TRANSCRIPT: SOMNARIUM. – SYN.001 – Going To See The Dinosaurs
Case of Lukas Stonebridge, request for consultation denied by Dr. Susan Renwyck on March 18th, 2009.
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[HDD spins up]
So… I’ve got something different today.
Maddy was tinkering around with the hard drive and managed to unlock a new folder.
She said she found yet another hidden partition.
Really makes me wonder just how many more things there are hidden on this drive.
Anyway, the folder is a collection of case files that are structured differently. And from what I can tell they’re cases that Renwyck never accepted.
The usual stuff is there, patient application, some of Renwyck’s thoughts, even the occasional sleep diary.
But… no consultation. Renwyck never even met the people in these files. I guess she must not have noticed the pattern in these cases.
[pause]
First one is…
A guy who has a streak of bad luck, drinks too much and ends up getting disoriented and lost before ending up in the Noren City Zoo.
This should be good.
[clears throat]
Case of Lukas Stonebridge, request for consultation denied by Dr. Susan Renwyck on March 18th, 2009.
PATIENT APPLICATION
Applicant: Lukas Stonebridge
Date: March 11th, 2009
Hello, I’m writing to you because, well honestly, I looked up “sleep clinic” in my friend’s Noren city phone book and you were the first one I found. When I called your office the lady on the line told me you required a formal applicant letter and that I should keep a sleep diary until I get a response. It seems like you’re pretty swamped with clients lately; the lady had to put me on hold twice during my call. Hope you can find time to talk about my situation. I understand it’s strange but I really think I might need help.
I’m back in Noren again. After all these years I’m back. The city is the same in a lot of ways. The towers downtown have gotten taller, the city has spread out and metastasized its way up the arteries of surrounding roads, but it’s still the same. The essential character of the city, whatever that might be, has not changed; I have changed, though. I left Noren a bold 20 something dreaming of a career in publishing. I came back at the tail-end of my 30s with a severance cheque in the mail and a three year marriage torched and scattered to the winds. There can be comfort coming back to something that is in its way constant, but it can also remind you how much you have changed.
I had almost nobody in Noren from the old days. Nobody but Brett Harding. Brett and I had been inseparable from grade school to university. When I moved, we made all the usual promises to stay in touch and we really did for a while, but the phone calls petered out into longer and longer stretches of silence. When Evelynn kicked me out I was too proud to call my parents, too ashamed to face any of our mutual friends, so I called Brett and he told me he could spare a couch for a week or two until I had things figured out.
We tried to catch up. It went nowhere. For me, the recent past was an open wound and every question a prod. I deflected, and the conversation moved on and we dabbled in the safe ground of reminiscing about old times for a while. Eventually he suggested that I should get my mind off everything by hitting a couple clubs. I countered that we were both past our best clubbing days; he told me he knew a few places where we’d still fit in. “Old Noren has a good scene these days,” he said as we walked into the needling wind of an early Noren spring.
Brett was my guide in Old Noren. The oldest part of the city is a maze from before the days of urban planning. It felt strange to be so lost in such a familiar place. It was only a twenty minute walk but it was enough for me to lose all sense of direction. I smoked while we waited in line, blowing streaks of smoke into the evening air that were whisked away down the street. Brett pulled out a little altoids tin and shook out three rectangular pills into his gloved hand. He told me to take one, that it would make the drinks hit harder and help take the edge off. I only hesitated a moment. I wanted more than anything to be lost to myself and the world. I swallowed two of them dry .
It was all a series of impressions. The throb of bass in my chest, the cottony press of loud music, faces, and lights. The bar, the familiar burn of alcohol, the dance floor, the press of bodies. I was in the toilet, ears ringing and head spinning pleasantly. The night had moved fast, the pills and alcohol turning my memory into a streak of hazy light when a sudden thought lit up my brain like a flash of lightning: Evelynn. Maybe she had called me. I fumbled around for my phone, it wasn’t in my pockets. Panic swelled up in my throat for a moment and the pleasant head spin curdled into a sort of vertigo before I realized: I must have left it in Brett’s apartment. The swell of panic subsided but did not disappear. I collected myself and stepped back into the pounding noise.
