Account 15: Corruption

Background information

• Name: Cal Miller
• Pronouns: She/her
  
• Date: May 12, 2020
  
• Occupation: College student
  
• City of residence: Robin, Michigan
  
• Date(s) of account: 2016-2020
  
• Subject of account: A book by Richard Farrow
  

 

Interview transcript 

THOMAS WAKE: Testing, 1, 2, 3...

CAL MILLER: You're sure about this?

THOMAS: You can write it down if you'd prefer.

CAL: No, it's fine, I'll just say it. I mean, you're already recording.

So, it started off back in 2016. You already know what happened to my dad- I mean, Peter, Peter Hail, I mean, he gave you that account, and that's how I found out about this whole... project... thing.

 

See, my dad- um, I'm supposed to use full names, I guess, so Harold Miller- he was off hunting deer, and my mom, Lily Miller, was staying home with me. We decided to start cleaning the house, since it was starting to get a bit, you know- a bit crappy. Thought it would make a nice surprise for when he got home. Partway through, Mom asked if I wanted her to go pick up some fast food and bring it back, and that sounded pretty good to me.

 

I was 15, so it wasn't like I'd never been home alone before, but I was still a little nervous. I decided to just keep cleaning until Mom got back to take my mind off being alone. I ended up finding this box full of old books while I was down in the basement. Most of them were books from when I was a kid that my parents were too attached to get rid of, but there were also some books I assumed were Mom's, books on ancient mythology and stuff. I think one of them was called Prometheus Bound. They all looked really old, and some of them practically looked like they were about to fall apart.

There was one book in particular that looked really dusty, but I could tell it was paperback, and that it was called The Pallid Mask, by R. Farrow. Its condition wasn't as bad as a lot of the other books, and it was right on top, so I carefully picked it up and opened it. There was a bookplate that said "Library of Matthias Clark" on the inside, and the paper was yellow. I checked the page that listed publishing information. Apparently it was only from 2008.

As soon as I started actually reading it, I knew I had to read to the end. I didn't really understand why, though. I mean, the book wasn't all that exciting. It was this romantic play set in... Victorian England, maybe? I've never been too good with history, but the main character, Lord Scott, was an aristocrat, and it mentioned street lamps a few times, so I don't think it could've been much earlier or later than that.

Anyways, before the start of the second act, there was a poem that I can still remember:

"Beware the man
Who is not,
For he brings madness
And festering rot."

There was an illustration below it of someone, who must have been the man the poem was talking about, wearing robes and a mask. He was starting to take off the mask. It was hard to make out what was behind the mask, but it had the outline of a face, at least. The hand was really bony, and the more I looked, the worse it got. It was like no matter how closely I examined it, there were always scabs or bruises or something I hadn't noticed earlier.

I started to read the second act after that. It was... different, somehow. I really couldn't say how. I mean, the story was still continuing, but there was something off about it. The dialogue was kind of stilted after that. Lord Scott and his love interest, Camilla, got together at the end of the second act.

In the third act, Lord Scott was at home with Camilla, and he heard a knock at the door. Lord Scott was about to send one of his servants to open the door for him, but he wasn't there. Lord Scott looked around, and Camilla had disappeared too. The weird thing is, he didn't seem surprised. He just walked to the door. There was a person standing there, wearing tattered yellow robes. Lord Scott started to say something to his visitor, who he called "messenger," but the messenger just shook their head and said that it was "high time he sought the King." Lord Scott started protesting, and just like the first time, the messenger cut him off.

The messenger asked Lord Scott if he remembered what happened to the three people who had defied the King. Lord Scott started to answer, but the messenger put their finger to their mouth, and he stopped talking. So the messenger kept telling their story.

There were three people: a farmer, a soldier, and a priest. I think the farmer kept pigs, the soldier had a pet snake, and the priest had a pet bird. One day, the King summoned the three of them to his palace, but none of them had gifts for him like he wanted. The farmer said he didn't know what to bring. The soldier spat on the ground and said he hated the King. The priest didn't say anything as the King turned to look at him. He just kept stroking his pet bird.

