An old, yellowed statement (Case: ERROR-COULDN'T ASSIGN CASE NR)
Statement of ARTHUR LESTER
Regarding his alleged madness and the cause behind his blindness.
Statement taken direct from subject (according to label on case of magnetic tape:) winter of 1935, undated.
Transcript of recording on magnetophon, 1935 – August 14th, 2015.
Transcribed by Sasha James – M.I., London
Statement has 1 (one) attachment.
Note: There is no further data to the attachment. The way of and date of its aquirement is unclear. By its juristic nature it was excluded from further research.
Attached:
[Copy of what appears to be an Arkham PD or FBI case file on Arkham fugitive ARTHUR LESTER
it details:
Citizenship and residence: Arkham, Massachusettes (United States of America).
Descent: British.
Age: 35.
Sex: male.
Height: average, slightly above average.
Occupation: private investigator.
at: 13 Mosby Avenue, Lester & Yang Private Investigative Office (previously: Cummings P.I.O.)
Location: unknown.
Profile: unstable (?), outwardly sound, highly dangerous. Possibly completely insane. Accounts on his possibly compromised eyessight inconclusive.
Status: fugitive.
Criminal record: unknown (/unprovided).
Account(s): voluntary manslaughter, suspected murder, avoidance of criminal justice.
motive: unknown. ]
Attachment ends.
Statement follows.
Transcriber’s note (in case of a need for clarification):
Recording is in good condition and recoverable, but obviously corrupted in some way, as if with an overlaying audio. A voice can sometimes be heard but not understood, and there’s no apparent acknowlegment to this from the two speakers. It has a different quality from the recording. Research on magnetic tape contamination needed.
Statement begins.
SPEAKER 1 [Assumed worker at the Magnus Institute. Female(?), age not discernible.]
The recording is just a formality, you understand. Good to put the machine to use.
ARTHUR LESTER
Hm, of course. I'm sure.
SPEAKER 1
This is a long way to come, from America. Just visiting the Institute, you said?
ARTHUR LESTER
Yes. For the sake of the... type of work your organization does here. There aren’t many, almost no other initiatives doing research of this scale, on- well. And England has called to me for the past few years anyway.
Recently I found traces back in the States- [He cuts off. He continues after an unexplained silence, voice slightly raised.] I found plans for a foundation, but it doesn’t seem to exist. A... friend pointed me to Chelsea.
SPEAKER 1
So do you have a story?
ARTHUR LESTER
N-no. Story? If you’re implying I’m a journalist...
SPEAKER 1
I wasn’t.
You don’t sound American, mister.
ARTHUR LESTER
I haven’t been living there long. In Arkham.
SPEAKER 1
Arkham?
[Silence.]
SPEAKER 1
You mentioned you were gifted a book when you saw the name JD Ackerman’s shop? As you can see, we have a few of his rare collection. If you could, please state your name for the purpose of the recording. You can make a statement for the Institute.
ARTHUR LESTER
My name is . . . M-my name . . .
SPEAKER 1
If you would, Mr. Lester.
ARTHUR LESTER
[Through teeth] Yes. [Silence.] I can’t seem to... Of course. [He takes a shuddering breath.] My name is Arthur Lester. I’m a... I was a private eye, in Arkham.
I was quite good at detective work. It’s something I’m still good at, something still me about me. Though it seems I have to learn to share that, too, eh?... I prefer not to think about why I had to leave Arkham, but it’s actually related to why I came here, and it’s not because of the storms over the pond. To you, to London. To ask some questions.
You are quite hard to judge just by looking at you, I see w- I’ve underestimated you. I would like to find out what you do. I can’t help the need to get to the bottom of this, I’ve been at it for so long... But promises to keep and miles to go before we sleep and so on. Heh.
I could start my story with my wife, or... Faroe. But you don’t want to hear about that. Well, except for the slim hope I still find myself carrying, that after all of the regret that was my life before, I’m deserving of absolution. That I can wash my hands clean, instead of having to live with what I’d done. It’s like a lighter you can’t keep your fingers from playing with.
