Chapter Text
[CLICK]
GRIAN
Statement of…huh. That’s weird. The spot where the name is supposed to go is…I can’t read it. It’s…goodness, trying to read it is giving me vertigo. If I could just…
[A CRASHING SOUND]
GRIAN
–nope, nope, nevermind.
[HE GETS TO HIS FEET. DOOR CREAKS OPEN]
MUMBO
Are you alright? I heard a crash.
GRIAN
Fine, fine. Just…statement things.
MUMBO
Ah, are you reading the one I gave you this morning? Looked like a real doozy, that one.
GRIAN
No, sorry. I’ll get to it. This one just…called to me?
MUMBO
Of course it did. I’ll, um, I’ll leave you to it, then.
[DOOR CLOSES. GRIAN SITS BACK DOWN.]
GRIAN
Right. Statement of…unknown, regarding an uncanny experience at a hot air balloon festival. Original statement given August 2, 2016. Audio recording by Grian, Head Archivist of the V.O.I.D. Institute, London. Statement begins.
GRIAN (STATEMENT)
I’ll be honest, I don’t expect to get anything out of this. At least, I don’t expect you guys to help with the situation. No offense. Seems like you’re really knowledgeable and all that, but…well, I guess I just wanted all this on file somewhere. The idea of never telling anyone bothers me, and if I told any of my friends they’d just think I’m crazy.
Anyways, I’m the sort of person to spend days off trying new and exciting things. Doing the same thing over and over again gets boring for me, so I’m always on the look out for fun and affordable stuff to fill up my weekends. So when I saw an advertisement for a hot air balloon festival, I was ecstatic.
The event was about an hour away from where I lived, in a town I’d never even heard of before. I didn’t have a car at the time, but I was well acquainted with the bus system, so I made plans for that weekend to check out the festival.
I didn’t notice that anything was off until…well, a while into the bus ride. The trip wasn’t meant to be more than an hour long, and while I’m not the best at keeping track of time, it certainly felt like it had been more than an hour. I checked my phone, surprised to see that it had only been ten minutes since I boarded the bus.
I shrugged it off, blaming my poor estimation skills on my boredom and took to scrolling through my phone with one hand, fiddling with the pocket knife in my jacket with the other, and telling myself that everything was completely normal. It worked, for the most part. I had decided to read a bit about how hot air balloons actually work, and that kept my mind pretty occupied.
I kept glancing at the time, though. It was weird. It seemed to be moving normally, and yet…it felt like I’d been looking at my phone for hours. Another supposed five minutes passed, and I was absolutely certain that I’d been on the bus for far longer than I should have been. My phone must be busted, I reasoned. I leaned across the isle and asked the person sitting there if they felt like we should have been there by now, but they just looked at me like I was nuts and said no, we’d probably only been on the bus for twenty minutes ago. Kind of rude if you ask me. Still there wasn’t much else I could do but sit back and wait.
I thought about going up to ask the driver about it a couple times, but whenever I looked forward, it was like the aisle stretched on forever, like the front of the bus was miles away. I felt dizzy just looking at it, so I shut my eyes and hoped I was just dehydrated.
I must have dozed off, because next thing I knew, I was jolted awake as the bus came to a sudden halt. As I stumbled down the aisle, half awake, I realized that it felt like a normal length again. I was more than happy to brush the weird incident off as sleep deprivation and maybe make a funny story out of it later. After all, I was here to see some hot air balloons, not get caught up over something that was probably just my overactive imagination.
The festival was bigger than I expected. It took place in a huge field, though calling it a field is probably too generous. Where it wasn’t covered by the oversized wicker baskets attached to the balloons or the dozens of people milling about, the grass had been worn down to nearly nothing, And when I say the field was huge, I mean I couldn’t see the ends of it from where I was standing. That probably should have raised some red flags right off the bat–I mean, the place is flat, how is it possible that I couldn’t see where it ended–but I was so focused on the balloons that it didn’t really register just yet how odd it was.
Seeing all the brightly colored canvases slowly filling with air or floating upwards felt sort of like being in a candy store. A few solidly colored ones were scattered about, but most of the balloons were covered in stripes, zigzags, or other fun patterns. For a while I just walked around the place, looking at the different balloons and chatting with some of the pilots.
I’d just finished asking one of them about the training that goes behind flying one of the things when I turned around and realized that I must be nearing the end of the displays. There were far less balloons out here, and I had a better view of the field. That’s when it really processed that I couldn’t see the end of it. I got really nauseous all of a sudden, like I was back on the bus. The feeling was even more intense though. It was like a…weird horizontal vertigo. I got the feeling that if I started walking that way I might never get out of that field. Disoriented, I turned around and headed back the way I came.
To my surprise, I caught sight of a balloon I swear wasn’t there five minutes ago. It’s possible I could have missed it, I guess, but the thing stood out like a sore thumb. While every other balloon at the festival was painted bright, vibrant colors, this one was dark. It was just as vivid as the ones surrounding it, but in the way that a black stain on a white shirt stands out as much as a green one. There was some sort of pattern on it that might have been storm clouds, but I was never sure. Whenever I tried to look too closely at it, I got dizzy.