The King had them executed. Nobody knew what happened to their bodies.

Lord Scott was shaking at this point. The messenger laughed quietly and left. The rest of the third act was just Lord Scott, alone, trying to decide whether or not to visit the King, and what gift he should take if he did.

I never got to see whether he finally left for the King's castle. Before I could, I heard the basement door open behind me. I just about fell over- I'd completely forgotten about Mom by that point, and I figured I must not have heard her drive up to the house. I turned around and saw that she looked like she'd been crying.

I'd, uh, I'd rather not go into details here.

THOMAS: No, by all means.

CAL: Thanks.

(Cal sighs)

Point is, Dad disappeared. He just vanished while he was out hunting with his friend Peter. Peter Hail, I mean, the one who gave you his account.

It was hard. Of course it was. I mean, I didn't have a dad anymore. Nobody should have to go through that as a 15-year-old. That's not supposed to happen. You're not supposed to... to feel that absence in your life where you know a person is supposed to be, like they're just out of sight, and you just have to spot them and everything will be back to normal. And it was even worse because we didn't even know what happened to him.

I still hadn't really processed everything when I looked out my bedroom window one night and saw someone looking back.

Whoever was staring at me seemed to disappear as soon as I caught sight of them. I couldn't tell who they were, or even what they looked like. All I could tell is that they were dressed in white from head to toe.

In the years since then, I've seen glimpses of the stranger who watches me constantly. He wears white priest's clothing, and his eyes look like he's staring right into you, like he sees everything you've ever done, you know? But his expression is so hollow. He never smiles or frowns or anything. He just watches. And waits. And he's everywhere, and you can never escape him, and he shows up in your dreams and he stares, and...

I'm sorry. I'm getting kind of upset.

THOMAS: It's okay. Take your time.

CAL: Right.

(Cal sighs.)

Right.

So, like I was saying, I keep dreaming about this man. I don't know who he is, but sometimes, at night, when I think about how much I miss Dad, and I finally get to sleep, I dream about that priest just standing there, watching me from all the places Dad used to be.

You know, there's this song, Holland 1945. It's by Neutral Milk Hotel, and one of the lyrics is something about a "dark brother wrapped in white." I think about it a lot.

THOMAS: I can see why.

CAL: Yeah. Anyways, I just... I just miss Dad a lot. And I'm scared.

(Cal clears her throat.)

Okay, um, that's everything.

(A pause.)

THOMAS: I'm- God. I'm sorry.

CAL: Don't feel sorry for me. I'm doing enough of that for both of us.

(Cal laughs.)

THOMAS: Well, in that case... thank you, I suppose.

CAL: Don't mention it.

(Cal's phone buzzes.)

I should go. Girlfriend's here.

(A pause.)

Thanks. Felt good to get that off my chest.

(Cal walks away and opens the door.)

See ya.

THOMAS: Right. Have a nice day.

(Cal laughs.)

CAL: Sure. You too.

(The door closes behind Cal.)

THOMAS: Right. So, that was... certainly something.

We've established at this point that Matthias Clark is a name worth keeping track of. As to R. Farrow, I actually own a book by someone called Richard Farrow, a book called Chronicles of the King. I picked it up at a second-hand bookstore a few years ago because the cover looked interesting.

After hearing Cal's story, I'm suddenly grateful I have too many books to actually read all of them. I don't want to think about what another Farrow story about the King would do if you read it.

Account 14: Night Drives

Background information

• Name: Avery Waters
• Pronouns: They/them
  
• Date: May 13, 2020
  
• Occupation: Musician
  
• City of residence: Atkins, Michigan
• Date(s) of account: 2015
  
• Subject of account: A trip from Atkins, Michigan to Chicago, Illinois
  

Account

My name's Avery Waters. My family's from Atkins, but my sister Haley moved to Chicago back in 2011, so I drive there every summer to visit. It's kind of a long drive from the Upper Peninsula down to Chicago and back, but I don't mind that much.

