Work Text:
*CLICK*
[G. Robinson]:
I do hope you don't mind you don't mind if I record this, it makes it easier to archive statements, and there is less chance of them getting damaged than with the paper copies.
[M. Morgan]:
I don't mind at all … is it okay if you stay whilst I do this … the lighting is not the best down here.
[G. Robinson]:
That's fine sir you’re not the first to be uncomfortable after such an event, I just need to finish some formalities first.
[M. Morgan]:
Oh, okay
[G. Robinson]:
Statement of Mitchel Morgan regarding …
[M. Morgan]:
Ghosts, disappearances … and a dark cupboard.
[G. Robinson]:
Statement recorded live from subject, Wednesday the 23rd of September 11:32 AM, 1992. Recorded by Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London, Gertrude Robinson.
Statement begins.
[G. Robinson]:
I suppose I should give some context before getting into the meat of the situation. My name is Mitchell Morgan and I am currently twenty-seven years old and have been living at number seventeen Wisteria Walk for a little over five years now, I work in a mid-ranking position at Grunnings, it a local hardware company that thankfully pays well, and have been… had been living with my wife Tiffany, although she always preferred Tiff, maiden name Mallory… if you need to follow up. (he trails off)
[G. Robinson]:
Thank you, please continue (a somewhat curt tone)
[M. Morgan]:
Oh yeah (quietly)... anyway, as I've said we had lived there for about five years, about three years ago a number of our neighbours, a family, lived over in number four, were killed. The Dursys of maybe it was Dursley, I never knew them that well my wife was always better at socialising and the most I knew about them was that the wife was a gossip, the son rather well fed, and the husband also worked for Grunnings, although he was much higher up on the corporate ladder than I was so we rarely if ever interacted, I think he might have been in the marketing department whereas I was in transport.
Anyway as I said before the family was killed a couple of years back in… 1989 I think, I don't know what happened exactly, only that the sight was apparently rather gruesome if the faces of the officers were anything to judge the situation by. I always thought it was rather odd just how quiet the whole situation was kept, the whole town was just full of gossips so much so that if a small scandal was discovered on the other side of town at nine AM you could be sure my wife had heard at least three variations of it by lunch. So the complete radio silence regarding the family’s deaths was rather strange at the time. So anyway the family was found dead when a neighbour reported hearing screams from inside their home, this was around ten PM in the evening and the family’s corpses were discovered by the police not too long after. The only survivor was a nephew of the family that was staying with them, the kid went into foster care last I heard, I didn't even know the kid was living with them before it all went down, supposedly he was kept inside due to some sort of medical condition only really went out for school.
It started on the third anniversary of their deaths, so 31st of July 1992, a child went. A boy called Piers Polkiss, from what I heard a group of children stayed out after dark and whilst the rest made it home to worried families just fine Piers just didn't. No one knew what had happened, he was just missing. This sent Tiff into a right state, she was always so caring and loved children, but it was the fact that whatever happened, happened, in the dark seemed to scare her more than anything, she was always scared of the dark, apparently, her parents were not particularly great and had some odd religious practices that left her with a couple of mental scars. It was all she could think about, how the kid must feel lost in the dark before whatever took him found him, she spoke as if it was the dark itself that got him, she seemed to think he was still just lost in the dark with no way out instead of the, at the time, more likely event of kidnapping or tragic accident.
A week passes and another child goes missing, this time all the parents start panicking, and very strict curfews are put into effect by the parents and I won't lie but hearing of some of the parent’s ideas for punishments when the kids were late almost made me pity the brats, but I do understand the reasoning for the parents strictness.
Another week passes and just like before on the friday evening a child who is late for curfew goes missing. The police are being no help throughout this just asking all the residents questions and apparently finding nothing. My wife grew worse over the weeks and I was able to convince one of my bosses, who had learnt of the situation, to let me take one of the higher-power torches we produce, and by that, I don't mean just a bright torch, that thing could blind a man quite easily on its higher settings, it thankfully seemed to ease Tiff’s mind at least a little bit.
