The Magnus Archives - MAG 146 - Threshold

Episode Date: July 25, 2019

Case #0030109Statement of Marcus MacKenzie, regarding a series of unexplored entrywaysAudio recording by Jonathan Sims, the Archivist.Thanks to this week's Patrons: Delainie, Julia G White, Will Cramer, Mary Nettle, Chris Adams, Christine, Karin Kross, MarryMeLake, Kalioz, JasmineTyrrell, Saroona Jam, DennGlanzig, Professor Ampersand, Benjamin Heebsh, Vilte Baliutaviciute, Angela, Thegeekgene, Doug Standish, SajWho, Rikki TikkiIf you'd like to join them be sure to visit www.patreon.com/rustyquillEdited this week by Elizabeth Moffatt, Brock Winstead & Alexander J Newall.Written by Jonathan Sims and directed by Alexander J Newall.Performances:- "The Archivist" - Jonathan Sims- "Helen Richardson" - Imogen Harris- "Alice 'Daisy' Tonner" - Fay Roberts- "Melanie King " - Lydia Nicholas- "Basira Hussain" - Frank VossSound effects this week by Kyles & previously credited artists via freesound.org.Check out our merchandise at https://www.redbubble.com/people/rustyquill/collections/708982-the-magnus-archives-s1 You 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] notes for:- Adverse mental health discussionThe Magnus Archives is a podcast distributed by Rusty Quill Ltd. and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Sharealike 4.0 International Licence 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 with a small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. Getting you started. This fall at Keanu College in Fort McMurray. We offer small class sizes, competitive tuition fees,

and a flexible learning environment to make it easy for you to live, work, and study locally. By providing high-quality education, skills, and training necessary for your future, Keanu College is focused on getting you started. Learn more at keanu.ca slash ykeanu. That's keanu.ca slash w-h-y keanu. Hi everyone, Alex here. I'd just like to take a moment to thank some of our patrons. Delaney, Julia G. White, Will Kramer, Mary Nettle, Chris Adams, Christine, Karin Cross, Mary Malake, Kalios, Jasmine Tyrell, Saruna Jam,

Den Glanzig, Professor Ampersand, Benjamin Hebsch, Thank you all. We really appreciate your support. If you'd like to join them, go to www.patreon.com forward slash rustyquill and take a look at our rewards. Rusty Quill Presents The Magnus Archives Episode 146 Threshold. The End Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, The Archivist. Statement begins. So my dad tells me he's been bothering you with his nonsense.

I just wanted to come over and set things straight. Apologise for any of your time that he might have wasted. He's just a lonely old man looking for attention and trying to manipulate me into moving back in with him, even though I've told him so many times that that's just not going to happen. The door's thing isn't even his, you know? That's what he talked to you about, right? Some magically appearing door? Yeah, well, he's just trying to send me a message, which has been received loud and clear. I suppose I do probably owe you some sort of explanation. Right. I'd been living with my parents a while. I kept moving out, but it never seemed to stick.

First was uni. Fine, moving back in after a degree is normal. Then there was my divorce back in 93. That landed me back in my old room for a while. Then my company went bust about four years ago and wiped out all my savings. All told, I must have spent most of my twenties and not a small amount of my thirties living in that house with my mum and dad. It was alright, but each time the vibe was worse. My mum was always happy to have me, but she wanted me to move on with my life. But Dad was weirdly protective of me.

Kept trying to keep me around, like he was terrified that the world outside was going to hurt me. I was quite depressed back then, and his attitude put me in a really weird headspace. I think it comes back to the doors, you know? I think he always secretly thought that I had some deep-seated mental illness, even though they did so many tests and the doors were the only thing that it ever was, aside from the depression, obviously. But they were just specific, weird little hallucinations that have long since stopped. Haven't had one in... well, it's not important. But my dad always thought it

was a sign of something deeper, something that was... something that was going to destroy me one day. So whenever I was living at home, he smothered me, tried desperately to keep me around. Don't you see? That's what this whole thing is all about. He's been so lonely since mum died, and he is trying to get me to move back in with him. He's pretending that he is starting to see the doors. He thinks if he pretends to share in my madness, as he always called it, then I'll be worried about him. I'll stick around. But I'm not mad, and he's not seeing any doors. I'm sorry he's so lonely. Truly I am. I try to see him as much as I can, but I have my own life, and I can't be there all the time. And I don't like being

