Work Text:
Statement of Edward Teach, regarding some behavioural changes in his husband. Original statement given 12th October 2017. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, the Archivist.
Statement begins.
Look, I’m not sure I should be telling you all of this. This is our business, not some spectacle for you academic types to gawk at. I guess I just… I don’t know what else to do. Our friend—Buttons—he said you might be able to help. Figure out what’s going on. That’s why I’m here. Because of Izzy.
Izzy’s my husband—Israel Hands, if you need that for your records, but everyone just calls him Izzy. Been married twenty-six years last December. Couple years ago, he quit his job and we moved down to Cornwall. It’s just a small village; the name wouldn’t mean anything to you. Right there by the seaside. It sounded romantic to me, but as it turns out, when the tourists haven’t set their eyes on a place, that usually means it’s shit. It’s a pretty place, sure—our house sits right on top of one of those big cliffs they print on postcards—but honestly, it’s kind of gloomy. It rains constantly, and when it’s not, the air is thick with the kind of fog that would give London a run for her money. Suppose I understand now why Izzy wanted to stay further inland. He really doesn’t like the sea. It’s strange, kind of—he used to be a sailor, so you’d figure he’d like being near the water, right? I always figured it was because of his old captain—guy named Peter Lukas. He was weird, from what I’ve heard, though Izzy doesn’t talk about his time at sea much. I looked Lukas up once, him and his ship, the Tundra.
I found that a lot of Izzy’s former colleagues died. The internet’s full of obituaries for people who worked on that ship. Every single one I found had drowned. This probably doesn’t sound weird, since they were all sailors. But none of them ever set foot on another ship after they left the Tundra. Just like Izzy.
I wonder what’s up with this Lukas guy, scaring everyone away from sailing.
Anyway, Izzy hates the sea, these days. If it was up to him, we’d be living in Manchester or in fucking Sheffield, but… my work had us ending up by the sea time and time again. I’m an accountant, by the way. Sounds fancy as fuck, but really, it’s kind of boring.
Shit, you don’t actually care about my whole life story, do you? Or—dickfuck, am I allowed to curse here? Fuck. Sorry. Guess it’s too late now.
Looking back, this all started when… look, I’m not proud of this, alright?
I cheated on Izzy. Biggest mistake I’ve made in my life. It wasn’t even with someone I gave a shit about, just some blonde bloke I met at the office. We went back to his place after my shift ended, and… yeah. Wasn’t even fucking good. I wish I could go back and slap some sense into myself.
I have no idea if Izzy ever figured out what I did. I don’t think he knows. I sure as hell didn’t tell him about it, and I’m not about to tell him now.
When I came home afterwards, I just made up some bullshit excuse. Said I’d had to stay late at work, then stood in the shower for twenty minutes until my skin was all shrivelled up. Izzy was in the kitchen, already making dinner when I got home. Curry. I remember that—the house smelled so warm and homely, and there I was, a fucking cheater coming home and ruining it all. But when I came back downstairs, it smelled burnt.
I didn’t panic, at first. We have a shitty old stove that sometimes smells like you’re about to die even though nothing’s wrong, so I figured that thing was just acting up again.
But it wasn’t the stove. Izzy was still in the kitchen, but he had his back to the stove, completely ignoring the food he had cooking.
He was staring out the window. Our kitchen’s got these gorgeous big windows above the dining table, y’know, overlooking the sea. When the weather’s clear, you can see all the way to the old lighthouse, miles down the coast.
Not like the weather is clear very often down there, but you get the point.
The day before, Izzy had brought flowers from the market and put them in a vase by the window. Yellow chrysanthemums. They looked bright and brilliant against the dreary grey outside.
Anyway—Izzy was staring out the window. Staring at the sea. Didn’t even turn around when I walked in. Behind him, the curry was bubbling like crazy, but he just ignored it. Just kept looking out the window.
I figured something had to be going on out there. Half expected a thunderstorm, or a flood, or the fucking Leviathan rising from the water when I joined him. But outside our kitchen window, there was… nothing. Nothing but the endless expanse of the sea, black like spilled ink in the darkness. Oddly calm, if anything. It wasn’t raining that night. I still remember that. The waves were gently lapping at the shore, and there was not a cloud in sight. I felt fucking sick with myself then. Wanted to punch myself for cheating on Izzy. I promised myself I’d die before I’d tell him then.
