- DR. BERNIER: How are you feeling?
- NIC: I’m good. Fine.
- DR. BERNIER: Okay. Good. Can we go back to the point where the, uh, the something in the dark was going to hurt Paul and the others? You were in the forest, you’d just come across Paul and the rest of what you call “The Cult,” um, they were doing something summoning something, perhaps. There was a large rock, totem, and -
- NIC: And something was coming.
- DR. BERNIER: Yes. [pause] Nic?
- NIC: Except that’s not exactly right.
- DR. BERNIER: What’s not exactly right?
- NIC: Well, I remember that I thought it was coming… I mean, I had that thought. But -
- DR. BERNIER: But?
- NIC: But that wasn’t right.
- DR. BERNIER: Why not?
- NIC: Because it was already there.
- DR. BERNIER: What do you mean?
- NIC: I mean, I felt like I could see it, or rather, sense it, but I just… I just some - I knew it was there before I could see it, if that makes sense.
- DR. BERNIER: What was there?
- NIC: The darkness. It was - is - there all the time.
- DR. BERNIER: Okay. Can you describe what happened after the… darkness?
- NIC: I’m sorry, I’m trying.
- DR. BERNIER: Would you like to like to take the relaxation exercises further?
- NIC: Hypnosis again?
- DR. BERNIER: I think it might help.
- NIC: Can we keep trying without it?
- DR. BERNIER: Sure, of course.
- NIC: Okay.
- DR. BERNIER: Okay.
NIC: “It’s waking up,” or, “He’s waking up.” That’s a phrase we’ve heard a lot on this show. From Marcus Corey, the disturbed soldier in the TeslaNova research facility basement, to Madison, the young actress encountering the cult deprogrammer on that audio recording labeled, “Subject M,” that ominous phrase keeps popping up. But what does it mean? Is it simply as it appears? A reference to Eld Fen, that eldritch, Lovecraftian entity mentioned in the work of August Wick? The ancient god of the forest worshipped by the Cult of Tanis?
Or is it something else? Are those mythological references merely placeholders for something a bit more… local? Could these more contemporary references to something “waking up” actually refer to the earth “waking” to save itself? Adapting to a rapidly changing climate or environment? Some kind of built-in earthly or alien safety mechanism?
Or is there a third option: TeslaNova? Is the phrase, “It’s waking up,” referring to the rise of a global conspiracy? A myth that’s become inextricably linked to a company that’s existed since the first world war in one form or another, or perhaps even decades or centuries earlier?
Whether it’s one of those three options or something else entirely, it feels prescient somehow. Too… relevant to ignore.
Marjorie Glass asked us to find out what had happened to her son, graduate student David Glass. Was what happened to her son somehow related to what we’d been researching here in the woods of the Pacific Northwest? David was currently living in an institution, and, according to Marjorie, he hasn’t spoken much over the past few years.
We found David Glass while looking into Nikola Tesla. David’s research involved Nikola Tesla’s late-period exploration into the world of perpetual motion. Included in some of his research documents were a number of photocopies of photographs of the box that was supposed to contain Tesla’s infamous death ray, but instead contain nothing more than a common multi-decade resistance box. One photocopied photograph, however, revealed that, inside the resistance box, rather than the expected electronics was a strange, grey shard. Stapled to the photocopied page were two additional pages: one, a poem by August Wick, and the other, a page from some kind of journal written by an unknown author, the implication being, I suppose, based on the page from that journal, was that the grey shard had been somehow cut or sheared from the strange horn mentioned in the poem and had somehow ended up in Nikola Tesla’s death ray box.
I’m sure most of you recognize the horn from the John Correman/Eld Fen documents we’ve read on this podcast in the past. It certainly sounds like it could be the same… thing mentioned in the experiment by Dr. Samuel Evanson called, creatively, “The Evanson Experiment.” If you remember, in that experiment, subjects were cut, and the horn was rubbed with some kind of glycerine to produce what they called a salve, which was then applied to the subjects’ fresh wounds. The results of the Evanson Experiment are unclear, but John Correman’s notes painted a fairly dark and ominous picture, a picture that included strange woods that affect those walking through them in even stranger ways.
