Your avatarsona has plagued me since the day you posted it and it sort of inspired me to write this jumbled mess of a fanmade statement? It’s probably not accurate at all but I had fun! And I hope you enjoy it!
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Statement of Kenneth Ragin, regarding the disappearance of his mother Joanne Ragin after an encounter with a strange man on a peer. Original statement given August 12, 2011. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.
Statement begins.
There’s a difference between being lonely and being truly alone.
Not many people seem to realize that, the more I think about it. I don’t think I realized that either until… well…
I was always aware of it. I would have considered myself a bit of recluse, to be honest. I called myself lonely but I wasn’t alone, not really. I was by myself most of the time but I was never truly, honestly alone. I wasn’t… abandoned, for lack of a better word. Forsaken, maybe? No… that doesn’t fit either. I’ll tell you if I ever do find the right one.
The only way I could describe it is… hm…
The only way I could describe it is… being in my own company but knowing that in the back of my mind, there are still people for me to turn to. There are still people there for me to lean on. It was like a safety blanket, a layer of protection and warmth that I didn’t realize was there nor did I realize how much I took for granted.
I suppose, after this, I could put it in the way that… I may have been alone but I always had somewhere to go. I wasn’t lost because I always had a place to return to.
That doesn’t matter now. I don’t have anyone. Or any home. Or any place.
But I came here to tell my story so… I guess… I guess we’ll start…
I’ve always liked being alone. I was a solitary kid, quiet for the most part but I never minded company. I was indifferent to it, looking back on my childhood. I didn’t mind the other kids but I’d much rather walk in endless circles around the base of the old oak tree in my neighbors front lawn, daydreaming aimlessly.
I think my mom worried, when she was still here. My mother not so much. She seemed to understand me. Apparently, she was much the same. Head in the clouds, drifting through life without giving a damn about the things that really mattered. But she nudged me into making friends when I needed to, almost like a reminder that I couldn’t be alone forever.
I think I know why now. I think I see why now.
It was… nice. It was good. She did that for a long time, even after my mom died. It hit her hard but she loved me more than the grief and that’s something I’ll always be grateful for. My mom’s passing was the first tug of that blanket, slipping down and leaving me cold and shivering. But my mother was there to pull it back up and tuck me back in.
I suppose she was my safety blanket.
I hope I was hers. I think I was hers. But… I don’t think I did good enough. Maybe if I had been more attentive, if I had cared a little more, if I had been there for her just as much as she was for me then maybe she would have still been here.
My mom’s passing must have done the same to her safety as it had done to me. I was just too… /stupid/ to realize. But… it’s too late now.
She was my safety blanket. And I was hers.
That all changed when she just… went missing. Gone, just like that. She was there one day and then the next? Poof. The most important person in my life just… gone out of thin air. I don’t know what happened to her, I don’t know why she disappeared, but I know it had to do with that… that wretched man and his cursed peer.
We were visiting the beach that day.
It was cold, I remember that. Cold and humid. The type of humid that stuck to your skin and crawled against your scalp, leaving you damp and uncomfortable. But I didn’t mind it, or maybe I just didn’t notice it. I don’t really know anymore. It all blurs together.
I was too focused on the fog. It was thick and grey, too suffocating and potent to be normal. We couldn’t even see more than three feet in front of us. It would have been more accurate to call it smog more than fog.
It was so dark that it blocked out the sun. If my mother hadn’t had a watch I would have thought it long into sunset by now. But no, today was supposed to be a bright, sunny afternoon. It was why we chose to go. I wish we hadn’t. She would have still been here if we hadn’t.
We should have turned tale the second we stepped on that beach. I wasn’t the only one who was uncomfortable. My mother noticed and commented on it, cracking a dry joke that got a laugh out of me. There was something wrong with that beach, something off. I just don’t know why it was different that day. It had never been like that.
Every part of me wanted to run and yet… I didn’t. We didn’t.
Instead, my mother grabbed a dusty torch we kept in the car for safe keeping and flicked it on. We pushed forward. She had wanted to go to the beach for so long and I suppose it was enough for her to ignore it. And she was enough for me to ignore it too.
It was oddly peaceful. At the time I just thought that it was comfortable, settling into the lull of the waves crashing and the silence that came with my mother’s company. I was wrong. I was wrong about a lot of things that day. There was something unnatural by that calm, by that stillness.
There was no wind, there wasn’t even a breeze. Just thick fog and the nearly deafening sound of the waves on the shore. It was like the fog muffled everything else, like a pillow held over my ears. The sound of our footsteps seemed to disperse into nothing the second the noise hit it. Only the waves could be heard.
The more we walked on that beach the more I couldn’t think. It was this honey sweet thickness that slowed my mind and thoughts, made every step and every movement lead heavy. I felt lethargic, lost. The more we walked on that beach, the more I seemed to forget my mother was right beside me.
I don’t think I had never felt more alone in my life.