But the thing that actually started all of this, was the book.
It was bound, you see. With brown paper, just like evidence I sometimes got from the p- the police in Arkham, in exchange for a few beers if you would believe it. But it was no crime scene photo that was in the box. The book had a dark glow about it, something I regrettably lost the ability to see since, though it would indubitably help my judgement these days. Not that it helped then. You should understand, I didn’t just feel an aversion from the fucking thing, although it was of a material that was strange to the touch, and adorned with a symbol I didn’t know but was able to make an educated guess as to how inadvisable it was for me to look at – I knew, with certainty, that I shouldn’t open it. It wasn’t rational, however, and I investigate things for a living for a reason. I was morbidly curious as to what could be in such a book.
Well, from a certain angle it really was just a book, yeah.
I didn’t see as much in opening it as I’d hoped. You know, [he laughs] when I think back on it, my only real regret is that my gun happened to be close at hand. The man I was wouldn’t believe me saying this. I have no festering reproach. It’s nice to say out loud. Do I grieve Parker? Of course. There’s no moment I don’t. But the event itself... [Somber] My life hasn’t been the same.
It was also the day my vision went dark. And it felt more than just minutes, but that’s all it took before I lost feeling in my left hand. Not that that didn’t end up serving me in a way.
Do you know what it’s like getting used to your eyes not being your own? Sometimes I can feel myself blink in my sleep, or while I drift. Yeah, I can. And I get veteran pains from where my hand used to be, except it’s right there when I reach out to squeeze it better. But it’s not my hand? I hold out my arm whenever I walk into something in reflex, and my hand gets in the way, and I have to apologize for it. I can’t even think how other people, blind people do this without...
A friend. Without madness, truly. No, it is madness, still I can’t agree when people say it: it’s madness for a different reason. I’m not talking to myself in an empty street. I am mad though, else I wouldn’t go along with this all, blindly. I should have curled up and died in the very beginning. And I never would have learned why I would feel that it were a shame now, had it happened, had I been hanged in Arkham with the blood of two men on my hands.
On my right hand and his left hand.
I never knew how lonely I was. I suppose I did, but not like this, like the way I know now. In the state we’re in, now I have a problem with imagining being alone. You’re never really alone with a voice in your head.
Let’s not talk about whose voice it is. I can see all that matters about him anyway, not that he doesn’t tell me.
I’m not afraid of him. I won’t lie and say I never was, and I won’t try to pretend I don’t get anxious sometimes still. But it turns out you can grow attached to a third arm, and even rely on it. Especially when this metaphorical arm asks so fucking nicely. You know, it grows on you, and you have to work around it and find a way for it not to choke you but were it severed now? I feel like I would surely bleed to death. Well, actually I’m inclined to, when it happens. I almost did. I resented a substitute for not being him, like I’ve never resented anything before. I... Gave up a life on my own I got handed when he was ripped from me.
I can’t think too long about how seamless it is for him to be inside my head, how it’s his nature. I can hear his voice but he can also hear mine, and that makes a difference, it has to. And it proves to, I think. One bite at a time.
I influence him but oh, does he influence me. Sometimes I think I’ve lost all reason, sometimes it’s me who’s the inhuman entity and not him. It used to be so easy to tell where I ended and he began; now, not so much. I’m changed. He says for the better, that there’s only one direction and that is forward but the last time I stopped to wonder what a nurse in a mental institute might say about the same thing was months ago.
There are other horrors I’ve brushed with. Things, hell, gods, I don’t know. There’s some names I heard. Shub- [he stops abruptly.] The Mother- Ne-
[He fights to take in a breath. He groans. It is unclear wether he’s meant to be listing names or trying to say a single one. Then, he bites out the next, voice lower.]