So, the notes of John Correman, the poetry of August Wick, and a journal connected to Nikola Tesla and his infamous death ray all reference a strange and powerful horn, a shard of which may have been hidden in a bit of old electronic equipment in Tesla’s alleged death ray box.
There are so many scattered pieces of information on Tanis, so many tenuous connections. But this wasn’t simply a coincidence, a connection I was wishing into existence. This was a connection somebody else had made. This was David Glass. Institution or not, I needed to speak with David Glass.
But first, MK called with a couple of updates.
- MK: Okay, so there’s something here. It might not be much, but I feel like it might be significant.
- NIC: What is it?
- MK: Parzavala.
- NIC: What about them?
- MK: They were looking for it.
- NIC: They were looking for what?
- MK: Kay, just hold on, listen to this: “17:52; item 478 taken from Lt. Johnson’s locker. 21:30; Johnson and Clark found dead inside the area. Nobody else has been inside the area since the last incident.” Kay, here’s another one. “Carter and Mallory sent to retrieve the bodies and the item. No sign of Carter; Mallory returned, changed. Company morale low. Recommend further scientific research before risking any addition exposure. Recommend placing item 478 status as, ‘considered lost.’”
- NIC: Okay… so…
- MK: Okay, wait for it, though.
- NIC: Okay.
- MK: So there’s a sketch here of item 478. It’s labeled, “fertility totem.”
- NIC: It’s some kind of large horn.
- MK: Obviously.
- NIC: Where did you find this stuff?
- MK: It’s from an auction house catalog, from an auction house that no longer exists, in Vienna.
- NIC: And Parzavala?
- MK: Purchased the whole lot of papers.
- NIC: Wow.
- MK: Right?
- NIC: Is there anything else?
- MK: There were twenty-nine pages in that lot. The catalog only included the text that I read you, and the sketch. Everything is in your inbox.
- NIC: Thanks.
- MK: Mmhmm. Oh, hey, wait, my friend in Sweden did some shit to your footage or whatever.
- NIC: Oh?
- MK: Yeah. I sent that stuff as well.
- NIC: Thanks!
- MK: Uh-huh.
NIC: MK’s friend in Sweden had access to some police equipment, and he or she had been looking into possible locations for Geoff’s appearance on that game camera, or whatever it was. It turns out they were able to use advanced mapping techniques they’d been working on for years to locate possible locations where that video may have been recorded based on the variables provided: the highway, the additional roadway, and the way that the lack of power lines in one direction related to the distance of the highway and the other road. They came up with five probable locations, but sent the maps with a caveat: not only was this an untested technology, but it was limited to about ten square miles around the region. If Geoff had driven, or been driven, farther away, well, we’d be out of luck. At best, it was a guess, educated, but still a guess. At worst, it was nothing more than a total shot in the dark.
I went to check those five locations in search of Geoff. I’ll fill you in on what I found soon, but first, while going through a number of private university databases online, I’d discovered something about a mysterious horn connected to the Haida, the indigenous people who played a large part in season one of Tanis. The information I’d found was located just over the border, in British Columbia, Canada, in the former capital of the province, a place called, “New Westminster.”
The New Westminster Public Library is housed in a low, dark, concrete and glass building. I’d called ahead and asked them to reserve a handful of reference material related to Haida mythology. I’d considered asking the librarian in charge if she could scan what I needed and send it to me for a fee, but I really didn’t know what I was looking for, and there was no way I could afford to scan entire textbooks. I really needed to be there physically. I didn’t want to miss anything.
A cart with some material was waiting for me at the counter when I arrived, and the young man at the desk pointed to the back of the library and told me that, although there were currently no private rooms available, I was welcome to go over everything in the reading area in the back.
- NIC: Oh - I’m sorry, I didn’t realize somebody else was back here.
