**\[Click]** ### JON Statement of [[Adekoya, Sebastian|Sebastian Adekoya]], regarding a new acquisition at [[Chiswick Library]]. Original statement given [[1999-06-10|June 10th, 1999]]. Audio recording by [[Person of interest/The Magnus Institute/The Magnus Archives/Archive staff/Sims, Jonathan|Jonathan Sims]], Head Archivist of the [[Magnus Institute]], London. Statement begins. ### JON (STATEMENT) *[[Person of interest/The Magnus Institute/The Magnus Archives/Archive staff/Sims, Jonathan|JON]] reads aloud from the archived witness statement of [[Adekoya, Sebastian|SEBASTIAN ADEKOYA]].* Books are amazing, aren’t they? I mean, when you think about what they really are. People don’t give the actuality of language the weight it deserves, I feel. Words are a way of taking your thoughts, the very make-up of yourself, and giving them to another. Putting your thoughts in the mind of someone else. They are not a perfect method, of course, as there’s plenty of scope for mutation and corruption between your mind and that of the listener, but that doesn’t change the essence of what language is. Spoken aloud, though, the thought dies quickly if not picked up. Simple vibrations that vanish almost as soon as they are created, though if they find a host, then they can lodge there, proliferate, and maybe spread further. Still, it is not a reliable method in terms of a thought’s endurance, as humans are fragile creatures, and rarely last a century. A book, though, is another story. There are written texts that have outlived the civilisations that created them. Imagine, thoughts hundreds, thousands of years old, preserved and ready to be taken again. Corrupted, or translated, perhaps, by a culture that does not understand them, but still, ideas that have outlived by lifetimes the mind that first conceived them. Will the thoughts that first ran through [[Shakespeare, William|Shakespeare]]’s head ever stop being thought by someone, somewhere? And a book, so dense with a mind’s fossilised creations, is it any wonder they have been ascribed such power throughout the ages? Or that an old library, with heavy tomes covering every wall, seems to have such a weight to it, beyond the physical presence of the texts it holds? I used to work at [[Chiswick Library]]. I didn’t have such ideas back then, though. I just knew I loved books, always had, and so when the opportunity arose to work in my local library I jumped at the chance. I had been a voracious reader ever since I was old enough to hold a book for myself, and even before that my mother tells me I would pester her constantly to read to me. I suppose you might say my mind has always been receptive to the thoughts that lurk in the written page. Still, [[Chiswick Library]] is a long way from the cramped and austere libraries you’re probably imagining. It’s light and airy, with bookshelves and carpets that speak more of cash-strapped local councils than of the rich majesty of knowledge. It has an extensive children’s section and the vast majority of its stock are dog-eared paperbacks of true crime, literary fiction and reference books. It has a modest collection of books on tape and the atmosphere, though quiet, is far from oppressive. In a word, I would sum the place up as ‘unthreatening’. It was three years ago when this happened. I had already been working there for about a year when the book first turned up. Now, we used to buy all of our books new, and I never did any of the acquisitions for the library, so I couldn’t say when or where it might have been bought from, but it looked old and pretty beaten up when I first noticed it. It was handed back with four other books at the front desk, and as I was scanning them through, I noticed that one of the barcodes didn’t seem to match up. The barcode and ISBN both registered as being that of *[[Trainspotting]]*, by [[Welsh, Irvine|Irvine Welsh]], but the book itself was an almost featureless black paperback, with a title on the front in a faded white serif font: *[[The Boneturner’s Tale]]*. I was a bit confused, and called the librarian, [[Weaver, Ruth|Ruth Weaver]], over to ask about it. She didn’t recall seeing it ever before, but stuck in