The Magnus Archives - MAG 89 - Twice as Bright

Episode Date: January 18, 2018

#0172404Statement of Jude Perry, regarding... some advice. Recorded direct from subject, April 24th 2017.Thanks to this week's Patrons: Rich Jones, Heather Paulson, Laura Greene, Wren Griffin-Harrigan, Anthony Sigman-Lowery, Jimmy Smith, Alexander Everett, Victoria Barnette, Emmett Lou Moon & and Ken BlakelyIf you'd like to support us, head to www.patreon.com/rustyquillEdited by Elizabeth Moffatt, Brock Winstead & Alexander J Newall.Sound effects for this episode provided by saturdaysoundguy & 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/subscribe.Please rate and review on your software of choice, it really helps us to spread the podcast to new listeners, so share the fear. 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. As women, our life stages come with unique risk factors, like high blood pressure developed during pregnancy, which can put us two times more at risk of heart disease or stroke. Know your risks. Visit heartandstroke.ca. Hi everyone, Ben here. I'd just like to take a

moment to thank some of our patrons. Rich Jones, Heather Paulson, Laura Green, Wren Griffin-Harrigan, Anthony Sigmund Lowry, Jimmy Smith, Alexander Everett, Victoria Barnett, Emmett Lou Moon, 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. The Magnus Archives Archives. Episode 89. Twice as bright. Something funny, Ms Perry? Uh, yeah. Care to share? I think it's pretty obvious.

Look, I lost my normal coat and it's cold. Some of us actually feel it, you know. You wouldn't shake my hand. No, I'm not stupid. Whatever the lightless flame is... Look, will you stop that? No, I'm not stupid. Whatever the lightless flame is... Look, will you stop that? Alright, I hate explaining jokes, but imagine you're a butcher and one day an injured little lamb walks into your workshop and strides right into one of the mincing machines. But when you go up to it, knife in hand, it shakes its head and says,

I'm not stupid. You get why that's funny? Right. No more abattoir metaphors, please. I suppose it's not really me, is it? Would you rather be a really stupid piece of firewood? What? I just have a few questions. Did you burn down a section of Gwydir Forest last year? Not alone, but yes. You should have seen how devastated they were.

Such a loss. I'm sure the Forestry Commission were mortified. Why? Stop that! And it was because Nicola Orsinov asked us to. She was done with the place and we're always happy to help. When that help is destroying something someone loves. But I...

No more questions, Archivist. Just... You were a friend of Agnes Montague, correct? She's not one of your little stories. According to the statement of Jack Barnabas, she very much is. That burnt-faced little runt. He got what was coming to him. Just like...

Yes, yes, I understand. You could easily kill me. I'm at your mercy. Blah, blah, blah. I've heard it before, and from things much scarier than you. That a fact. Okay, so why haven't you done it? We're in public.

You're hardly keeping your voice down. You talk about God and death and demons nice and loud and watch people bend over backwards not to listen to what you're saying. No one cares.

If you say so. Are you trying to talk me into killing you? If I wanted, I could reach through your chest like runny wax and hold your heart while it cooked. No one would even notice if I didn't give you time to scream.

Right. Right. So why don't you? Does your god not want you to? Hard to say. When I look at you, I feel that burning liquid pain eager to flow out and purify your rotten carcass. But I feel that a lot. Oh. More or less than normal. Hard to say when every nerve ending's on fire.

Hard to tell degrees. Third degree, maybe. Oh, sorry. Sorry, I was... It was a... I have a god too, right? Is that another joke? No, I'm new to this.

Everyone keeps calling me archivist, like I'm special and that I serve the eye. Trying to kill me for it. Yes. So it's like your god, right? Oh, please. Your god is nothing. The eye-beholding, ceaseless watcher, whatever you call it, that's all it does. It watches and knows, sitting bulbous and comfortable in the ignorance of infinite knowledge.

sitting bulbous and comfortable in the ignorance of infinite knowledge. I serve a reckoning, a surging tide of destruction and pain. The lightless flame. The desolation, blackened earth. The destructive, agonizing heat of burning flesh and land scoured of life. The light, the comfort of fire stripped from it that sees nothing but its own agony. I think I... I see. So if one wants to watch everything to know everything

and the other wants to destroy... You don't even know what this is about, do you? So tell me! An archivist pleading for knowledge? That is satisfying to see. Look, if you're just about my only lead, and if you're... Just kill me, alright? If it's so easy, if you're not going to tell me anything worth my time. No, you're sounding like an archivist. Oh no, I'm obviously not going to kill you.

Why not? Consider it a favour. Thank you. Not for you. For Elias. Wait, but... No, I mean, if I serve beholding... He's in a lot deeper than I am, I think.

The rumour is he killed Gertrude Robinson. If so, I feel like I am. And he clearly wants you alive, so... But she was the last archivist, so you're God. Why? The unfathomable contest of eternal forces is not the only reason I might want someone dead. So...so tell me the story of why you wanted Gertrude- Ah! Ah! Ah!

Try to compel me again and I'll burn it out of your mouth! Now you're scared, Now you're getting it. There's no safety in sitting on the sidelines watching. The audience is only safe when the story isn't about them. Fine. Fine. Keep your damn secrets. Fine. Fine. Keep your damn secrets.

No. Maybe I do want to tell you a story. If it's not about Gertrude or Gwydir and I can't talk about it... Right. Then what? I'm going to give you some advice. Fantastic. Well? Aren't you going to say your words?

Statement of Jude Perry regarding... some advice. Recorded direct from subject April 24th, 2017. Statement begins. If you smother a flame, it dies. The only way it grows and flourishes is if you feed it. It's about making sure you find enough fuel for it, and not caring where it comes from. If you spend your time hiding and fretting about who you hurt, you'll sputter and you'll die as surely as any candle. Don't be afraid to burn. The pain is sensational. You feel your flesh cooking, your nerves screaming out as they die

exquisitely. Your whole body changes texture as you become that which feeds the fire. And in that agonising, beautiful transformation, you can feel it ignite again and again and again. At least, that's how it feels for me. I don't know how it would feel for you. Maybe you get an itchy eye. I don't care. Point is, whatever form it takes, you have to feed it for it to grow strong. Otherwise, you're the one that gets consumed.

I never hid my flame. Not once. Even before I found my god, I burned as bright as I liked, and those who came too close simply ended up fueling my brilliance. At the time, the closest thing I had to God was cocaine, though I also spent my evenings as an acolyte to alcohol, but my true thrill was money. Not mine of course, though I had plenty, but the money of others I could fling upon the pyre of the stock market. Whether it ignited into something more or simply burned down to ash meant nothing to me. It was the thrill that I craved. This is decades ago

now. I was decades ago now. I was one of the top bankers for... Eh, it doesn't matter, they're not important. Not to mention that a series of severe fires has long since put them out of business. The point was that I burned through too much of myself because I didn't know what else I could burn. My girlfriend saw it, though she had no idea how to help with the deep depression that had settled over me. I never

slept much to begin with, but now even the choice seemed denied to me. I was sluggish and listless at work, and people began to notice. My rating began to drop. My colleagues would whisper and not-so-subtly leave me off invitations for what little socialising there was. I was burnt out in every sense but one, and that was the one that saved me. It was Agnes, of course. I don't know where she found me. I only remember sitting in a booth with a beautiful young woman who smelled like matches and incense. I was drinking coffee so hot it peeled the skin from the roof of my mouth. But I didn't care, because looking at her filled me with every kind of heat. We were talking about sacrifice, about power, about things that even now I struggle to fully understand.

She was soft-spoken and shy, and I gradually became aware of what other people stood around us. There seemed nothing remarkable about them at first. Different clothes, different ages, just a dozen or so unremarkable strangers. There was something in their faces, though. A vicious hunger that I knew mirrored my own. And they all looked at Agnes with such devotion. One of them, a round-faced black woman I'd later know as Sandy, squatted down next to me and stared into my face. She made a noise of dismissal and leaned in close to stare at me. She said, I don't think so. And her breath hit me like a furnace. I instinctively thrust

out a hand to push her away, but as I touched her face she remained still and instead my hand sank into it like softened candle wax. I screamed, but if anyone heard me they didn't do anything. I could only stare as thick rivulets of molten flesh flowed down my arm and onto the ground, and Sandy's body shook as though with laughter, even as my hand stayed encased in her warped and yielding head. I probably don't need to describe how much it hurt. It would be a long time before I was able to use the hand again. At last I calmed down enough to pull my scalded, wax-encrusted hand from her head. She stood up, pressed her fingers to her face, and calmly squeezed it back into shape.

It didn't look exactly the same as before, though there was no mistaking the voice that came from her lips. She turned to Agnes and nodded her approval. Agnes, for her part, had been talking this entire time, I realised, and somehow I had been listening. I knew what to do. Nicholas Tregenza was the one that I chose. I had other colleagues I hated far more, of course, and in many ways

I might have even called Nick a friend, but unlike so many of the others, he had a lot to live for. His wife Julie had just given birth to a squalling brat that he'd named Desmond, awful name for a baby, and he'd saved enough money to move away from London entirely. He'd just bought a house. When he spoke to me, he had hope in his face, and so much life in him it still makes me smile to think about it. I invited him out for a drink to celebrate his good fortune, got him drunk, and stabbed him to death in a filthy alleyway near the edge of the Docklands. He didn't even have the wherewithal to look surprised. His skin didn't yield as easily as Sandy's had, but I suppose that's what knives are for, isn't it?

And just like that, he was dead. And I felt no different. I had a minute of blind panic. How could I have been such an idiot? I hadn't even planned ahead to consider how I might dump the body. I was just so desperate to stoke the fire, I still felt sputtering inside me. Then all at once I saw the faintest tongues of smoke creeping around his body. In an instant it was burning and I was surrounded by that smell of matches and incense mixed with an oily smell like cooking pork. And as he burned, I felt my senses sharpen. My limbs were alive with searing energy, and my heart was aglow with love. The agonising, The terrifying love of something that I knew must be a god. My god. The lightless inferno of desolation, of pain and destruction.

My tears of joy were nothing but steam. Nick's body didn't completely burn to ash, of course not. There needed to be something to identify. After all, what does my god care about death? It was the destruction of his life that it hungered for. The agony and fear of his wife and child, those that loved him, so they had to know he was dead. Killed and mutilated in a pointless and unforeseeable act of unutterable violence. Then it was simply a matter of forging his signature on a few documents, implicating him in some very illegal transactions to get his assets stripped from him. Oh, and burning down the new house, of course. And with each act of glorious, hateful destruction, I felt my God's love embrace me,ume me. Give me life.

Any feelings of pity or mercy I might have had for the poor woman I fed from were cauterised. Julie's dead now, of course, though I do keep half an eye on their son Desmond, to see if he has anything worth taking from him. At first I channelled this new energy into my job and my relationship. Gretchen and I had never been happier as I moved from one success to the next. I think she realised there was something else going on, though. Perhaps she suspected how much my mind drifted to Agnes when I held her in my arms. I know she wondered about how I started keeping petrol in the cupboard, and about my newfound love of scented candles,

but she never asked, never even mentioned it. Perhaps on some level she knew as well as I did where we were headed, but there are some things you just have to accept, that in the end they'll cause you pain. I should have been caught, really, for all that it gifted to me, my faith did little to hide my crimes beyond ensuring they were scoured of physical evidence. And I know the police were investigating a possible serial murderer targeting people in my industry, but for whatever reason, they never gave me a second look. I later learned my new brothers and sisters of the Lightless Flame

had taken it upon themselves to help hide my crimes, but even they are only human. Some of them, at least. but only for my own glory. But with each new gift, each renewal of the fire, I saw how lifeless and hollow it was, how grey and ashen my existence had become. It became clear that where once I had destroyed to fuel my life, I now live for the pain that I caused. And for Agnes, my sweet, hopeless Agnes. And so I ended it. For all the agony and pain on Gretchen's face, she didn't seem surprised when I doused myself in kerosene and set it to light. I think she screamed. She must have screamed, I think she screamed. She must have screamed, but I couldn't hear it. As the heat warped my bones and bubbled my flesh, all I heard was the loving exultation of my God. Huh. I suppose you did compel me after all. But what about...

Try again and I will actually kill you. I don't care what favours your boss might have done for me. I will tell my story to your smouldering corpse. Fine. I just wanted to know when it happened, is all. I met Agnes in 1989 and completed my transformation in 1991. Oh. It's just that you don't...

I mean, you don't seem like you're, what, in your fifties? Or burnt to a crisp? Wax is remarkably easy to mould. Oh, oh, oh, oh. Oh, come on. You're going to need a much stronger stomach than that if you're going to walk this path. I, I, I mean, I don't... It's like you're not even listening. You have your god as I have mine. Feed it, fearlessly and without hesitation,

or it will feed on you. But I don't... I mean, what do I feed it? I don't know. You're the one it picked. Not a great choice, if you ask me. I didn't ask you. Look, is there anything else you can tell me? Yes. Anything you're willing to tell me? No

And I suppose I could talk to anyone else in your... It's fine, you can call it a cult And no, they wouldn't hesitate They're not as friendly as I am Well, thank you for the advice And the dead end. Wait. Hmm?

If you're really keen to keep chatting to things that could kill you I might know someone. Not on great terms. He's closer to your lot than mine. But I know where he exists. Who? What is he? He Who... what is he?

Calls himself Mike. Michael? I guess Mike is normally short for Michael, yeah. Corridors, weird limbs, laughs like a headache. What? No. He's pale, got a big weird scar, smells of, um... Oh, like ozone!

Yeah, that's the one. Hangs around with the Fairchild sometimes. Michael Crew. That's him. I know where you can find him. Where? Not for free. Okay.

What do you want? Nothing much. Just shake my hand. What? You hurt my feelings earlier. I want you to shake my hand. Come on. It won't hurt. Fine. I lied. AHHHHHHHHH! non-commercial share-alike 4.0 international license.

Today's episode was written by Jonathan Sims and directed by Alexander J. Newell. To subscribe, view associated material, or join our Patreon, visit RustyQuill.com. Rate and review us online, tweet us at TheRustyQuill, visit us on Facebook, or email us at mail at rustyquill.com Join our communities on the forum via the website or on Reddit at r slash the Magnus Archives.

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