MAG 97: We All Ignore the Pit

Statement of Jackson Ellis, regarding the geographical oddities in the town of Bucoda, Washington.
==Statement==
Jackson Ellis had been offered a position at a newspaper, but when he arrived, he found the paper had been shut down, leaving him stranded in Olympia, Washington.
A friend of his, Thomas Krycek, offered him a spare room in his house in Bucoda, which Jackson accepted. Bucoda was a very small and simple town, surrounded by forest.
After getting a severance package, Jackson took a few days to recover from the ordeal. During this time he took to exploring the town and noted that the locals regarded him strangely and he never saw any children.
He found the Pit at the intersection of River Street and 6th. It was very neat and went down into a single point and did not seem very old. A car drove up to the Pit and drove around it as though they had not registered the gaping hole.
The next day, Jackson asked Thomas about the Pit, but realised that he had stopped moving when Jackson started asking questions. When the questions stopped, Thomas continued as though he had not heard them, and did not understand further questions about the hole.
Jackson checked maps of the area but not even maps from 2008 showed the pit. When he asked in the diner, Joe's, they ignored or did not understand him. Just before he gave up, an older man approached him, saying "Nothing for you down there. You just go and enjoy your sky," before spitting mud at Jackson's feet.
He tried to stop thinking about it, but started to dream about it, that it whispered to him to reach into the hole. When he did so, the hole began to close, engulfing his hand. When his arm had been buried, he felt teeth, and a tongue reaching up his arm before tearing his skin off. When he awoke, he was in bed, but fully dressed with scratches on his arm.
Jackson had found a job in Chehalis and was set to move out. On the 17th June 2008, the day before he left, he was awoken by Thomas leaving the house in the early morning. Jackson saw other figures walking past his window. Outside, he saw all of the residents of Bucoda climbing down into the pit without making a sound. One of the women looked up at him and screamed before being pulled into the ground. Jackson fled back to Thomas' house and hid under his bed, feeling the earth swaying beneath his feet.
As he left, he saw the pit, which had become much larger. There was an older woman looking into the pit. A young man with blue eyes sat in the car behind her, crying. She turned to Jackson and gestured for him to leave.
That night an earthquake reportedly struck Bucoda and destroyed the town.
== Post-Statement ==
John wonders why Elias sent him this statement. It points to an Entity which is related to caves and the earth, but he is not certain.
Although Jackson is alive, he is not willing to give any more updates on this statement. Bucoda is reported to have been destroyed by an earthquake, but there are no records of the destruction itself and surrounding roads have not been affected.
A light bulb goes out as John is talking and Nikola Orsinov appears. She says that she killed her father, Gregor Orsinov, by pulling him apart and used all the bits. John notes that she does not sound Russian, to which she replies she is borrowing someone else's voicebox: it is hard to sound like anything when you are plastic.
Nikola explains that she is not going to kill John, but after he attacked Sarah Baldwin, Nikola decided that she wanted to talk to The Archivist. She says that she wants the old skin which Gertrude has hidden, explaining that she wants to wear it as she dances the world anew.
Nikola grabs him by the throat, saying he has got until she changes her mind to find the skin.
==Continuity==
*Related Entity: The Buried, The Vast, and The Stranger.
** What Jackson Ellis witnessed appears to be The Sunken Sky, The Buried's ritual.MAG 129: Submerged
** The old woman Jackson sees at the end is Gertrude Robinson, who has been investigating The Buried's ritual.MAG 99: Dust to Dust The young man with her is likely Jan Kilbride, who she ultimately kills and dismembers before throwing into the Pit. His connection to The Vast causes The Sunken Sky to fail.
** Jackson’s immunity to the ritual may mean he was previously marked by The Vast—this would be consistent with his feeling out of place in Bucoda, WA, a stronghold of The Buried, and would explain the interaction with the old man in the diner.
==Trivia==
*In MAG Commentary - Retrospective #2 Alex mentions that Nikola's part in this episode became popular with the clowncore community on TikTok.
==References==
Category:The Magnus Archives Episodes