Chapter 3: Blind Support

Content Warning: Use of explicit language, mention of suicide, brief description of gore and mental illness

A tape recorder clicks on, already picking up the sound of wanton commotion in the Archive. The dialing of a phone is heard, and after a few moments, a voicemail plays.

"This is Monroe Murphy, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute. If this is a personal call, please leave your name and number. If this is related to the Archive, please call me during work hours."

"Goddamnit Monroe. Pick up the phone!" The tall thin man that was Archival Assistant Ezra West said, as he slammed the archive's phone down. Ezra placed his hands to the bridge of his nose, in an attempt to steel himself. Then he felt it. The call. The itch. The hunger. He smiled nervously as he felt it… looking at him.

"I feel a statement coming on…" He murmured. He walked over to Monroe's desk, one of the many statements left on their desk.

He opened it with a half-hearted chuckle, the sound of Monroe's office chair spinning as Ezra crashed onto it. Ezra looked down below the desk, and made a noise of surprise. The sound of a bottle half-filled with some sort of liquid spirit.

"Well if you were here Amanda would surely give you a talking to Head Archivist. Not to worry, I'll take care of that for you too." Ezra said, before uncorking the bottle and taking a long series of gulps. A slam of the now empty glass bottle onto the wooden desk, alongside with the sound of the bottle cracking. Ezra cleared his throat before pushing his rectangular eyewear further up onto his nose. The sound of further noise is heard: Ezra throwing his feet up on Monroe's desk, rustling of papers from a file, and the rapid clicking of a pen back and forth.

"Statement of Tanner Butler, regarding his late wife's ailing mental health in the time before her passing.

The sound of the clicking pen stops.

"Original Statement given November 11, 2020. Audio recording by Archival Assistant Ezra West, in absence of our Head Archivist." Ezra said, his voice now monotone.

"Beginning statement…"

My wife was sick. I know that now. I just couldn't help thinking that if I got her to therapy she'd be okay you know? Maybe I waited too long. I guess I was just in denial. I would have hated to force her to go somewhere she didn't want to be, and I know she didn't want to go to therapy. I just wanted to support her and damn it all I…

I'll start from the beginning. Diane Walsh was always a soft spoken girl, shy, but hid a great deal of smarts. How she ever chose to spend her life with a guy like me, I'll never understand. I was a custodian at the university where she taught maths. It wasn't near as romantic a meet up as you think, not like one of those novels. I thought it was gonna be a one night stand, but it turned into something more. You'd have to have been around her to really understand, but she had so much love in her heart to give. She cared about every student in her class, every member of the staff, right down to the custodians. I couldn't break things off, especially after she started bringing me a coffee every morning. Heh, maybe I just wasn't the romantic one.

I remember during that time, I'd ask her why she liked me so much. At first, she'd say it was simple math, I liked her and she liked me. I thought she was cute, she thought I was cute. It just all made sense, all added up. Didn't have to be much more than that. Later she was telling me things, like how comforting I was, or that I was a good listener. Which I did always try to be. Diane had a rough go of it in life before she started working. Her dad was a maths professor too, and she wanted to be just like him.

So day in, and day out I'd find time to be out with her. Just to listen to what all she was feeling. It made me happy to be that for her. Eventually we got married, she proposed to me which may not be surprising. Gold band that fit my hand perfectly, she was real good at that kinda math too. I was a real lucky guy to have her I'd say. She'd say luck had nothing to do with it. Things were perfect. I'd never been happier in my life.

We moved in together, and I'd say it was heaven on earth really. Ten years we never had a single hiccup. Least, nothing major. Sure sometimes she'd get mad if I got a little lazy from time to time, we'd bicker here and there, oftentimes I'd realize I was wrong and let her know I'd do better.

Then one day we got a letter in the mail for her. Didn't have a return address which I thought was odd, but I never felt right about opening her stuff for her or anything. So I brought it to her, and she had the same reaction. The envelope itself was addressed in English, but the letter inside was written in Hindi, I think. I didn't know how to read it, but Diane did. Her grandmother was from India, and her immediate family all knew it pretty fluently. So I assumed the letter was from a distant relative.

I asked her what it was about, and she said they had found some of her father's belongings and were sending it to her. By this time I had heard all about her family, and I knew she didn't like to talk about it, so I didn't push. See, Diane's mom had died in childbirth, and she was raised by her dad. Then, when she was nineteen her dad… well he'd been found dead. They labeled it a suicide, and Diane seemed to agree with that conclusion. He had been acting strangely all leading up to his death, and I guess in hindsight I should've figured things out when the same started happening with her.

