Douglysium

Statement regarding investigation 101 for client Juliette Angelo in regards to a possible forced entry and potential malicious destruction of property. The statement by Juliette Angelo is being played via recording. The investigation is being led by private detective Ana Otto near REDACTED in the U.S.A., and the transcripts are written by Nancy Otto. The date is January 1st, 2015. Content warning, this investigative statement contains themes of claustrophobia that one may find disconcerting. Investigation begins.

Juliette Angelo- I need your help. Everyone thinks I flooded the Mcnamara’s house but I swear it wasn’t me and everyone is so angry and I don’t have the money to fix this and… Okay, okay, okay, calm down. I need to start from the beginning… 

I was hired to do a bit of house-sitting right? No big deal, I’ve done it before many times for many different clients, and the Mcnamara’s only trust me enough to take care of their house while they’re gone away on whatever trips. I think it’s because I’m one of their childhood friends. The family was particularly concerned this year because they were afraid that the cold winter might lead to some pipes bursting, so they wanted me to check on the house and prevent it from happening if possible. I still remember that morning. It was snowing, just enough to be beautiful and capture that leftover holiday spirit but not snowing so much that that it caused absolutely atrocious traffic or filled the streets with a disgusting icy slurry. It was perfect. 

I drove from my house to the Mcnamara’s and on their front lawn there was an unusual amount of snow. Every other place in the neighborhood had only a couple of centimeters at most but the snow on the Mcnamara’s lawn was at least a foot or two tall. Maybe about a foot and a half if I had to say? The massive tree in their backyard stood as unnaturally tall as ever though. But what really caught my attention was the mud… In the yard, there were these snow angels, right? But they were disgustingly muddy. Where the imprint should have been clean and white snow it was a slurry stained with mud. I didn’t think too much of it originally and I assumed it was just some neighborhood kids having a good laugh. But looking back on it I realized something was off about them. There were no footprints leading to or from the angels and their wings looked like they had been torn to shreds. Which is super SUPER weird when you consider all the mud. Whoever made them went out of their way to cover their tracks for some reason. But going through all that effort to cover up making a couple of dirty snow angels seems well… stupid. I know this is about to sound absolutely absurd but it’s almost as if the angels… spawned… or like grew from where they were? It’s whatever. 

Anyway, as I made my way to the house I decided to take a step in the nice snow, y’know to hear the satisfying snowy crunch and all that. But my foot went through the snow and under it was a concerning amount of wet clay that stuck to my boots like glue. I assumed that maybe the Mcnamara’s grass had died from the cold and snow but that wouldn’t explain why I didn’t see any remains of grass at all, like not even a loose dead blade or two. I went inside and I tried to wipe the clay off my boot but most of it just wouldn’t come off no matter how hard I tried. So I decided to just take them off in order to avoid tracking dirt into their house. The house itself was freezing cold so I turned on the heater and went about my normal duties. Y’know, watering the plants, feeding their parrot, checking the pipes, etc. etc… 

Just as I was about to go home I heard a rhythmic thumping from above me. It grew louder and louder and it sounded like something was smashing and slamming against something else. For a brief second, I was afraid there was a robber or someone else in the house with me so I went to investigate. Which… yeah, I know it was stupid. Had there actually BEEN someone there I don’t know what I would have actually done about it. I didn’t even have the sense to grab a kitchen knife or something before I went to go check it out. But to my relief, I realized the noise wasn’t coming from the second floor but from something on the roof. I assumed it was an animal or a branch from one of the nearby trees hitting the roof but I decided to look outside of the window just to make sure. 

Outside the sky had grown eerily dark and hail, at least the size of a golf ball, along with snow that almost completely whited out my field of vision rained down from the sky. There was something off about this hail though. I mean hail just rains down randomly and while the noise I heard from the roof was definitely hail the noise itself was too… rhythmic… patterned… meticulous and thought out. I didn’t really have time to think about that though since the snow was quickly piling up and I quickly realized I wouldn’t be able to get home. Since I would have to stay in the house for the night I tried to text the Mcnamaras but my phone couldn’t get a signal. The weather must have been REALLY bad which meant that I couldn’t just leave. I would have to stay and if I resorted to eating anything I would just need to hope that I could repay them or buy a replacement. So I turned on the TV in order to pass the time. Weirdly, the TV worked just fine even though my phone didn’t and I remember the TV being a satellite TV. I remember thinking it was weird that my phone had no connection but the TV did, but I wasn’t an expert on TVs, so maybe there’s some weird weather thing that only messed with phone frequencies, I don’t know. 