I still had no idea why he was staring out at the water like that, though.
I said his name, and he looked at me like I’d dragged him up from the depths of sleep. I asked what he was looking at, and he just shrugged. He seemed confused, almost like he hadn’t noticed he was even staring at anything. He said he’d just looked out the window for a moment. Told me not to make a big deal out of it.
Dinner was burnt, of course, but Izzy managed to salvage it. I volunteered to take the worst bits of it. Felt like I deserved it for cheating.
The rest of the evening was weirdly normal. Izzy acted normal, mostly, but I don’t think I did. Don’t think I knew how to be normal anymore. I kept thinking that Izzy had to have noticed somehow. Would explain his weird staring, maybe. Trying to figure out how to hand me the divorce papers or something.
But he never brought it up.
It kept happening, though. The staring, not the cheating—I’d learned my fucking lesson the first time, and I wasn’t about to do it again. But Izzy… it was like he’d drift away for a moment whenever I wasn’t looking. Like he was hypnotised or something.
One time, I went to get something from his office—I don’t remember what it was. He doesn’t like to be disturbed when he’s working, so I usually leave him be. I knocked on the door, but he didn’t answer. I knocked again. Maybe he was just focussed on whatever he was doing, or maybe he had those noise-cancelling headphones on, right? But again, no reaction. So I opened the door.
I can’t tell you what exactly was wrong with what I saw. Objectively, it was a little weird at worst, but my stomach fucking dropped. Izzy was sitting at his desk, his laptop open in front of him. I think he was looking over some bills or something. It doesn’t fucking matter. His head was turned to the window, though. He was looking out at the sea, and this time, it looked… painful. His neck was bent at this angle—not unnatural, that wasn’t it, but it looked like the sort of position that’d give you a stiff neck if you kept it up for too long. And he’s in his fifties, so… His hands, too, were still hovering above the keyboard. Like he was frozen mid-motion. Like someone took a photo of him and he just stayed that way.
Looking back, I’m not sure he was even breathing.
There was nothing outside the window. Just rain pouring down so hard it looked like pieces of rope smashing against the window.
He snapped out of it when I said his name. Acted like he had no idea what I was on about when I asked what he was looking at. But he seemed… off. He wasn’t looking at me, but I’m sure there were tears in his eyes.
It almost felt like he was keeping secrets from me, too.
Really, it all went downhill from there. It kept happening. I’d call his name in the house and not get an answer. When I’d go to find him, he’d be gazing out the window at the sea, standing so close his breath was fogging up the glass. His hands were always up in some weird position. Like he was casting a spell. Or like someone was holding them up, a marionette with invisible strings.
Our relationship got worse, too. Not like it was perfect before. I wouldn’t have cheated on him if I was happy with how things were. I… I tried to fix things, but I had no idea what was wrong in the first place. Had no clue what to do. As time went on, Izzy got more and more reclusive. He talked less, seemed like he was always lost in his own head. When I’d try to touch him, he’d push me away. It hurt like hell. Every night, I felt like there was a void between us, something wider than the fucking Atlantic that I could never cross. His skin was always cold when I tried to hold him, but he’d tell me to stop, said he was running hot and couldn’t stand the touch.
I still don’t know what was going on with him. Just knew I really fucking missed him.
I ended up cutting hours at work. Izzy was at home full time already, and I figured it wouldn’t hurt to spend more time together. But honestly, it just gave him more time to ignore me.
Once, I was in our bedroom upstairs, putting together a new chest of drawers that Izzy had wanted to buy. I needed a second pair of hands for something, so I called for Izzy.
I was hardly surprised when he didn’t answer. I’d almost come to expect him to spend his free time staring out at the sea. Weird how quickly that kind of shit becomes normal.
I went looking for him, of course. He wasn’t in his office, and he wasn’t downstairs in the kitchen, either. That wasn’t normal. I took a couple of breaths to calm myself, like my therapist taught me to, and the air tasted like salt. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up as I ran through the house, looking for Izzy in every room.