manipulated. I don't like being lied to. The first door I remember seeing that shouldn't have been there must have been when I was five or six. I had this skipping rope, bright green, old and ratty. I made my mum buy it for me at a car boot sale, and I loved it. I could spend hours on the playground just stood there jumping happily. We weren't really supposed to bring our own toys to school, but no one stopped me. It was thicker, heavier than the one the other kids had. A proper rope that needed a good bit of strength to really swing. I was fiercely proud of it.

So one night, it was in the Christmas holiday so I must have been six, I wake up. There's a noise in my room, like something being dragged along the floor. Well I look over and in the weak orange glow of my nightlight I can see the heavy wooden handle of my skipping rope moving slowly across the floorboards and out my bedroom door. I don't remember panicking. I'm not even sure I was scared, not at that point. But I didn't like anyone except my friends touching my toys, so I got up and I hurried to follow. I chased it sleepily out of my bedroom and down the hall, past the stairs and towards… a doorway I didn't recognise. I was sure that when I'd gone to bed it had been a patch of wool with a painting of

an old sailboat on it, but now it was an open doorway. A small amount of light leaked from around the edges of the door to my parents' room behind me, but it didn't reach very far at all, and beyond the threshold it was completely dark. That was when I started to feel scared. I could see the wooden handle of my skipping rope lying in the corridor, its heavy green cord stretching out and into the door, until it disappeared in the darkness. I realised I was shaking.

I didn't want to go through that door. So I picked up the handle and started to gently pull on the rope, trying to drag it back out again. Instead of moving, the line went taut. Something was holding the other end, and it was trying to pull me. For one awful moment I found myself frozen in a tug-of-war with whatever was stood inside that door,

clinging desperately to that rope as it stretched away and vanished into blackness. But I was six, and felt myself starting to lose my footing and fall towards it, so I did the only thing I could. and felt myself starting to lose my footing and fall towards it so I did the only thing I could. I let go, and I watched my most treasured possession disappear forever as the door closed behind it, and I ran back to bed. I told my parents, of course, but they didn't believe me. They just thought I'd lost it and was making up wild stories to cover it up. They just thought I'd lost it and was making up wild stories to cover it up. The wall was the wall again,

and the picture of the old sailing boat was back where it should have been. The next time, I was eleven, and that time the door wasn't really there. Well, it was, but it was covered in concrete. It was in this old alley about five minutes' walk from my house, and one of the buildings was this abandoned warehouse. At least, I think it was a warehouse. The wooden signs were rotted away and the windows had all been broken.

The main door had been covered in a layer of perfectly smooth grey concrete. I passed it on the way home from school almost every day and something about that blank grey space where a door should have been always gave me a slight shiver of unease. Then one day I was walking past and the door that stole my skipping rope was there. The thing was though I couldn't see it because it was still covered in that concrete but I knew it was there. Before, there'd been nothing behind it, but now I was certain. Now, in the centre of the concrete, were five clear marks, as though someone had pressed their fingers into the mixture when it had still been wet. I stood there, staring at it like I had all those years ago.

It was playing with me again, but this time it wasn't looking to play with a skipping rope. This time it was a dare. It was daring me to put my own hand on that rough concrete to fit my fingers into the hollow spaces it had made for me, and open it. It was a windy afternoon, but for that moment the narrow street where I stood was completely still. I could feel the muscles in my arm tensing, preparing to stretch towards it to accept the dare

from a door that had hidden itself so sneakily under all that concrete. Then my friend Luke yelled at me from the end of the street. The fear was gone in a second, and I ran to catch up with him. I did, however, make the mistake of telling my parents about it, and reminding them of the other time it had happened when I was six. This time they didn't dismiss it so quickly. First they checked the alleyway and took some pictures of the solid, unmarked concrete of the covered entry. Then they began to make appointments and send me to specialists. I was tested and poked and quizzed and prodded