I wish I could remember the name of the poor guy who was flying the thing. It wouldn’t really matter to you, considering…well, you can’t exactly interview them. Honestly, I can’t remember much from when I saw the balloon to when I was up in the air. I just remember a strong need to get on that balloon and to get up in the air.
And I sure did get up in the air. The next moment of clarity I remember was looking down at the festival, now just a bunch of splotches of colors on the browning field. The wind was pleasantly cool on my face, and I shrugged off the lingering haze hanging over me. I figured I must have just zoned out. I’d had enough weirdness for the day, and I was determined to enjoy the experience as much as I could. Other colorful balloons floated by, and I waved to a few kids that were shouting at anyone within their line of sight.
I shouldn’t have been surprised when I tried to look beyond the festival and saw…nothing. Just a barren field, stretching out in all directions.
I’ve never had a problem with heights. I actually really like them. The feeling of being up high, of seeing whole neighborhoods or even whole cities laid out underneath you–well, it’s dizzying, but in the best sort of way. I just want to make it clear that I’m not afraid of heights, so you don’t think this is some sort of fear-driven metaphor. I could see the space that went past the area taken up by the festival, space that should have included roads and buildings and the bus station I arrived at, and it was just…empty. Just a flat expanse that seemed to go on forever. I had to look away after a few moments. That weird vertigo feeling was back and it was stronger than ever.
As I stared down at the ground directly below me, fighting the urge to look back out at the horizon, I realized with mounting dread that it was far away. Like really, really far away. I wasn’t sure exactly how far up hot air balloons were supposed to go–I’d sort of zoned out during that part of the pilot’s lecture–but based on the fact that the other balloons in the air were just tiny specks below me, we were definitely too far up.
I turned to ask my pilot what was going on, only to be greeted by an empty basket. If they ever found a body, I never heard about it–and I checked the news, obsessively.
Now, I’m not one to panic easily, but this was a little above my emotional pay grade. I leaned over the edge to scream for help. I couldn’t see the other balloons anymore, but I screamed anyways. No one answered me.
I was alone, probably miles up in the air.
I tried taking a deep breath in an admittedly probably futile attempt to calm myself, only to find that I wasn’t breathing. I don’t mean I was dead or anything. I could feel my lungs expanding and contracting, but there wasn’t any air going in. It wasn’t an altitude thing, either. I wasn’t struggling to breathe, I just…wasn’t breathing at all. But I wasn’t dying either. Sounds crazy, right? I don’t really know what to make of it. But I’m certain that while I was up there, at some point, I stopped breathing and it didn’t kill me.
Once I had somewhat processed that fact, I forced myself to lean my head over the edge and look up. I saw…well, I don’t know if I should call it something or nothing. It was dark, completely pitch black and covered the entire sky. I mean, if I was really as high up as I appeared to be, I should have been able to see the stars, right? But it was completely void of anything. It wasn’t like the dark at the end of long hallways that kids are scared of. It felt…infinite. Like I could go up and up forever.
I mean, that’s how hot air balloons work, right? If you kept going up, there’s nothing above you to stop you from going up. But eventually you’d run out of fuel, or suffocate, or starve, or something. I got the feeling that if I kept going up, though, I wouldn’t die. I would just keep rising. And, at least in that moment, that seemed a lot worse than dying.
So I pulled out my trusty pocket knife and did something, as a dear friend of mine would say, characteristically stupid: I stabbed the balloon.
It was just a tiny hole, but it did the job. The balloon started descending, which delighted me for a moment. My ridiculous plan had actually worked! And then I realized that I could only say my ridiculous plan worked if I didn’t die on impact. I ran over to the blast valve and put my ten minutes of internet surfing on hot air balloons to good use.
Against all odds, my ridiculous plan did in fact work. I did land, though it took a lot longer than I thought it would. After everything else that had happened that day, though, that was the least of my worries. When I landed, the thing I was most concerned with was gulping in lungfuls of air and assuring myself that yes, I was in fact breathing, and yes, I needed to do so in order to keep living.
No one seemed particularly concerned about the oddly colored balloon that had gone up with two people and come down with one. When I went to report the missing pilot, however, the head of staff just frowned, checked their clipboard, and said no pilot was stationed to the balloon that day.
I have an awful feeling that something took them. And though I wasn’t about to complain about it, I was a little unnerved as to why it hadn’t taken me.
GRIAN
Statement ends. You know, I’m not afraid of heights either. As a result, Vast statements are–excuse the pun–a breath of fresh air.
There’s obviously nothing to follow up on here, as we don’t know who gave the statement. I’ll ask the others to take a look at the name or lack thereof later, though I’ll be sure to tell them to do so lying down.
We’ve gotten anonymous statements before, of course, but nothing like this. I’m certain there’s a name there, but it’s like someone–or something–doesn’t want me to read it.
Whoever or whatever it is messed with the wrong Archivist, though. I’ll get to the bottom of this mystery.
End recording.
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