Statement of Lesere Saraki, regarding a recent night-shift at St. Thomas Hospital, London.
Statement[]
Lesere Saraki worked at St Thomas Hospital, near Waterloo. On 23rd December 2011 at 01.30am, two men were brought in with severe burns and she noted that the A&E room was almost totally silent when they came through, despite being full of people. Dr Kayleigh Grice was assigned to the burn victims.
The first victim was covered in second degree burns all over his body, although his clothes were unaffected. He was tall, heavyset, had no hair (presumably burned off) and wore a black suit and white shirt. He had no identification on him.
The second victim was also entirely burned except for a clear line on his neck, above which everything was fine. He appeared to be in his mid-thirties with long, dyed black hair, he wore the same suit as the other victim but wore a long leather coat over the top. He had small eye tattoos on all of his joints and over his heart, which didn't seem affected by the burns. An old passport marked him as Gerard Keay and he had a zippo lighter with a similar eye design on it, his only possessions.
They had been found by firefighters near St Mary's churchyard responding to reports of a fire at a nearby building site. They found no actual fire but the ground had burn marks and a nearby metal bar was bent as though from a great heat.
Later, as Lesere was walking past their room she heard the older unnamed man chanting, something that sounded like "Asag, veepalach, the lightless flame." His skin felt warm to touch. She returned to the reception and found it empty, strange for 3am on Christmas Eve. Here, she heard a growl as if there was a beast in the waiting room and witnessed all the soft drinks in a nearby vending machine boiling and exploding. She ran towards the exit only to discover that the handles were warping and giving off extreme heat.
As the chanting got louder, she returned to the room to find the older man with his eyes open staring at the ceiling. Lesere made a move to silence him but was stopped by Gerard, who said touching the man would be a bad idea. She was shocked that he didn't seem to register the pain from his burns.
Gerard asked Lesere if they'd had anything brought in with them, specifically a small book bound in red leather and a brass pendant (possibly with an eye on it). She said not, so Gerard went into a storage room (somehow knowing the code to bypass the lock) and returned with a scalpel. As he was exiting the room, the nurse was faced with the choice to move out of his way or try to stop him from killing the other man, deciding on the former. Gerard nodded in appreciation, and told her "Yes, for you better Beholding than the Lightless Flame" as saline solution boiled in the background. He then muttered some words and stabbed the chanting man in the throat. The wound blackened before the whole body turned to ash and cremated itself - there was no heat or fire but even the scalpel disintegrated.
Lesere left the room to dispose of the ashes and saw Dr Grice, then ran to the waiting room and was relieved to see that people were back, then she returned to work.
Gerard received more support over the next 4 days, though not regaining consciousness again, before being released to his mother.
Lesere still works on the ward but keeps feeling like she's being watched, especially around that storeroom.
Post-Statement[]
Sasha got into the hospital records and found a record of Gerard and the older man arriving and only Gerard leaving. There was also a police report on the other victim who went missing but no evidence of foul play and no missing persons report.
Jonathan Sims remarks that Asag is a demon in Sumerian myth, one of disease and corruption, but that there is a story of it boiling fish in their rivers alive due to its ugliness.
Martin suggested that Vipolash may be 'wypalać', the Polish word for 'to cauterize or brand'.
Gerard Keay apparently died from a brain tumor in late 2014.
Lesere declined the offer of a follow-up interview, though still reported the occasional feeling of being watched.
Sasha noticed, from the CCTV, that at 03:11:22 everyone in the waiting room in A&E calmly stood up and left the building. Subsequently Lesere can be seen entering & leaving the room three times. At 03:27:12 everybody returns to the waiting room. But at 03:22:52 the feed cuts out momentarily, replaced with a single frame of a close-up human eye.
Continuity[]
- Gerard Keay was previously mentioned in MAG 4: Page Turner.
| ATTENTION! SPOILERS AHEAD!! This section contains information from later episodes of The Magnus Archives and may contain major spoilers for the setting and plot. Continue at your own risk. |
- Related entities: The Desolation and The Eye.
- The heavyset man is later revealed to be Diego Molina, a servant of The Desolation and a member of The Cult of the Lightless Flame.
- Mary Keay, Gerard's mother, died in 2008 but was undead at the time of this statement and thus able to collect him from the hospital. Gertrude Robinson has been known to pose as his mother but Gerard did not meet her until around 2013.