The Magnus Archives - MAG 140.1 - The Iron Gate

Episode Date: June 13, 2019

This week's episode is the winner from our latest Rusty Fears competition.“The Iron Gate” is written by Cailyn Toomey, read by Jonathan Sims and directed by Alexander J Newall.Thank you everyone who submitted stories and spread the word!Note: this is a stand-alone piece of fiction and not part of the Magnus canon.Content warnings for this episode are at the end of the show notes.Thanks to this week's Patrons: Alex, Rob Young, Jen Van Meter, Jeffrey D Brainerd, Alix Antilla, Lho, Kevin Lovecraft, Margaery Clare, Andrew Hall, Porkchop Krandal, Alex Rose, Rozzlynn, Jon Lozano, Rowan MacBean, Mildred, Amelia Stevenson, Mike Weiss, Finn Garza, Tommy Parker, Cornflake of DoomIf you'd like to join them be sure to visit www.patreon.com/rustyquillEdited this week by James Austin, Brock Winstead & Alexander J Newall.Sound effects this week by previously credited artists via freesound.org.Check out our merchandise at https://www.redbubble.com/people/rustyquill/collections/708982-the-magnus-archives-s1You can subscribe to this podcast using your podcast software of choice, or by visiting www.rustyquill.com/subscribePlease rate and review on your software of choice, it really helps us to spread the podcast to new listeners, so share the fear.Join our community:WEBSITE: rustyquill.comFACEBOOK: facebook.com/therustyquillTWITTER: @therustyquillREDDIT: reddit.com/r/RustyQuillEMAIL: [e-mail] Magnus Archives is a podcast distributed by Rusty Quill Ltd. and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Sharealike 4.0 International LicenceContent warnings for:· Bullying Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull-apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. Hi everyone. Alex here with a quick introduction to today's episode. Firstly, I just wanted to thank all of you for your patience during this mid-season hiatus. We tried to keep them as short as possible, so thanks for bearing with us. We'll be returning to our normal release schedule from next week. In the meantime, we recently ran another Rusty Fears competition, inviting people to submit their own statements for the Magnus treatment, and today we are happy to present you with the

winning entry. As with last time, please remember that today's episode is a standalone work and shouldn't be considered part of the Magnus Archives canon. So congratulations to the winner, and we hope you enjoy today's episode is a standalone work and shouldn't be considered part of the Magnus Archives canon. So congratulations to the winner, and we hope you enjoy today's episode. I'd just like to take a moment to thank some of our patrons. Alex Rob Young Jen Van Meter Jeffrey D. Brainerd

Alix Antilla Lo Kevin Lovecraft Marjorie Clare Andrew Hall Porkchop Crandall Alex Rose Rosalyn John Lozano, Rowan McBean, Mildred, Amelia Stevenson, Mike Weiss, Finn Garza, Tommy Parker, Cornflake of Doom.

Thank you all. We really appreciate your support. If you'd like to join them, go to www.patreon.com forward slash Rusty Quill and take a look at our rewards. Rusty Quill Presents The Magnus Archives The Iron Gate By Kaylin Toomey The older I get, the more I realise how much I've forgotten. Do you remember being a kid on a long car ride? How the road would stretch on and on and your grandparents' house was only twenty minutes away

but it felt more like two hours. Some kids would watch a movie or play a game on some half-broken old tablet. But I get car sick. So sometimes, all I could do was look out of the window and imagine.

It was easiest to play the game at night. Do you know the game I'm talking about? I don't know if it has an actual name, but I just used to call it the car chaser game. When I first started playing it on car trips, I felt like the smartest kid alive. I would imagine the chaser a little differently every time, but no matter what it was, it followed alongside the car as the trees and houses sped by. It would jump effortlessly from power line to power line across streetlights. The chaser would follow along beside the car, and the game was to see if it could keep up the whole trip. My friend Joey got carsick too, and on the bus we weren't allowed to use devices anyway,

My friend Joey got carsick too, and on the bus we weren't allowed to use devices anyway, so I guess it all started because we were bored. I told him about the car chaser. When I finished, though, he just looked smug. Said he already knew that game, and that I wasn't doing it right. When he looked out the window, he always saw a white dog. We started to argue, and some of the other kids sitting next to us leaned in to listen. When they heard what we were fighting about, some people said that they pretended it was a cheetah,

and some said they just saw a really fast man. When we realised we had all played the same game though, everyone leaned back into their own seats to look out the window. Joey and I talked about what path we thought the chaser would take as it ran. We pressed closer to the window and imagined the chaser jumping across the cars we passed, long legs stretching out behind it. When we passed a gated driveway though, we got in another fight. I said the chaser would jump from one side of the iron gate to the other. Joey said the gate was its base, though, and since the car chaser had made it to the base before us,

it had won the game this time. I told him I thought that was a dumb rule, but Joey stopped playing after that. We talked about video games the rest of the trip. I had thought that was the end of it. We all got off the bus, me and Joey and a few other kids, and we started walking home. But when we passed the big iron gate, Joey stopped, picked a leaf off a nearby tree and placed it on the ground in front of the gate.

He said the leaf was really money for the car chaser from the game to say thank you for playing with us. The rest of us thought it was funny, and being kids, we would pretty much take any excuse to pull the leaves off a tree. So we each picked a leaf and left it in front of the gate too. And we just started doing that. It kind of just became a habit. It kind of just became a habit. We all rode the bus together and so whenever the group of us passed by the Iron Gate, we would always end up leaving something in front of it.