She was always real broken up about it whenever she did tell me, and I guess now I know how she must have felt. But I need to tell someone. Because what happened to her, and maybe her dad, wasn't normal.

Those belongings she received from her father were notebooks, old research that he had done. But some of this stuff seemed far older, like maybe spanning multiple generations. It didn't take her long to become obsessed, and at first I supported it. I thought it may bring her some peace or closure when it came to her father.

But it didn't.

She started turning up at work less and less. To the point where I had other professors at the school coming to me to ask about her. I always told them she was fine, because… well I believed it. I just thought she was really trying to crack this stuff, and that once she figured it out, things would go back to normal.

Damn it all, if I could go back…

I'm getting off track again. I asked her one time what all the stuff she was reading was about. She went into some at length discussion about how the human body is just a math problem waiting to be solved. I guess discussion is the wrong word, I didn't say much of anything when she was talking. Just tried my best to listen.

If I had to guess, it was about all that ten percent of the brain stuff. I wish I knew more I really do. But I just couldn't understand anything she told me, and I can't repeat it. She kept telling me it was something groundbreaking, that it would change the world. Help cure people of a bunch of different types of ailments. Started talking like she had found a miracle in a bunch of numbers.

That part of her I do miss a lot. The excitement she had, for the chance at helping others. She was selfless! She didn't deserve to…

I suppose I should just… skip to how it ended up. It went on for a year. Eventually, she stopped coming into work entirely. Spent all of her time cooped up in her home office. I wasn't worried, she had always had a handle on things. She was smarter than me, and I thought she'd know when she was pushing herself too far.

I'd find her some nights, lying down on the desk and I'd bring a blanket and wrap her up in it. Make some hot cocoa and leave it for her if I woke up before her. I remember one morning, I was drinking coffee outside the front door. She came out still wrapped in the blanket I gave her and looked at me.

She asked how long she'd been at it for, and to be fair I didn't really keep up with the exact time, so I just told her it was getting close to a year. I remember the look she had on her face. No surprise, or shock. It was an acceptance.

I asked her if she was okay. If she needed help. I told her if she wanted me to call a doctor for her I would do it in a heartbeat. But she walked up to me, and for the first time since those books came in, she really looked at me.

Said she was sorry, that she was close to being done. That after all this was over, things could go back to the way they were. I remember taking her hands, and telling her that I understood. I knew how important it was to her, and didn't want to get in her way. She grabbed my face, and kissed me, and all the memories of our life thus far came flooding back.

After that, I went back to work reinvigorated, happy that she'd soon be done. I had missed having her close every night, going to work with her every day, and just hearing her voice. The giddiness she always had, before the exhaustion of this research set in. I rest assured that we were nearly over that bump in the road.

Then when I came home that day… She was gone. All that was left was her blood, scrawled all over the walls of her office. Scrawled in patterns and formulas. The research and the books were all gone.

When the police tested the blood, they concluded it was hers. God it made me sick. There was so much that they said she couldn't have survived, but there was no body. No indication that she'd left the house or anyone had come in.

I had to leave after that. I hoped for a long time that she'd just turn back up on the doorstep one day, that things would go back to how they were, just like she said. I guess I know better by now. I just hope she's at peace. That maybe there is some sliver of a chance that she figured all this out. I've even caught myself theorizing that she learned something so revolutionary that the government took her.

I've told all this to the police, but I know your organization looks into stuff like this too. So if you find out any-

"Ezra!" A smarmy masculine voice called from the office door. Ezra looked up from a daze and made eye contact with one Craig Stevens. The annoyed tapping of his foot is heard plainly as he stands with the door to the Head Archivist's office open.

"Yes Craig, how can I help you this evening?" Ezra replied without much thought.

"I've been looking all over the fucking office for you. I got another one of the damn Leitners again. I swear on Christ above, if we don't vet these things better-"

"You're still in one piece aren't you? Then get a hold of yourself."

"Aye, but one of these days this shite is gonna kill me. You should see what it did to my desk!"

Craig lets the door slam shut, cursing as he makes way out of recording range.

Ezra lets out a small groan, as he looks again at the empty bottle.

"There's no way we're paid enough for this. Oh um… end recording."

Click.