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Started recording

Clicking the recorder only to flip the paper a few times to look for the date I gave a heavy sigh "statement of Timothy Stoker...on the disappearance of his brother Danny Stoker four years ago. Original Statement given June 14th, 2017. Audio recording by...Marcus archival assistant of the Magnus Institute...London."

"..S-statement begins "

My little brother Danny, was always better than me. He was a couple of years younger, but by the time he hit 21, he was already taller, fitter, better looking. I mean, he didn't have my winning sense of humor, but he didn't need Charisma, it wasn't a problem for him. I think a lot of people in my situation would have been... jealous, but not me. I was just proud of him. He was always doing, some charity race or endurance course, getting modeling gigs, while I worked quietly away in publishing. And it made me smile.

I remember he got a job doing some publicity shots for the company that owned my local gym. There was a good five months where, whenever I walked down to my offices, there he'd be, twice as large as life, smiling down from a poster, and challenging me to take them up on their joining fee, or lack thereof. I never did, but it always brought a smile to my face when I saw it.

We didn't talk much, me and Danny. We were still pretty close, and he'd usually keep me updated on whatever his latest obsession was. He tended to throw himself into a thing completely for about six months, and well, then he'd get bored, and something new would catch his eye. Like, um, back in 2013, it was urban exploration. He'd come down to London, stay with me for a couple of days and we'd end up having drinks with, Abigail Ellison, who's a mutual friend of ours from back home.

Abi had been doing the urban exploration thing on and off for a few years, and was telling us a few of her 'close calls' in some of the sites down near the old Docklands. As she talked, I was just watching Danny's eyes light up, and I knew exactly what was happening. His passion for sailing was starting to wane after almost a year, and I was sure I was watching him discover his next project. When Abi mentioned she had a trip lined up for the old Millennium Mills in Newham, well, it was pretty much a done deal. At the time I quite liked the idea. It wasn't the weirdest thing to ever catch Danny's attention, not by a long shot, and secretly I thought he and Abigail would maybe make kind of a cute couple, so I was quite encouraging. Not that he needed it.

It's weird, isn't it, the things that can change your life? You can plan for all the devastating, terrible possibilities you can imagine, and it'll always be those tiny, unexpected things that get you. You know, the things that you never even noticed as they were happening, just... just nudging everything into motion. But even if there was a way I could have known, I don't think I'd be able to have stopped him.

So, for the next few months that was it. My cool little brother was an urban explorer. It suited him, and I got used to my phone buzzing at my office desk as he filled it with pictures of his smiling face in front of some, I don't know, rusted machine or hidden tunnel. He never did get together with Abi, but it only took a couple of trips with her, and he'd learned what he needed. He talked a few of his friends into it, like always, and started going on trips further afield. I thought he'd be down in London more than he was, but it turns out there are even more interesting abandoned places up north, and they tend to be less guarded than they are down here, so that was where he spent most of his time.

There was one thing that did draw him down to London, though – what he referred to as "ghost buildings". There might have been some official name in the urban exploration community, I don't know; he stopped using the jargon around me after I joked that 'urbex' sounded like a brand of drain cleaner. What he was talking about was the places where newer buildings had been constructed or, I don't know, over the remains of an earlier one, but development had left some of the old pieces intact. Sometimes, it was just a wall or two, made out of a different material, but occasionally there'd be an entire hidden basement or bricked-up room. I don't know why, but Danny loved them. He'd talk for hours about "crumbling pieces of history desperately clinging onto existence", but to be honest I never really got it. I guess I didn't have to. Anyway, according to him, London had more of these 'ghost buildings' than anywhere else in the country.