Episode 1.4

Tape click

Introduction

Welcome to The Phosphene Catalogue no. # 15004
We see light where others see only darkness.

I do hope our reader's Christmas preparations are proceeding well, perhaps you will find the lots presented this week inspire unique gifts.

Morwenna, if anyone asks, Lobby Art 37 is in my office, I'm restoring it. Or appraising it. Or something.
I shouldn't have done what I did, but I'm frustrated.
I telephoned the police station again today, they told me the investigation has concluded, verdict: Misadventure.
Misadventure...That's code for overdose isn't it?
Edie would still be here, if Josephine had never introduced her to Nelson Bloody Cartwright, you mark my words.
sigh
My research into the mark of the ship with black sails suggests it's a society of some sort, but my sources are all too vague, or too old.
Warrick is avoiding me.
He has not been available to help with this research at any of the times you scheduled, can you pin him down for me?
Thank you.

Tape click

Side A: Haunted Reel

Lot No. 1125 "Haunted Reel", Unknown Artist, contemporary. A 7-inch reel of long play mono audio tape.

The small cardboard box that arrived at my desk this morning surprised me.
It is not unheard of for The Catalogue to feature instruments or music, there can be no question that these objects and sounds are, of course, art.
But the 7" roll of dark red tape in front of me contains neither music, nor poetry, nor any kind of performance.
At least, perhaps not an intentional one.

Morwenna, who gave this to us? And why did we accept it? Please pop by my office if you find out.

It has been a good decade since I last saw reel-to-reel tape used in an office environment.
I recall from my previous work as a secretary, the enormous reel-to-reel machines were very ungainly on a desk. It was a relief to switch to compact battery-powered cassette recorders for admin use, which is what I am speaking into now.
There are no desks and unreliable power points in The Catalogue's sub-basements, and sometimes little enough light to see with, so using this little microphone attached by its coiled cable is wonderful.

There is almost no information in the file attached to this tape.
The folder contains a single sheet of ruled paper, not our usual headed form with the date, the name of the client, and the colleague who took possession of it - no supporting documentation at all.

The ruled paper, torn from a notebook, has the words "Haunted Reel!" on it, with an exclamation mark after the second word.
Nothing else!

I borrowed our historian, Warrick's, reel-to-reel tape player to listen to this dark red tape.
I thought it would be a short job to identify the music or performance on it, and then I could categorise it quickly.

As I look out of my darkened window with the moon silhouetting the Tower of London, I note that it has, in fact, been many hours of work before I felt comfortable advising you, dear Reader, of the content of this reel.

This is a 2-hour recording of someone sleeping.

I thought the reel empty initially, but a tiny sound in my left ear, in the heavy set of headphones, attracted my attention.

I replayed the reel from the start, turning every volume dial to maximum and listening closely.
On the tape are the gentle sounds of someone breathing, mattress springs creaking occasionally, and some muttering, a woman, I think.

I had a mind to stop the whole exercise right then! I had no wish to pry into a lady's private nighttime repose.
But a loud sound in my right ear shocked me.

I tore off the headphones instinctively, the sound was of someone coughing loudly!
Not the sleeper, but another person in the room with them, they were much closer to the microphone, and the explosion of their cough made me feel sick with the noise!
I let the tape roll on, holding my head with the pain.

After my right ear stopped ringing, I gingerly replaced the headphones.
The sleeper was speaking now, much louder, but it was still difficult to hear her voice on the recording, it was slurred and guttural.

The sound of a pen or pencil scratching in my right ear was louder than she was!
Whoever was controlling the tape recorder was also making notes, and occasionally speaking to the sleeper, asking for repetition or clarification with a low, honey-sweet voice, that I couldn't quite place, though there was certainly something familiar about him.

The sleeper's voice rose and fell, and I caught snatches of fantastical descriptions:

• A garden with gargantuan trees growing in coils around one another, and up to a canopy, miles over head.
• A waterfall emptying up into the sky,
• Honey falling from floating beehives like rain.

The recording and the descriptions enraptured me, and I listened to the full length of the tape as the moon rose outside my office.

Whoever the sleeper was, they had a vivid imagination.
Perhaps they are an artist?
I would like to see these wondrous descriptions drawn or painted!