I already knew I wasn’t going to find him in the house, I think. None of the other rooms were facing the sea. He would only ever stop to look at the sea.
In the end, I found him in the garden. Wish I could say I was surprised. It was raining that day, that sort of fine spraying mist that makes every breath you take feel like you’re drowning. No fucking weather you want to be outside in. But of fucking course, Izzy was there. Closer to the edge of the cliff than you should ever go.
Izzy knew it was dangerous. He’d been the one to drill it into my head when we first moved in. The cliff’s eroding, could break off and crash into the sea at any moment—that sort of thing. I always rolled my eyes at it.
And now here he was, standing just feet away from the cliff. Standing. Staring. Not moving. His feet apart like he’d stopped mid-step. I was almost glad I couldn’t see his face. I don’t think I could’ve beared to see.
“Izzy, come back here,” I called, desperate to do something.
I can’t say for certain if it was because he’d heard me, but he took another step forward.
Below us, the waves crashed against the face of the cliffs, reminding me that certain death waited on the other end of that drop.
He knew that, too. And still, he lifted his foot off the grass and slowly, like someone had set the TV to slow-motion, he took another step forward. My heart fucking dropped when I saw how close he was getting to the edge. I called his name again—must’ve been properly screaming, this time—but he didn’t react.
In the end, I had to shake him awake. His shirt was soaked under my hand—wetter than it should’ve been from the rain.
His empty gaze when he looked at me was the single most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen. It was like he didn’t recognise me at all.
It was fine in the end, but… it shook me.
After that, it just kept happening. It was like simply staring at the sea wasn’t enough for him anymore and he’d graduated to physically going to the water. It was like the ocean was beckoning him. Like there was a siren or something, calling his name. He’d stand outside during a storm, his face turned to the sky like he was expecting God to burst forth. More than once, I woke in an empty bed and followed his footsteps on the wet ground all the way down to the shore.
I was so worried about him I kept calling out of work. I don’t know what exactly I was scared of.
At least I didn’t know until that day at the beach.
A friend of ours—Fang—celebrated his birthday with a couple beers at the beach. Terrible idea to begin with, getting drunk this close to the water, but there we were, getting pissed on a Wednesday afternoon. It wasn’t raining for once, but there was a strong wind blowing inland, sending high waves ashore. No one was swimming. It was way too cold for that. It was always too cold for that.
Of course, I considered not going. Izzy’s weird thing about the ocean was happening far too often at that point for me to not at least think about it. In the end, we went. I can’t fucking tell you why. I figured it would be fine, I guess. Didn’t want to explain it to anyone.
I didn’t know how to explain it to Izzy, most of all. He still thought nothing was wrong with him. Wherever I shook him out of his trances, he couldn’t remember what happened to him. When I’d ask about it, he’d just say he was enjoying the view or some bullshit like that.
So, anyway. We went to the fucking beach.
Should’ve known better than to take him to the fucking beach.
He seemed fine at first, actually. Was chatting with our friends, dealing some rounds of poker, shouting about the Tories. With every moment that nothing happened, I felt myself relax. It only ever started while I wasn’t in the room, or when I was asleep. Maybe it wouldn’t happen around other people. Or so I told myself.
I swear I only left for a few minutes to have a piss. I went back up to the boardwalk—there’s a tiny wooden shack with a kiosk and a toilet in the back. I can’t have been gone for more than five minutes.
Still, when I returned, Izzy was standing by the shore, all by himself. I don’t think anyone even noticed he was gone from the group. I try not to blame them. Izzy always had a tendency to be sneaky about it. He’d just… slip right through your fingers when he wanted to, like trying to hold water in your hands.
I knew something was wrong, and I started running the moment I saw him. I was so cold suddenly, even though I had a jumper on, and the beach felt endless. I ran and ran—have you ever tried to run on wet sand? It’s a whole different thing from going for a run through the city, I tell you that. It’s like nature itself is fighting you. Like the fucking beach doesn’t want you to get ahead.
When I started running, Izzy moved as well. He took a step forward, towards the sea, and then just… kept going. He just kept fucking going! The waves spilled over his boots, the water pouring inside, but he didn’t seem to notice. Didn’t flinch or anything. He just kept going. Soon, he was up to his knees, the surf crashing around him.
