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quinzelade · 7 years ago

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The Magnus Archives: Hunger

New statements have been unearthed. New statements that scratch the surface of the dark entities in our world. Beings of vast power, unknowable motives.

But sometimes...they need to feed.

Note: This is pre-season one finale Jonathan. I miss his snarky commentary about every statement he reads...and Martin.

If you want update alerts, feel free to follow me on Archive of Our Own. I am under ‘Quinzelade.’ TMA doesn’t appear to be on FFnet at the moment.

Weeping

Case #9980529 — “Weeping”

Statement of Joanne Jefferson, regarding an abandoned church of dubious location. Original statement given May 29th 1998. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.

Statement begins.

I can still hear it.

Breathy, whispering, pleading. It scratches at my skull—every waking moment, every second of sleep.

How many are like me, the teeth in their traitor’s mouths strangers to their tongues? Wearing the smell of another, with eyes that lie—eyes that are wrong?

Do you often get statements like this? Cryptic and mired in self pity, no use to anyone except my own conscience? I’m not here to take answers from you, and yet I’ve done nothing but ask questions.

I’ve had a long time to think. A long, long time. The pen feels strange in this hand, the fingers too long and many for my liking. I remember better days, when pens rested against the familiar grooves of my knuckles, and I would clutch hard. Those hands would ache for so long after writing.

Archivist’s note:

The bottom section of the page has been covered in large, scrawled words that say, “Do you know people like me?”

Part of me can’t help but think, yes, I do know people like Miss. Jefferson—more concerned with writing war and peace over her chronic hand ache than anything of actual note. Given the presence of dramatics this early in, I have little hope for the rest of her account...but I’ve already started now. May as well continue.

Statement resumes.

Sorry. Sorry. I should start again, but looking over this mess, I know couldn’t write it any other way. It is a confession, as well as a warning. About the church.

I can’t tell you where it is. When I try to remember, I feel pains in my head and then I hear it. Louder, like it’s trying to suffocate my thoughts. Endless noise, over and over until…

I don’t know where it is. All I can tell you is this began in the Kielder Forest and ended somewhere in Wales. Everything in-between...you’re the experts. I’ll leave the deductions to you.

I used to be an avid walker. Hills, valleys, forest trails...I adored it all. I even went on a hike through Svalbard once, in my youth. It ended badly. Very badly. Badly enough that the travel company who organised the trip were investigated for negligence. Or they would have been, if all their offices hadn’t been abandoned with no trace of the owners.

I’m not surprised the Foxheaths went on the run. Unlike Rob, I was lucky—the frostbite only took two of my old fingers. I survived because my friend, Paul, pulled me out of the freezing water, but even then the cold nearly killed me. I don’t think you can appreciate true cold until you’re in its grasp. It chokes you, burning away all your senses so that suddenly you are numb. Only when you warm up again is there true pain. Your own body betrays you, screaming to return to ice and the chill, deadening everything until nothing remains.

I still don’t know where they took me. All I can remember is sitting in a tiny, miserable shower in some facility on the ice, the luke-warm spray like molten metal on my frigid skin. After that, I ended up in a hospital. No idea how I got there, either.

I promised I’d never go walking again. But a few years later, I met a man called Chris, and over time, we became a couple. He was passionate about ‘The Great Outdoors’ as he called it, and had this amazing smile whenever he talked about walking. He listened when I told him what I could remember about my awful trip, and slowly but surely, he convinced me to return. Small ambles to various hills and valleys and forests, and over time I fell in love with hiking all over again. I fell in love with him, too. He was perfect.

The last trip I ever took with him was to the Kielder Forest. I’d never been there before, and Chris had been itching to go back for some time, which was unusual for him. Chris liked exploring the unexplored, but this was apparently an exception. England’s largest woodland, he told me. He described a vast, endless ocean of trees, the forest floor blanketed with leaves from seasons past.

I booked the weekend off work especially for it. I was so excited, so happy Chris had returned the buzz of going somewhere new. My skin prickled with anticipation, my stomach whirling as I imagined the deep forest, far away from the rest of the world. Just me, Chris, and the silent trees.

The start of the walk was wonderful. The plan was to make our way to a spot Chris had camped at last time. We had supplies, a tent, and a little bit of wine to help the evening pass. We walked and walked, Chris telling me about the various animals and plants as he held my hand, dappled sunlight filtering through from above.

As we walked, though, I had the feeling of being watched. Like when you’re alone in your room, but another presence is filling the corners. The house is quiet. It’s dark. You know no one is there, and yet you can feel it—unseen eyes burrowing into your skin, gnawing their way to the bone. You turn, and the hidden things in the walls smile as your eyes rake peeling wallpaper and closed doors, finding nothing. It knows you sense it, but you’ll never find it. Not until it wants you to.

