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Auction houses must, as a basic facet of their business model, hold the nature of their clientele foremost in their mind. This applies regardless of the auction house’s relation to the anomalous, whether a fountain pen’s capability to write passable pseudo-Rumi ghazals under the weak light of a new moon is an entirely unknown feature or if an encaustic painting’s propensity to replicate the assaults and abuses carried out by its various owners is the very reason for its place on the auction stage. One must remain aware of the limits that one’s customers suffer under and, more importantly, never give the impression that any such confining limits exist. The case of Marshall, Carter, and Dark - whose clients range from the surviving scions of the old peerages, those margraves and zamindars, granted perpetual wealth by vast estates, to the few robber barons surviving from the 19th Century, with lives extended by infinitesimal fragments for every passenger on their railways, for every drop of oil burned in a car, a tank, a boat, a plane, now to theparvenu whose introduction to these hidden aspects of the world is nothing more than a wide-eyed gawking that betrays their inward turmoil, that eternal hunger now focused on every inch of this landscape of the newfound “occult” – is the best introduction to this business.
The requirements for taking part in an auction are simple, indistinguishable from any other company. Some bidders choose to be physically present, others entrust this responsibility to an employee, and others will bid through the auction house employees over the phone or through MC&D’s proprietary highly secure anomalous Internet platform. After a successful bid, the funds would be transferred to the regional banking account and then on to the seller, minus the premium and commission. Businesses can’t work for nothing. The next stage is transport of the items to their new owners. Some buyers are well aware of various magical transfer methods and are willing to pay a few extra fees to reduce the likelihood of damage to their new belongings – the construction of a suitable apportation circle and the dispersal of the subsequent thaumaturgical backlash is not cheap, neither is the opening of transcontinental portals. For those buyers new to the anomalous, ignorant of what the world has to offer, or simply unable to utilise these methods for themselves, MC&D offers an inhouse delivery service. There are shipping containers emblazoned with enough runes and sigils such that even Proteus could not see a way to crack them open and spill the contents into the ocean, airplanes made invisible and intangible to every thief and potential hijacker, trucks and vans hermetically sealed and proclaimed to be strong enough to withstand a head-on collision with the Chelyabinsk meteor.
Sasha Newman is currently driving one of these delivery vans along the I-86 in New York, heading to Erie. She isn’t supposed to be driving along this route. In fact, she doesn’t know that she’s driving along this highway. If Sasha could move, speak, even regain a single spark of consciousness, she would be shocked at her current surroundings and call her supervisor for assistance. Which is exactly why she is now asleep, driving the van perfectly safely, at the whim of her puppeteer.
Sasha hadn’t done anything to warrant this assault on her mind. She was just the driver chosen for this delivery and, so, she had to be controlled. Bribery only works on people so invisibly enmeshed within an organisation’s sprawling bureaucracy as to be overlooked by any investigation or who are wealthy and powerful enough to evade and forcibly stop any questioning of their actions. Sasha Newman is neither; she is the driver and would be blamed for any damage or loss incurred during transport that she could feasibly prevent. Which is why it took quite a few visits to her usual bar, several incantations surreptitiously aimed at her drinks, and the presence of an attractive, cheerful woman before Sasha let slip those few much needed fragments of information. So, shortly after leaving the warehouse, those drugs and spells added to Sasha’s system kicked in, knocked her out, and her slumbering body drove the van where it needed to go.
It was roughly at this point that alarms began to go off at Marshall, Carter & Dark. Not because of the van, but instead the company accounts. Several thousands of dollars had disappeared. Instantaneously. Without trace. In a system secure from any outward interference, regardless of origin. Yet, hundreds of thousands of dollars were no longer in the auction account. More alarms went off when it was discovered that one bidder’s account had turned blank. No name, no address, no bank account. Atabula rasa.
They looked at the recently auctioned items, to see what had been purchased by this now-ghostly bidder. A few pieces of auditory and visual artworks and a collection of old texts from the Portuguese royal court. All of which were now in the back of Sasha Newman’s van. A van no longer driving along its assigned route. A driver unresponsive to any messages from her supervisors. Several expensive objects now missing and a large amount of money no longer available to their sellers.
The auction team sent all their available information over to Fraud Prevention and Asset Recovery, before releasing a brief sigh of relief at the fact they were no longer responsible for any havoc caused by this loss.
