MAG-ARG 0240428

Statement of Lior Keren regarding their experience in the Keiller Shopping Centre. Original statement given... Um... It looks pretty squiggly but I think that that's April 28th… They don't mention a year but the statement itself is in a box for 2024. Audio recording by Solace, Archival Assistant at the Magnus Institute, Dundee.

Statement begins.

This was a while ago. I tried to give you a straight number, I promise, I really did, but… well, I'm sure you can see it. It's like I can't keep more than one of them in my mind long enough for my hands to pick it up; I get halfway through writing the date and without realising it my pen has gone off on its own, drawing those corridors and stairwells in giant swooping motions like it doesn't want me to forget about them.

As if I could.

Sorry, I've gotten off track. That's been happening a lot.

The Keiller Centre has four entrances, twenty-eight shops and it's all one floor, save for the flats where people live above it. Or, well, I think people live above it. Knowing what I know now, I'm… Not so sure. I know those numbers because I've counted them before. I've had to duck into the Keiller Centre once or twice before when the rain started pissing it down before I'd gotten it into my head to finally buy an umbrella, and, well, when you've got no signal and your phone is pretty much a brick designed to send and receive work emails, you get a bit bored.

I mean, I didn't actively try to remember them, it was more like once I had made certain of all of the little details of the place they just stuck in my mind, like little ‘fun’ bits of trivia.

Anyway, it's not the kind of place I'd frequent. You can ask anyone who's ever been in there and they'll tell you there's just a weird vibe about the place, but the reason that I was in there that night was just for the convenience. It was supposed to just be a shortcut so that I could dodge the rush of people on the street, seeing as it had just gone– seeing as places were beginning to close.

That meant that the Keiller Centre was supposed to be closing as well, but the doors were still propped open and the lights were still on, so I assumed it would be fine. I mean– I could still see workers inside who hadn't actually started to lock up. I pushed open the door and, slipping through it, nobody told me outright to leave, so I just kept going.

If you asked me to specifically navigate through that place, I definitely couldn't give you directions. But it's small enough that any path you pick will just lead you straight to another door, and I'd at least been through it enough to have the route I needed to go burned into my muscle memory. That's why I felt the… Dread– that I did. When I turned round a curved corridor with its glass shop windows and saw the hallway that should have led to a door outside, instead stretched to a length that far exceeded what should have been possible for the building.

I turned around, and things looked normal. I could see the light from outside being cast onto the floor from across the room, although thinking back, I couldn't see the doors themselves that were letting it through. The shops that lined the sides and those… weird little open rooms that cut through the middle of the space seemed fine, and I guess while trying to calm my nerves I had gone still enough to notice the sound. Or… the lack of it.

The Keiller Centre is old enough that the doors creak pretty obnoxiously, and on top of that they're so heavy that it's almost impossible not to slam them. So I absolutely should have heard if anybody left the building, but I didn't. All I know is that when I walked back past those shops and scanned the insides, the workers I had seen from outside were gone without a trace, and without any sound other than the buzzing of fluorescent lights overhead, I knew that there was nobody else in that building with me.

I tried to go back to the door where I came in, obviously, but when I turned round the bend to exit I saw that the same thing had happened as before. An impossibly long hallway lined with shops that looked real in my peripherals but under scrutiny they were… wrong somehow. Like they had been invented just to fill in the gaps. Some storefronts were just carbon copies of ones that I know for certain I had already passed. I think at some point I was so creeped out that I fell back on an old comfort; I started to count.

Except, the numbers didn't go in order. My thoughts were perfectly clear at the time, I remember that, but hearing my own voice back, everything I was saying was muddled. My speech might even have been slurred, thinking about it, and trying to remember what exactly I was saying is hazy. It didn't register to me as odd at the time though, I just kept counting. Just kept cycling those total numbers through my head, and the weirdest thing was that although the shops and doors kept on going and going, the numbers were never wrong, and the totals didn't change. They were the same as they had always been, no matter how different they were from what I knew before.