NIC: Her name was Callie. She told me that it was okay, that she was easy to miss, but she wasn’t easy to miss. She was about five feet tall, with short, cropped light brown hair, might brighter near the ends. She had huge brown eyes, a tiny, turned-up mouth, and it seemed like, whenever she was standing, her weight was perpetually shifted onto her back foot, like she was silently amused by your existence. She told me that her name was Callie and that there was no way she was ever going to allow me to record her voice for this, or any, podcast.
Callie was a PhD student: cultural anthropology. She was extremely well-versed in all kinds of mythology: Norse, Celtic, Viking, Haida, and a lot more. It turns out she’d seen the cart full of stuff I’d had set aside, and because the majority of that material related directly to her specific areas of study, she told me that she just had to meet whoever had called to have such an eclectic collection of books and manuscripts put on hold. After she came clean about her lying in wait to meet me, I explained to her that I’d had this specific research material set aside because I was looking for anything related to a large, grey horn with dangerous magical qualities, perhaps connected to fertility or something similar. Callie had a few ideas where I might start looking.
Meeting Callie probably saved me at least three hours. She didn’t believe the horn I was looking for was fertility-related, and she quickly ruled out a few myths and legends, including the myth of a hunter who was hunting the moon and was eventually rewarded with a large horn when he finally pulled down and captured that moon. Callie was familiar with the original story surrounding that legend, something that had been passed along via oral tradition. She pulled some other stories for me that she indicated might be related to what I was looking for. I found something else as well, something in the additional materials Callie had pulled for me. It was a bibliographic reference to an article with a by-line by a writer I recognized: Professor Carl Adams. It was something I’d seen referenced before, but had been unable to find. I’d seen it listed twice under a different publication name. This time, the article attributed to Adams looked like it had been published in Omni Magazine in the late eighties. I was able to track down a portion of the article online. Somebody had scanned a few pages of old Omni ads and half of the article by Professor Adams was included in those pages. It was a start.
I’ve asked my friend and producing partner at Pacific Northwest Stories, Alex Reagan, to read that article for you, right after she reads something that Callie dug up for me: a short story, passed along through the oral tradition among the Haida, a story called “Aw Khúng (1),” or, “Mother Moon.”
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- ALEX: (reading) “Mother Moon,” by Anonymous. Thasi (2) was chief of the Lost North. He had recently lost his daughter to the sickness, and was unable to sleep. He went for long walks, following the moon. One night, he saw a buffalo unlike any other. This creature was four times as large, with light grey fur. The giant buffalo stood out against the darkness of the land, as it walked beneath the moonlight. Thasi followed the buffalo across a long, open field. The buffalo eventually stopped at a large, stone cliff on the side of a mountain. Then, as if by magic, a cave appeared, and the buffalo entered. Thasi followed the buffalo into the large cave.
- The great chief walked and walk, but he could never catch up with the buffalo. Eventually, the cave slowly narrowed and the ceiling became lower and lower, and still, Thasi could hear the buffalo lumbering up ahead. Thasi walked through the tunnel for four days and four nights before he came to the large chamber in the middle of the mountain.
- That’s where he saw her: It was his daughter, Maalal (3). She was wearing the skin of a great, grey buffalo, a cedar bark neck ring, and nothing else. There was no sign of the buffalo, except for a large, pale grey horn, sitting on the floor in the middle of the room. As Thasi stood there, Maalal began to dance, a striking dance, like the winter dances of old, and as she moved around the large, grey horn, Thasi began to change. It happened slowly at first, and then, before he knew what was happening, he found himself outside, running through the forest, the loving Mother Moon shining her light upon him, giving him a strength he never thought imaginable. It was with that strength that he burst through rock walls, and tore up the roots of trees. And it was with that strength that Thasi entered his own village as the grey, pale beast, and killed and devoured all of his people that he could find.
