MAG 9: A Father's Love

Statement of Julia Montauk regarding the actions and motivations of her father the serial killer Robert Montauk.
==Statement==
Julia Montauk is the daughter of renowned serial killer Robert Montauk, who killed at least 40 people over 5 years.
Julia had always lived in York Road in Dartford. When she was 7, she awoke to noises downstairs; when she went to investigate she found the backdoor open and her mother Linette's silver pendant (with an abstract hand and closed eye design), on the kitchen table. Julia woke her father, who became very concerned when he saw the pendant. He turned on a tap and dark, dirty water flowed out which smelled salty and brackish. The light blew in the kitchen and her dad told her to go to bed as he left the house. The next morning he returned and told Julia that her mother was gone.
Although he was a policeman, Robert did not log a missing person's report (though this was not discovered until much later). He started drinking and spending a lot of time in his shed. He was gone most nights and the shed in the back garden smelled strongly like tinned meat.
One evening Robert came into Julia's room whilst she was sleeping. He wore dark-stained overalls, his hands smelled of blood and brackish water and he whispered that he promised to protect her.
He seemed to be injured constantly and Julia became good at cleaning small blood stains from the hallway. Robert said that he had been moved to the night shift, but had actually quit the police force to continue with his work.
When Julia was 10, she took a phone call from someone who claimed to be a Detective Rayner with a new case; he sounded old and possibly German. Her father spoke to him, saying "no", "not already", "do it yourself", before finally saying he would do it as soon as possible. He spent the rest of the day in the shed.
Julia did not know where the bodies were as they were never recovered by the police; however, she never told them about the photographs. Her dad had converted the guest room into a dark room after her mum disappeared. Although it was always locked, one day she got in and found photos of faces with symbols drawn over them, although she admitted she was not sure if they were those of the victims. She asked her dad about it, who hugged her for the last time and left.
That night at 2:47 am, Julia woke up and went to get a glass of water, but when she turned on the tap the same brackish water from before flowed forth. Looking outside, the streetlights seemed to not reach as far as usual and then began to fail sequentially. Then followed knocking at the door, gradually sounding less human with each knock and more like wet meat slapping against the door. Julia called the police before the door shattered, strange growling sounding from behind her in the darkness. She fled into the garden, towards the shed from which emanated a blue, pulsing light.
She ran in to see her dad, bathed in the blue light, standing over a corpse with its chest opened up, clutching a knife in one hand and the body's heart in the other. He was chanting and the heart in his hand and those in jars on the walls beat in time to his chant. As the presence got closer to the shed, her dad's chanting reached its crescendo and he plunged the knife into the heart. With that, the presence disappeared and the light faded.
Robert looked at his daughter and apologised. They could hear police sirens in the background and Robert fled. Julia noted that the body had the same pendant as her mum's.
The subsequent manhunt for Robert ended with his incarceration.
== Post-Statement ==
The body in the shed that Julia saw belonged to Christopher Lorne. There were 41 hearts in total, 11 on each inner wall, 7 on the wall with the door and one in Robert's hand.
The pendant is from the People's Church of the Divine Host, founded by the defrocked Pentecostal minister Maxwell Rayner. This appears to be the same name as in MAG 7 (specifically the body that was found with Wilfred Owen after he was blown up by the artillery shell) but Jonathan Sims believes this to be a coincidence.
Christopher was part of this church and his family had not heard from him in the six years before his murder. In 1994 Rayner disappeared and the church disbanded shortly afterwards.
Robert died in Wakefield Prison on 1st November 2002. He was stabbed 47 times in the chest and bled out. No murder weapon was recovered and he was found in a locked cell although the light bulb had blown, leaving him in darkness.
== Continuity ==
* Related entity: The Dark and The Hunt
* Julia Montauk later reappears, along with Trevor Herbert, in MAG 107, MAG 109, MAG 111, MAG 153, and MAG 158. She has apparently continued her father's work as a killer, although it appears that she mainly hunts supernatural beings. She and Trevor also possess the Catalogue of the Trapped Dead, which they use to contact Gerard Keay.
* Robert Montauk’s time in Wakefield Prison is documented in MAG 52.
==Notes==
*A deluxe transcript for this episode is available as bonus content on the Rusty Quill Patreon.
*In MAG 33: Boatswain's Call, this statement is one that Tim Stoker notes has inconsistencies: John referred to Case 9220611 as Case 1106922 in the post-statement follow-up. This was reported by Samantha Emery, who is writing a Ph.D. in Manifestations.
*In the notes for this episode, Julia's surname is spelled "Montork". This appears to be a misspelling as it is spelled "Montauk" in all other official instances.
Category:The Magnus Archives Episodes