After a while, what I assumed to be, several hours passed. So I helped myself to a small sandwich from the fridge (trying to eat as little food as I could while trying to avoid anything that looked really fancy or important) and then I went to bed on the couch. The next thing I remember is waking up in a pool of my own sweat. I was bombarded with a sweltering heat and it had become extremely humid and clammy. I went over to look outside one of the windows hoping that the weather had changed but I was only greeted with a sheet of pure unblemished white. It took me a second to even process that I was looking at snow and not some sort of weird painting or sheet that had been put over the window. That meant it was probably still cold outside and that the heat was due to the heating system within the house itself. I went to check on the thermostat only to find that its display was blank. So I went to check on some parts of the heating system down in the basement and a couple of them seemed broken in a sense. The basement was covered in a muggy fog and warm water had condensed on the surface of the heater and wisps of… well I wouldn’t quite call it steam but like… vapor leaked out of it. Considering how hot and humid the house was, the heater must have just broken and gone into overdrive, or maybe I just accidentally turned it up too high and pushed it too far because of how cold it was outside. 

The basement always made me uncomfortable. Its architecture was weird in comparison to the rest of the house and seemed several decades out of date. I checked my phone again, no signal. I couldn’t stay here forever so I went all the way to the second floor to try to look out of one of the windows and get a better view of the outside or just get a better signal for my phone. To my horror, all I could see was a sheet of pure blank white icy snow pushing against the glass. How much did it need to snow in one night to create two stories worth of snow? Something wasn’t right. I went up to the attic to try to find an even better view. The attic was weird… It was tiny with nothing but a single small window on the other side of it. It was freezing and the architecture of the attic seemed completely different from the rest of the house. Just like the basement, it was as if it was at least several decades out of date from the rest of the house. I quickly hurried over to the light of the tiny window it housed, my last glimmer of hope, and looked out the window. Snow… nothing but more pure white snow pushing against the window. Unlike the others though, I swear that the window bulged ever so slightly from the weight of the snow and I could see little hairline fractures in the glass. I began to worry about my girlfriend. What if she was trapped in our house or something worse like being stuck in a car or something? 

Then I heard something. The tiniest of creaks or cracks. At first, I thought it was just the house settling but the creak had gone on for far far too long. Those creaks became the sound of wooden cracking that kept getting louder and louder as it moved towards me. Like an entire tree was falling over. Then I remembered the giant old tree in the backyard. The weight of the snow must have strained it so much that it broke. I panicked and began to run downstairs as something massive collided with the roof of the house. The small round window shattered and snow poured into the room while the ceiling of the attic caved in. The house eventually caught the tree’s fall, stopping its descent. I began panicking even more. Where was I supposed to go? I could feel the freezing cold seep in from outside as snow kept spilling in from the hole that the now shattered window once occupied and the cracks and crevices in the roof of the house. Was I going to freeze to death? No, the snow couldn’t be THAT bad I should at least be able to see outside. If the tree had enough room to fall over that must mean that the snow just got stuck to the windows or something. 

Crack! I heard that sound again. CRACK!!! The parts of the house holding up the massive trunk of the tree seemed to finally give way and the tree slowly descended towards me. As it went, snow just kept pouring down from behind it, filling the room around me. I scrambled down the stairs and it sounded like the tree was right behind me the whole way. I cried as splinters and snow pelted me. I went for the front door and when I opened it a mountain of snow and ice fell on me, burying me beneath it and knocking the air from my lungs with its weight. The tree seemed stuck once again for the moment, having smashed through the stairs I ran down, and I flailed about in the snow trying to catch my bearings. I escaped from the pile and took a couple of deep breaths. But before I could rest, I heard cracking again even though the tree didn’t move. Snow started pouring from behind it and more and more snow spilled from the door in front of me. It wasn’t possible, it didn’t make any physical sense. Water started leaking from under the growing pile of snow, some pipe must have burst somewhere right…? But outside? 