I remember hours passing like that. Well, they felt like only hours, but honestly I have no idea how long I was wandering those corridors. I even went up and down stairs at some point, places that shouldn't have existed and defied all logic. I mean, I've seen floorplans of the building before. They actually had them up on display inside, as if to taunt me with how wrong to life they were.

My legs were aching, I could feel blood drying at the backs of my heels from where my socks had managed to wear away in the time I'd been stuck in there. I swear it must have been a few hours… I mean, if I'd had to actually sleep overnight there then I know for sure I'd remember that.

I don't know what time it was when the paramedics picked me up though. They were in a right panic as well, looking at me like I was going to drop dead on them whilst they carried me out of that place on a stretcher. They told me to try to stay focused, and not to drift off while someone pushed a cup in my face and urged me to take small sips of water. Then they asked for my name and I told them, but they only exchanged a look of concern and kept prompting me to keep my eyes on them and stay awake.

Everything got a lot clearer when we arrived at the hospital and I actually got some proper fluids and nutrients back in me. Only then did it really hit just how… dead I felt. I mean, I drained an entire bottle of water and my throat still felt like a desert.

They told me that I had suffered several days’ worth of malnutrition, that had they found me any later then I would have kicked it from dehydration. I asked who called them in and they said that the security had found me almost immediately when they showed up to work in the morning. I told them that there was no way I had been in there a whole night, let alone a few days, and they pretty much shrugged.

Then I asked them for the time, and their answer was… well it felt right, but I knew that what I was actually hearing was wrong. They said it was… 4:28, but I could see the morning light outside. I asked them to repeat that and again they said it but, I think I was the only one hearing it. I gave up at that point and decided I should just focus on letting my body stabilise.

I still don't know what day it is. My phone, my calendar, everyone I've asked has given me the same response. I mean, I can be fairly certain that it's still summer given the heat – although the rain would definitely try to prove me otherwise – but I know that sooner or later I'm going to completely lose track. I lost my job; It's hard to keep on somebody who can't ever show up on time. Alarms go off in the middle of the night, my parents say I go for weeks without calling them and both my fish and my plants have all died, for god's sake.

It's impossible to keep track of anything anymore. At this point, I really don't know how I'm supposed to continue like this. I know that you said that you can't help me, but if you've dealt with things like this before then you have to at least know something about what's happening to me, right?

I've left my email and my number. Well, I've tried to at least. I don't know what to do anymore. I really don't.

Statement ends.

Reading this statement is pretty difficult… There’s a lot of points where it’s clear that the statement giver lost concentration and began to stray from their account. Lots of words turn into drawings of spiralling patterns and become difficult to discern before they stop abruptly and the statement picks up again. As well as that, they keep working in the numbers ‘twenty-eight’ and ‘four’.

The phone number and email provided also proved to be pretty useless, featuring the same number again. Attempts to contact Lior again for a follow-up proved to be useless and their whereabouts are unknown at this time.

I guess if there aren’t any public records of the statement giver then we could maybe ask Sera to try out his connections? Or I bet Saccade or Lyes could track down some trace of them online. It’s probably fine though. It’s been committed to tape in the meantime, so–

Solace? We were thinking of going to-- [now quieter] oh, are you still recording?

It’s okay, I was just finishing up.

Sorry! I just wanted to ask if you were coming to Annie’s? Sera suggested it and everyone else is already packing up.

Uhh are you sure it’s okay? Boss isn’t usually a fan of us clocking out for lunch early…

[Appearing in the doorway] What they don’t know won’t hurt ‘em.

And even when they do know, I don’t think anyone’s ever actually gotten into trouble for it.

…Well if you’re all already here…

[A little distant] Are you coming? I already sent Lyes to grab a table. They close at 5! We’re not exactly made of time here.

Ah! Coming! [Sounds of paper rustling] Oh! I almost forgot. End recording.