It didn't always have to be leaves, just anything interesting we found. Sometimes we would leave plastic bottle caps. Sometimes Joey would even leave a small piece of candy if he had one. And then there was the time we made Nico leave some of the money his mum had given him. I still feel bad about that. Nico had been given a couple of coins by his mum, and he'd been talking all day about how if he brought the money back to her at the end of the day, she would take him to get some ice cream.

It was supposed to teach him about responsibility or something. Nico and I were sitting next to each other on the bus ride home that day, and we were both looking out of the window. Nico told me that this time he saw a long white dog running next to the bus, and when it was running it picked up all its legs off the ground like a horse, its body scrunching together and stretching back out as it followed. We got off the bus, and when our group came across the big iron gate we all stopped, dutifully picking leaves off the nearby plants. Only this time Joey didn't put his leaf down. Instead he looked at Nico and told us that Nico had to leave some of the money his mum had given him.

Nico didn't want to. He said he was going to leave a leaf like he always did because that was the rule. But Joey said that that wasn't good enough. He said that the chaser knew Nico had something better. And if it knew you had something important, you had to share. And because Nico played the game on the way home, he had to give up the money. Or else. The rest of us didn't know what to do, but Joey seemed like he knew what he was talking about, so one by one we left our gifts and waited to see what Nico would do.

Nico's cheeks were red, his chubby fists clenched at his side. Joey looked serious he seemed reluctant to say more but he said if Nico didn't leave the money the chaser would start chasing him and it wouldn't stop not until it caught him I still wish I had said something

but that was a long time ago until it caught him. I still wish I had said something. But that was a long time ago. Nowadays, Joey lives across the country and I commute to and from work on the bus. To be honest, I hadn't thought about the game in a long time. But then, last Friday, I missed my stop. I think I just spaced out. My company's in crunch right now, so everyone's working long hours to meet the latest upcoming impossible deadline. So running on two hours of

sleep, I must have missed when they announced my stop. By the time I had realised what happened, we were ten blocks away. I knew this route looped around, though, and I didn't want to walk that far at night, so I decided to just ride it out. I stared out of the window into the darkness. My tired eyes appreciated the lack of scenery. I don't know when exactly I noticed it. I was just about to drift off, I think, when I realised there was something moving in the dark alongside the bus. I assumed it was some reckless cyclist, their long legs pumping the pedals as they matched the bus's unhurried rumbling. In the fog, I watched the pale legs going up and down in a fluid motion.

going up and down in a fluid motion. Somewhere in the back of my mind I think I even noticed that the cyclist must have been really hunched over, their handlebars, their torso almost parallel to the ground. My eyes closed. There was a gentle tapping on the bus window, and the vibrations knocked against the side of my head. Irritated, I opened an eye, glaring at the other passengers to see who was tapping along to their music. There were only five other people this far along the route, and everyone was facing forward,

either looking at their phones or sleeping themselves. I opened my other eye to look at the window. Outside, it was so dark that I could hardly see anything past the lighted interior of the bus. The window rattled again. I looked lower, down by the pavement. Running alongside the bus was a dog. It was a greyhound, I think. was a dog. It was a greyhound, I think.

At first I thought it must be a lost dog and I looked at the back of the driver's seat considering how to tell her to stop. I was worried if she stopped suddenly she might run over it. Then I realised the dog was keeping up with the bus. I looked down again and the pale dog stretched out its neck

wrapping its nose against the bus window its eyes sparkled orange in the light its long, long snout opened and tooth after tooth gleamed in the dark too many more than any dog has the bus driver announced the final stop, and as I watched, the thing started to go faster, its long, gangly legs stretching out behind it,

its head staying in place the whole time. Its eyes didn't blink, its mouth hung open, jaws gaping in a dumb, toothy, dog-like expression. Then I saw what it had seen coming up further along the road. An iron gate. I yanked the cord, but the bus didn't stop. Of course not, there wasn't a bus stop to get off at. I sat, frozen, as both the bus and the dog raced toward the gate The bus slowed as it approached an intersection

The dog did not The bus stopped shortly after the doors opening with a hiss The bus driver looked back, told me I had to get out I didn't move I asked her, didn't this route loop around? Apparently not on Fridays. I got off the bus.

I wanted to walk the other way, I really did, but as I turned to walk away I could feel the gate on the road behind me lit a muddy yellow by a streetlight. I walked towards it. I didn't remember any of it that night, especially not what Joey had told Nico. I tried, I really did.

But all I remembered was kids putting leaves by the gate. So I picked a leaf, and I stepped up to the gate. I bent to set my offering down, my fingers brushing against the cold metal. I looked up at the gate as I stood, and in the darkness behind it, just out of reach of the streetlight, a pair of eyes gleamed back, round and shiny as coins. They were at eye level. For a moment, the only thing that moved was the hot, wet air across my face. I ran. I ran down the block, didn't stop running until I ran out of breath

I must have gone for an hour before I finally called a cab to come pick me up I don't think it followed me I swear if I had remembered I would have left something better I haven't taken the bus the past few weeks but I would have left something better.

I haven't taken the bus the past few weeks. I have to work again on Monday. And it's going to be another long night. Thanks for listening. visit us on Facebook or email us at mail at rustyquill.com. Thanks for listening. Hello, it's Kareem, the voice of Simon Fairchard from the Magnus Archives, letting you know about our sponsor, Audible. For fans of heart-racing, bone-chilling and mind-bending stories, Audible has everything you need.

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The new Cinnabon Pull Apart, only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply.