The Magnus Archives - MAG 91 - The Coming Storm

Episode Date: February 1, 2018

#0172804-AStatement of Micheal Crew regarding his experiences with the supernatural.Content Warnings for this episode are at the end of the show notes.Thanks to this week's Patrons: Lara Taffer, Justin Bankert & Akvilina Petrutis, Alexandra Krzoska, Jameson Senger, Ian Barrett, Jonny, Fabian Beranovsky, Richard Maxton & Rob KerrIf 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 markb, brianhanson2nd, ceberation, Maynardkenmuir, Coral_Island_Studios, RogerBoyX69passAirmangrace, DSOADigital, ceberation, spenceomatic, fryzu82, Glitchedtones, Anthousai, FunWithSound, JakLocke, MaxDemianAGL, mmasonghi, Lesmash, uEffects, taure, Slave2theLight, northern87, pfranzen & 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.Content Warning for:ElectrocutionHeightsGun Violence Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Episode 91 The Coming Storm The coming storm. You sure I can't get you a cup of tea? Uh, it's fine, really. Okay. You just seem a bit jumpy, is all. Oh, I just, uh... Coming in, I thought that... It's fine. Grand.

Uh, okay, what can I do for you? Uh, you're... You're Michael Crew, right? It's Mike. Grand. Okay, what can I do for you? You're Michael Crew, right? It's Mike, please. Right. I'm from the Magnus Institute. Oh, yeah, you said. I read. You feature in some of our statements.

Oh? Statements of what? There was a book. Two of them, at least. Ex Altiora, The Bone Turner's Tale. You, uh... I think you threw a guy off a skyscraper in Paris. Hmm.

Last chance for that cup of tea. I, er... Where did you get that scar? And I was trying so hard to be polite. Hard, isn't it? Trying to ask prying questions at terminal velocity.

The air... it doesn't leave your lungs like you expect it to. I mean, I know you're still sat down. You know you're still sat down. But whether your body knows it when I decide you hit the ground, that's... That's something I haven't made my mind up about yet. A little bit of privacy. Is that really so much to ask? I suppose it is, isn't it, from you and yours at least. We have a lot in common, really. After all, what good's the height, the terrifying draw of gravity, unless you

really know the scale of what you're facing? Hey, maybe I'll let you live. I don't need to drag yourself back down to your den, but you need to learn some respect. My scar, wasn't it? Always the scar. It's ironic in some ways, because it was one of the few marks that was only really ever physical. I got it when I was struck by lightning, age of eight. Playing outside with a friend of mine and the storm just came on quickly. That's really all there was to it. Have you ever been struck by lightning?

No. Of course not. Not unless that's what happened to your hand, but I'm guessing that burn came from sticking it somewhere it wasn't wanted. And you still didn't learn. Well, imagine a white-hot stinging pain, your whole body becoming rigid. Like, for an eternal moment, you're frozen. moment you're frozen, you're trapped in a statue of yourself with a thousand needles of agony just erupting through you from the inside out. I don't know if it's the most painful thing that can happen to the human body but beyond a certain point trying to quantify and measure pain it becomes pointless. That

point is being struck by lightning. The part that always bothered me was how I didn't remember it. Not really. The sensation's still vivid enough, but it exists in my mind, completely detached from any actual memory. I remember the feeling, but not the event. One moment I'm playing amid raindrops the size of blueberries, and the next I'm in a white hospital bed. That acrid smell still surrounding me, and lines of agony just carved through my skin. The doctors told me there would be no long-term damage from my accident. They were wrong, of course, but the damage wasn't something they could see. So how were they to know?

Sitting alone in my room, tracing the lines of electricity with my finger, mentioning my pain, travelling these branching pathways. I was obsessed with it. And every time my finger reached the end of the line, I felt a jolt of fear, because I knew they went further, they went deeper than would show on my skin. By age ten I was reading everything I could on what happened to me. The electricity, Lichtenberg's experiments, meteorology. My parents thought it was simply my way of recovering, of processing my trauma.

But there was something else there. I know that now. Did you know that Lichtenberg figures are fractals? I didn't, not back then. But as they travelled along the length of my scars, I sometimes think that my fingertips could feel it. When I was twelve, curled under my bed to escape the pounding with the rain against my window, the roll of thunder that just rattled my skull, I began to travel them once again. My hands ran down and along those jagged, discoloured lines, every branch, every turn. My nostrils full of ozone, my veins full of fear. They didn't stop. They didn't stop.

I knew where my scars ended, but those I traced in the dark that night, they just went on and on and on, far beyond me, and to somewhere that still flashed with that unspeakable white light. That was the night everything changed. Before it, I was odd, certainly, and probably traumatised and gripped with a terror of storms, but after that night, things were different. I think, looking back, that was when I called it. That was when it caught my scent. It delighted in toying with my perceptions, making me believe a storm was approaching, forcing me to run for shelter or desperately hunt for cover without warning. In the dark, it would stand beneath my bedroom window, the light flaring, flashing the awful. forcing me to run for shelter or desperately hunt for cover without warning.

In the dark it would stand beneath my bedroom window, the light flaring, flashing the awful brightness of sheet lightning across my room. I could never look directly at it. The bright, arcing glow of its insides almost blinded me when I tried. It was almost a man, but I could never be sure. Its strobing, flashing Lichtenberg organs changed and flickered too fast. It never hurt me. Not once in all the years I was chased by its malevolence.

Of course, I know why that is now, but at the time it did nothing to dull my fear. I remember when it found out where I lived. I had dreamed that night of shifting, branching avenues of light. I travelled them so fast I could feel my flesh peeling away, leaving nothing but the coursing, buzzing pain within me as I ran down these hideous corridors, aching for an end I knew simply wasn't there. I woke up screaming into the darkness. Walking to the window, I looked out over the tiny garden below. I was sixteen at the time, and the house I lived in had a small patch of green behind it, just fighting against the pressing grey of the city, the

dull glow of the light pollution overhead. But where the back wall should have been, there was a small wooden gate. I didn't feel the cold as I opened the back door and walked out towards it. My tormentor was nowhere to be seen. But the blackened edges of the gate showed clearly it had passed by. Was I afraid? It's hard to remember now, but I have to assume that I was. I mean, I must have been as I pushed those ancient hinges back to reveal this darkened forest. How could I not have been? It stretched away forever, I think, or as close to forever as the human mind can contain.

The trees were long and spindly, their branches bare and reaching as they grew down towards me, out of the sky, their roots pulsing upwards into this roiling mass of clouds, scorched and shattered chunks reeking of ozone. I found the journal of a plague year when I was seventeen. I was lucky, I suppose, that it wasn't anything worse. It infected the house, of course, brought it crashing down upon my parents in a collapse of diseased brick and septic foundations. But I escaped. And more than that, my eyes were open to the powers that might save me, might protect me from the past that followed me so brightly I could barely see it. But

I knew that filth was not for me. Buzzing flies and rot disgusted me, but they never spoke to my soul. I threw the book into a sewer and began my hunt. The bone-turner's tale was next. Found tucked away in a waterlogged library basement and deposited back in another. I played with it, but when I tried to shift the bits of myself I thought might set me free, the only shapes I could form with them were laced with that horrid hunting fractal. My experiments weren't entirely pointless, though. They did have a truth to me.

I learned that I was more than capable of killing, if it brought me closer to what I needed. I spent some time with a small grey volume, I think it was in Cyrillic, that decided it was at home amongst my bookshelves. I couldn't read it, of course, but when it tried to read me back, I buried it on a lonely stretch of moorland. Finally I found what I was searching for. In the back of a chichester bookshop, I found my release. Ex Altiora. From the Heights. The owner didn't want to par with it, a nasty, grubby little man who stank of sweat and self-importance, but I got it.