Cain. [/Kayne?] And of course, the king. What do you know about the Dark World? There are some great... Things, that make our world look fragile in comparison. But it is possible to learn about them, I know some people have written books, at least. And there are cults dedicated to them. Secret societies, tied in with these... worshippers.
He won’t talk about it or at least I don’t trust what he says he knows. I thought maybe you would know something. Is Dr. Henry Armitage corresponding with you? He is a respected, some said even revered man in the scienece of humanities, yet I only knew his name as a researcher at Miskatonic. But his name came up along both cultists and the case of a poor dismembered girl, and two others who disappeared, and Ackerman’s store; too much with too little in common for it to be coincidence.
The thing that ties these together are twisted and... perverse rituals that some idiots deem worth organizing and kidnapping for. Armitage studies them. I know from a reliable source that he may have others helping him. Since I couldn’t get a hearing with him, I came to you. I came here on a limb but your Institute’s name has a certain ring to it in all circles connected to the mythos. No information about this sort of thing is given willingly or without some effort from us. I believe I may have beaten someone to death. It is because I’m a PI, sure, but I would be lying if I said I don’t delight in every drop of blood I draw from these fanatics. I may have killed seven people, but I don’t know for sure: and I don’t keep count.
So I myself have collected my own... Intel on these damn cults along the way. But the picture keeps growing and growing and it is always harder to see through and my head swims when I think about it and I sink and I’m locked in tight at the same time...
At every level, there’s always the cultists. They would keep themselves and others in terror every day, only to hope for something in return from these forces, these monstrous gods – hope in vain. If there’s one thing that’s plain to see, it’s that there might be comfort to their insanity, but there’s also so anaesthethic to the process. Serves them right.
I know how it must be like to hear me cast judgement. [His voice changes abruptly, he continues with clear affection.] But if only you could hear him: some do, but they cease to be human by the time they get there. If they ever were. I once met a man who said he could hear him speak to me. The unfortunate sod scared me, scared us both. I... forget, if he actually could. I killed him. Not- not over that.
But it wasn’t the first time I did that. And not the last. Most definitely not the worst.
He broke me, I think, only once. Well, not him, the other Him. The king. He wore his face and made me dream... I rarely sleep, haven’t before but I almost never do now. I can only sleep if I don’t dream. If I dream, I fear he’s behind it, I fear what I do. It would be easy to say I stooped lowest while in a dream, but you don’t get that hungry in a dream. In the barren Dreamlands, you do. And you’ll do anything. I... did.
These great un-gods, they influence our dreams and our waking hour, but everything else, too. They influence our history. I’ve found constructs not erected by man, and men where there shouldn’t have been a living soul. They break humans and leave destruction in their wake, that is if they leave anything. The cultists’ actions are their own and so are mine, though sometimes I feel like even the hand that’s my own betrays me. But I’ve seen them... I see...
[Breaking, in a different tone and volume, unclear to whom.]
I can feel someone watching. [With growing terror.] I can feel that something’s... John. John, no, I don’t mean the archivist- something else is looking at me, John, wha-
[Two people stand at the same time, it is not discernible who’s first. Sounds of something that could be a scuffle. Furniture is moved, possibly thrown. There’s a sound of fabric tearing and a louder thud. Then scrambled footsteps.]
[ARTHUR LESTER again, voice more aggravated, out of breath.]
Tell me where- This high? No, then here? Well, it’s a moving ta-
[A gun is shot two times. Then a yelp, a thud timed with ARTHUR LESTER whimpering, possibly muttering something repeatedly. He speaks, apparently to himself, still alert.]
Where..? Ri- r- okay. [Muffled mumbling again.] Fuck.
[Footsteps retreating, as if up a staircase, sound of skin on metal and a door opens and closes.]
[Silence.]
[Movement in the room. By the sounds, a single person remains. The sound of something wet. An elongated moan, more movement. Silence again, then the female(?) voice. A hitched, shocked but what sounds as an amused giggle. It contiues for a while before the magnetophon clicks off.]
Statement ends.
End transcript.