- When Thasi looked up at the sky after what he had done, the moon was no longer there. She was hiding, frightened and ashamed of Thasi’s actions. After such a feast of blood and bone, the great beast that was Thasi lay down to rest. It was then that the medicine man of his tribe captured Thasi, and cut off his horns. With his horns cut off, Thasi became a man once again.
- The medicine man called to the great mountain spirit of Tlat'a'áaw (4) to guide Thasi in his trip to the other world, but Thasi cried out, ashamed at killing and devouring his people. Thasi demanded he be buried with the horn of the great, grey beast somewhere so far away that nobody would ever find the grave. The medicine man went to his own grave, the only person who knew where Thasi and the horn had been buried. And thus was peace restored to the tribes of the area.
- The next night, Mother Moon was back in the sky, looking down upon all of the tribes.
NIC: So, that was “Mother Moon,” a story that definitely shares certain characteristics with the other mentions of some kind of strange horn.
The article by Professor Adams, while not directly related to this particular artifact, shared a certain amount of mythological DNA with the stories I’d been digging up. Once again, I’ve asked Alex Reagan to read that article.
- ALEX: (reading) Luc de Heusch coined the term “adorcism,” not as a kind of anti-exorcism as it is commonly considered, but as a way to describe placating, or accommodating spiritual plurality. To put it another way, adorcism is a way of working together with the entity, with the goal of a positive result. This kind of thinking is very common in astral- or astroshamanism. Unlike exorcism, which pits the possessed against the exorcist, the church, and the world, adorcism, as defined by French neuropsychiatrist and psychologist Jean-Michel Oughourlian, allows for voluntary, desired, and even curative possessions. From this perspective, spirits are neither positive nor negative. They simply are. Adorcism involves opening the door to what might initially be understood as evil or antagonistic forces, but, after the cathartic stage once transformation occurs, the old dies and the new is reborn. In shamanism, this is what allows the shaman to summon or acquire a powerful spirit or ally. The adorcist, unlike the exorcist, is there to facilitate the possession, to support the possessed until the visiting spirit has been fully integrated.
- Like the Fountain of Youth, the mythic, migrating world of Tanis, or the full moon transformation of the werewolf, there are many mythological instances of certain environments behaving like spirits, perhaps even antagonistic spirits. What if these environments and occurrences were simply the natural world’s attempt at communication? If this was true, then perhaps the oracle at Delphi, the runner in Tanis, and the shaman of the Haida are simply natural adorcists. What if the natural world was actually trying to communicate with us? What would that look like? These are just some of the questions I’ve been asking lately.
NIC: The last section of the article is missing. I asked MK to look into adorcism. She came up with pretty much the same material, but her take was a bit darker.
- MK: This stuff is fucked.
- NIC: Adorcism?
- MK: All of it.
- NIC: Right.
- MK: These people are scarier than exorcists.
- NIC: How do you mean?
- MK: Okay, well, first off, all of the descriptions I could find say that the first stage of any adorcism is incredibly difficult, often devastating, and occasionally fatal.
- NIC: ...Oh.
- MK: Yeah, and unlike the exorcist who’s trying to expel the evil entity or the “energy” involved, the adorcist works to support the possessed person until the energy or spirit has been fully integrated. Sound familiar?
- NIC: Um… not exactly.
- MK: Really? You don’t feel like something might have been trying to… assimilate you? In the woods?
- NIC: Uh - no - well - no, I don’t - I mean, I… no.
- MK: That’s what’s happening!
- NIC: Ah - that doesn’t feel exactly right.
- MK: W-why not?
- NIC: I don’t feel like I was being assimilated, I don’t…
- MK: That’s what they thought on Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and then, boom. You’re looking at a hissing Donald Sutherland.
- NIC: [laughing] Is there anything else?
- MK: Parzavala.
- NIC: Again?
- MK: Mmhmm, the insidious corporate gift that keeps on giving.
- NIC: What about Parzavala?
- MK: They’re back.
- NIC: What do you mean, “They’re back?”
- MK: I mean they’re back online. Somebody’s answering emails.
- NIC: What do the emails say?
