I don’t remember his name; he was Polynesian, I think, or Samoan, and I remember that he was big.
Captain Lukas had gotten his hands on a large oval mirror, ornate and old, and he was eager to get rid of it. He didn't tell me what was wrong with it; he just said to be careful not to touch the reflective glass.
Which is, of course, exactly what happened. I had just shifted the mirror while I waited for Mr. Artifacts Dealer to finish reading the note Captain Lukas wanted me to pass along with the thing. My fingers brushed the glass, and then suddenly, I was…
I'm sorry. It was only a few weeks ago, and I'm still having the nightmares.
I was inside the thing that had taken my parents; I don’t know how, but I know I was. Inside the thing that had haunted and stalked me through my childhood. Did I mention that? Always in the corner of my eye, always gone when I turn my head. I'm sorry I can't tell you more than that. It's …all quite blurry. It hurts my head to try and think about.
But now, whenever I look in the mirror, any mirror, I swear, I see fog spilling from my mouth and gathering in cold, spiraling clouds around me.
…Monsters are real …and I think I'm becoming one of them.
Please don’t tell Captain Lukas I was here.
ARCHIVIST
Statement ends.
Due to the conciseness of the text and the vagueness throughout, I might have dismissed this statement out of hand, were it not for the fact that it apparently comes from a member of the Lukas family.
I’ve had my team do some digging, and while there are no legal records for a Salome Lukas nor any adoption records under the name, Sasha did manage to find digital records of 1992 intake forms from Strawberry Fields in Liverpool, then a care home and orphanage, for a then-four-year-old Salome Cartier, whose mother and father, Judith and Olivier Cartier, went missing on 17th November 1992, and were officially presumed dead in November 1999.
Needless to say, “Salome” is an uncommon name in the UK, and enough of the verifiable details match up so that this Salome Cartier identifying as or even simply leaving the statement under the name “Salome Lukas” is not out of the question.
Tim did overhear something interesting from Elias yesterday; he seemed to have been on the phone with somebody when he mentioned, “Salome’s funeral,” which could go some way to explain our difficulties in contacting Miss Cartier, or Miss Lukas. Dead women don't typically answer phone calls.
Recording ends.
