Location 014Q part 2

 In the last post where I shared "Location 014Q," I said that I would just have to put Ewan's introduction in another post. That is this one. Here is an introduction to Ewan Marsh and how he came to be part of the agency. 

Location 014Q

Testimony 2019-05-17

Arch. Hale: Statement of Ewan Marsh regarding his family’s experience with Location 014Q, recorded direct from subject by Archivist Makhi Hale.

Marsh: Do I...do I start talking now?

Arch. Hale: Yes, please. At the beginning or as near to it as you can, if you would.

Marsh: Um, well, it all started way before I was born, but I know the history and can give you some info about it. It was my grandfather, Eli Marsh. He was the one that first found out about the quarry. Dove below fifty feet and found the cave. Found the message. Shouldn’t have even been there. It was too deep and it was old, too old to have been from humans. Too perfectly written to be from humans. No one would’ve been able to get there, especially with how the quarry was about letting people that deep. But he found it. He came back up, kept the message to himself. After all, everyone already knew about the wish granting. It was just rumors and legends, though, like the stories of giant catfish and drowned children. That’s what everyone thought. You know, urban legends. Everyone knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who has a friend who went to the quarry and made a wish.

Except it was real.

At least, it was after my grandfather made his first wish. He made his first wish the way you’re supposed to. He went to the quarry at night, spilled his blood into the water, and spoke his wish aloud. It doesn’t work if the wish isn’t spoken and if no blood is spilled. Kinda works during the day if the other conditions are met, but not really. Night is the best time, dusk and dawn are next best. He wanted his dream car. His father, Earl, got the car and forbid him from driving it. He went back to that quarry and made countless wishes, but none were granted. At least, not until a year passed. Then he made his wish, that his father would give him the car. His father was badly injured, wheelchair bound, and my grandfather got the car. Life went on. He used the quarry to grow his business. He needed money to invest in his company, wished for it, his father died and he got the insurance payout. Same thing happened with his first wife, Edith Mayhew. My father and his brothers were from that first marriage. My grandfather’s second marriage, to a woman named Elizabeth Benton, resulted in one child, a daughter, Eliana.

When my father, Elliot, and his brothers, Edward and Elias, were a little older, around ten, eleven, and twelve, he told them about the quarry and took them there to let them make their first wishes. They wished for a couple dollars of their own that didn’t come from their father. A couple months later, they received a letter from the lawyer of a distant great-aunt who died and left them each ten dollars. It wasn’t a fortune, but it was definitely a couple dollars that didn’t come from Eli Marsh so they were impressed. As they grew, they made more wishes. One a year each. That was all the quarry would grant. One wish per person per year.

This tradition carried on with Edward’s daughters, my cousins, Eve, Esme, and Emily. Oh, he was married to Alexandra Brooks. It carried on with Elias’ kids, my cousins, Ellery, Eldon, Easter, and Ella. He married Scarlett Gordon. It even carried on with Aunt Eliana’s kids, Pippy and Effie—Epiphany and Euphemia—when she married Uncle Zeke, that’s Ezekiel Whitley. He took her name, which was quite a scandal at the time I’m told. Pippy, Effie, and I were born around the same time. They were a bit older than me, but they didn’t mind playing with me. My family never liked that I played with them instead of my male cousins or brothers. They didn’t like that I enjoyed dress up and playing with dolls, but they figured I’d grow out of it and it wasn’t like I did these things in public so they let me be.

My father was twenty-two, just married my mother Viviana Harrell, when he had the dream. The dream he told the family about. The dream he told my siblings—oh, right. You all like names. That’s Ezra, Eugene, Valentina Eryn, and Vincent Emory—and I about when we were old enough to understand words. I was about three when I first heard it. We grew up hearing the dream. It was the gospel, holier than any sermon in church. He dreamed of the quarry and our family standing along the shore. There were gentle waves that lapped at the shore, despite the fact that quarry is usually still. A voice whispered across the water, murmuring the message our grandfather found on the wall of the cave. But then it whispered my father’s name. It whispered his name and said, “Protect me...feed me...” The waves washed over an ornate dagger half-buried in the sand at the shore. The blade of the dagger pointed toward town.