- MK: I dunno.
- NIC: Then how do you know they’ve been answering emails?
- MK: ‘Cause I have one of ‘em.
- NIC: ...And what does it say?
- MK: I dunno.
- NIC: Why not?
- MK: Because I don’t speak Russian.
- NIC: Okay, you might have buried the lede there, a little.
- MK: Yeah, sorry.
- NIC: Okay. Can you send me what you found?
- MK: Yes, you know I can, and did.
- NIC: Thanks.
- MK: You’re welcome
NIC: So MK sent over the Russian email. The online translation was pretty sketchy, of course, so I asked a friend of mine to look into it. While I was waiting for her to get back to me, I finally heard from Cameron Ellis. I’d left a few messages with Ellis since he offered me another job. But I hadn’t heard back.
- ELLIS: Hello, Nic.
- NIC: Hey!
- ELLIS: How are you?
- NIC: I’m pretty good, all things considered. How are you?
- ELLIS: I’m fine, thank you. Have you… given any further thought to coming to work with me? With us?
- NIC: I have, yes.
- ELLIS: And…
- NIC: And… I’m still thinking about it.
- ELLIS: Okay.
- NIC: Where are you, right now?
- ELLIS: I’m… out of the office.
- NIC: Right. Where?
- ELLIS: I’m in Ivdel.
- NIC: Ivdel?
- ELLIS: Northern Russia.
- NIC: What are you doing in northern Russia?
- ELLIS: Working.
- NIC: On what?
- ELLIS: I’m afraid I’m not able to go into that at the moment.
- NIC: Okay… When are you back?
- ELLIS: I’ll be in Seattle on Monday. I’d love to sit down and talk about… next steps, if you’re available. [pause] Nic?
- NIC: Sure. Just let me know when and where.
- ELLIS: Will do.
- NIC: Okay. Sounds good.
- ELLIS: Buh-bye.
- NIC: Kay. Bye.
NIC: So, Cameron Ellis was in Russia and MK had a Parzavala email in Russian. Could these two factors be coincidental? Absolutely. But it’s been my experience that, where Tanis is concerned, coincidence is often not quite what it seems.
Earlier in this episode I mentioned that I’d gone back into the woods to look for Geoff, to check out those five possible locations. I didn’t want to go alone, so I asked my new friend from the library, Callie, if she’d be willing to accompany me. She said yes, and the two of us took off in search of Geoff van Sant.
None of the five locations were inside the walled area, thankfully, but we were unable to avoid a few unofficial military-esque checkpoints along two of the main roads into the region. They didn’t give us any trouble, just smiled and waved us through. I’m sure they were taking video and photographic images of every car, hiker, and dog walker and coyote that passed by. There’s no way TeslaNova would be taking any chances.
Four of the five areas MK’s friend marked on the map yielded nothing. Three of them were pretty far from the area Cameron Ellis refers to as, “The Breach,” and the fourth was a wide open meadow. No Geoff. The fifth area, however, was different.
We parked in one of the lots I’d used when I was working up here for Ellis, and followed a familiar path into the forest. Where I normally turned one way toward Pacifica Station, however, MK’s friend’s map lead us in the opposite direction, down toward a creek, a tributary of the small river that traversed this section of the forest.
We’d been walking for about ten or fifteen minutes when we came upon a heavily-forested section, against an open clearing, with two huge trees that had been overturned by the recent windstorms blocking the path along the treeline. It was a perfect match for the geography of the Geoff van Sant video.
For the past five minutes or so, my head had begun to feel fuzzy, the familiar, light, electric feeling: the blur was waking up. It had been so long since I’d had this feeling that I was a little freaked out. I must have wavered a bit, because Callie came over to steady me. I smiled and said I was fine. She nodded and asked me if I could hear the buzzing too. I was surprised that she could hear it, or feel it. She told me she always felt it whenever she went for a hike in this area. Is it possible that Callie was experiencing the same thing? Was Tanis somehow trying to communicate with her, or warn her, as well?