When it is said that the van contained various artworks and some old Portuguese books, this is not entirely true. But this is the gist of what Marshall, Carter & Dark have described the objects as in their auction catalogue. It is what the world has claimed these objects to be for several decades. Therefore, from the perspective of a politician, a museum curator, an oligarch, they are some minor artworks and some books. But, from another perspective, they are tiny remnants of the death meted out upon innocents throughout the centuries.
The ”artworks”, such as they are, were built by a middle-aged man during the Indonesian occupation of Timor-Leste. His family were massacred and he was held prisoner by the Indonesian Army, beaten, and threatened with torture under the omniscient gaze of officers dispatched by the American Paranatural Warfare Command, before being ordered to build machines for them, spying mechanisms and weapons to crush the surviving independence movement. He instead created deliberate failures, magical machines that saw and heard over huge distances but eventually combined everything into a series of endless repetitions of sound and light. The Indonesians and Americans eventually cut their losses, beating his head in and burning his corpse alongside a large portion of his works. What remained was, officially, lost to looting by independence fighters and was most certainly not smuggled back home by one of the American officers, in hope of selling what was the last remnant of a dying man’s magic to a rich collector as a stupidly expensive kaleidoscope.
The books were worse, as anything created during the height of colonialism would be. The ever-extending grasp of the Portuguese Empire hunted down every tribe and village it encountered, tortured them, extracted every piece of information regarding their ways of magic. Everything was noted, every potion, incantation, carving, all copied into their journals and condensed into brief paragraphs for the records in Lisbon. Entire dialects of ritual language, many unique to a single tribe, were lost, the explorers caring nothing for the intricacies of their labels. This, perhaps, is why the rituals were soon found to be rather irregular in their rates of success. Even so, the texts were used in war and were deemed important enough to be taken with the royal family to Brazil whilst Napoleon began his invasion. In Brazil they remained, whilst John VI returned to Portugal, whilst Pedro I declared Brazilian independence, whilst Pedro II was overthrown, before being lost and dispersed in the 1930 revolution.
It must be said that there was no real reason to wipe the bidding account at that time. It would have been far simpler to drug Sasha, hide the van and quickly remove the items, and disappear hours before MC&D realised their delivery van hadn’t confirmed its arrival at the customer’s address. But where was the fun in that? Now, the Fraud Prevention team was worried. No information about the mystery bidder seemed to have been preserved in any of their computer systems and, whenever they tried to read some of their physical copies of registered bidders, people started engaging in longwinded arguments over the spelling and pronunciation of the names, without even agreeing on which name belonged to the mystery bidder.
Sadly, this reenactment of the flailing of headless chickens wasn’t replicated over at Asset Recovery. Cecilia Herabai Petit had quickly recommended bringing in the Global Occult Coalition and everyone had found that an amenable solution to the problem.
An eternal problem of organising auctions of anomalous paraphernalia is that organisations who dedicate themselves to collecting such items oftentimes will interrupt the auctions to cart off your lots for analysis. Old Darke had, shortly following the creation of the GOC, proposed a short agreement. The GOC would “neglect” to raid any of MC&D’s auctions and, in return, MC&D would politely refuse anybody’s requests to auction off obviously dangerous objects. How the GOC would subsequently learn of such things like a secret store of flesh-eating guns was anyone’s guess. Another aspect of the agreement was that, if items seemed to become too much for MC&D to handle, a simple call was sufficient for a team of GOC operatives to swoop in and neutralise any threat.
An unknown individual stealing a large collection of Portuguese grimoires and anomalous military observation equipment certainly counted as a threat. Informing the GOC of the actual usability of any of the books and equipment was unimportant until the thief was caught. As a bonus, if the GOC were called in, the difficulties of recovering the stolen items were no longer in Asset Recovery’s hands. None of them could be blamed if any delays caused by the GOC were responsible for the thief making off with the valuables.
There were, in fact, a number of delays. The various anti-tracking spells on the van had been adapted to prevent any scrying from getting anywhere close, meaning that, at best, the GOC trackers could see a portion of the coast of Lake Erie. Their next method was to obtain a portion of Sasha’s hair or skin, and thereby track down where the rest of her was. The search of her apartment was less than satisfactory. Somebody had rather recently – that is, in the last hour or so – cleaned it of any residual skin flakes and hair. It took almost forty minutes to find a small patch of blood on the inside of an oven mitt. Residue from an accidental cut, perhaps, but still enough to track Sasha down.