I panicked once again and ran towards one of the windows but the moment I reached the window it shattered. Bits of glass fell to the ground with a clink as water, snow, and ice began to spill in from the opening. They were so heavy that the bottom of the window frame bent and broke as it was pulled down. I heard more glass shattering. Every single window in the house was breaking.  I ran into the basement and closed the door behind me. I figured that the basement would be safe. It had no windows and the snow hadn’t spilled through the front door until I opened it, so maybe I could hunker down there until help arrived. Then I heard water splashing. 

It was freezing now and I could even see my own breath. I looked into the basement… total darkness. The lights had all gone out so I turned on the flashlight of my phone to see that the basement was flooding with cold water and ice. It looked like the basement had started flooding from a broken pipe or something. Water began to flow from under the door behind me and rained from the ceiling. The water was rising unnaturally fast… I was trapped, stuck. I had two choices. Drown in the basement or get buried alive by the snow and collapsing house on the other side of the door. I could hear the crack of the tree falling once again, getting unnaturally closer and closer, as if its weight had increased tenfold. There was no way it could reach the basement though, right? My chance of living probably would have been higher if I stayed on the ground floor and just hoped I got stuck under some rubble or snow until help arrived. But if I tried to open the door to go back now the snow would probably knock me into the water anyway and I would either freeze to death or drown. I missed my chance. There was nowhere to go. 

Then I heard splashing. Not from the pipes in the basement or the water flowing from under the door. Something was in the basement with me. Probably a rat or something… But it sounded too big to be a rat, and there’s no way a dog or cat-sized animal could have gotten down there. I turned around and saw a pale man climbing out of the freezing cold water. The cold didn’t seem to bother him and I have no idea how he could’ve gotten in without me noticing. Was he a thief who was trapped with me, maybe I had heard someone upstairs after all? He was squat but unnaturally so, as if he’d been smashed or crushed. He probably would have been at least average height if his spine was straight. His spine… It was all bent out of shape, crushed. There looked to be some sort of indent in the man’s head as if part of his skull had been crushed into itself and he carried a briefcase that looked like it was made out of some sort of marble. He was bald and particles fell from his head occasionally when he moved. At first, I thought it was dandruff but now I think it was sand. He wore a mud-stained, sopping wet suit. 

“Do you need help?” he asked, his voice sounded like he was gargling something akin to mud. “What?” I was confused and had no idea what to say. “Do you need help?” he asked once again. I didn’t know what was happening, I was so confused that words refused to leave my mouth. He opened his briefcase with a click. At that moment it seemed like everything around us slowed down. The water rose much slower and a few of the pipes only let out a trickle of water. He handed me some forms and a pen before saying “I can save you if you sign here.” The papers were water-damaged and covered in mud stains, and yet they were perfectly legible. He handed me a pen. I hesitated for a moment and tried to read what I was given. But as I did I heard the cracking of the great tree’s trunk and the splashing of the water around me grow louder and louder. The door behind me bulged ever so slightly, splintering from the sheer weight of the crushing ice and snow behind it as the room quickly became colder and colder. I didn’t know exactly what was happening but I had no choice. I messily scribbled my name onto the signature line of the paper. The ice cold pen was unnaturally heavy and the ink, or at least I think it was ink, was like that of a dark mud. 

The moment I finished signing he took the papers and smiled saying “You are trapped in my debt.” I could see small jagged stones embedded into his teeth as he spoke those words. He turned around and walked back into the water and vanished as quickly as he had come. I sat there sobbing from all the stress. It was so bad that it took me a few minutes to even process the fact that I wasn’t dead. The water had stopped rising and the basement seemed a little less cold. I cautiously opened the door. The house was in shambles. A layer of snow was spread out across the ground and while a tree or some other large object clearly fell through the house there was no trunk to be seen. I went outside and only a thin layer of muddy snow and slosh sat on the ground but every other house in the neighborhood didn’t have a speck of ice or snow on them. 

The weather was gray and cloudy but I felt room temperature nowhere close to the freezing cold I had felt in the basement. I went to the backyard and all that remained of the Mcnamara’s massive tree was a cleanly cut stump… I don’t know what else there is to say… I just sort of went home. I have no idea who that man is or what he wants but my bank account has been decreasing steadily for some reason. Apparently, my money is going to someone by the name of Jamie Erdmann and there’s nothing I can do about it due to some legal stuff I don’t understand. I think it has something to do with the contract. I’ve been experiencing sleep paralysis every time I wake up since that day. I’ve literally never had sleep paralysis until after that day and every time I wake up there’s this great pressure on my chest. I always end up trying to scream or flail around, afraid of being back in that basement, but my muscles refuse to move for even hours at a time sometimes. I’ve been seeing a doctor about it but maybe I’m like possessed or something. I don’t know if you have any advice or weird techniques but please tell me if you do. Not every member of the Mcnamara family believes me and I think one of them might try to sue me because they think I didn’t check the pipes which led to the basement getting flooded or because I cut down their favorite tree or something. 