Brett had found a girl. They leaned against the wall, far from the blasting speakers, entwined around each other and I realized that all around me people were paired together. An absence, until then half-felt, slammed home with full force and the barely suppressed panic surged forward and swallowed me whole. I was moving, pushing blindly through the dance floor spilling drinks and making people stumble and swear. It was all noise as I moved towards the dark hole of the exit. I tripped on my way out, going down to a knee amongst the crowd. My glasses had only been holding on by a hair, and they flew from my face and hit the ground, turning the world into a smeary mess. The crunch couldn’t have been heard over the roar of the music but I could swear I could feel it as a booted foot slammed down on them. They were handed back to me by a bleary watercolour painting of a man’s face. I squinted through the single remaining spiderwebbed lens as I made my way to the door and into the night.
The cold of the night was a relief. The faintly whistling wind wicked the flush of panic from me as I stared out blindly into the night through my remaining ruined lens. The street was quiet on a weeknight. Hazy figures moved between distant streetlights into seas of darkness between. The alcohol, pills, and outflow of adrenaline left me in a brief stupor before the club’s bouncer told me to keep moving and quit crowding the door. I obeyed meekly, turning in the direction of Brett’s apartment and started to walk. He had given me a spare key, and even if I was sure he would be upset that I ditched him, I couldn’t face the idea of turning back towards that music and all the dancing, writhing pairs of people. Even as I took my first few steps, the cold had turned from relief to discomfort as I hunched my head as I walked out from under the streetlight and into the dark.
I was lost by my first turn, although I didn’t know it. I’ve tried to retrace my path that night since but I can’t make sense of it. I can’t correlate the roads on my flimsy tourist map to any of the dark and narrow ways I passed through. Every path and intersection seemed to lead to an emptier street, and every street lamp seemed further than the next. I couldn’t read the street signs through my shattered cracked lens and mental haze. Even when I squinted through a clear sliver of the glass to read a couple letters at a time the names seemed to leak out of my head. I remember that I walked past the shape of a blue payphone and didn’t even think about calling a cab. Four or five turns later when the streets had emptied out and the houses seemed to lean over me with ill intent, I decided I would go back to the payphone. I must have walked for ten minutes before realizing that I wasn’t going to find it again. My body felt heavier with every step, the effect of the pills seeming to increase the pull of gravity, but every time I slowed or stopped, a gust of needle-fingered cold would galvanize me to push forward another block in search of something familiar or a person to beg for help. I remember standing on an old stone bridge looking down into a river that ran fast and dark underfoot. Each end of the bridge was flanked by a pair of stone lions that were deformed by time and darkness into crude gargoyles. I lingered there for a while, looking at the reflections of the streetlight in the water before the cold finally pushed me onwards.
Somewhere deep in Old Noren, the Noren Memorial Zoo sits brooding. A great compound of brick and wrought iron fencing. All the animals are gone now, they closed the zoo years ago, but the big empty complex has yet to be demolished or repurposed. I came back to myself in the parking lot of the Memorial Zoo. My hands and feet were numb and my teeth were chattering. The ground seemed to tilt underfoot. I squinted blindly through my shattered lens looking for somewhere to shelter before I saw a familiar flash of blue. A pay phone station right by the rusty shutters of the zoo. I stumbled to the phone which hung from its cord like a lone executed man. I winced when I put the cold plastic to my ear and let out a half sob when I heard a dial tone. 911, a slurred plea, “please stay on the line, sir. We’re going to send someone to help”, an ambulance, the squeeze of a blood pressure cuff, a hospital room, and sleep. That was one of the last peaceful sleeps I have had for nearly a week now.