Things seemed to be rather simple after that. The GOC team apportated close to the van and found Sasha Newman nearby, tied up and unconscious. The van had been opened with Sasha’s personal identification. Its inside was a mess. Fragments of metal and glass scattered across the walls, likely the last remnants of those Timorese kaleidoscopes. Books were scattered across the surrounding landscape, pages torn and covers hanging on by a thread, but, surprisingly, all thirty of the texts were present.
It seemed as though the thief had been interrupted in the middle of their work or, perhaps, had just given up on the heist in the middle of it all and had just left. Whatever the reason, there were no answers. There was no physical evidence from the thief, no sweat, no thread, no hair, no blood, no boot prints. Sasha was, unsurprisingly, barely cognisant of anything that had occurred after leaving the warehouse. She remembered the changing of the sunlight and nothing else. The team returned her to MC&D, along with the recovered metal fragments and the texts, as well as a complete analysis report.
Cecilia Petit was the unfortunate one who was first to read that report. After an initial portion commenting on the fragile nature of the texts, she found the reviews of the texts’ contents, hurriedly grabbing the auction catalogue for the partially censored photos of the Portuguese texts. The contents did not match. Though the books initially started with various analyses of indigenous magical rites across the Americas and Southeast Asia, the contents quickly devolved into lewd descriptions of the Portuguese and Spanish courts, related by some Johann Teufelsmann. Orgiastic ceremonies, nude dances, bestiality, the list went on. Endless stories of depravity, enhanced by various methods of magical enhancement, none of which, the report went on to explain, were functional rituals. None of this, needless to say, had been in the original texts that had been put up for auction.
Cecilia raised the alarm, of course. The books had been stolen and replaced with fakes, to temporarily delay any subsequent investigation. It was, therefore, highly likely that the Timorese artworks had been stolen. So, here was Asset Recovery, with a series of pseudo-Iberian pornographic grimoires and a load of scrap metal. At the very least, they were doing better than Fraud Prevention. Half of that team had engaged in a violent riot over the pronunciation of “Aneurin” and the other half would have to admit to being unable to track down the missing funds, which would have to be paid for out of the auction profits. Cecilia was mildly annoyed but, as she told herself, this was the wondrous benefit of outsourcing to the GOC. If they had succeeded in bringing back the correct grimoires, she would have been praised for her quick thinking. As it was, she was still praised for her quick thinking, which allowed her team to escape all the blame and pin it on the failures of the GOC operatives.
James didn’t really care about the books he was carrying. They were old but Mercier had claimed them to be rather durable. James didn’t ask questions, he just walked off into the Alleys, quickly tucking Mercier’s notebook and chalk into his pocket.
The jobs weren’t too bad, if a bit irregular. He’d quickly gotten used to the Alleys and the pay was good. He had Mercier’s list of places to visit and all the time in the world to do it in. Okay, at least the rest of the day. Move through the Alleys, pop up near a bookshop in Queens, make a small mark – perhaps a dot, a wave, an arrow – with the red chalk, and note down the time in the notebook, alongside the relevant destination. Then, go back into the Alleys, pop up near St Pauls Cathedral and do it all over again.
The routes changed every time. Some of the places seemed a bit random, he went from Buckingham Palace to a random patch of coast in New York, to a small hole near the Loire. But, he had the whole day to do the journey in and the Alleys made everything a lot easier. He just had to make sure to mark each point with the red chalk and put down the right time in the notebook. James didn’t know how but, whenever Mercier returned in the evening for his notebook, he always seemed to know what mistakes James had made. He didn’t like to watch the old man, standing on his doorstep and altering the numbers, licking the tip of his pencil between each stroke. Mercier never followed him on the route, James was certain of that. One time, James had delayed setting off for an hour or so, just to watch Mercier and see what the man did whilst James went along the Alleys.
Mercier did nothing. Well, he walked. But not in any way that seemed to have a purpose, he just walked. Down a street, across a road, turning right and left. Mercier just walked around New York, occasionally doubling back on his path, sometimes spiralling out from some point and turning back inwards, along that same spiral. Mercier never went into the Alleys, never even seemed to be bothered by anyone. Nobody looked at him, nobody even seemed to register his presence. James had watched as Mercier looked in a café window, staring intently at two women talking at the table directly in front of him. He stood there, slightly hunched, for a good ten minutes, whilst the two women finished their coffees and walked right past him, still smiling and happily talking. James went off on his route at that point. Mercier made no comment as to why James had apparently delayed his departure for nearly one hundred minutes, only correcting a five to a six in the time of when James had arrived at London Waterloo East.
