MAG 8: Burned Out

Statement of Ivo Lensik regarding his experiences during the construction of a house on Hill Top Road.
==Statement==
Ivo Lensik works in construction, having inherited his father's family business. His father and great-uncle had schizophrenia, his father's disease developing around the time of his divorce. He would spend many hours in his study drawing and analysing fractals. He told his son that someone was following him, trying to stop his research and that Ivo would know him when they met because "all the bones are in his hands". Shortly afterwards Ivo's father apparently committed suicide, though the tools that he used were never found and the coroner noted there was a look of fear on his face.
In mid-November 2006, Ivo started work on a house on Hill Top Road as a second job in order to earn money for his upcoming wedding to his fiancée, Sam. On his first day there was a knock on the door; he answered it to reveal a clean-shaven man with shaggy chestnut hair and a tan coat who claimed to be Raymond Fielding, the owner of the house. Raymond produced the deed to the house as proof.
Raymond came into the house and stared at the huge tree in the garden before abruptly disappearing, leaving behind a scorched wooden floor and a smell of burning hair. The smell disappeared as quickly as it arrived. Ivo slipped on the floor whilst cleaning the mark and fell unconscious for a few seconds. When he awoke, he called an ambulance and was taken to the John Radcliffe Hospital, where he was kept for observation overnight. When telling his doctor of his story (who confirmed the hallucination was not due to early schizophrenia), he noticed another nurse, later revealed to be Anna Kasuma, a Malaysian woman in her 50s, listening into the conversation.
Before he left the hospital, Ivo spoke to Anna, who told him about the story of the house on Hill Top Road. Raymond Fielding, a devout churchgoer, set up the house in the 1960s as a half-way house for teenage runaways and those with mental problems, supported by the local Catholic church. Agnes appeared at some point, an 11-year-old girl with mousy pigtails who some claimed was Raymond's daughter. After she arrived, the children from the house stopped being a bother to the rest of the town and slowly the occupants of the house seemed to dwindle, Raymond explaining that they had moved on. Eventually, it was just Agnes, aged 18 or 19 by this time, and Raymond. Then Raymond disappeared and local pets started to disappear; then in 1974 5-year-old Henry White went missing. A week later, when the house at Hill Top Road burned down, the locals were not exactly quick to call the fire brigade. Agnes' remains were not found but Raymond's were, although he was missing his right hand.
A few days later Ivo returned to work at Hill Top Road, careful to only be there when others were there. However, one evening he stayed late accidentally. When he realised this, he felt suddenly hot with a heat that radiated from his bones and he could not scream. There came a knock at the door, one Edwin Burroughs, a Catholic priest who the nurse Anna Kasuma had asked to visit. Explaining he was an exorcist, he said he would do what he could.
Ivo went into the garden to give Edwin some space. There, he was overwhelmed with a hatred for the ominous tree. He struck it with a crowbar and blood spilled from it. He wrapped a chain around the tree and uprooted it with his car. In the hole where the tree was, he found an ornate wooden box with intricate patterns on it, about 6 inches square. Inside was a green apple that looked freshly picked. As he removed it from the box, however, it began to rot and thousands of spiders spilled forth from it. When he dropped the apple, it burst into dust and vermin. He destroyed the box and threw it into a skip.
Edwin said he had done what he could and gave Ivo his business card. Ivo finished up a week later without further incident.
== Post-Statement ==
Martin did not find any dates about when the house burned down but did find that Walter Fielding purchased it in 1891, passed it to Alfred Fielding in 1923, then Raymond in 1957. There are no records of it being a half-way house, although this could be due to poor record-keeping of the Catholic diocese.
Other residents of Hill Top Road corroborated Mrs Kasuma's story about the history of the house. Although Tim interviewed her, she had nothing new to add to the statement.
Raymond was reported as having died in a house fire; his obituary lauded his work with troubled youths.
Martin found a report that may or may not be related: Agnes Montague, 26, was found dead in her flat in Sheffield on 23rd November 2006, the same day Ivo destroyed the tree. She hanged herself and had a severed human hand tied by a chain to her waist, which appears to have died the same time she did. Obviously, her age does not match up with the Agnes from Hill Top Road.
There have been no further manifestations at Hill Top Road.
== Continuity ==
*Related entity: Primarily The Web and The Desolation with minor involvement from The Spiral.
**Hill Top Road is an old stronghold of The Web and the box that Ivo discovers under the tree fits in the hole in the table from MAG 3, an artefact of The Web.
**Agnes Montague is a powerful avatar of The Desolation whose conflict with Raymond Fielding left a scar in reality on Hill Top Road.
** The "man with all the bones in his hands" is likely referring to The Distortion, a being of The Spiral. If so, this would imply the Distortion had in fact taken on human identities before the Great Twisting.
*Edwin Burroughs gives his own account in statement 0218011 (MAG 19 & MAG 20), although that record had not been discovered by Jonathan Sims at this point. He experiences a similar invisible heat as Ivo Lensik.
*The events of this statement overlap with some events at the end of Jack Barnabas’ statement in MAG 67
*Hill Top Road is mentioned in numerous other statements and in MAG 147 John visits it in person.
*Martin burns the physical copy of this statement in MAG 118. 
==Notes==
*A deluxe transcript for this episode is available as bonus content on the Rusty Quill Patreon.
*In the episode description Mr. Lensik's first name is spelled "Evo" while the official transcript spells it "Ivo".
Category:The Magnus Archives Episodes