We didn’t have much time to compare notes about what we were hearing, or feeling, because somebody was there, staring at us from across the clearing. It was impossible to make out any detail. The figure was hidden in the trees. It could have been Geoff; it could also have been a hunter, or somebody else. I yelled, but the figure didn’t respond. It just stood there, completely still. Callie still wasn’t willing to allow me to record her voice for this show, but I didn’t care. I pressed record and started moving quickly toward whoever was standing there, staring at us from across the clearing. As I started moving toward the figure, it turned and ran into the woods. I took off after it, voice recorder in hand. I made it across the clearing in no time and continued through the trees, running as fast as I could through the brambles, across twisted roots and fallen branches. The figure was way ahead of me at this point. I was losing ground. But I kept running.
Eventually I lost him, or her, or whatever it was, and found myself in the middle of a small glade, a meadow surrounded by thin, tall birch trees. It turns out I’d lost someone else along with the strange figure: Callie either didn’t follow me into the woods, or decided she’d seen enough. I was, once again, alone in the woods, in Tanis.
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NIC: Just as I was about to turn and start walking back to the car, I saw it. It was hanging from a branch of one of the tallest trees on the other side of the glade. It looked like some kind of… wicker thing, the figure of a thin, twisted man, maybe, like something you might make if you were crafting in a Wiccan death cult. But as I got closer, I realized it wasn’t wicker, or sticks at all. It was made of dark, wiry hair. The entire weird, geometric whatever it was was made out of thick, sticky hair of some kind. It smelled like rotten, old copper, like animal decay. It was awful. I had to plug my nose.
As I stood there staring at the hair-thing, I realized that somebody was behind me. I could feel them breathing against my neck. I quickly turned and -
I woke up somewhere else, in the clearing where I’d last seen Callie. My head was ringing, but I couldn’t find any head wound, or evidence that I’d been struck; no explanation for my change in location, no explanation for what had happened. Did I pass out? Was it the blur? It certainly couldn’t have been Geoff, could it?
I made it back to the car. Callie was standing there, waiting for me. She wondered where I’d been. I explained what happened. She didn’t seem surprised. She told me, as we drove away from the area, that “these woods are fucked.”
Yeah. I couldn’t really argue with her assessment.
So, after all that, still no sign of Geoff. I went back into the woods the next day. It took me way longer than it should have to find that clearing again, but I eventually found it. What I couldn’t find was the small glade with the strange human hair-thing hanging from a tree. I tried to retrace my steps, but it just… wasn’t there.
You’ll remember David Glass, the graduate student from the University of Washington who had been working on a thesis involving legendary scientist and inventor Nikola Tesla. It was in some of David Glass’ research into Tesla’s death ray that we found notes and photographs connecting both Nikola Tesla and David Glass to a strange, grey shard, a shard that might be part of the strange horn mentioned in John Correman’s writings. David Glass’ mother Marjorie asked us to look into what had happened to her son, to see if we could shed any light on why or how he ended up where he did: in the extreme care wing, of the Western State Hospital in Lakewood, Washington.
After quite a bit of back-and-forth, we eventually received permission to visit David Glass. When I told MK I was going to Lakewood to visit the old asylum, she insisted on coming along.
- MK: I fucking love mental hospitals.
- NIC: Yeah?
- MK: Yeah. They’re awesome. Have you seen Session 9?
- NIC: The movie?
- MK: Fuck yeah the movie! What’d you think?
- NIC: Uh, it was creepy…
- MK: It was amazing. Does this place have a chair?
- NIC: Um, what?
- MK: An electric chair, like Old Sparky, you know, squat n’ sizzle?
- NIC: [nervous laughter] Um, I’m not sure, actually…
- MK: This is gonna be awesome.
NIC: The parking area was right in front of the main building. It was exactly what you’d expect in a large, old asylum. It was creepy. MK loved it.