I remember distantly wanting to stop. Just stop. Stop right where I was and never move again. Stop moving, stop trying, stop caring. Because god, it would have been so much easier than this. It would have been so much easier than trying to force my muscles to move and my brain to work. It would have been so much easier than caring.
For some reason I didn’t stop.
Thank god I didn’t.
By the time we caught sight of the peer, I thought the ringing in my ears and the static in my finger tips would consume me. Eat me alive and let me wallow in the rot of my loneliness. The torturously sweet, beautiful numbness and silence of it. It was rising in a fucked up crescendo that I was drowning in and I don’t think I would have minded. I was so lonely.
But the second my eyes landed on that peer, I was snapped out of whatever trance I was trapped in.
It was jarring, dizzying. It left my head throbbing, the breath punched out of my lungs and out of my lips. Suddenly, that loneliness was gone and all that was left was lightning quick thoughts and the realization of where I was and what I was feeling. And what I was feeling was wrong. What I was feeling demanded me to run, stumble across the sand and back into the car.
It was a sick feeling. It swirled in my stomach and rose up my throat like bile. It might have been bile, if the burn told me anything. Then again, I can’t be sure of anything that happened on that beach.
When I turned to grab my mother, all there was was the flashlight she held previously lying in the sand, feebly lighting the path in front of it.
And just like that feeling of unease, I knew where she was. I don’t know why I was so certain, I don’t know why I was so sure, I just knew. Just like you know the sky is blue. I looked up and there she was.
There she was, stepping through the fog as she moved toward the peer. Up the peer. Onto the peer. The fog wrapped around her like it was trying to grab her, consume her, and it probably was. Her very movements were slow and sluggish. Like she was too tired to move, too exhausted to care.
I didn’t move. I couldn’t move. My muscles were locked in place as I watched her, one torturous step after the other. I wish I moved. Why didn’t I move?
Once she made it to the top, she stopped by a man. He looked normal, all things considered, with long, brownish-ginger hair. The only strange thing about him was how pale he was and how dull his eyes were. Like they were glazed over with the fog that surrounded him.
There was a weight to him, a heaviness that he carried. Like the silence came from him, his whole entire body exerting the fog that hushed the wind and deafened my foot steps.
And just like that unease, just like I knew the sky was blue, just like I knew exactly where my mother was going, I knew in that moment that this man wasn’t human. I knew in that moment that the fog and the silence and the honey sweet static was because of him. It came from him. His whole body, every cell in his skin right down to his dull, empty eyes.
I wondered why he wasn’t taking me.
I wondered why he couldn’t take me.
He looked at me then, like he heard my question. He was expressionless, cold and lifeless and suffocating just like the fog he commanded. I shouldn’t have been able to hear what he said, he was too far away. But over the silence of that beach, over the stillness of the peer, I heard him as clear as a church bell.
His voice was deafening. I think I fell to my knees then, clamping my hands over my ears and cowering from the pain of it. It shouldn’t have hurt. He was so quiet… so soft-spoken and yet my ears rung for days afterward.
“You are not truly lost until you have nowhere left to go,” he had said.
I don’t know much of what happened afterward. Just brief, vague feelings and images. I don’t know how I escaped that place, I don’t know what happened. I just know that my mother was taken because of the man and that peer.
I haven’t seen my mother or that man with his fog and his silence ever since.
As ironic as it is, I feel that loneliness everyday now. Growing heavier and heavier with each passing moment I’m awake. It weighs on me, makes my limbs heavy and head sluggish. And he was right. I no longer have a place to go, I no longer have a safety blanket to cling to.
And I have never felt more lost in my life.
I can’t bring myself to care about anything. I can’t bring myself to think. My life has gone to shit and I have lost everything I have ever held dear and I… I simply don’t care. I know that my mother is dead and long gone. Probably eaten alive by the loneliness that plagues me now, that plagued her then.
I wonder if this was how she felt.
I don’t go to beaches anymore.
But I think I might visit that peer again.
Statement ends.
There isn’t much we can do with this statement. There is nothing we could follow up on, only the fact that Mr. Ragin’s mother did, indeed, pass away in May of 2004 and the fact that his other mother was reported as a missing persons on November 2nd, 2009. He didn’t give us a name for this beach, nor can we track it down.
There are hundreds of beaches with just as many peers and none of them have ever been reported to have as severe fog as Mr. Ragin describes.
However, what should be noted is that Mr. Ragin himself was reported missing not too long after this statement was taken. Three months. A coworker stated that the last time they had seen him, he said he was going to visit a beach over the weekend. No one has ever seen or heard from Mr. Ragin ever since.
End recording.
Oh ??? My God!!!!
This is amazing oh my gosh!! I have no idea how you wrote this so fast. This is absolutely beautifully written and is deeply haunted! 100% being added to the canon of my sona. I didn’t really have anything concrete lore wise but this for sure is part of the lore now! You really captured a great energy that fits so well with the drawing ! I really love this oh my God thank you so much!!