The trees were watching me.

Chris was puzzled by the way I kept glancing over my shoulder. I tried to explain it, but his brow just furrowed with concern. We walked on, our conversation a little more forced, Chris trying to distract me. I glanced around again, but nothing had changed. Except the trees looked...denser.

I tried to stop, tried to keep staring ahead, but I could feel it reaching out to me, breathing down my neck. My skin prickled, and I turned once more. Still nothing.

Again and again I’d look around, until I was struggling to see in the low light. The forest was thick and heavy, sunlight straining to fight its way through the canopies. I clung to Chris, panic rising in my throat, but he seemed oblivious, squinting through the darkness of the ever deepening woodland as though it had always been this way.

Thin, hard fingers raked across my head, and I screamed. I pulled sharply away from Chris, to see branches tangled in my hair. Chris laughed, telling me not to worry, but I stepped back, holding up my hands. The trees were pressed right to the edges of the path, the way we came now lost in a sea of bark and leaf. I asked Chris where the trail was, and he shrugged and pointed ahead.

“But where does it go?”

He shrugged again, unconcerned, and held out his hand. “To the unknown. The best destination.”

I took his hand. I didn’t know what else to do. He led me on, and I bit my lip, trembling as I felt sharp, inanimate fingers poking into my spine. If I kept walking, if I refused to look back, then we’d be safe. They wouldn’t follow.

The trees bent over us in gnarled arches, but aside from their outstretched limbs, never strayed a single root onto our path. I decided the trail was our saviour, keeping the trees at bay. The thought stopped panic from overwhelming me at any rate, and I managed to keep my breath steady and quiet, praying for it to end.

Suddenly, it did.

We came into a clearing, the trees standing sentinel, daring to go no further. In the centre was an old church. The stone was pitted and crumbling, shingles falling from the sagging roof and cratered steeple, from which atop sat a cracked spire. It looked as if the metal ornament—possibly a cross or some other symbol—had been torn away long ago. The doors were old wood and framed with tarnished metal, and the stained glass windows still intact. The glass was so filthy, though, I couldn’t see the pictures.

Chris shook his head and apologised, saying he must have taken a wrong turn. But then he tilted his head to me, his face lit up with delight. “What an amazing find,” he said. “And we have a solid roof over our head for the night.”

“Night?” I checked my watch, confused, and was shocked to see it was evening already. We’d only been in the forest for a few hours, and yet here we were, the day gone.

I looked up to see Chris walking towards the church. Panic stabbed through me and I ran to him, gripping hard on his wrist. Something didn’t feel right.

The church waited.

I begged Chris to stay outside. That we should find somewhere else, that we had tents, that the roof could cave in at any minute. He wouldn’t listen. Pulled his hand free, apparently fed up of my skittish behaviour, and strode over to the door. Despite its age and rot, it opened as if freshly oiled, and Chris walked inside, turning on his torch.

Fear consumed me. All at once, I knew he shouldn’t be in there. The church seemed to swallow him as he disappeared into the dark, the door swinging silently shut.

My breaths came out, short and shallow, and I turned to look at the trees. They remained still, denser than ever. I dragged my eyes back to the church, which sat docile. Chris was alone in there. I shook my head, trying to loosen the stupid fears digging their claws into me, but they held tighter. I knew something wasn’t right. I couldn’t leave him in there.

Taking a deep breath, I turned handle and stepped inside, focusing everything on following Chris. I didn’t think to even reach for my torch.

The door slammed shut behind me, making me jump and plunging me into dark. The cold hit me. My chest tightened as I drifted through the black, ice in my veins, waiting to drown. Something brushed my face and I gasped, finally snapping to my senses and fumbling for my torch. Light—blissful light—flooded the room, and I saw an old spider’s web, stretching across the archway. I brushed it aside and moved further in.

Broken, dusty pews were strewn all over the bare stone floor. My light trailed from shattered wood and ruin to the walls, which were carved so intricately it was a wonder the detail hadn’t been lost to time. I moved closer, peering at them, forgetting everything for a moment. As I stared at them, the designs seemed to flow together, forming a shape that looked strangely like an open mouth.

A shiver ran through me and I turned away. The odd carvings left me unsettled. I tilted my torch up to the stained glass windows; thin dark shapes swayed behind the grime, but I paid them little attention. The colours were muddied with age, with flashes of vibrance lurking beneath the filth. And yet the depictions were clear enough. Each pane was filled with countless people. Some were on their knees, others on the floor, but all wore the same tortured expression. Even now, I’m not sure if it was pain or despair. Their faces were screwed up, mouths open in what looked like a scream. Tears stained their cheeks, their eyes narrowed slits. Some of them clawed at their faces, fingernails clogged with meat as deep, ruddy trails were left behind.