all through my teenage years. I never believed I was delusional, not like that, no matter what my father said, and neither, it seemed, did the doctors. At least, not in any way they could prove. Every test, every examination seemed to reinforce the fact that there was nothing medically unusual about me or my mind. The only evidence to the contrary was the fact that I kept seeing the door. When I was thirteen it was underneath a railway bridge. It was huge and metal this time, with solid iron bolts sealing it shut and a thick

chain stretched across it. The warning stickers had long since peeled off, and someone had scrawled in chalk, warning, danger of death. As I passed, something heavy began to bang on the other side, sending the chain dancing. It pounded again and again, and I didn't know if it was trying to force its way out, or politely knocking, hoping to be let in. or politely knocking, hoping to be let in. When I was fifteen, I pressed the doorbell to Sandra's house, picking her up for our first date. And I realised that it sounded wrong,

like the doorbell was echoing through a hundred empty corridors, bouncing back and forth and lingering in the air. I looked again at their front door and realised that it didn't lead to their house. I heard footsteps approaching on the other side from the far distance, fast and steady but getting closer. I turned and ran just as I heard the door open behind me. When I was sixteen, I was stumbling home drunk from a house party, and I found it lying open in the ground in front of me. It was wide, waiting, and I could see a long corridor stretching down and away at a right angle to the world as I knew it, turning off into an angular labyrinth.

I was trying so hard to walk carefully to seem like I wasn't drunk that I almost didn't notice it until it was too late. I stared into it for a long time, my eyes hazy from cheap vodka, and I saw a shape walking calmly along the vertical floor. When I was eighteen, I was driving a group of friends to a concert in Leeds when we pulled into a service station to get some lunch. They didn't hear the scream, coming from the small stone structure just next to where all the coaches parked. They didn't see the drag marks that led across the tarmac and under the door. I didn't eat lunch that day.

The last time was the worst. It hadn't happened for almost fifteen years, and when I saw it, I almost wept. It was when I was living in Oxford, up Cowley Way. A few streets over, there was an empty plot of land, just scrubby plants and junk. If there'd ever been a house there, it was long gone. A few of the older residents said it burned down in the seventies, but they were always real weird about it. I passed it whenever I was heading down to

get a drink at the city arms. The last week before I had to move back in with my parents, I was at my lowest point. I was bankrupt in all but name, the work of almost half a decade flushed down the toilet, and all that remained of my worldly possessions were packed up for yet another return to childhood. And as I passed that empty space of grass, there it was. A pale yellow door Stood all alone Like the entrance to a house that I just couldn't see It had no frame around it

But I was sure that if I grasped its handle and twisted It would still swing open Silent and inviting This wasn't like before There was no playfulness here None of that malicious joy that I had always felt coming off it. Now there was just a cold hunger, a deep anger, as though I had no right to just stand there looking at it. The street was silent, but I could feel it screaming at me to open it.

I just about managed not to. I was just about able to walk away. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to get so deep into my own issues. I'm not mad, I know that. It's just this door is something else. And my father knows that. It's why he used it as a cornerstone of his little story, but it's just pretend. He just wants me to move back in with him. And I can't. I just can't. And I can't. I just... can't. Sometimes you just have to leave. Even if what's on the other side scares you. Statement ends. So it seems we did have Marcus McKenzie's statement after all.

I spent so long looking for it back when I found his father's and... No luck. But now I decide to start looking properly into Hill when I found his father's, and no luck. But now I decide to start looking properly into Hilltop Road, and all of a sudden, I'm drawn to rearrange a filing cabinet. And what do I find behind it? I never thought I'd miss those days, when I could throw out some half-baked speculation about drug abuse or mental illness, and whoosh, away all the statements went. There is nothing in the world more reassuring than ignorance, which we can mistake for certainty. But no, almost every one of those statements, those people,

that poor old man. Like I can talk. Like I'm in any position to mourn the suffering of the innocent. But there is one thing I know an awful lot better now than I did when I read his father's statement. I know an awful lot more about doors. You rang? Marcus McKenzie.

Why didn't you tell me? Is that name supposed to mean something to me? No. I suppose it wouldn't, would it? Just an old man and his son for you to terrorise and feast on. Ah, well, the son I was pursuing long before I was even Michael. And technically, I didn't eat the old man. He passed away from terror before I even got a chance to open properly. And his son Marcus, he was fine when I found his father's statement two years ago, but now, suddenly, I can't get through to him.