The neighbours decided to put together a neighbourhood watch style of thing, several adults would stay out late into the night and only return home around midnight, hopefully returning children home and possibly even finding the people behind the missing kids. I was selected for the Friday night shifts as I didn't work Saturdays and my Fridays were normally rather calm. Tiff wasnt happy in the slightest that I had chosen to stay out after dark, but I just needed to help her, I thought that if we found the children or at least found out what had happened to them it would do her good, by this point she was barely sleeping and refused to be in a room without a light on after dark, I was able to find an old nightlight from when I was a child and she always slept with that powerful torch beside her.
Friday evening approached faster than I expected and I got ready to go out, it was decided that the shifts would be between eight PM and twelve AM just to catch any kids who missed the curfew. My wife gave me a peck on the cheek before I left saying that she’d wait for me to come back, it told her not to worry but all I got was a look in return. The night was calm for the most part, found a couple of kids close to the nine PM curfew and sent them home but there wasn't much. That is at least until around 10 PM, by this point the sky has completely darkened and the only way I could see was due to the torch, on one of its lower settings, and the street lamps lining the road. I continued to walk around for a little while until I reached a road where the street lamps weren't working, the entire road seemed to be just pitch black, too dark to be normal I remember thinking to myself but I just assumed it was because I had been up too long, I've always fallen asleep rather early. Since I had my torch I decided to check it out so I turned the torch up a bit and entered the street, it was odd and creepy, I remember having a distinct instinctual feeling that I was not alone in the darkness, the only things I could see were what the light of my torch illuminated nothing else, I couldn't even see the streetlamps from the other roads in the distance, just an unending black and a small cone of light that seemed far smaller than before I entered this road, just me, my light, and whatever was there that I couldn't see. I'm not ashamed to admit that I started walking just that little bit faster, or at least I did until I saw a small bit of movement at the end of my torches range accompanied by a small voice calling out. When I reached the movement I learnt it was a small boy, no older than eight, and he was startled quite badly when he realised I was there, but he also looked like he might cry when he saw my torch. I of course gave him a rather stern scolding and asked what he thought he was doing and where he lived, apparently had gotten lost in the darkness and couldn’t find his way out, i was not sure if I believed him but decided it was a job for his parents to sort out when he got back home, it was just a few streets over so I figured it would be best to walk him there, he stayed huddled close to the torch the entire time. As we were about to leave the darkened street the street lamps all flickered to life and this time I think the boy did cry. I turned around briefly after the lights came back on and I swear I saw a figure, a silhouette really, of a man looking at us through the window of one of the buildings, even with the streetlamps on the lighting wasn't great, the man appeared to be rather large both in height and width, id say around six foot in height and I certainly would want to squeeze in next to him on the bus, but by the time it pointed my torch in his direction to get a better look the window was empty. I eventually got the boy back home and by the looks of fear, worry and anger on his parents' faces I wasn't sure if his hearing would still be functional by the end of the night. I continued to patrol for a bit until heading home to find my wife still awake with all the lights in the house turned on. She seemed a little stressed but quickly calmed down and we went to bed.
In the morning I quickly reported the issue with the lights from the night before and decided to check out the house that I saw the figure in the night before, I figured that he might have seen something the night before and I could at the very least apologise for trying to shine my very bright torch in his eyes. When I reached the house I realised that the dark last night was obscuring quite a lot such as the fact that the house seemed abandoned, it was at this point I realised that the house was number four Privet Drive which had had no new owners since the deaths of the Dursley family. It was at this point I called the police about a possible lead on the missing children, I mean seriously a child got lost, when all the lights turned out right in front of the abandoned house that seemed to have a man inside of it. I figured that it was at least trespassing if nothing else and the police might finally find something.
They didn't, apparently there was nothing inside that implied that someone had been inside except for some markings in the dust as if something had been dragged into the cupboard under the stairs but there was nothing inside the cupboard. When Tiff learned of the figure in the window it seemed to make her stress even worse and she spent most of the day on the phone with various people seemingly buying something but seemed upset about how long it would take for them to arrive. (a wistful sigh can be heard over the recording)
A week passes and nothing happens, I do my patrol and nothing happens. I come home to a brightly lit home and nothing happens, I wake up and no children are missing. Nothing happened until the next Friday when I arrived home from work at about six PM and Tiff was in the kitchen with a box, it was apparently what she ordered the week. The box was average size but contained hundreds of small eye-shaped pendants and pieces of cord.
(a faint noise of interest can be heard from Gertrude)
I ask what it is about and she gives some mumbo jumbo about it being a form of protective pendent. The pendants were seemingly carved from wood and the largest were no longer than an inch on their longest side and the smallest barely a centimetre and a half, they all had a small ring of green glass acting as an iris and the pupils seemed to be made of a darker wood. I asked how much they all cost and got my answer in the form of her silently looking away. I would have gotten angry, I’d never really believed in the supernatural before this, but this was possibly the only time in several weeks that she seemed to be actually calm so I let it slide.
Before I leave for that night's patrol Tiff insists that I take two of the pendants with me, one on a necklace and the other wrapped around the handle of my torch. I agree if only to help keep her calm. The patrol is going normally until around ten PM again when I notice that I'm once again on Privet Drive, I see in the distance one of the street lamps flicker out, and suddenly full of unease I turn around to return from the direction I was from only to see the lamps at that end of the road flicker out as well. I don't know why but I was suddenly overcome with a fear of that dark, like last time I wasn't its focus but now it was after me, it sounds stupid now, how could faulty lighting or a dark place be after anyone, but at that moment I was consumed by terror and quickly made sure to hide beneath a lamp and watched as more and more lamps flickered out until only the one that I was under remained, my torch helped a little but I knew it wouldn't be enough, it only let me see in one direction after all. Just like the night I met that boy, I was unable to see any light in the darkness, as far as I could see only the world beneath the lamp was real and the rest had been consumed by the shadows. The lamp above me flickered but remained on.
It flickered again for longer this time but it remained on, I noticed a dull warmth on my chest.
It flickered a third time with a growl from the thing in the dark, the sound almost human but wrong somehow, like it was incomplete, but the light remained on, and the heat on my chest grew hotter.
The light flickered one last time before gaining a pale green colouration, much to the displeasure of the thing in the dark, and flared brighter than before. This new brightness revealed the shape of the thing in the darkness for just a second before it fled back hissing as if burned, the thing seemed to be just a silhouette much like the one I saw in the window before, but this time it took the form of a tall thin woman instead a large man, the shadow of a woman seemed to be made of some sort of intangible black smoke that blended seamlessly into the shadows behind it. After the shadow fled back into the darkness the light began to return to its normal pale yellow and the other street lamps turned on after a minute. That night I didn't even bother wandering around long enough to finish my shift and arrived home to a well-lit home and almost immediately collapsed into my wife.
That morning when we woke up we heard the news, another child had gone missing during the night. A teenager had locked their bedroom door as was likely in bed when their parents heard a smash around ten PM and by the time they got their son's door open the teen was nowhere to be seen. The smashed glass was on the inside of the room indicating that the window was smashed from the outside, but outside of that there apparently wasn't much sign of a struggle. The only clue seemed to come from an old neighbour of the distraught couple, an odd old lady by the name of Arabella Figg. She claims to have seen what looked to be the figure of a rather fat child clinging to the side of the building before all the streetlamps went out. Most of the officers seemed to dismiss this although some of the higher-ups seemed to be nervous about it, I heard them muttering about something the number thirty-one. The only thing I could really think about was the fact that there seemed to be a number of these shadow things, it didn't simply choose to take the form of a woman, it was a separate creature entirely with one shadow being a large man, another being a tall woman, and now a fat boy as well.
When I got home I thanked my wife for the pendant and explained what I was too tired to do last night, I explained the shadows and my theory of multiple shadows possibly existing. Her reaction to this information was to kiss me before gaining a scared yet resolute expression after I told her about the teenager's disappearance. I later heard of Tiff going out and passing the pendants out to just about everyone she met prioritising the children but doing her best to arm everyone she met. I was not surprised to learn she had been escorted away from the school by the police for apparently throwing a handful of the pendants at a group of children.