The main problem is that it tends to be night by the time I get there. When I was a kid, I always loved night drives, but that's just because I wasn't the one trying to drive when everything's dark and half the people on the road don't even use their brights. As long as you're playing music, it's not that bad, really. I'm fond of indie music myself. Acoustic guitar over a guy singing quietly about someone he broke up with, you know, that kind of stuff.

Anyways, the point is that something weird happened when I drove to Haley's place in 2015. It all started when it began to get dark. Since it was in summer, probably July, that only happened around 8 or 9 at night. I wouldn't know for sure, because when I glanced at the car's clock, the screen was completely blank.

I was still on the highway by that point. No stop signs, no traffic lights. I couldn't exactly pause to check my phone, so I just kept driving.

Eventually, I noticed a rest stop, one of those janky little spots you see with some vending machines and some dirty bathrooms and nothing else. When I parked my car and looked at my phone, it didn't display a time. I checked the clock app. It was gone. I didn't even think you could delete the clock app, and I definitely didn't remember doing so. I tried downloading it again, but as you may have guessed by now, there were no results, first-party or otherwise. I was pretty confused at this point, so I decided to head into the rest stop. There were no clocks inside, and nobody else was there- not before I went into the bathroom, not inside, not after I came back out. The whole place was empty.

At this point, I was freaking out a little. I got back in my car, and as I was parked in an empty lot, I texted Haley to tell her what was going on. After a second or two, she texted back saying it was 8 at night and asking what I was talking about. I sent her a screenshot of my phone to show her that it didn't show what time it was, and she told me my phone said it was 10 in the morning.

I didn't understand. Was she messing with me? Why could she read it when I couldn't? Why did it say it was the same time it had been when I started driving?

She asked where I was. I told her I was at a rest stop somewhere in Illinois and asked her to wait a second while I checked the GPS on my phone.

I didn't bother seeing if I could find another app where I could check my location when I saw that the map was gone. I sent Haley a screenshot of a phone screen without a map and explained what was going on. It didn't even surprise me when she asked what I meant about the map being gone, when she said she could see it right between the clock and calculator icons.

I told Haley we could sort everything out when I got to her place. She asked if I'd arranged some kind of surprise visit. She said I hadn't said anything about coming over.

I was sure by this point that she was messing with me, or maybe even trying to gaslight me- trying to make me think I was losing my grip on reality so she could manipulate me.

But that wasn't it. She couldn't have deleted my apps and disabled my car's time display remotely. Not to be mean, but half the time she forgets her computer password. Something else was going on, I just had no idea what it could've been.

I waited there in my car seat for God knows how long, just trying to figure out what to do. Eventually, I shut my phone off, buckled up, and left a parking lot that I was sure had been empty as long as I'd been there, though as I looked around, I saw cars stationed firmly in the other parking spaces and people leaving the rest stop.

The road signs were still there as I drove. They were the same signs they'd always been. But I knew I had to turn around and go home when my phone's GPS told me to turn onto Jedidiah Drive, a road that I know for sure does not exist.

I'm not ashamed to admit that I started crying when my lights turned off on their own. When I turned them back on, I wasn't on a highway anymore. Now I was on a dirt road that white text on a green sign identified as Jedidiah Drive.

At this point, I was too tired to even think about what I was doing. I just drove until I saw a house.

It wasn't my sister's, of course. I'd never seen it in my life- it was white, modern, more window than house. It looked much more well-kept than its grassy, overgrown surroundings, sheets of rusted metal scattered about. It didn't belong there any more than I did.

I turned my phone on and took it with me as I prepared to walk up to this stranger's home for reasons I didn't quite understand, my eyes still red but my mind too frayed to keep crying.

As I stepped out of the car and walked up to the porch, I idly wondered when the music had stopped playing.

I knocked on the door. There was no response. I was just about to knock again when the door opened. There was a tall, thin woman standing before me. She was wearing a black T-shirt with some kind of mathematical formula on it. There was a key written beneath it, labeling what each number and variable meant, but I didn't understand any of it.

She asked if she could help me, but her voice sounded wrong somehow.