My father interpreted this to mean the quarry wanted people to wish there, more people than just our family, but wanted our family to act as gatekeepers. Guarantee that it would be protected. My grandfather proclaimed my father a prophet. Clearly the quarry had chosen him, much like it chose my grandfather to find the message first. My father, despite being the third born son, was made head of the family. His siblings didn’t mind, not even Elias who should’ve been first in line for the fortune. They became his trusted advisors, listening to him preach what the quarry wanted. They told others in town of how to properly wish. Soon, there were people who lined up at the quarry at night to make their wishes. But it didn’t stop there. During the day, there would be people lining up at home to talk to my father, ask him for advice on wishes, ask if there was anything the quarry needed or anything the family needed.

It didn’t take long for my father to begin holding sermons about his dreams from the quarry. And he had a lot of dreams. All of them about the quarry. Some of them involved a humanoid form coming from the water to speak directly to him. He didn’t talk about those in detail. I read about some of them in his journal that I wasn’t supposed to read, but I was bored and didn’t know if he’d written in it. First thing I saw when I opened it to a random page was a dream about that humanoid form. It was...well, it wasn’t the kind of thing a son should be reading about his father, especially not when I was as young as I was when I found it.

But moving on from that because I don’t really like thinking about it, things were pretty great. Our grandfather’s business was booming, the town treated us like royalty and gave us whatever we wanted or needed. Well, some of the town. Those who wished at the quarry treated us like royalty, though the rest of the town kissed up to us in hopes of getting some money. My father was a messiah to those who wished at the quarry.

Things went downhill, though, starting with me.

It was tradition that when we were nine, ten, eleven, or twelve—it depends on how old our parents were when they first went to the quarry, like Uncle Edward’s kids are eleven when they make their first wish, Uncle Elias’ kids are twelve, Aunt Eliana’s are nine, and my siblings and I would be ten—we go to the quarry and make our first wish on the night of our birthdays. It was always a big deal, our birthdays, but then the birthday wish would be just between the parent who went to the quarry when they were our age. I was so excited in the days leading up to my birthday, but then when I got to the quarry to make the wish…I felt sick. I could barely speak and felt like I was going to throw up. Everything was so still and quiet. The water could have been glass, it was so still and reflective. My father handed me his pocket knife, the same one he’d used to make his first wish, and stepped back to watch me make my wish. I held the blade to my hand, but couldn’t do it. My father asked if everything was alright and I said that I didn’t know what to wish for. There wasn’t anything in particular I wanted, I wasn’t in any juvenile disputes, I had no grudges or ill-will toward my siblings or cousins. My father was surprised, but said that that was alright. I could come back to make my first wish when I thought of something. I don’t know how it was possible, but the air became even stiller as we climbed back into the car and drove up gravel road from when the quarry was active.

Things started going downhill after that, though it was so gradual that no one realized. No one connected our misfortune to my birthday. Our business started dwindling, losing money. It was fine, though. The town still liked us and we still had money. The ones who wished at the quarry still wished there, still viewed my family as the chosen family, my father as a messiah. Then we went bankrupt. Still, it wasn’t a big deal. Then my father began having nightmares. Soon, the whole family was having nightmares. Except me. I was fine.

My parents started fighting. He blamed her for breaking tradition by giving Valentina and Vincent names that didn’t start with ‘e’ and she retorted that it was his fault for letting children make wishes at the quarry, abusing the powers of it for selfish, childish things. It was about two weeks later that Valentina and Vincent were involved in a car accident. Valentina was killed—not instantly, but it took so long for the ambulance to arrive and she was so badly injured…I wish it had been instant, but Vincent lived. He had severe trauma though and amnesia. The doctors said it was unlikely he’d ever fully recover. My father changed his name on his birth certificate to Emory Vincent, against my mother’s wishes, but everyone knew he was still Vincent. Most people treated him like he was stupid. Kids mocked him, insulted him. I don’t have to tell you the kind of things they said about him. I got into my fair share of fights over it, though I usually ended up on the losing end, being younger and smaller.