We discussed appropriate actions after that.
Then Friday came again, I put on my pendants and headed out to my patrol. Whilst I was not attacked that night I remember seeing movements in the shadows between buildings as the creatures watched me, but they always evaded the light of my torch.
We heard in the morning about how one of the pendants was able to shield a child until day came preventing the large man's shadow from getting her.
After that, most of the parents in town wanted at least one of the pendants and Tiff soon ran out. Giving the last one to a small blond girl with pigtails.
The next Friday came and I once again left for my patrol, once again nothing happened before ten PM, children weren't even staying out that late anymore but I patrolled nonetheless. After ten PM struck and nothing happened I expected to follow much the same pattern of nothing happening, I still saw a shadow moving nearby but it hadn't attacked the week before and I didn't expect it to attack now. That's when I felt it, I don’t know how I knew, I just Knew, something was going on at my house and I had to get back there. That is when it struck, the lamps at the end of the street began to blink out again. I Knew that two of the shadows hid in the dark, and they began to rush towards me i was just about to make out their bodies against the darkness around them, it was the large man and the tall woman, the light above me flickered and whilst I felt my pendant heat up and try to resist the encroaching shadows but it was not enough when faced by two of the beings and thus I was submerged in the darkness. It was extremely difficult to tell the difference between the shadows and the dark the key difference being that the shadows hissed when they met the light of the torch. Until eventually they got close enough that the torch began to flicker as well. At this point I was barely able to see them swipe at me with a speed I did not expect from either of their builds…
(huff)
To be honest I'm still not sure how I dodged them, I was running purely on instinct at that point, but instinct was not enough to dodge the swipe that cut into my right arm forcing me to drop the torch and causing the flickering light source to finally go completely dark, I lashed out with my fist hitting one in the head only to feel as if my hand had passed through a particularly cold mist, the thing didn't even flinch, just knocked me to the ground. Whilst I was on the ground I had to quickly roll to avoid another stab that I heard crack the pavement. I lashed out again this time with my leg only to achieve the same effect as the first attempt of giving myself a slight chill, my foot did connect with something though, I heard the slight metallic clatter of my torch being kicked a little way away briefly illuminating the creatures and forcing them to flinch away in pain. I used this second to dive for the torch and attempt to flick it on, but nothing, and so in desperation I swung with the torch, the tall woman dodged but the large man did not, the torch connected with the side of his head, and this time it did connect rattling my arms like I had just hit a stone wall, but it finally did something. The thing released an ungodly screech as lightly glowing green cracks formed from the site of the impact growing to encompass half the things … ‘face’. The tall woman seemed to stay at a distance for the moment but the large man seemed to flail in anger striking me in the chest and throwing me back by I believe several metres but I kept hold of my torch and was able to return the favour once he got within my range again by striking him in the chest and once more new cracks emerged glowing brighter this time, during the beasts flinch this time I take advantage and hit it a third time causing all the cracks covering the large man’s body to expand and glow to such a degree that I am forced to look away and with a scream like shattering glass the large man disperses into the darkness hopefully as dead as something like that can be.
By the time I could look again the tall woman appeared to have fled and I sprinted back home as well as I could with multiple shallow cuts and some cracked ribs. By the time I arrived back home it was apparent that I was too late, all the lights were out and the front door seemed to be bashed in. In the house I saw signs of a struggle such as shattered glass and a small amount of blood, but most importantly I saw Tiff's pendant, the wood seemed slightly charred and the glass cracked, if I had to guess it was overworked or something. But Tiff's body wasn't there and there wasn't enough blood on the floor for her to have died there either I don't think so I went to the only place I felt she could be, number four Privet Drive.
When I arrived at the house it was just how I remember it being, empty and dark. The inside of the house was covered in a thick layer of dust as expected but upon cleaning off an old photograph I found a picture of the Dursleys, oh hear you go.
