The Magnus Archives - season 1

MAG. 3 Across The Street

Statement of Amy Patel, regarding the alleged disappearance of her acquaintance Graham Folger.

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unreality, gaslighting, stalking, being watched, imposters, someone being replaced and only you notice, paranoia-inducing, head injury, surveillance, identity theft, body horror, death of an lgbtq character

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[CLICK]

ARCHIVIST

Statement of Amy Patel, regarding the alleged disappearance of her acquaintance Graham Folger. Original statement given July 1st, 2007. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.

Statement begins.

ARCHIVIST (STATEMENT)

I first met Graham two years ago, more or less. It's hard to say exactly when we first met or even started talking, as we were taking a class together at the time. I'm sure there was plenty of discussion or interaction before we learned each other's names, but I started my course in September of 2005, so yeah, about two years. I had decided to take a Criminology course at Birkbeck University as a way of getting out of the rut with my office job – I'm an Associate Compliance Analyst at Deloitte, and if you think that sounds boring, well... yeah. It is. I knew a night course in Criminology wasn't going to go anywhere, of course, even if I'd finished it. I just had to do something to find a bit of interest in my life, and it was either that or become an alcoholic, so...

Sorry, I'm going off topic. I initially found Graham a bit off-putting, to be honest. He was a chain smoker and wore far too much deodorant to try and cover the smell. He was a bit older than me, maybe ten years or so. I never asked his age, I mean, we weren't that close, but he was starting to grey at the edges of his hair, and you could see that the tiredness on his face wasn't just from missing a single night's sleep. That's not to say he was bad looking – he had a round, open sort of face and quite deep blue eyes, but very much not my type. He was well-spoken in group work, at least when he did speak, and I think it came up once that he'd been to Oxford, though I don't know what college.

I'd noticed earlier that during lectures he always seemed to be scribbling furiously in a notebook even when the lecturer wasn't speaking. At first, I just thought he was thorough, but I swear I watched him fill a whole A5 notebook in one lecture. I remember it was a talk on youth and the justice system where the speaker was so slow that it wouldn't have filled that book even if Graham had been writing down literally every word. Not to mention I asked to borrow his notes once for an essay, and he gave me this weird look and said he didn't take any notes.

So yeah, point is, I wouldn't have called him a friend, but we got on alright. It was about four months into my course that I first encountered Graham outside of the university. I was riding the night bus home, having gone for a couple of drinks and missed the regular service. I live in Clapham, so there's a pretty regular night bus service headed there. Of course, regular also means drunken angry vomiters, so yeah, I generally try to be unobtrusive, sitting in a seat at the back of the top floor.

It was there that I saw Graham. He was sat right at the front, staring out of the window. People-watching is one of my guilty pleasures, so I decided not to say hello, at least not right away. I wasn't disappointed, either – he was stranger alone than he had ever been during class.

It was the middle of winter at this point, so the windows were solid with condensation, but he almost obsessively wiped it away from the one in front of him the moment it started to obscure his view. He seemed to be intently scanning the street for something, except that at times he would crane his neck to stare at the roofs of the buildings passing by. He seemed nervous, as well, and was breathing way faster than normal, which fogged up his window even more. It was slightly alarming to watch, to be honest, and I finally made up my mind to tell him I was there.