The dreams started my first night after being discharged from the hospital. I was more or less housebound without my glasses. I squinted around the yellow pages for an optometrist and made a couple phone calls before realizing that a pair of new glasses could take a couple weeks if I was lucky. Since I couldn’t bring myself to leave the apartment after the awful night before, I decided that a nap would be the best course of action. Even as I lay in bed, the visions of last night kept flicking through my head until I drifted off.
Old Noren is almost as it was when I was younger. Back in the days Brett and I would ride the bus through this side of town on our way to the mall or back. The buildings are tall and whitewashed. I’m standing under the pooling orange glow of a streetlight amidst the penumbral shadow. I can’t remember if I just stepped off that old bus or if I stumbled my way out of a club but I’m alone in the street. Is the smell in the air cigarettes or exhaust fumes? I look up and down the street for a clue as to which way might lead home but this place that is nearly Old Noren refuses to give a clue. The streetlight flickers and the ethereal sense of safety of the light is banished. It’s as clear a signal as the starting gun of a race. I pick a direction and start walking towards a distant intersection.
With every twist and turn the streets grow stranger. Some streets are lit with the old orangey incandescents of my childhood, while some are washed in modern pale gold. With every turn I am not only less sure of where I am but when I am or who I am. I am sure of one thing, though. With each corner, each new street, the buildings loom taller and their shadowy windows and awnings gape deeper. The shadows seemed to greedily swallow the sound of my footsteps on the cement and leave only a growing sense of space and silence. Whenever a light above me would flicker or one behind me would go out I would sprint to the next oasis before the dark could catch me.
Every night is the same. No resolution, no answers. But there’s a growing sense of proximity. That there’s something in my dream that I am approaching without my intent. Somewhere that when I try to find home, I am doomed to find instead. When I wake I struggle to ground myself in the world. I feel exhausted and disjointed. I expect to wake up with Lyn beside me, or in my childhood bedroom and when I realize I’m on Brett’s couch I have to reorient myself. It’s silly, I know, but this exhaustion and confusion is really getting to me. I’m just hoping you can prescribe me some exercises or medication that could get me through a night in peace. I’m keeping a sleep diary like your receptionist recommended. Please get back to me soon.
SLEEP DIARY
[All prior entries corrupted]
Monday, March 16th, 2009
Blue, the phone was blue. Or maybe it was yellow? It’s so hard to remember this morning. When I was a kid the pay phones were all yellow. The kids at my school called making a phone call “chatting with the banana” or something similar. I had been wandering in the dream again. With every turn that sense of progress increased and with it a growing dread. The buildings loomed taller and stranger and light and shadow met with razor-edged definition. I arrived at a T-intersection and on impulse I turned to my right. The pay phone sat directly beneath the next light. The light above it seemed to flicker between shades. First deep and hazy orange, then a lucid gold. It’s a strange thing, I don’t want to approach it. I look right to see the street disappear into complete shadow. I know I can’t turn back. I take the first step out from under my streetlight and towards the phone and it starts to ring. I freeze and it’s the only sound in the whole world. Insistent and clear; echoing off of the buildings lining the street and being swallowed in the distant dark. It’s for me of course. I cross the gap like a wary animal and my hand floats trembling at the receiver of a phone that is somehow both blue and yellow. I don’t want to answer. The receiver is at my ear and there is a voice.
“Lukas, don’t be afraid” the voice purrs into the receiver amid a roaring sea of static. “Something wonderful is happening. We’re going to the zoo. We’re going to see the dinosaurs.” I recognize the voice, or rather, I almost do. Through the haze of the poor connection I can’t tell If I am hearing Evelynn or someone else. “We’re going to see the dinosaurs, Lukas. We’re going to see the dinosaurs, we’re going to see…” And then there is a shriek of static and I pull the phone away from my ear as if shocked with 120 volts and there are a sea of voices in the static chanting those words. I turn to run and stop dead. Far, far ahead of me is the zoo. The road to it is straight but even now seems to warp and branch. It’s too vast for my brain to accept. A hulking beast of history looming with its gates wide to accept any and all. Standing at the payphone under the awning of the building, a figure wreathed in surreal and total shadow holding the receiver to her ear and looking towards me. I covered my eyes with my hands and the cacophony of voices faded gradually. When I peeked through the cracks in my fingers I looked up at Brett’s popcorn texture ceiling.
