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ARCHIVIST
Statement of Ranboo, name withheld for privacy, regarding his time as an unwilling participant in a failed ritual. Original statement given November 16, 2017, audio recording by Jonathan Sims, the Archivist.
Statement begins.
ARCHIVIST (STATEMENT)
I’ve been a fan of horror as a genre for as long as I can remember. I was always fascinated by the detail and effort put into the movie sets, costume makeup, the way horror media can induce a fear so real and visceral in a person despite knowing just how fake it really is. The way we allow ourselves to revel in the terror that we bring forth from our own minds. Maybe I felt that fear when I was younger, but the older I got, the more it turned to intrigue and curiosity instead. I wanted to know the ins and outs of all of it. That’s not to say that I didn’t feel afraid when I watched horror films or played horror games, but I let that fear conflate itself with excitement. And, well, that’s not to say that I don’t still enjoy horror even after being kidnapped. We all deal with trauma differently, I guess, and my way is - is shooting mushroom zombies and making eyes at Leon Kennedy in front of thousands of people.
Right. I should mention - this is important to my statement. I stream on Twitch, it’s my, uh, full time job. I started while I was still in highschool - I’m 19 now. I think. I don’t know how long they kept me in that mall. I know time moved differently there. Then again, I’m not…I don’t think I can really trust my memories of that place anyway. It’s all...headache inducing. Like there’s something veiling what the reality I know was going on even in my head. Anyway, um. The reason why this is important is because I mentioned to my chat that I wanted to make a project called Generation Loss. I even uploaded some teasers and, like, demos to my discord server. But I never told them anything about the plot.
This happened, like, two years ago. I had been calling a bunch of people to help me get the show produced. A few of them - the other actors - were people I’d become friends with by streaming, and others were part of the production team, and at this point I’d started to become pretty familiar with everyone I was working with. That’s why I didn’t question it when I got a call on Discord from a user I wasn’t familiar with, because they prefaced it by saying they were from the Generation Loss production team. I picked up and was struck by how honestly terrible the audio quality was. The call was constantly losing connection and it was incredibly staticky, and I heard what sounded like faint band music in the background. It sounded like something you’d play at a circus. Their message wasn’t long, though. They just mentioned that one of the props we’d need for the show was being shipped to me, and that it was fragile, so I’d best be careful with it. I did wonder why they needed to call to tell me this, especially if the call quality was so terrible, but I reasoned that maybe they did try to send me a text about it but the connection was so bad it would just be faster to call me.
I found the black box of tapes on my doorstep the next day. They were all old, the way I had talked about with the design team, unlabeled, and the logo we’d decided on was printed onto the empty label. Well, all of them were blank except one, which said “The Social Experiments.” That was supposed to be the very first one I released, and I wondered what they had put on the tape, so…after hanging out with my friends that day, I went home and played it. Yes, I know, stupid of me, but you gotta remember that I thought it was harmless!
I don’t even remember falling asleep or passing out or anything. It’s just that one moment the tape was playing in the evening light of my room, and the next, I was laying on my back on a ratty old couch in a cabin in the woods. This…metal mask had been strapped to my face, open wires sparking next to my ears, and I had a horrible pounding headache when I woke up. I remember everything now, of course, but while I was in the mall, I didn’t know…anything at all. I was hardly sure of my own name. All I knew was that I was in a cabin and I wasn’t supposed to be in the cabin and I didn’t know how I got there. I remember being so…far away for most of it. As if I was watching something else pilot my body, though I was still in control. It was like one horrifically long dissociative fit.
I spent a long time trying to get out of the cabin. There were three doors in the main room. One was locked and led to a bedroom, another led to a kitchen, and the last…was a bright yellow door that opened into a different endless hallway each time. I only stepped inside once and immediately regretted it. Nothing about it made sense. Trying to think about it now causes a different kind of headache, one I’m keen to not experience again. I’m not even sure how I got out of it, really, just that there were shapes and colors and then there was a man covered head to toe in slime.