I don’t remember what I said; I just know that I screamed at him from the top of my lungs. It was cold and windy, and the waves were too high to swim. There were no lifeguards out—not that late in the year—and on that day, there weren’t even any surfers in the water. Going in there was fucking madness. It was suicide, if anything, and not a pleasant way to die.
And still, Izzy kept walking. Right into the sea, still in his clothes. Didn’t even take off his leather jacket. He loves that thing, keeps it polished and everything. But that day, he just kept it on as he walked into the sea.
It was like someone was calling him. Like walking out into the water was the most important thing he’d ever done.
I kept running. I should’ve arrived at the shore long ago, but it was like everything was happening in slow motion. I kept shouting, too, always hoping I could shake Izzy from his trance somehow. I thought the cold water should do the trick at some point. Shock him awake, or something.
The shore is flat, where we live, until it isn’t, and you just drop like you’ve fallen off the edge of the world.
Izzy went under without a sound.
Eventually, the others must’ve heard me screaming like a madman. Our buddy Ivan and I were the ones who pulled him out. The water was so cold I nearly fucking fainted when we went in, and the waves kept pulling at us, dragging us into every direction but the one we needed to go. I was almost sure Izzy would be dead by the time we got to him.
He wasn’t.
I should be grateful he wasn’t.
Right?
When we dragged him to the beach, there was a blissful smile on his face. He looked… I don’t even know how to describe it. He looked like a sleeping baby. More at peace than I’d ever seen him, even on our fucking wedding day, when things were still okay and we weren’t just pretending to be happy.
Honestly, that scared me even more than the fact that he’d just tried to drown himself.
Anyways, the expression disappeared as soon as he spat saltwater all over our picnic and drew a breath.
What, you thought the story was done here? God, I fucking wish that was all.
It got worse. Of fucking course it got worse.
When we came home, I bundled Izzy up in bed and made him promise me he’d never do shit like that again. We could get him a therapist, I said, get couple’s counselling if he felt we needed it. “Just talk to me,” I said. Fucking begged him. But he just looked at me, shrugged, and said nothing was wrong.
Or maybe he looked right through me. I don’t even know anymore.
I held him tight that night, and for once, he didn’t shove me off. It wasn’t easy for me, though. His skin was cold—just as icy as the water had been, and somehow still felt damp hours after we’d fished him out of the sea. But I held onto him. I wanted him to feel warm. I wanted him to feel that I was there with him, that we’d figure out our way through this together. I didn’t mind being cold for one night.
When we woke up the next morning, his hair was still damp.
I think that’s when things started to change around the house as well. I remember waking up that day and feeling clammy. Like I’d sweat through my pyjamas, but I was so cold that night that that couldn’t be what was going on. The air was so humid it felt thick, and every breath was a little like drowning on dry land. When I looked out the window, trying to see if it had rained that night, I found droplets of condensation clinging to the edges.
I tried not to think too much of it. Like I said, we live directly by the sea, and high humidity is the furthest thing from unusual. Still, after everything, it made me uneasy. Everything that had happened to Izzy somehow had to do with water, with the ocean.
I wiped those droplets off with my sleeve. Had the ocean followed us inside, now that it hadn’t been able to call Izzy to it? Were we no longer safe in our own house?
I decided to let Izzy sleep in. He looked pale and sickly, so I figured he could use an extra hour of rest.
In the bathroom, the tap was dripping. A slow, steady rhythm that drove me half insane. Plink-plink-plink, and no matter how much I fiddled with the thing, it kept going. I jumped in the shower, hoping to wash off all the fucking stress of the past day, but the water wouldn’t properly heat up. After, the showerhead kept dripping, too. Plink-tap-plink-plink-tap. You could hear that sound in every room of the house. Still can, if you lot ever decide to come visit.
Anyway, the day started… normal is not the right word, but like. As normal as it could be the day after your husband tries to drown himself. I kept staring at him, kept trying to figure out if I should say something. Bring up therapy again or something. But Izzy seemed content, and I didn’t want to shatter that.