Things kept getting worse. My father became more and more fanatical about the quarry and my mother began telling anyone who would listen stories of children drowning in the quarry, trying to keep them away from it so they wouldn’t “use up all the magic for frivolous things,” in her words. People slowly stopped visiting. Then my mother suddenly vanished. We found her car at the shore, near the gravel road. There were footprints in the sand. My father proclaimed that the quarry was punishing her for her sins. That was around the time I noticed some of your agents around town and when I first heard about Verdigris wanting to acquire the quarry. As you know, it was fought by the town, but no one fought harder than my family. We lived so close to the quarry and my father had practically built a religion around it. But Verdigris managed to buy it and our family was unhappy with it, but couldn’t do anything. When Verdigris began draining the quarry, bad things happened around town, which I’m sure you heard about. But things were worse for my family. Everyone except me had nightmares. Vincent would cry and wet the bed most nights. My father would moan in his sleep, loudly. Not too sure his were all nightmares, honestly. My cousins, uncles, aunts—everyone was having nightmares. Everyone except me.

It was around the time that Sloane Cunningham came back that I dreamed of the quarry. I dreamed of gently lapping waves. I dreamed of a humanoid. A handsome man with blue-green eyes. I can’t recall any other features, just those eyes, though it might have looked like Sloane. Maybe. The voice was lyrical, but he didn’t seem to move his mouth. “I can cure your brother,” it said. “I can heal him. You just need to wish for it.”

I woke up in a cold-sweat. I went to Vincent’s room and woke him up. I told him to come with me, but be quiet. We left the house and we went to the quarry. Vincent began crying and saying no over and over, but he calmed when we were taken by the security guard—well, I suppose it was actually a custodian—to the office. I began telling him—I think his name was Tanner?—everything about the quarry. He told me to hold on and then called you. He let us stay there and told us that he’d keep us safe. You know the rest. You showed up and Tanner told me to tell you my story while he kept Vincent entertained.

Arch. Hale: You mentioned that your father formed a religion around the quarry and that people believed him to be a prophet. Could you...elaborate on the practices of your father’s cult—er, religion?

Marsh: Call a spade a spade, it is a cult. And I mean, we didn’t really do anything. We had our family tradition of making our first wish on our birthday and my father advised us to tell the town how to properly wish—bleed, speak the wish out loud, best results at night—but it wasn’t something as formal or organized as a cult. Sure, people came to my father for his advice on wishing and treated him like a religious leader, but it wasn’t like a cult. Like, they’d come to my father for wishing advice and to hear about the quarry the same way you go to a priest for spiritual counseling or a lawyer for legal advice. There weren’t really any practices.

Arch. Hale: And the stories about people drowning in the quarry are just stories?

Marsh: Well, I mean, there’s probably been someone that drowned there back when the town was first founded, but I don’t know. Didn’t really pay much attention to the town history portion of class. But no, as far as I know, any rumors of people drowning in the quarry are just urban legends. Anything else?

Arch. Hale: No, I think that covers it.

Marsh: Good. I’m going to get back to Vincent before he gets worried. He doesn’t like strangers.

Arch. Hale: Statement ends. Marsh was contacted by Superior Callum Read and strongly advised to join the Agency. It is unknown at this time what position Marsh will request once he passes the required courses and exams. Hopefully, he’ll want to be an archival assistant. This position would also give him the leeway he needs to take care of his brother.

This is the last entry involving the quarry so far, but there may be another at a later date. For now, I hope you enjoyed the cool, refreshing, blue-green waters of Location 014Q.