Thursday, March 19th, 2009
It’s still there. In the dreams now, whenever I try to orient myself by the skyline I see it. The Old Noren Zoo stands looming out of all proportion or sense above the other buildings. Whenever I first look up in the dream I see it dead ahead. But I know instinctively, even if I am lost, even if it is the only landmark. I do not want to go there. I do not want to stand in its shadow or pass its threshold. So I try to turn away. I zig left or right onto a gold-hazed street and look for a new route. But the roads betray me. They bend back to face the zoo as if dragged away by gravity or they end in intersections where the only lit street takes me closer by degrees to walking towards the only landmark of this almost-city. It’s like an ultimatum is being handed down to me. I can walk into the dark and be truly lost, or I can move an inch at a time towards a thing that is visible and somehow more unknown. A binary choice repeated ad nauseum until it seems there was never a choice at all. And so, in my winding and reluctant way I approach the Old Noren Zoo and wake with memories of its distant figure in my mind.
If you ever read this Dr. Renwyck, I did call your office again. I was on hold for nearly a half-hour before your receptionist spoke with me. When I asked if I could update my application letter or submit my dream diary for review she was very clear that it would put me back at the start of the queue. I tried to ask her why that would be the case and she said something about how everything was sealed for privacy so it couldn’t be updated once submitted. I’m embarrassed that I didn’t take that in stride. She hung up on me midway through my explanation why that was a stupid policy. The clunk of the receiver stopped me in my tracks just as I was building up steam. For the record, Doctor, I still think it’s a stupid policy but please don’t take what she says about me too seriously. It’s just all this damn stress and these dreams. I am digressing, this is supposed to be a dream journal. I guess I just needed to have that said.
Friday, March 20th, 2009
After last night I felt like I was going stir crazy. It’s been a week now of barely going outside. A week of concerned looks from Brett. A week of sitting, watching the phone on the end table, waiting for a call. I thought I knew the place to go. Somewhere not far, but where I didn’t feel the pressure of all the buildings and streets surrounding me. I boarded the 83 bus south. I knew every stop along the way to Centennial Park.
As I walked the gravel paths between stands of trees I reminisced on Saturday nights spent in the park with Brett hiding in the bushes and getting high on cheap grass. Back then the whole world could move around us but it couldn’t touch us. It felt good to be there, to not be worrying or waiting for a phone call.
When I came to the central pavilion, my nostalgia was cracked by a change in the scenery. The central fountain had been remodeled. It took me a moment to determine what was so wrong with it and only when I had gotten quite close was my vision clear enough to tell. Where once a verdigris bronze statue had stood in the center, now there was a bare pedestal. The fountain was dry and dirty and the whole scene just seemed forlorn. I couldn’t have told you why it bothered me so much, but I suddenly had no desire to linger here. I figured I’d go back to the pond I had passed and have my smoke there.
After I finished my cigarette and sat for a while, I started to make my way back to the bus stop. The clouds promised rain as I wound through the paths I had passed through before. I walked between a copse of white birch that was still bare in the young spring and came to a halt. A split in the path that I did not remember lay ahead of me. Suddenly nervous and indecisive, I picked the path from which the distant sounds of traffic seemed louder. I followed it until I came to another split. I stood still listening as the susurration of the spring breeze through the branches overwhelmed the traffic and left me stranded without reference. I tried to retrace my steps but when I came to the copse of birches I felt a sudden stab of fear. Their pale needle forms and black knots like unblinking eyes or pitiless shadows set me in mind of the looming, evil buildings in my dreams and I couldn’t bear to walk under their grasping branches. I turned again and tried to find a new way along the paths.