At that moment I was absolutely sure that there was something wrong with him. I mean, obviously, being covered in slime makes you weird enough, but it wasn’t the, the bearable kind of weird, it was an unsettling, unnerving kind of weird. Like he was something trying to be a person but couldn’t get it quite right. The worst part is that I was too scared to think straight then but now I remember it clearly. The thing tried to look like one of my friends, Charlie, and it did a terrible job of it. His face was lopsided, he had too many teeth…and his eyes were so glassy, like marbles. And that slime was definitely blood, even though I can’t remember it as such. It kept threatening to kill me with a huge, creepy smile on its face if I didn’t…make it lunch. There was something bad about the food too. No matter how normal it looked, everything felt squishy. Wet. It…that creature tried to feed it to me, but the mask got in the way. Thankfully. It let me go after that, but I was still trapped inside the cabin with no way out. One of the other rooms had another one of those things impersonating my friends. It tried to kill me too, but there was a pair of bolt cutters laying around that I used to defend myself. After I smacked it around a bit, it seemed to…change its mind and tell me it would help me. I didn’t trust it, of course, but I didn’t think I could say no, either, because I couldn’t kill it even with several blows to the head with a bolt cutter, so I just…let it follow me back to the other room. At that point I was exhausted. There was a bed in the locked room, and I just…laid down to sleep. I know, okay? Super terrible genre awareness. But I was so tired.
I woke up to the sound of screaming. The thing had been leaning over me, watching me sleep, but the one impersonating Charlie was now dragging it away, digging its fingers into its flesh and ripping it apart into cloth and sawdust. I don’t know why but I thought that if I followed, I could escape. I didn’t, of course, but I managed to set it and the room on fire before running back to the living room by lighting a match I’d found in my pocket. It was screaming. Not in pain but in rage, and I prayed that dragging the couch to block the door would be able to block it from following me.
Something spoke to me then, a whisper of a man’s voice. “There you are, Ranboo,” he said, crooning in my ear. “Congratulations on surviving for so long. The Stranger has hidden you well, but I know a safer place. Won’t you follow me?” I didn’t know what to do. That yellow door was still there, there was no way to escape from the kitchen, and the locked room was burning still, so I…agreed. He seemed to sigh, satisfied, and said, “Then go through the yellow door. He owes me a favor, after all.” I tried to protest and say that the door was bad, that it couldn’t possibly lead me anywhere, but he didn’t say anything else. What else could I have done? I went through the yellow door.
When I woke up next I was chained to a chair. My head hurt, as usual, and I think one of the wires of the mask was burning into my back. Just as I was trying to get out of it, the TV in front of me flickered to life, and another one of those terrible puppets was there again, but this one looked different. A faceless mannequin dressed like a circus master.
“Hello, our Hero,” it said, tittering like a little girl. “Can I call you our Hero? Such a pleasure to finally meet you. We’ve been enjoying your stories of people that are not people that are people! That terrible spider is trying to get in the way of our business with you, and we can’t have that, no. You take such good care of your skin, the others wanted to peel you now. Make use of that pretty face of yours, you know, but I told them to wait just a little longer. Let the power grow. So just sit tight!” And then it was gone. I don’t know how long I spent sitting there, honestly, but after a while I realized there was a ring of keys just close enough for me to bend over and nudge it into my lap and I managed to get out of the chains. The puppet I set on fire earlier was in the next room, laying on a surgical table, and it twitched and convulsed and stared at me with incredible hatred. I was pretty numb at this point, and…I took the scalpels sitting nearby and…cut it open. I’m not sure why. I could say that for a lot of my actions during this time, really. But I was absolutely convinced the key to the next room was in that puppet so I cut it open and it screamed and thrashed and I pulled all its disgusting, gooey insides out. It was like playing that board game, Operation?
The key ended up being in the dirty toilet next to the surgical table. I didn’t and I still don’t feel bad about ripping that thing open, though. When I opened the door to the next room, there were a bunch of waxworks strapped to a carousel. Their faces were contorted in varying degrees of pain and terror, still terrible caricatures of people I recognized as my friends, and thinking about it now makes me nauseous. I don’t know how I knew this either, but I was certain that those were real people trapped inside the wax. They all kept staring at me, pleading with me through their eyes, and they kept. Watching. Me. You have to believe me. I tried to get them out, but the controls were all broken, and I no longer had that bolt cutter on me. There was no way I could have helped them. That circus master appeared again on the TV, tutting disapprovingly.