But towards the 2-hour mark, I had not reset the mechanical counter when I started, so I couldn't say for sure, the sleeper's voice rose in volume and urgency.

"I see the gate!" she shouted, "I see the gate!"
The man's voice also rose in questions, powerful and insistent, but still sweet and friendly.

"Come on, dear, what does it look like? Where is it in the garden? How did you get to the gate, eh? You can tell me."

The dreamer did not answer him, she moaned in frustration and anger, and said,

"NO! It is locked. NO! Give me more, I must get through! I cannot come back!".
Her voice sounded so familiar, even slurred and mumbled in sleep.

With a click of a pen lid, and a creak of a chair, the man said, very calmly,
"You've already had too much, we agreed safe limits, the experiment is over. We will speak over breakfast, my dear."

The frustrated screams from the sleeping woman continued until the tape ran out.

After switching the tape off, the woman's screams still in my mind, I felt like I had missed something important, the nagging feeling that I knew the sleeper did not leave me.

Putting the headphones on again, I rewound the tape and found the point where the man coughed, I had missed perhaps a minute or two of the audio here as I had nursed my ringing ear.

I replayed the tape from this point.

After his loud cough, the man said, "Do you want to go deeper?"
The muttering from the woman, though quiet and indistinct as it was throughout this early part of the recording, clearly replied in the affirmative.

There was then the loud sounds of rummaging in a bag, which must have been right next to the recorder, by the volume.
A few items were placed onto the table that the microphone was standing on, causing deep, distorted thuds on the recording.

Then I heard the gentle scraping of a glass bottle being unscrewed, a click of metal, and the unmistakable sound of a finger flicking air out of a syringe.

"Here you go, Edie." the man said, gently.
After a heartbeat, the woman cried out in pain, and then began her lucid description of the garden again.

I stopped the tape, but didn't take off the big headphones.
I listened to the blood rushing in my ears as I thought.

"Edie", he said, and I suddenly recognised the voice, it WAS Edith MacKinley.

What was she DOING!?
What was the drug?
What was the experiment?

And who is the man with the honey-coloured voice?

Intermission

Side B: A Motion Picture

Lot No. 4849. "Family Portrait", 1850s. Ruby ambrotype on glass set in a metal frame with hinged cover.

This photograph dates from the mid 19th Century, as the dark red glass suggests:
This form of early photography was only used for a period of about a decade, and was one of the standards bridging between the daguerrotype's glass process to modern film.

The photograph was rescued from obscurity by our client, a keen photographer herself, after she recognised the rare development technique.
It was this property that saved the photograph, not the contents, at least not at first, because the glass appears entirely blank.

I, personally, took in this item, and so can speak in detail about the conversation with the client.
I was confused when first opening the locket-style picture frame, measuring about 3 by 4 inches across.
Though the interior is in much better condition than the exterior, silver still gleaming in places and the red velvet of the lid also in good condition, the black photo plate confused me.

It took some amount of persuasion for me to accept the frame, the client begging me to look again under moonlight and reconsider.

Reader, I am very glad that I did.

After taking dinner in town, I returned to the offices of The Catalogue to examine the photograph again.

Sure enough, when holding it up to the light of the window in my office, overlooking the city, the waxing gibbous moon glinted off a monochrome photograph of a manor house and gardens that had now revealed itself.

The image was remarkably clear, with good contrast, the bright bricks of the house shining white with reflected moonlight.
The darker areas, were a deep, blood-red.
Almost black, but not quite.
Ambrotypes must be mounted on a non-reflective background, dark parts of this image are transparent, showing the dark red velvet behind, highlights reflect the light of the room, or in this case, the moon.

The photograph is of a large manor house, the kind occupied by a wealthy Victorian family and servants.
In the foreground, on the immaculately-kept grass lawn, two children are playing.
There are blocks or hoops between them, and behind sits a dark-haired man wearing a black suit in a wicker chair, stiffly facing the camera.
In his lap is a baby, perhaps less than a year old, though it is difficult to tell as the child moved a great deal during the exposure, giving its outline a blurred, ghostly quality.
The baby seems to have been fussing, both hands outstretched towards the left of the frame, mouth an open black void.

When evaluating the stiff posture and rigid facial expressions of subjects in these early photographs, we must assume that this is the product of the slow capture process, not necessarily a window into their attitude.
With one hand, the man holds the baby, and in the other I spy a wooden rattle, a toy for the child.