The paths I had followed had somehow led me back to the pavilion. It had begun to rain. I drifted towards the fountain. The statue was back, or so I thought. A new figure, it gleamed atop the fountain. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I finally got close enough to recognize it, I had seen the face often enough. It was me. Me as I was when I left Noren for what I thought would be the last time. A lean and smiling face upturned to look the world head on. A bold stature and confidence. Had I ever been like this? Gradually I noticed the flaws. The statue’s posture seemed rigid to the point of pain and the planes of the upturned face channeled the rain into streaks like tear tracks. With a sudden shock I saw that the statue was chained clumsily to the pedestal as if a captive. I didn’t want to follow the statue’s gaze, but I couldn’t help myself. Even above the treeline, Old Noren Zoo loomed. The statue’s tear-streaked face stared towards it with the emotion I had mistook for confidence. In the distance, something immense rumbled inside the zoo. I fled. Fled down the paths and through the trees, every one a skeletal black-eyed birch now, looking for someone to help me, to ground me in sanity. I nearly ran into the pond and when I looked left and right I saw a ratty figure curled up on a park bench. I ran to their side and shook them begging unintelligibly for help and…
I awoke with a shiver and now laying rain-soaked on the bench. The world seemed in flux for a few dizzy moments and then I was sure of the world around me. I retraced my steps and feared an unexpected intersection or bend in the path but it was exactly as I remembered it. I hurried to the bus stop and waited under the shelter as the rain came down in sheets. Even now I can’t quite find the seam in dreaming and waking, but hasn’t it always been that way? It’s hard to think this through. I’m so tired.
Monday, March 23rd, 2009
I picked up my glasses today. I felt a little hopeful that maybe things would turn around somehow, but my dream blew that all away. I was wandering through the not-quite-Noren. The buildings loomed over me with their pale facades and black-hole windows. I feel so very small as I wander from streetlight to streetlight, trying to find some way that will not lead me to the swelling shade of the zoo in the distance. But every turn is a wrong turn, every path leads me on just long enough to lose my sense of direction before I see I have been reoriented back to face the zoo. I remember that I started to call out for help, not caring who found me because anyone would be better than nobody. I shouted for Evelynn, for Brett, for my Parents, for anyone. The empty street swallowed my voice.
When I woke up Brett was shaking me gently. He told me I had been having a nightmare and that I woke him up. He looked at me with concerned eyes and asked if this was really all about Evy, asked if he could help. I might have told him then, but to say anything could put me on the path of saying everything and it’s all so crazy that I couldn’t bear to see how he’d look at me if I let him know I was losing it. So I told him it was nothing. He didn’t let it go. Our discussion devolved into an argument and then a fight. Why couldn’t he have let it go? We both said things the other couldn’t forgive, and he told me I should probably go. He told me that as far as he was concerned, I was a stranger. I’m writing this in my car now. The windows are all fogged up so I can’t see outside at all. It’s better that way really. Now that I have my glasses there’s something threatening about the clarity of the streets. I don’t want to look too long, that way I can pretend the city still looks the same to me at night.
Wednesday, March 25th, 2009
I’ve moved into a motel. A real rats nest at the edge of Old Noren near the highway. It’s really the only place I can afford. Last night I walked the city alone. I hurried from light to light. Trying to outpace the darkness behind me and break from the path of the zoo ahead of me. I thought I heard voices but when I tried to follow I lost them. The rumbling is so often now. There’s something in there. Something in the zoo that is waiting impatiently for me to find my way to it. I’ll make some phone calls tomorrow. I need to see if there is someone else I can stay with.