There was the other time, when James had his bag snatched on a job. He would never have been able to describe the thief and resorted to slowly making his way home, trying to think of a way to justify his failure and the loss to Mercier. That was when he saw the bag on the steps leading up to the apartment building. Mercier was there too, sitting next to it, drawing in his red chalk on the steps. The two of them, Mercier and the bag, were surrounded by swirls and arrows and waves and crosses, all in deep red chalk. Mercier proffered the bag, the notebook, and the chalk to James and the two of them set off together. The journey took hours, but Mercier kept perfect pace with James through the Alleys, around London, Paris, Strasbourg, quietly panting to himself and watching as James noted down their time of arrival in the little black notebook.
When they returned to James’ apartment, Mercier removed the money from the bag – the money always appeared in the bag and the items always disappeared during his route and James didn’t question how or why, even though he was certain nobody could have put it in or removed the items he was carrying – and walked off into the night. James couldn’t sleep, not until he’d filled a bucket with soap and water and scrubbed all that chalk off his steps.
Though James liked the Alleys, he lived in New York and was always aware of that fact. His payment was always in dollars, except for once, when he’d found pounds and euros in the bag instead. Mercier had frowned, bowed deeply, and touched James’ knees, as though in apology. There was a small eggshell business card attacked to the notes, with the word “Sorry!” and a tragedy mask emblazoned in the centre in black. James didn’t complain; when converted, it was double the agreed fee. He’d converted most of the currency, but kept some in case of emergencies and a sudden need to move through the Alleys. He hadn’t had any problems with his fee after that.
It would be an insulting use of exaggeration to claim that the theft of some small, jittering mechanisms and a few battered old books had grave and earth-shattering consequences. The previous owners of these items did not notice. They received their money, although this was sourced from the main New York account, instead of the relevant auction account. Perhaps this was the gravest effect of the theft, a minor disruption to the company balance sheet; one soon rectified by a few minor cuts in wage increases and bonuses. The former owners did not hear of this and would not care even if they had. The profit they had obtained would likely be used to fuel one of a hundred different habits: rare wines, cars, illegal drugs, perhaps a series of inkstands from the early Tang dynasty, stolen from burial mounds and museums across China.
Perhaps the only who could have noticed - for "care" is a rather excessive word in such circumstances - certain new events would be old Darke himself. If, on one of his visits to the Wanderer's Library, he had glanced to the donation desk, he would have seen a vast, towering centipede and two or three scaly and bespectacled Librarians looking over a small stack of grimoires. He would have seen their careful inspection of the cracking of the spines, the staining of the pages, the state of the binding and threading, before adding the books to the collection and sending them to be carefully added to the proper place on the shelves. If he had seen this, he would have forgotten it in an instant. Even from such a distance, he could tell that those grimoires held nothing of interest to him. And so, he would have missed the presence of a small letter, addressed to the Library staff.
There was no sound. No light. No minor shift in the wind. Nothing betrayed the fact that a person exited a room in an impossible manner, through neither window nor door. If anyone had been quick enough to grab hold of this visitor's elbow, they would gaze upon a vast new space, a museum with space for hundreds of wings. There is a very large library, filled with important magical, cultural, and historical texts spanning the entire world. They are not the originals, those are, of course, held in the Wanderer's Library. However, the Library employees have been politely asked to pass on the knowledge of this place to anyone who wishes to access copies of those texts for free analysis, without fear of possibly damaging fragile works.
The rest of this museum is dedicated to monuments. In one hall, there are a series of auditory and visual kaleidoscopes, accompanied by a description of their creator, his life and death. There are many halls, filled with monuments to sadness and happiness, survival and suffering. This is not an important place. It has a community, people who come to read and learn and mourn the loss of families and tribes and entire civilisations. The visitors introduce new people to the museum and discuss their various fields of research and work. It is not an important place. Not every place can be important. Not every person can be important. If the builder of this museum were to explain their desire, perhaps they would say that unimportant things are needed, that the exhibits here, though sad, may inspire hope, a desire for change, for a world where this suffering need not be. Perhaps they would laugh and disappear in an instant. Either is possible; some things do not need an explanation.
Cite this page as:
"Testimony Regarding Minor Theft" by LightlessLantern, from theSCP Wiki. Source:https://scpwiki.com/testimony-regarding-minor-theft. Licensed underCC-BY-SA.
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