Do you see a stern father here? I do not. Reader, when you view this photograph, or by necessity, prints of it, in our gallery, look at the environment the man is in, surrounded by toys and children, on a warm sunlit day.
I think we have a family man here, temporarily pausing the games for a portrait that he hopes might capture the happy scene for later reminiscence.

Next to the man is an empty high-backed wicker chair, of the same design as the one he sits in.
Is this where the children's mother usually sits? If so, where is she?
Perhaps in the house, or maybe even behind the camera.

Unusual, certainly, but among wealthy women, not unheard of!

It is a curious photograph, and certainly of interest to The Catalogue, the image appearing only under moonlight suggests the supernatural, but a straight-forward example, I thought.
We have many more incredible objects under careful lock and key in our vaults, with lower levels that even I don't have the keys for.

I closed the hinged frame, put it into an archival cardboard box, and moved on to other, grander, projects.

That might have been the end of my description, except, returning to the box less than a week later, planning to move it into the archives, I opened it and took out the photograph and folder to double-check the contents.

The photograph had changed.

The client said nothing about this property.
I stopped what I was doing and took the photograph to the window, to better see it under the full moon's light.

This time the glass showed an interior scene, a bedroom with a small dressing table and mirror, and a high double bed with ornate iron bedposts.
There is a sleeper on the right side of the bed, by the dark hair and outline, the father from earlier, and though there is no partner next to him, a delicate folded nightgown rests on the pillow.

The man's partner, perhaps the children's mother, is missing again in this new view.
There are plenty of cosmetic accoutrements on the vanity next to the bed, and the nightgown seems to suggest she intends to arrive, or perhaps that he hopes she will.

Can you see the man's expression?
Look closely at the photograph, hold it up to the full moon's light that you must have to see this scene.

He's no longer sitting rigidly for a portrait, he is... sleeping.
But is that a wrinkle of a frown on his brow?
Perhaps, reader, I am both reading too much into this and projecting my own interpretation onto the scene.
But...
Perhaps not:

After the full moon revelation, I realised that more time would be needed to properly appraise this item.
A few days passed, and on the waning gibbous moon, the scene changed one last time.

This last scene was very different to the other two.
(The photograph seems to store only the brightest three moon phases, one for waxing, the second for full, and this last for waning)

The composition was of an extremely dark room, making it difficult to pick out the details: Most moonlight passed through the glass and was not reflected as detailed highlights to be scrutinised.

The walls of the scene are bare brick, the floor is made of large, square flagstones, and there are no windows on the three portions of the walls that we can see.
This is either a separate location, or, by my interpretation: perhaps the basement of the manor house.

In this room, there is a large unvarnished wooden table, warped by age, use, or damage.
Next to the table is a small wooden cot with a hay-stuffed mattress, perhaps for a maid or other servant?

The table is cluttered with flora I cannot readily identify, nor can our resident botany expert Elizabeth Morgan, who I found pottering in The Catalogue's small walled garden, a tiny courtyard sandwiched between tall buildings on every side.
I persuaded Elizabeth to stay late one evening around the waxing gibbous moon, but upon examination, she could not say for sure if the plants were flowers, or grasses, or simply weeds.

There are many cut plants tied into bundles on the rough wooden table, alongside pebbles and stones of various sizes, a mortar and pestle, a large open book, and a curved black-handled knife.

The subject of this last photograph is in the centre of the room, however.
Three of the large flagstones have been violently taken up and broken in the process, revealing the foundations under the house.
Some gravel, clay, and dirt has been scooped out of this hole and piled next to the broken stones.

Inside this depression, a large black cauldron has been set, and a bright fire is roaring in the pit under it, amplifying the darkness in the shadows of the photograph.

And behind the cauldron, barely visible through the smoke, shines a pair of eyes, looking directly at the viewer.

CREDITS

The Phosphene Catalogue is a NAMTAO production.
The voice of Jude Francis-Sharp is Wolfie Thorns,
The show is written and produced by me, Tris Oaten.

For links to our merch store, the music, and mastodon account, check out the podcast's website,
https://phosphenecatalogue.com
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Thank you so much for listening,
See you next time.