It didn’t last long, of course.
When we went to bed that night, there was a stain on the ceiling. Water damage. I took the entire ceiling apart the next day, but I never found the burst pipe that caused it. I didn’t think anything about it at the time—shitty old houses have their problems, and we were used to it—but it was strange that it all happened around the same time, no?
The next week, I found wet footprints around the house. When I followed them, they led me to Izzy. I remember thinking how odd it was. It hadn’t even rained that day. I asked Izzy about it, but he just shrugged. He did a lot of shrugging, I suppose.
Things went back to normal soon. I worked from home as often as I could. Didn’t like the thought of leaving Izzy alone, so I tried to stay around. He soon started doing his staring game again. I almost didn’t mind—at least this time, he was just sitting and staring. He wasn’t trying to run out to the sea anymore.
But then, maybe he didn’t need to anymore.
Maybe the ocean had finally followed him inside.
It was right around that time that I found the first puddle in the house. It was in the kitchen, so I figured Izzy had just spilled something. But when I went to clean it up, it was ice cold and cloudy. On some impulse, I tasted it—bad idea, I know, putting some random liquid I found on the floor in my mouth. It was salty. There was no mistaking it. Ocean water.
Neither of us had been to the beach since the day Izzy tried to drown himself.
I cleaned it up, vowed not to tell Izzy about it, and then promptly found another puddle under Izzy’s chair in his office.
But it wasn’t just the puddle. The closer I got, the more I realised that Izzy looked… I don’t know if there’s a word for it. He was looking out the window again, so his head was turned, and I only saw half his face.
He was pale. I mean, he’s always pale—white guy living in a town where it rains all the time, of course he is—but this was different. It was like his skin was translucent, and there was a bluish tint to him. Dark circles under his eyes, like he hadn’t slept in weeks.
I was looking at my husband, but I’d never felt so scared. Took everything I had in me to walk into that room. When I got closer, I heard a dripping sound. Water was dripping into the puddle, and when I looked closer, I realised it came from Izzy. For some reason, his hair was wet, dripping down his back and onto the floor. I swear I never heard the shower turn on, or even just a tap. I reached out to touch him, and his skin was clammy and cold.
He didn’t react. My heart fucking dropped. Normally, he always snapped back out of it when I touched him. I pulled back my hand and, on some impulse, licked my finger. Salt water. It made me feel fucking sick.
There’s no way Izzy could’ve gone out to the sea. He was in his office the entire time, and I was downstairs. I would’ve seen him leave the house. I would’ve stopped him. But there he fucking was, soaked in ocean water for no reason and looking like a drowned man.
I feel to my knees and started sobbing. Screamed Izzy’s name and shook him, but he wouldn’t budge. I was so fucking scared I’d lost him. I had no idea what to do. Should I have called an ambulance? What would I even have told them? I just sat and screamed and wanted to fucking punch myself in the face for not being able to do anything.
After maybe twenty minutes, Izzy slowly returned. His skin felt a little less icy, and the redness in his eyes waned. But he still seemed distant. He saw me crying and screaming on the floor in front of him, and he never even asked me what happened. I didn’t tell him. Didn’t want to stress him out even more. I was just glad he’d finally snapped out of it.
It keeps happening, though. His skin is always cold, even when he’s sitting right in front of the fireplace. His hair is always wet, always dripping. He doesn’t seem to notice, or if he does, it doesn’t bother him. Some days, I give up on cleaning the trail of saltwater he leaves all through the house.
His trances are getting more frequent. Every time, he’s gone a little longer, looks a little more confused when he comes back up. It’s like he doesn’t want to come back to me, no matter how much I call his name. Sometimes, when he snaps awake, there’s… a sadness on his face. Something bone-deep and sinking. Like wherever he goes when he’s staring at the sea is better than his own house with his husband waiting for him.
I have no idea what to do with him anymore. Most days, I barely even know what to say to him. I fucking miss him, but it’s like there’s an ocean between us and I can’t reach across and get him.
Our house is so fucking quiet these days. It’s like I’m living with a ghost.
I wouldn’t have come here, normally. It’s not like there’s anything… supernatural happening, or paranormal, or however you people call it. But I’m running out of options, and I need someone to do something. I need help.