I already asked the police and several detectives about Jamie and all of… this but there hasn’t been a whole lot of luck. Your ad said you were an investigator who was willing to look into supernatural stuff and perform exorcisms. So please PLEASE help me if there’s anything you can do, HELP ME.

Ana Otto- Statement ends. My diagnosis: Most likely the work of the Choke considering the presence of losing space and the fear of being trapped and buried alive. When it comes to dealing with the Choke and the Boundless they tend to be relatively easier and straightforward due to their often adverse effects towards each other. However, this case is a little more complicated. I went to investigate the house and brought Ben Bannet to perform an inspection on the house and its architecture. He was able to find something strange going on with the attic and the basement of the house. They appear to be based on the design philosophy and sensibilities of one Robert Smirke. If you have read even a small number of my previous investigative statements and reports you should be quite familiar with his architecture and its connection to the supernatural. 

Various parts of the house were smashed and crushed by the tree falling on it, which is to be expected, but some parts of the basement seemed to be unnaturally warped and distorted as if something was crushing it from the outside. I brought an artifact aligned with the Boundless, a feather that leaves anyone who touches it unable to fall for several days without any way to bring themselves down. I dropped the feather into the basement and the feather was shot out of the basement at an alarming speed as the room seemed to screech and contort before going back to its original shape. However, the damage from the water and ice still remained. As for the person who rose out of the water. Miss Angelo’s description of his appearance and behavior does indeed match that of the mentioned

Mr. Erdmann is an Avatar of the Choke that appears to have the ability to enter the Choke itself through sufficiently large bodies or pools of water. This ability can also be used by him to travel from one pool of water to another by entering the Choke from one area and then moving through it before exiting somewhere different than that of where he came from. He is capable of going back the way he came so this ability can be used to hide in the Choke for any amount of time before returning back to where he was. According to some of my… intel… this “portal” travel might involve the Choke somehow compressing space both literally and metaphorically. Erdmann can also bring people, be they willing or unwilling, into the Choke with this ability. 

My records indicate that Erdmann works as a debt collector, healthcare manager, and financial director. I hypothesize that he typically feeds the Choke in one of three ways. By dragging unfortunate victims into pools of water in order to take them directly into the Choke, trapping scared people in terrible contracts they cannot escape from, and  /or feeding on the fear and despair of people trapped in debt or terrible financial situations. This wouldn’t be the first time I’ve seen the Choke get more elaborate than just people being physically trapped. It seems that the fear of not having a lot of wiggle room or being out of options in a metaphorical sense feeds this Dread Power just as well as being buried alive. The Entity cares not if you feel like you are suffocating literally or metaphorically. 

There have also been several other investigations regarding Erdmann that I was tasked with looking into and supernatural phenomena seem to have a way of following him around, indicating that the Choke probably favors him greatly. There is also the possibility that locations could have something to do with it. Some of the research notes I exchanged with Gertrude Robinson theorized that similar to how Britain might be the current focus of the Beholding, North America might be the current focus for the Choke. Which seems to have some basis with how active the Dread Power seems around some of these parts. As for Edrmann’s whereabouts, he appears to be working at a nearby hospital and bank at the moment. Something that I will be sure to look into in the future. 

When it comes to Miss Angelo’s plight I fear that it might be too late. I have no way of really proving Erdmann had anything to do with it so I’m currently working on gathering some evidence of a pothole or other natural disaster as the explanation for the state of the Mcnamara’s home. Perhaps wind and snow caused the tree to fall over and destabilize the house while knocking a few pipes loose. It is quite old after all. But I fear the real problem is the contract Angelo seemed to have signed. I’m still working on figuring out how to break these contracts and the only way I’ve managed to do so involves the Puppeteer. Which is basically trading out one supernatural binding for another one of sorts. Mcnamara’s contracts tend to end quite terribly for those who sign them. Those who accumulate too much “debt” disappear or worse. The investigation is still ongoing though, so more evidence is needed. End diagnosis.