No, I imagine not. I decided it was time to finish that game a few months ago. You... Why? Not sure. I suppose Helen didn't have quite the same attachment to him as a project. I'm not quite as much for decades-long campaigns of subtle terror these days. That's horrible.

Is it? We do what we need to do when it comes to feeding, don't we? Don't we, Archivist? Yes. It would be better if you embraced it it's not look why were you trying to lure him into Hilltop Road that oh well that was just curiosity I wanted to see what would happen I don't understand. There is something wrong with Hilltop Road. You know it as well as I do. Some strange scar in reality at the centre of whatever it is the spider is spinning. When young Mr

McKenzie passed, it seemed like a good opportunity for an experiment. To see what would happen if I lured him inside. But it seems I just don't have the web's gift for manipulation or persuasion. Were you controlled? What a delightful thought. I don't believe so, no. But the spider strings are subtle, so I suppose it's not impossible. Why? I want to know. Can the web control another avatar, one that serves a different power? Make them do things they don't want to?

Make them find victims, feed? Oh, perhaps. Perhaps not. Would that make life easier for you? Are you so sure you didn't want to? Been a while since you've all come to see me together. I assume it's not good news. No.

What the hell have you been doing, John? Martin left a tape for us. And what exactly is on this... Oh. Yes. How many? Sarah, I... How many? Four. Jesus.

Including the one on the boat? What one on the boat? Including Floyd? Five. Jesus. Do I even want to know? I do. Including the one on the boat What one on the boat? Including Floyd Five Jesus Do I even want to know? I do Jess Terrell, the woman on the tape She was the fourth

I just tried to I was weak Ravenous I didn't feel The first was a supermarket cleaner Ended up lost for a week in an endless warehouse. I didn't even... I just went in for some shopping and he was there and I just... Asked.

The second was... it was after I got stabbed by Melanie. You are not putting this on me. No, that's not what I meant. I was walking the streets. I thought I was trying to clear my head. But you were hunting. Apparently. I found a woman who, every year on her birthday, wakes up in a fresh grave just for her. And the third was after the coffin. A man rejected by all who knew him. Searching ever darker places for love. When he told me his story, he started weeping maggots.

Enough. I hope so. Why didn't you record them? Why do you think? Because he was ashamed? No, I don't... I mean, I don't record anything anymore. Not really. I just sort of assume they'll turn on if it's important. Well, I don't record anything anymore. Not really. I just sort of assume they'll turn on if it's important. Well, they didn't. No, I suppose not. So, what do we do now? I don't know.

You're a danger, John. A monster. You're hurting innocent people. So did Daisy. Shut up. It's not the same thing at all. But, Sarah, he has a point. You didn't know what you were doing. And since you did, you've spent every waking hour resisting. He knows exactly what he's doing. I don't... It's not that simple. It feels...

I don't know if I can control it. I don't know if it's even me doing it. So you say you're being controlled? I don't know. Maybe. The web is... What was the name you said before? Annabelle Kane? Yes, she's been watching us. I'm pretty sure of it. John, I'm not sure that it's actually... No, if he is being controlled, we need to know. And we need to know now. Do you know where she is?

Not properly. I think she has some connection to Hilltop Road. Then we go. Now. Unless anyone has any objections. Not from me. You don't get a vote. Okay, seriously, I'm going to have to be the one to point out that this is a terrible idea. Daisy? Be better if we could prepare. I just think that we shouldn't be exposing

ourselves like this until we have a little bit more than a hunch. She does have a point. I didn't ask you. Okay, fine. I'll go then. I'll do some recon on my own and update you. Wait, hang on. Basira. I'll tell you all what I find. Don't let him eat anyone's brain while I'm gone. That's not what I do. But, but, but, Sarah! Come, come on! Well, that was- Shut up. So we're going with her? Come on, Mel. I'll see if I've got a stab vest in your size. Yeah, sure. Sure. License. Today's episode was written by Jonathan Sims and directed by Alexander J. Newell.

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