There was something about looking at her eyes that made my head hurt. I tried not to make eye contact as I asked if she knew what time it was.

She told me it was 8 at night and asked if that was all.

No, I said, and then I asked if she was Dr. Mira Solomon. I'd never heard the name in my life.

She laughed in a way that made my ears feel like they were bleeding as she asked if I was familiar with her work.

I almost asked what she meant, but before I could, I remembered.

Well, I didn't exactly remember it, since I hadn't known in the first place. But I knew exactly who she was now, and I felt very afraid.

She had been a physicist researching the many worlds hypothesis. But there was this one formula, the same formula written on her shirt- I don't even know what it represented, but apparently she'd gotten obsessed with it.

One night, while she was working, she only realized she had fallen asleep when she woke up. But the formula was solved. It was complete.

It didn't matter to the world she found herself in. Nobody knew her there. Her coworkers didn't recognize her, and when she went home to her apartment, she found only confused strangers.

Even as Dr. Mira Solomon tried to find work and housing in a world that did not know she existed, she kept having dreams about that formula, dreamed of numbers twisting into impossible shapes and letters forming strange fractals. She walked through a landscape that should not have been each and every time she went to sleep. Eventually, she couldn't separate her dreams from her reality, and it broke her.

Dr. Solomon laughed as she watched my face with impossible eyes. I think she'd been laughing the whole time. She waved goodbye as I walked, drained and empty, back to my car.

Don't even ask me how I got to Haley's house after that. My memories are fuzzy at this point. But I got there, somehow, and when I did, she didn't remember any of the messages we'd exchanged earlier that night. Both of our phones confirmed her story. By that point, I didn't feel like considering the possibility that she was lying or that she'd deleted the texts we'd sent one another. That wasn't how that night worked.

I don't blame you if you don't believe this. I barely believe it either. I mean, how can I? All of it's true, but none of it happened.

Analysis

Avery Waters left their phone number at the end of the email. I called them around a week ago asking if they'd be interested in a follow-up. All I heard on the other end was an automated voice saying "Turn left onto Jedidiah Drive," and then silence for a few seconds, at which point the same automated voice as before said, "You have arrived at your destination."

Searching the name Mira Solomon gets no results that seem particularly relevant, even when narrowed down to "Dr. Mira Solomon," "Doctor Mira Solomon," or "Mira Solomon PhD." This isn't entirely surprising, given the nature of this account- after all, supposedly, she doesn't exist. Or comes from another reality. Or... something. The whole thing is confused. On the one hand, that's sort of the point. On the other hand, that also makes this account very difficult to look into.

I, for one, have never heard of a Jedidiah Drive in Michigan. There are some results that crop up, but the vague nature of this account means it's hard to get specific enough to be particularly helpful.

I can't say I blame Waters, though. This entire experience sounds like it would've been exhausting, assuming they went through it as they say they did. (Or, well, assuming they didn't go through it as they said they didn't.)

I'm almost reminded of Antigonish by Hughes Mearns:

"Yesterday upon the stair

I met a man who wasn't there.

He wasn't there again today.

Oh how I wish he'd go away."

One way or another, I'm really not sure what to make of all of this. That's not exactly surprising, though, is it?

Account 13: Restoration

Background information

• Name: Martin Flint
• Pronouns: He/him
  
• Date: May 2, 2020
  
• Occupation: Construction worker
  
• City of residence: Atkins, Michigan
• Date(s) of account: December 20, 2019
  
• Subject of account: The restoration of the Pierre Museum of Art
  

Account

My name's Martin Flint. I'm a construction worker from here in Atkins. See, I worked on one of the buildings that got struck by lightning back in September 2019, and the other day, a friend of mine told me about the message you got from someone else whose restaurant was destroyed.

That September was a hard time for everyone, of course, but it gave me and my friends a lot to do. Among other things, the Pierre Museum of Art- which I see you've already gotten a message about as well- was destroyed, and I was one of the people who worked on restoring it.

There's not a lot to talk about with the restoration itself. We waited a few weeks, maybe a month, for the museum staff to recover anything they could, and then we got to work: laid bricks, put in doors, pretty standard stuff.