The Fort Steilacoom Asylum was established in 1871, almost twenty years before Washington achieved statehood. In 1875, the Washington territorial government took control of the facility, because of patient abuse and neglect. The asylum had at least one recognizable patient around this time. That patient’s name was Frances Farmer.
The original buildings that made up the asylum have been torn down, and a new, larger structure was built. Renamed the Western Washington Hospital for the Insane, various buildings were added over the years, and the facility continued to grow. It was eventually renamed the Western State Hospital. Today, it’s the largest psychiatric setup west of the Mississippi, and the second-oldest state-owned enterprise in Washington.
We were greeted by Dr. Mallory Edwards, one of David Glass’ resident doctors.
- DR. EDWARDS: Why are you interested in speaking with David Glass?
- NIC: His mother didn’t tell you?
- DR. EDWARDS: Only that you believe he may have been… possessed by evil spirits, or something like that.
- NIC: Oh, it’s nothing like that.
- DR. EDWARDS: What is it like?
- NIC: Well, it’s more of a series of other… other events, and other people who have been looking into similar things who’ve experienced… the same.
- DR. EDWARDS: ...Where’s your friend?
- NIC: ...Uh… She was right behind us; she must have had to go to the bathroom.
NIC: I lied about MK having to go to the bathroom. I had no idea where she’d taken off to. She was probably looking for Old Sparky, or the old shock therapy wing, or something. Dr. Edwards opened the door to David Glass’ room.
- [door opening]
- DR. EDWARDS: David? There’s somebody here to see you.
NIC: David Glass looked older than his fifty-something years. His hair was patchy, and completely white. His wire-framed glasses looked like they were perpetually about to fall off of his face. He never spoke, and he never made eye contact. I did my best to get him to speak for at least twenty minutes, but I got nothing. If he knew anything about the horn, or if it might be connected to Tanis, David Glass wasn’t talking.
After my visit with David Glass, Dr. Edwards lead me out into the hallway. He’d been called into a meeting. I pulled out my phone to text MK, when I noticed I’d missed about a dozen messages. I’d turned my phone off when we entered the hospital. I was about to call MK when she grabbed my arm.
- MK: Where the hell have you been?
- NIC: Me?
- MK: Yes?
- NIC: Um, I’ve been sitting here with a very silent David Glass. Where the hell have you been?
- MK: Working.
- NIC: Working.
- MK: Well, I took a tour of the facilities.
- NIC: A tour.
- MK: A choose your own adventure tour. Whatever. Listen, that’s not what’s important.
- NIC: Um, okay, what’s important.
- MK: I have to show you.
- NIC: Okay…
NIC: MK lead me through a maze of corridors and down two different elevators to a different wing of the hospital. Eventually we made our way into a long hall that ran alongside a large room, a large common room of some kind. A group of patients were sitting around. It looked like some kind of music therapy class or something.
- NIC: Um, what are we doing here?
- MK: There.
- NIC: Where?
- MK: There. The woman in the corner.
- NIC: Okay, by the piano?
- MK: No, other corner.
- NIC: Um… Oh.
- MK: Yeah.
NIC: There, staring at us from where she sat at a table in the far corner of the room, was a young woman. A face I’d seen only once in real life, but had seen in numerous photographs since I started this podcast. The young woman sitting at the table in the corner was Tara Reynolds.
It’s Tanis. I’m Nic Silver. We’ll be back again in two weeks. Until then, keep looking.
SITE NOTE: This episode was transcribed by the fantastic Melissa. Her notes are as follows:
1 Transcriptionist’s note: Also written, “Kúng”
2 Transcriptionist’s note: Neither the Skidegate nor the Masset dialects of the Haida language have an interdental fricative sound, which is to say, either a voiced or unvoiced “th” sound. As such, the chief’s name has been transcribed phonetically, to the best of the transcriptionist’s ability.
3 Transcriptionist’s note: In an effort to remain faithful to the Haida language, Maalal’s name has been spelt traditionally, to the best of the transcriptionist’s ability.
4 Transcriptionist’s note: Haida word for “mountain.”