(the sound of rustling fabric then paper can be heard)
As you can see in the picture the family was comprised of a large man, a tall woman, and a fat child. It's my guess that the shadows are some form of ghost or otherwise leftover piece from the Dursleys.
[G. Robinson]:
Yes we’ll definitely consider that during our follow-up investigations into this event, thank you for the photo, should save us some time. Could you please continue your statement?
[M. Morgan]:
Oh yeah of course… Anyway so I had just entered the building and found the photograph and put together my theory when I heard a voice. The voice seemed to be a child and seemed to be muffled for some reason, I eventually discovered why it was muffled when I realised it was coming from the cupboard under the stairs. It was further explained when upon opening the cupboard I was met with what I could only describe as an opaque wall of black, it seemed to ripple occasionally but was overwise solid. It was through this wall that I could hear the muffled crying, there were multiple of voices crying out, screaming for help and about just how dark it was.
(sniffle)
I heard my Tiff in there.
(deep breath)
My torch couldn't penetrate the darkness from where I stood and whenever I got too close some long and thin arms as well as some short and fat arms attempted to reach for me, it seemed like I had found where the tall woman and the fat child were hiding. I stayed there for the rest of the night listening to my Tiff's voice and trying to find a way to get her out of what I'm calling the dark place. But I found nothing. When the sun started to rise whatever the rippling darkness was disappeared leaving only an empty cupboard behind.
(huff)
I returned on both Saturday and Sunday night to find that nothing had changed, from the previous appearances it is possible that whatever that… portal thing was it only appears on Fridays so I intend to head back in a couple of days and try to put an end to things.
[G. Robinson]:
End statement. That was certainly informative. I am sorry you had to go through all of that.
[M. Morgan]:
It's fine it going to be over on Friday either way.
[G. Robinson]:
Are you sure I can't convince you to at least let up help on Friday, I'm certain you would be able to be of some use around here, i should atleast be able to get you an interview.
[M. Morgan]:
No, i have things i need to do and i wont be able to do them if im stuck down in some basement in london.
[G. Robinson]:
Very well, the offer willremain open should you survive friday.
[M. Morgan]:
Would you be so kind as to escort me out.
[G. Robinson]:
Of course.
(rustling of fabric and scraping of chairs)
*CLICK*
*CLICK*
[G. Robinson]:
Addendum, recorded Tuesday 29th of September 1992 9:45 PM.
I have not heard back from Mr Morgan which is a shame, from what he said he would have been a good bit more useful in the practical sides of this job, certainly more useful than my current assistants anyway.
On the night of Friday the 25th of September, Mrs Polkiss of number 7 Privet Drive phoned the police about hearing loud ‘unearthly screams’ coming from the former residence of the Dursleys. The call was made at 10:28 PM and the police arrived at 10:49 PM, by the time they arrived the entire building had gone up in flames and the fire department had been contacted ten minutes prior to their arrival. The fire department arrived at 10:53 PM and the fire was extinguished by 11:08 PM. No remains human or otherwise were discovered in the remains of the building although most of the lower floor had been completely destroyed by the flames. Included amongst the damages caused by the fire was the cupboard mentioned in Mr Morgan's statement although the door to the cupboard was seemingly unharmed by the fire and reportedly cold to the touch after the fact. Mr Wright has put in an order for the cupboard door to be transported from police custody to the Institute’s artefact storage and I have passed along a message that if this can not be done by Friday to keep the door in a well-lit location just in case.
Mr Morgan apparently went missing the same night as the fire and it does not take a genius to figure out that there is a correlation between the two events. I do not believe that Mr morgan is dead or trapped in the supposed ‘Dark Place’ beyond the cupboard door simply because he seems to be able to handle himself better than that. I intend to continue searching for him to see if I can gain his assistance in the future, although there is a risk of him falling to the hunt if what I felt from him proves to be true, although he also has a connection to the eye so that may prevent him from becoming either way.
Addendum End.
*CLICK*