It broke my heart knowing how much got destroyed in the storm, it really did. I may not have the look of someone who enjoys going to art museums, but I like to educate myself when I can make time for it, and that museum's been free to visit since the first time my dad took me there when I was 4 years old.

I'm getting off-topic. Point is, every day from September to December, I worked on restoring the Pierre Museum of Art- weekends excluded, of course. We started with the lobby, but that was pretty quick, so soon enough, we moved onto restoring the area that would house the main attraction. Naturally, that meant Pierre's sculptures, as well as the few paintings that could still be displayed.

Given how widespread the damage was throughout Atkins after the storms hit, the company couldn't spare a lot of workers for the Pierre Museum of Art. What that means is that most days, it was just me and a few of the other guys working there. That was the case on the night of December 20.

See, here's the thing. Something really strange happened that night.

It was cold. I mean, of course it was, it was the middle of December and the building we were standing in was half-finished. But something about it was different. I really don't know how to explain it- the cold was just different. It was definitely worse than usual, even with the coat I was wearing. I could tell everyone else there could feel it too.

A friend of mine, Jack Arden, kept trying to talk to me about who-knows-what, but he could barely say a word with how bad he was shivering. Eventually he gave up and took out a notepad, wrote something on it, and handed it over to me. It said something like "want me to go get some food?" or something like that. I just nodded, so he took it from me headed outside, leaving me to work alone in the museum.

At some point, I realized that I hadn't heard the sound of Jack's car starting up outside.

He never bothered parking in the lot, just drove right up to the section of the museum we were working on, so I should've heard it. I turned around and walked to the section of wall where Jack's car should've been. I couldn't see it, so I figured I must've just tuned out the noise of his car driving off. I mean, I can get pretty concentrated when I'm working on a job, if I may say so myself. It wasn't all that unlikely.

Still, Jack wasn't there. He wasn't there even though I knew, as much as I tried to convince myself that I had forgotten or simply not noticed, that his car had never left.

I took a slow breath in and began working again. But I could hear something coming from the back of the exhibit. It was quiet at first, but the louder it got, the more certain I felt that it was church music. Well, not church music exactly- a choir. I turned around and held my flashlight steady, but I didn't see anyone there, or anything else that explained it.

As I looked, I got this really weird feeling. It was like someone or something was looking back.

I breathed in and turned around. I started to work. But I couldn't stop that feeling that something was staring at me, and after a while, I finally turned back.

There was a statue standing there. The Seer in Stone, by Charles Pierre.

I shivered, from cold just as much as fear. See, this statue had been destroyed in the lightning strike that had burned down the museum. It was the only statue of Pierre's that hadn't made it, because a bolt of lightning had struck it directly, shattering it to pieces.

So why was it standing thirty feet in front of me?

The right arm of the stone monk should have been placed in front of his hooded face, palm facing outwards. But instead it was reaching towards me, like it was beckoning to me. I took a long breath in and backed away, but it felt like something was holding me there, forcing me to stare at him.

I thought I heard someone call my name. I turned around, thinking Jack must've come back with food, but he wasn't there. That was when I realized it wasn't Jack who had called my name.

I didn't want to look back at the statue, but that force was pulling on me, making my head turn around.

The monk's pose had changed. His hands were placed on his hood, and I swear I saw him start to pull it back as the invisible strings let me go and I fell onto the floor.

When I got up again, the monk was gone. I started to leave the building, but as I headed out the door, I saw Jack's car pulling up outside.

Jack could tell something was up with me, but I didn't care. I was just glad that someone else was there and the statue was gone.

But sometimes, when I'm alone and everything else is silent, I think I can hear a choir singing, and I get the feeling someone is staring at me.

Analysis

Another account that mentions Charles Pierre and his Seer in Stone. One that reads very similarly to the first, at that. I'd like to think that Flint simply read the account of Diane Richter and decided to copy it. Something tells me I'm being too optimistic, but that's only a hunch, and one I very much hope is wrong.