I don’t mind admitting the windows made me feel sick. The anguish in them brought me back to earth with a bump, and I remembered I was looking for Chris.

I called out to him. No answer. I shone my light around the room, but there were no doors, save the one I’d come from. No alcoves. Nothing. He was just...gone.

Panic came back in waves. I flicked the light around again and again, searching for him. I saw him go in. I went in right after him. There was nowhere else he could be. I called out to him again, tears pricking my eyes, and the air grew colder still. I could see my breath misting where my torch beam cut through the black. I needed to get out. Maybe Chris had slipped past me for a joke, gone back without me noticing. I knew it this couldn’t be true. I hoped for it anyway.

I turned, barely aware of what I was doing, and wrenched the front door open. My scream caught in my throat as my light met something that rooted me to the spot.

Trees.

Trees, lined up against the entrance so tightly there wasn’t a single gap. Trees, packed together as if they were a wall. I backed away from the door and flicked my light up to the windows again, finally realising what the dark, thin shapes moving outside were.

I looked back at the door. The bark remained in place, teeth clamped shut over a lipless mouth.

I let out a moan and stumbled away. My foot snagged on a piece of broken pew and I fell to the floor, my torch hitting the stone with a dead clunk. It rolled lazily away, the shadows created in its wake mocking me.

From the back of the church came a low, muffled sob.

I froze, wondering if I’d woken an animal, or—even worse—Chris was still in here, but hurt. I got onto my hands and knees and crawled across the floor, barely aware of the tears sliding down my face and dripping to the floor. The crying grew louder, magnifying into a harrowing sound—a miserable weeping.

I felt my way across the church, broken wood and close stone pressing into my palms, until my hands enclosed around my torch, I lifted it up, the light skittering along the walls as I trembled, and slowly got to my feet.

The sounds led me to a wall. I leaned forward, and sure enough, the weeping could be heard within the stone. Without thinking, I pressed my palm to it, and instead of cold, it burned, almost hot enough to scald. The stone seemed to melt away, and when I shone my torch to the floor, there was no sign of it. All that was left was a yawning, open space.

“Chris?” I whispered, crouching down and peering into the gloom. My torched pressed feebly against the darkness, holding it at bay rather than piercing it. I moved inside the small tunnel, the stone rougher than the church. It scraped at my skin, like a cat’s tongue, and the warmth in the tunnel seemed to increase. I continued, my heart hammering against my ribs. Every bit of common sense I possessed screamed for me to leave, to run. But...Chris was missing. And the trees had shepherded me into a pen.

The heat of the stone was now unbearable, sweat trickling down my face, stinging my eyes. I blinked, and all at once saw a pale, thin figure curled up at the end of the small tunnel. It was a frail, pitiful thing—its flesh mottled and dirty, so skinny its bones look ready to rip through paper-like skin. Its breathing was laboured, rasping, and it covered its face as it lay shaking on the floor. Its sobs rang hard against the stone, and I felt a pang of pity.

I reached out. As I did, the figure looked up. I saw grey eyes, dry as bone.

My fingers pushed through its soft, clammy flesh. Cold ripped through me—through my arm, to my shoulders, my body, my legs…. I tried to scream, but it pinned my tongue. The chill splintered me until I could feel no more, floating in endless numb, and my vision faltered.

I was back in the frozen sea, drowning. Darkness encased me, the cold reaching its crescendo, my lungs choking for breath. This time, it would not let me go.

Slowly, the light came back, the torch half-blinding me. I was huddled at the end of the tunnel, my own body slumped opposite me. I was not that body. She shook her head, straightened herself up, and picked up the torch. Her grey eyes fixing on mine. There was something unreadable in her expression. Then, without a word, she backed out of sight.

I tried to follow. Tried to move. But the numbness was all around me, and I was held in place. I watched, horrified, as the stone wall shifted back into place, moving closer and closer, melting into me, until my body was encased. I try to call out again to Chris. To my body. To anyone to save me. My voice was muffled by the stone, jaw unable to move in its new mould.

I can’t begin to describe what it’s like, unable to move or breathe or speak. Alone in darkness, limbs aching from neglect and starved of all contact. No matter what I write, it would never do it justice. I spent every second wishing I was dead.

I don’t know how long it lasted. I didn’t keep track. I don’t even know why I stopped crying in the end. One day, I just...did. I was empty. I had nothing left to give.

The church...somehow, I understood it at last. It had been waiting for this, and hungered for a new taste.