the front was the ex-libris bookplate of [[Chiswick Library]], as well as a lending label with a handful of stamps going back several years. [[Weaver, Ruth|Ruth]] shrugged and told me not to worry too much about it – we’d get it recorded and put on the system properly, but something about the situation bothered me, so I decided to check the record of the man who had returned it. His name, at least according to his library card, was [[Crew, Michael|Michael Crew]], and sure enough, three weeks ago he had borrowed four books from us. Specifically, the four others he had returned. I suggested to [[Weaver, Ruth|Ruth]] that perhaps he was a self-published author who was trying to trick his way onto our shelves, and she laughed, saying that was probably it, although why anyone would go to the trouble of faking it just to get on the shelves of [[Chiswick Library]] was beyond her. The book even looked worn, though, like it had seen decades of being read, with a line creased down the spine, and one half of the cover faded from the sun. Nor, from what I could see, did it list any author at all. It was at that moment that [[Hopworth, Jared|Jared Hopworth]] came in, and I had to put the book to one side. [[Hopworth, Jared|Jared]] and I had once been fast friends; growing up on the same road, attending the same schools, we had spent much of our early life as inseparable. But he had always been, well, not to put too fine a point on it, thick as mud, and when I went away to university, he stayed behind. I think he saw it as something of a betrayal, and when I finally returned, I knew immediately something had changed between us. He spent the time I was away becoming a bit of a crook, and upon my return, began what would eventually become a campaign of petty terror. He was always very careful to stop before he did anything that might get the [[UK Metropolitan Police Service|police]] involved, and I guess there was enough leftover affection from a childhood spent together that I never really thought about reporting him. It wa– --- ### PAGE: [[Arachnophobia - 01 - Statement|Last Episode]] - \[[[The Boneturner's Tale - 01 - Statement|01]]] - [[The Boneturner's Tale - 02 - Supplemental|02]] - [[The Boneturner's Tale - 03 - Statement|03]] - [[The Boneturner's Tale - 04 - Follow-up|04]] - [[The Boneturner's Tale - 99 - Postface|99]] - [[The Man Upstairs - 01 - Statement|Next Episode]] ### PROPERTIES | Episode published on | [[2016-05-04]] | | -------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Statement given on | [[1999-06-10]] | | Date of events | [[1996-09-01 - 1996-09-30\|1996-09]] | | Date of recording | N/A | | Recorded by | [[Person of interest/The Magnus Institute/The Magnus Archives/Archive staff/Sims, Jonathan\|Sims, Jonathan]] | | Recorded at | [[Magnus Institute]] | | Statement type | Written | | Case number | 0150409 | | Given by | [[Adekoya, Sebastian]] | | Voice | [[Person of interest/The Magnus Institute/The Magnus Archives/Archive staff/Sims, Jonathan\|Sims, Jonathan]] | | Magnus staff | N/A | | Mentionned | [[Hopworth, Jared]] - [[Crew, Michael]] - [[Weaver, Ruth]] - [[Welsh, Irvine]] - [[Shakespeare, William]] | | Non-person | [[UK Metropolitan Police Service]] - [[Chiswick Library]] | | Artefact | [[The Boneturner’s Tale]] | | Avatar | [[Crew, Michael]] - [[Hopworth, Jared]] | | Creature | N/A | | Ritual | N/A | | Entity | [[The Flesh]] | | Location | [[Chiswick]] | | Linked mention | [[Pageturner - 01 - Statement\|0132806]] - [[The Coming Storm - 02 - Statement\|0172804-A]] | | Other pages | [[The Boneturner's Tale - 01 - Statement\|01]] - [[The Boneturner's Tale - 02 - Supplemental\|02]] - [[The Boneturner's Tale - 03 - Statement\|03]] - [[The Boneturner's Tale - 04 - Follow-up\|04]] - [[The Boneturner's Tale - 99 - Postface\|99]] | | Transcript | [The Boneturner's Tale.pdf](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-KPIR3DUI8LR7Topx532AZrrCt1sQdkd/view?usp=drive_link) | | Tags | #Source/TMA/Statement #Warning/Setting/School/Bullying #Warning/Betrayal #Warning/Abuse/Elder #Warning/Horror/Body/Bones #Warning/Crime/Harm/Animal #Warning/Horror/Gore/Blood #Warning/Phobia/Animal/Rodent/Rat #Warning/Death |