Thursday, March 26th, 2009
The dream came into focus all at once. The city surrounded me like a cage and Noren Memorial Zoo loomed huge on the horizon. I could hear water running. I could hear footsteps. I could hear people chanting. It was the same words in an idiot chorus. “We’re going to see the dinosaurs” over and over. The chant feels like the start of a nursery rhyme, something that’s incomplete. I followed the voices, winding through the streets until I saw them. A great procession was crossing the bridge flanked by the two stone lions. Their faces are half-lit by orange street lights. I watched them cross. I felt the sudden desire to follow them, if only to not be alone anymore. Their destination was fixed, but wasn’t mine as well? A figure in the rear of the procession stopped in the middle of the bridge and peered over the side and down into the water just beyond my view. I watched them heft something held in both hands over the side and seconds later heard a mighty splash. They beckoned for me to join them; I do not know when they first saw me. I only hesitated a moment before I joined them on the bridge.
It was Brett. He was maybe ten, maybe twelve. Somehow we were the same height. There was a stone in my hand now. I looked over into the water and tossed the stone out as far as I could. It plunked into the water with almost no splash, just swallowed. I turned back to Brett but he was walking away. His high voice joined the crowd. I followed, I couldn’t be lost again. I crossed over the bridge and…
A horn honked loudly and tripped over a curb. I stuck my hand out to catch my fall and my hand wrapped around something cold and lumpy. I looked up to see I had thrust my hand into the cold jaw of the stone lion, my fingers wrapped around its chipped and time-worn teeth. Dislocation. It’s the only word that can describe the feeling. I stood by the far side of the bridge in my shorts and jacket. My shoes weren’t even laced. I had never sleepwalked before and the feeling of.. I really can’t think of another word than dislocation… was nearly unbearable. It made me feel physically sick and I slumped against the pedestal of the stone lion until the world stopped spinning. Above me a streetlight flickered. I tried not to look at the buildings as I searched for a bus station that could take me back to the motel. I’m writing this now as the sun comes up. I will not go outside today.
Date Unknown
I’m not sure what day it is. I’m not sure if I’m actually writing this. Ever since that night on the bridge I can never quite tell. Waking and dreaming seem to dovetail into each other. Sometimes I look outside and it’s day, more often it’s dark. the buildings are wrong, looming and warped; my dreams made manifest. Sometimes the streets are lit gold, sometimes deep orange. I know that if I went out looking for a payphone, it would be yellow. I’m not going out, but my dreams carry me there. I’ll dream of walking the streets. Caught between fleeing from the building and chasing the procession of people going towards it. The procession has gotten louder now. I can hear them, their voices echoing down the streets, the sound so scattered that it’s nearly impossible to track. When I find them their faces are smiling, but tears trace lines on their faces. Their voices are full of anticipation, and my heart seems to thrill with excitement too when I hear them. I cannot do anything but follow. Sometimes, the thing that has made the zoo its shell shifts and the world shakes like the skin of a drum. They all fall silent then, before chanting even louder. Brought to apparent ecstacy by the nearness and restlessness of the destination. Most nights I don’t find them, I try to follow the voices and end up alone, my only landmark looming so great and close. Sometimes I wake in my bed. I use a pant leg to tie myself to the bed before going to sleep. Some nights, my precautions do nothing and I’m on the street. I need to leave. I did try to leave, actually. I figured if I could just drive away then maybe it would all stop. The city didn’t let me. Turn after turn the roads emptied out until it was just me and the empty eyes of the windows. When I turned a corner and the Zoo was right ahead of me. It wasn’t diminished by the daylight. Its shadow stretched out before it, as if to reach me and pull me closer. I know it lets me go. I could feel the mental hook that had pulled me here slacken, but there was no real release. It’s night now. I have the curtains closed but outside I can see the lights changing through the fabric. Orange to gold and back again.
Note from Dr. Renwyck
While I never consulted with Mr. Stonebridge, I have pieced together all of the information I have on him after Detective Raynor came to see me in my office. Mr. Stonebridge is, at this time, listed as a missing persons case under suspicious circumstance. A copy of the police report was provided.