“Oh, you just had to go and break yourself out, hm? How impolite. We were going to take such good care of you. You really shouldn’t listen to those nasty creatures! They just want you for their own ends. Well, we do as well, but it is so much more enjoyable to be the star of a play than a fly in a web, wouldn’t you agree? Don’t run anymore, hm?” Which, of course, meant that I should book it. So I tore through the set, a bunch of different escape rooms glued together in a way that didn’t make any sort of sense, until I made it into the mall proper. There was no proper light, just flickering bulbs and dying stands, and for the first time I felt like I had broken free of the haze that had gripped me the whole time because my fear was just that overwhelming. I got really close to having a panic attack. Or a few of them. Anyone would, in that situation. I tried to pull that mask off my head, but it felt like I physically couldn’t move my arm to do it. I looked and it was wrapped in a web, pinned to my side.
“Stop that,” the man from earlier said, sounding irritated. “It’s hardly easy to infiltrate another’s seat of power, even for the Mother. Would you like to live, or not?”
“Of course I do,” I told him, and he began to give me directions to follow. I found that even if I disagreed with his instructions, I physically could not disobey, so I metaphorically hung my head and just did what I was told. Go to the heart of the facility, he said. You need to destroy it to escape. To prevent I Do Not Know You from turning the world inside out. Now, this had already been a nightmare of a horror movie - I’d been kidnapped, forced to play weird, freaky games at the behest of my kidnappers, probably drugged, physically harmed, told I was going to get skinned…let’s stop an apocalypse and add a chase scene, why not? I ran so many circles around the mall, trying to avoid all sports of creepy marionettes, puppets, waxworks come to life, every kind of uncanny valley creature you can imagine, a facsimile of my friends pasted on all their faces as they lumbered after me. The thing I cut open led the chase, sawdust and goop flaking from the massive hole in its chest as it screamed and cursed at me.
I almost made it. I almost made it to the exit. I was so, so close, but I’d made a few wrong turns, had to double back one too many times, and I could only run for so long. I got cornered when I stumbled, piled on by a bunch of those stupid things, and blacked out from being throttled. Sometimes I can still feel those hands, plastic covered in skin, tight around my neck.
Have you ever been trussed up by a rope? Hung from a wall like a cut of meat? I’d been restrained so many times during this entire thing it was starting to feel like it was the way I should always be. Hung up on display for the world to see, a puppet for these things’ entertainment. Whether it was spider web or metal chain didn’t make any difference at this point. I was tied up to a wall. There was blood on my face, and I could feel it leaking down my chin, crusting up. There was blood on the floor too, and all over my clothes. I think I was missing a few teeth, actually. I must have hung there for some time before the man who spoke in my ear appeared. I couldn’t see anything - I could only barely make out his form, and even then, I thought - this man has too many limbs to be human. I don’t know if it was a trick of the shadows or if he really had more limbs than normal, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he did.
He gave off this air of irritation, like I was a gnat that had gotten in the way one too many times. “Really, Ranboo, I gave you so many avenues to escape, and you still failed. You make a poor Hero.” I wanted to cuss him out, honestly, but I didn’t know what he wanted to do to me so I kept my mouth shut. I know I’m not a hero. I would have saved those people and made an escape if I was. He didn’t have to rub it in, is all I’m saying. He paced around a little bit, muttering to himself, and an eternity seemed to pass before he finally decided to look at me again. My skin prickled. There it was again, that feeling of something not quite right, something inhuman.
“Listen, Ranboo. The Mother still has plans for you, or I’d have honestly just let the Strangers skin you by now.” He paused here, like he was trying to give a dramatic monologue, like this was a comedy of some sort and I was supposed to laugh at that. “As it stands, your…penchant for survival is useful. Helpful, even. The Ringmaster is looking for you now, incensed that the Unknowing has been delayed by your disappearance. You must make a decision soon. Not that it particularly matters in any way, as the result will be the same, but it’s all about the choice.” As he said this, I felt a compulsion to look up. I really wish I hadn’t.