I had a choice. There were no words—there were never any words with the church. But still somehow, I knew I could choose. Faces flickered past me, old, young—male, female. I picked a woman who looked like me. Her eyes were wrong, but that wouldn’t matter.

As soon as I picked her, within a day she was offered. A horrible weeping filled my prison, and I recognised the sobs as my own, though I hadn’t shed another tear. My cries for help, wordless begging, pleas for warmth. The church had kept them all, and now here they were, pulling in a fresh body.

I could have warned her. But I didn’t. She reached out, her blue eyes wide, her naive face screwed up with concern. She touched me.

Burning molten metal cascaded onto me, my body pressed against blistering walls. Screams gurgling in my convulsing throat, unable to escape, as my flesh bubbled and melted.

And then, gradually, slowly, it faded. And I was panting, leaning against the tunnel wall. I could feel my skin, the shape of my nails, the clothes, so rough and yet so soft, hanging off me. The wetness of my mouth and the foreignness of the stolen body. The warmth was suffocating me, and I drank it in. I wanted to drown in it, burn in it.

Finally, my gaze drifted over to the ghostly figure now in my place. She stared back, her blue eyes fearful, brimming with tears. I knew the cold stayed her tongue. I edge out of the tunnel, not wanting to look at her any longer, and sat on the floor. The limbs of this body—well used—did not hurt when I moved them, but I remained sitting anyway, not wanting to push myself too hard.

I tried to ignore the girl, visible in the short tunnel, and instead glanced around me. The people in the stained glass windows were still there, contorted with grief—and two new figures. On the window above the opening, there was a woman with long red hair and grey eyes, dragging her nails down her face so blood flowed. Beside her, another redhead, but with brown eyes. She stared straight at me, her mouth twisted into a cruel, jagged smirk.

A wail brought my attention back to the tunnel. The church wall was slowly sealing itself. I caught a glimpse of my victim’s terrified face, cheeks wet, and then she was gone. Even when the stone grew still, I could hear the faintest muffled sobs.

I left her there.

Outside, I found myself on a lonely peak, surrounded by hills and valleys. In the distance, I could see trees. I started my way down a nearby footpath, but every time I looked back at them, they seemed to move further and further away. They’d delivered my replacement. Their job was done.

I staggered a little as I continued on the old path, which winded down and out of sight. In the distance, I could see a little village. It seemed as good a place to go as any.

The people there called the body ‘Anna.’ They smiled at it and waved as it passed, unaware she was long gone. As soon as I learned where I was and the body’s place in the world, I sold all of Anna’s things and took off. I couldn’t bear to be around strangers any longer, smiling faces who called me by a taken name and thought she was still there. The very sound of it made me feel sick.

I’m not Anna. But I’m not Joanne either. I don’t know who I am anymore.

I didn’t search for Chris. I couldn’t.

The warmth is all consuming, and the cold haunts my sleep. I’m afraid to cry. Every night is the same. I dream of tears and an open door. There are the trees, waiting for me. I turn away and I am in the church. My own body is there, staring at me with grey eyes. She laughs before dragging me towards the open wall—a hungry mouth, eager to taste an old, forgotten meal.

Statement ends.

I can’t help but feel unnerved by some of Miss. Jefferson’s word choices. ‘Burrow’ in particular. The recent sightings of Prentiss...they have me on edge. At least she stuck to a theme throughout her statement, and kept her meandering to a minimum. More than I can say for some. A pity then her actual story is about as believable as Elias’ promises of a pay rise for allowing Martin on my team.

I knew I should have gotten it down on paper.

At any rate, all aspects of Miss. Jefferson’s statement were easy enough to disprove. There have been no known records of a church matching the one described in the Kielder Forest or Wales. Granted, despite Sasha’s efficiency and Tim’s...well. They can’t cover such a wide area by themselves, even with their various contacts. But I don’t intend to waste their time or—more importantly—mine chasing a moving ruin across the country.

Admittedly, searches into Miss. Jefferson’s background reveal another woman who matches the original date and place of birth given by Miss. Jefferson at the time of her statement. The date of birth is some fifty years previous. Martin—who was likely given tips by Sasha—managed to find a series of photographs, and show a woman with red hair, who matches the description given by Miss Jefferson. By all accounts, she spent the last twenty years of her life alone, and died relatively young.

Just...one thing I noticed. In some of Miss. Jefferson’s photographs, particularly the oldest ones, her eyes…it’s hard to tell, with the red glare typical of photographs from that time period. But in the older ones, her eyes look brown. In the later photos, they appear to be grey.

Probably a trick of the light.

End recording.

#the magnus archives #tma #jonathan simms #fanfic #story #TMA: Hunger

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