Yesterday, Izzy tried to drown himself in the bathtub. I was up in the attic, trying to find that burst pipe again. I was starting to doubt it was actually a fucking pipe, but I didn’t want the ceiling to collapse on us while we sleep, so I went looking for it again. The house was awfully quiet while I took apart the floor, but then, it always was. The only sounds were the rain on the roof, the waves crashing outside, and those fucking dripping taps. Plink-tap-plink-plink-tap, so much louder than it should be.
I tuned it out as I was working. But at some point, I noticed that the sound had changed. Instead of that constant dripping sound, it was… pouring. Rushing.
Something was wrong. Something was very fucking wrong.
My heart beat so hard I could feel it in my throat as I hurried down the ladder and followed the sound to the bathroom. The floor outside was wet, the water clearly pouring out from behind the door. The bathroom wasn’t locked, thank fuck. God knows what would’ve happened if Izzy had locked the door.
When I rushed inside, my heart dropped to my stomach. The bathtub was filled to the brim, the water still running and spilling over. I slammed the tap shut, and then I realised what was happening.
Izzy was in the tub, fully dressed. He was lying on the bottom, flat on his back with his knees tucked to his chest so he could fit. He wasn’t moving, wasn’t even attempting to come back up. His body wasn’t floating, either. He just lay there, still as a stone. His eyes were open, and there was a smile on his face, a smile that I hadn’t seen since that day on the beach. He looked peaceful—so happy I almost felt bad when I reached into the water to pull him to the surface.
The water was so cold it burned when I plunged in to grab him. The smell of saltwater and seaweed was so strong I could taste it.
I don’t remember what I said to Izzy after I’d pulled him out. I just remember that I screamed and screamed until my lungs felt bloody and raw.
Izzy just looked at me with such sadness in his eyes. I felt sick to my stomach. I almost—almost!—felt bad for pulling him out of the water.
“I wanted to go home,” he said and shook my hands off his shoulders.
He hasn’t spoken to me since. I tried to towel him dry, tried to blowdry his hair, but his skin is still wet.
I think the ocean is inside him now, leaking out through every pore of his skin.
I can’t fucking stand to look at him. I’m so scared all the time.
I almost didn’t come to London today. I didn’t want to leave Izzy alone for so long, and I didn’t want to bother anyone else with it, but Ivan offered to stay the day at our house. Make sure Izzy didn’t do anything stupid and all that. Still, I don’t know what to do or what happens next.
I’m so fucking scared of what I’ll come home to.
Statement ends.
This is an interesting one. It seems to be a rather unusual manifestation of the Vast. From what I understand, it normally manifests as a fear of deep, open water, but only once you’re already in it. Luring someone to the water, then following him inside, is… not the way these things usually go. Peter Lukas, Mr Hands’s former captain, is a well known servant of the Lonely, so I wonder if there’s a connection. It seems all too likely for the Lonely to be attracted to a man living in isolation with his cheating husband.
Is it one of them? Both? Neither? They’re hardly distinct entities in the way we talk about them, but still, something about the possibility of two of them working in tandem worries me.
I’ve had Martin follow up with the statement. Mr Teach refuses to speak to the institute again. Apparently, he was quite vulgar when Martin finally got him on the phone, accused us of being, and I quote, “as useless as a bag of melted dildos”, and hasn’t returned any phone calls since.
He doesn’t live in that village anymore.
Martin was able to locate their friend, Ivan Khan, who Mr Teach mentioned in the statement. According to him, Mr Teach and his husband moved away from the sea shortly after the statement was given in an attempt to… fix things.
Clearly, it didn’t work.
Mr Teach has quit his job and now acts as his husband’s full-time carer. Mr Hands has entered what seems to be a permanent trancelike state. His attempts at drowning himself seem to have stopped, at least. Only sometimes, when they go out for a walk by a local lake, does he have lucid moments. He even speaks, then. Recently, he looked his husband in the eye and told him, “I’m all alone.”
Martin tells me Mr Khan did quite the convincing impression of his empty-eyed stare.
I doubt they’ll be going to that lake again.
End recording.