A huge spider hung above me, its chelicerae framing my head like a halo. 8 beady eyes stared down, straight into my soul, and I think that was the moment I really broke down. Everything up to that point had felt unreal, you know? All standard horror-movie content. The thing is - spiders are…well, it’s a little hard to explain. Spiders are real. Spiders have hurt people, will hurt people, and they scare people, but they are just creatures with their own wills. The mannequins, the puppets, I could dismiss those as a bad hallucination or a terrible, horrible nightmare if I wanted to delude myself. But the spider…the only unnatural thing about it was its size, and the way it seemed to wait for a command. It was real. Does that make sense?
He prompted me to respond to him, and I begged him to just help me get out of this place. He must be capable of it, and he was here, which means he knew how to leave too, and wouldn’t he just let me go? I wouldn’t go to the police, I wouldn’t say anything about it, whatever he wanted. I must have begged and cried for a few minutes before realizing it wouldn’t work, so once I managed to get my crap together enough to be coherent again, I told him to make sure they could never use my skin for anything. That answer seemed to satisfy him greatly, and he…smiled. I don’t think I can forget the sight of his teeth, blindingly white and sharp, against his formless face. “A wise choice,” he said, and the spider’s jaws closed around my head.
I really wasn’t expecting to wake up again, but when I did, I was sitting in my room, the exact same spot I’d been in before the whole thing. I felt absolutely gross and numb, like when you take a nap so hard you wake up disoriented, so I went to go take a shower. There were two new scars on my cheeks, almost unnoticeable, like puncture holes, and another two on the sides of my temple. I called my friend Aimesy up afterwards, and she told me I’d been missing for six months, and they’d all been looking for me. I told her about the tapes, about what had happened, called off the project, and tried to go to therapy. You know, I’ve come to realize it’s not actually that hard to see when people think you’re crazy and they’re just being polite about it. It’s made finding a therapist that will actually help me work through it a little difficult.
I…got back to planning about Generation Loss and streaming recently. It helps. I know! I must be insane! Most people tend to stay away from things that traumatize them. I’m sure that those Strangers or whatever he called them somehow learned about Generation Loss through watching me on Twitch, but I can’t help it. It’s my everything, you know? Like, I definitely won’t be the protagonist like I planned to before, but I never really liked being an actor anyway. I definitely prefer directing. I can’t help the feeling that it’s a project with so much potential. I can’t wait to see the audience reaction. Pulling at their strings to get a certain reaction just because I can is so…fulfilling.
ARCHIVIST
Statement ends.
I did some following up, seeing as the Web and the Stranger are so explicitly fighting in this statement. A rare moment of clarity. It’s rather a miracle that he made it out in what seems to be one piece. Or, I suppose, as that avatar put it…part of the Mother’s plan.
(sighs) “Ranboo” is a pseudonym used all across the internet. He seems to be quite a popular streamer, and is indeed still active on Twitch. In fact, a few months ago, he released the show he spoke about in his statement, Generation Loss. It does seem heavily based on the events he went through. The Charlie he mentioned is also featured in the show, and can also be found online under the pseudonym of Slimecicle. Aimsey, as well, can be found online under the same name, though I don’t believe there is…any need for followup.
…
I wonder if Elias knew that there had been an attempt at the Unknowing before Yarmouth? More likely, this seems like some kind of taunt or warning from the Web, a live statement about the very event that put me into a coma after the fact.
[ONLY THE SOUND OF HIS BREATHING IS HEARD FOR A FEW SECONDS.]
[PAGE TURNS.]
Oh. There’s a sticky note attached to the back of the transcript. It says…”the curtains have fallen. Smiley face.” This…is certainly not from Elias, or the other staff. (frustrated exhale) You would think he might invest more in supernatural security if we archival staff are apparently so important to whatever it is he does. Whatever the Eye does. Wants. Or, well. I guess Peter Lukas is in charge of that now.
[HE FALLS SILENT AGAIN.]
…“It’s all about the choice,” hm?
[ANOTHER PAUSE, BUT QUIETER.]
[A SIGH.]
End recording.
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