And at last I had what I needed. The thing that chased me, you see, was an arcing branch of the twisting deceit. Taken shape to follow me. But the shape it had taken more rightly belonged to the sky, to those same vast unknowable heights that blessed book wanted to take me. Falling had always held a special place in my heart, that wonderful border between terror and delight. When my parents would take me to the fair, I always found my way to the highest ride, the one that would just send me plummeting. It wasn't simply the rush of adrenaline, but something deeper, something that just gripped my soul with this ecstatic horror. And I knew that

within that book was something that could not only release me from my pursuer, but chain my being to that rush of wind and vertigo forever. I don't remember that night in detail. The two most important events in my life, and I have clear memories of neither. I know that it was the first storm, the first real storm I had seen for almost ten years, but nothing else remains in my mind. There are echoes of resignation, I think almost desperation. That can't be right, though. What reason would I have had not to jump, not to become as I am now. Perhaps I just didn't know the true joy of vertigo. Doesn't matter. In the end, I threw myself into the arms of that vast emptiness, and I bound my tormentor

to the book. That's all, I think. Since then, I've embraced my new life. Gladly fed that which feeds me. A, uh, a Paris skyscraper, was it? You said, I, honestly, I can't say I recall it in detail, but that does sound about right. Sometimes it's hard to keep track.

Hm. You know, that was, Sometimes it's hard to keep track. You know, that was nice. I'm not usually the sort for speeches. That was a pleasant change. So. Off you go. Archivist, take my mercy and leave. You have touched something few ever walk away- I thought you said you came alone.

I'm in dark. Can I help you? Detective? Shut up. Are you human? What? Is this man human? I...

No. I don't think so. Not anymore. Right. What does it do? It feels like he makes you vertigo, like you're falling. Has he killed people? Yes. A few, I think.

Does he need to see you to do it? Does he need to speak? I don't know. Okay. Doubt he can do it in a coma. Now turn that off and help me get him in the car. Don't try to run. What are you... What did I say about questions? I said turn that off. This is it.

So what now? You kill us? You think he's going to save you? What? No, I... Now, let's see the bag. One wallet, brown leather, no cash. One packet cigarette, silk cut. One lighter, gold, Spiderweb design. One pocket knife.

Blunt. One set of keys to the Magnus Institute. One tape... You sneaky little freak! What? You want to record this? Oh, right. I'd have to destroy it anyway.

What? I... I didn't... Please don't shoot me. Why are you doing this? Tell me! Stop asking questions.

That's how you want it? Fine. You brought a knife so we go through the voice box. Daisy! Daisy! Daisy, put him down. Have you been following me, Basira? Didn't need to. I know what you do here. Can you tell you? He didn't need to. You're not that subtle. But I always thought you just killed monsters. I do. Just let him go. You don't know what he is. You don't know what he is.

You don't know what it's like, Dab. Your secret's pulled out like teeth just because he asked. I'm sorry, I didn't... Shut up! Daisy, don't you... Don't you dare look at me like I'm crazy. It got you too. Or do you think we gave him those tapes because we like handing out evidence?

What? That's not how it happens. No, you asked me to take a tape over to this murdering freak, and I'm all set to tear you a new one for it. But then I get the cassette in my hand and suddenly all I want to do is deliver his tapes and spill my guts. So, so now you kill him? First him, then his creepy boss.

It's, this is too far, Daisy. You know it is. He murdered two people, Basira. Maybe more. I've done one monster today. No reason not to do another. I didn't kill anyone. For God's sake, look at him. Then who? I think it was Elias. Yeah? Well, he's on my list too. What if he asks? What? You reckon he can mind control people? Make them tell the truth? Why not try it on Elias? He's got his own... He knows things. Would that work?

I don't know. I could try. Daisy, this might be our only chance to find out what's going on. Alright. Daisy, this might be our only chance to find out what's going on. All right. But if this doesn't work, you're still dead. Yeah. Yeah. What about Mike? Who? Oh. Grab a spade. non-commercial sharealike 4.0 international license. Today's episode was written by Jonathan Sims and directed by Alexander J. Newell. To subscribe, view associated material,

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