A notebook was recovered by officers performing a wellness check at the Candlekeeper Motel: Lukas Stonebridge’s last known place of residence. This was done at the request of the owner who reported unusual sounds over the last handful of nights coming from the room. The scene described by investigating officers was fairly mundane. The room was untidy, with a packed suitcase and an overfilled ashtray. The bed was unmade and in some state of disarray and a pair of jeans were tied to the bedframe that the officers described as “looking like a slip knot”. Officers reviewed the journal and investigated the exterior of the Noren Memorial Zoo. They did not enter the premises as they could not get a warrant. The building is currently privately owned, but it seems unclear who currently owns it and the warrant paperwork was apparently misfiled. The officers found no sign of Lukas outside the premises. The report mentioned that the payphone on site was found vandalized. The receiver appeared to have been pulled off the phone itself. Lukas’s prints were found on the phone but it was unclear how recent they were. The receiver was not recovered. Lukas’s case remains unclosed. This copy of the sleep diary was printed for review by Detective Raynor and provided to Dr. Susan Renwyck in the process of expert consultation.
As a final note, Mr. Stonebridge left a voicemail for me in the middle of the night on March 28th. My office has provided a copy to Detective Raynor as evidence for Mr. Stonebridge’s disappearance.
VOICEMAIL
[answering machine beeps]
[the line is bad. Lukas is very far away and there’s the low hiss of static]
Dr. Renwyck, I’m sorry to call you at this hour. I know we never spoke, but your number was the only one that went through on the pay phone. I’m.. at the zoo, Doctor. I tried to get away but it won’t let me. Not anymore. I’m not alone, They’re all here too. Really here I think. This isn’t just a dream. Can you hear them?
[The chant is audible the whole time, but only as Lukas points the receiver towards the procession does it come through clearly]
The gates are open now. They’re all going in. Some of them are holding hands, we’re all crying. Oh, oh god.
[Lukas takes an emotional breath]
I don’t want to go, but they’re waiting for me. Brett went ahead and Evy is waiting for me. She’s got her hand out for me, Doctor. I don’t think it’s really her, but–but I really want it to be. I’m scared. I–I…
[There’s a rumble and the voices go quiet for a moment before starting up again]
I can hear it moving in there. It’s huge. Doctor, it’s just black in there. They cross into the shadows and then they’re just gone… Oh she’s coming closer. [the static rises with every step the not-Evy gets closer to Lukas] I think I’m out of time.
[Sounds of a scuffle, the chant gets louder]
Stop! I don’t want to go yet. Let–let me go Evy. You’re not her. You’re not real, this isn’t real this isn’t… it can’t…please.
[chant, static, and the great rumbling swallow the soundscape until the call ends]
[recording beep]
CONCLUSION
ALEX
That has to be one of the creepiest audio recordings I’ve ever heard.
[sighs]
Seems like even Renwyck makes mistakes, she messed up.
She failed to notice the pattern in time.
Or maybe, she was too busy to take extra patients?
Regardless, she was too late… if that even matters at this point.
Have we even seen a single case that doesn’t end badly for the patient?
What I can tell you, is that Renwyck did identify the pattern at a later point.
The scanned version of the case file has Labyrinth written in black marker in the upper right corner.
So… in conclusion, I think we can safely say that the theme of being lost matches the Labyrinth pattern… whatever that means.
Anyway, that’s all I have for you today. If another of these files pop up, you’ll hear from me again.
[hdd spins down]
OUTRO PLAYS
Today’s episode was part of the Submit Your Nightmare fan contest.
This nightmare was submitted by MoJO1020 and produced, adapted and edited by the Haunted House Studios Team.
If you’d like to participate in future Submit Your Nightmare contests, be sure to join our Discord community to stay up to date with the latest developments.
That’s www.hauntedhousestudios.com/discord
Thanks for listening.