#Wordcount: 3273

[lyrical-linguist]

Tarot Cards

Archivist

Statement of Evan Lodge, regarding the alleged series of ‘bad luck’ in early 2019 following the purchase of a deck of Tarot cards in August 2018. Original statement given May 7th 2019. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.

Statement begins.

Statement (Archivist)

I’ve never really been one for that spiritual nonsense. Plenty of my friends are into it, New Age spirituality and paganism etcetera, etcetera. I always found it fun, though. I might not have believed in any of it, but tarot cards and horoscopes and crystals were a nice bit of fun, something to do when I was bored and a good way to give yourself advice. I’ve always found all these supposedly prophetic things to be a good way to convince yourself do to what you already know you need to. It’s all just confirmation bias and coincidence.

And even when weird stuff does happen, it’s not like there’s anything supernatural. It’s just a coincidence, or some sciency thing we don’t yet understand or can’t see, like how some fish can see infra-red, or some bugs can see more colours than we can. Things doing stuff they shouldn’t, it’s all just ions or quantum physics, or maybe dark matter - we don’t understand that yet. The point is: everything weird has an empirical scientific explanation. Anything that seems supernatural has a, well, natural reason. It has to. But those cards, I don’t know. They’re just wrong. I’ve not done drugs, I don’t think I’m hallucinating, there has to be an explanation. I need you to tell me that there’s a rational, scientific explanation. I’m not crazy, I’m not!

I’m sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself. I’ll start at the beginning.

It was just like any other day in August, I was in town doing some shopping as it was the Summer holidays and I was yet to start my University term. I was looking around some charity shops as I’ve never particularly been a fan of the more modern, more expensive clothing you get on the highstreet. I specifically remember the shop that I went into third, because there was this beautiful vintage jacket significantly under-priced, and I bought it immediately. As is the norm, I had a quick look around the books and the CDs. I don’t suppose you care what I bought, but I’ll mention it just in case it is useful in tracking the shop or something. I remember looking through the books for a little longer than usual. A friend had told me they had found a beautiful clothbound book from the 1800s here last week. No luck, though, and in the end I just got a copy of Dorian Grey and a couple of CDs from some obscure band I’d never heard of before. Sorry, that’s probably not a useful fact.

It was then that I saw them, looking though old teapots and photo frames. At first I thought it was just a pack of ornate playing cards, but as I looked closer I realised they were tarot cards, an intricately morbid design painted on the box. As I said, I’ve never really believed in spiritual nonsense, but there was just something about this deck that drew me to the cards.

I took a few out in the shop to examine them, and of course they first card I pulled was Death. At the time, this seemed amusing. I know that Death signifies new beginnings and fresh starts, but it’s always funny to pretend it means I’m going to die. Well, it used to be. Anyway, I pulled out the card, and examined it. It was truly beautiful, unlike any deck I had seen before. It seemed to be hand-painted, the ivory of Death’s bones stark white against the black of his cloak and the red of the corpses at his feet. If I hadn’t known better, I would have said that red looked like fresh blood. Of course given the age of the deck, blood would have been a dark brown not this glistening scarlet. Every card in the deck was the same; a black and white design with blood-red detailing. Even the cards of the Major Arcana signifying anything alive seemed almost dead. They weren’t skeletal, no sunken eyes, they even had joyous expressions. I could not label any detail that made them seem that way, they were just… dead.

I do not do justice the beauty of those cards in my description, but of course I bought them. Maybe I didn’t believe in that stuff, but they truly were beautiful, and I’ve always found the aesthetic morbidly appealing. Not to mention that they were only £2, and I felt oddly drawn to these cards, as though they were made just for me. There was no company listed on the back of the box, just a cardboard thing with ‘Tarot’ crudely painted on the front. It didn’t seem to match the look of the deck, and seemed to have been made significantly after the cards themselves were. Something of this beauty seemed to belong to some sort of ornate wooden box, like a more expensive version of those boxes dominos used to come in. The cards seemed to be lacking this, but I don’t suppose I thought much of it at the time. I was only disappointed I could not Google to find more information on their creation.

For the longest time, nothing happened. The cards sat pride of place in my growing collection of spiritual items, mostly bought by friends who were happy I was also getting involved in this stuff. Those same friends were massively impressed when I showed them my new deck, and even more impressed when I told them the price. I remember one told me that something like that could easily go for £50 if they were new, and in the hundreds or even thousands if they were as old as I suspected they were. Although I could not find my deck on the internet, I was shocked to find others selling for as much as 2.5 grand. I don’t know why, but I didn’t even consider selling them. I suppose I just didn’t think they were actually worth as much as my friends said they might be, and despite (as I keep saying) my disbelief in all things spiritual, I had developed some sort of connection to this deck. Selling them would be wrong. How I wish now that I hadn’t held onto them, that I had sold them, even given them away for free.

So like I said, nothing really happened for a while. I would read my tarot maybe once a week, usually the standard past-present-future spread, and I was even slowly learning the meanings as they were much easier to read than my previous Grand Etteilla deck. I was even quite proud of myself one day in early December when I managed to do my reading without even having to look up what the cards meant. I was less proud when I realised what the cards were. I still remember today, even though it was months ago. Past: Nine of Swords, upright; anxiety, trauma, depression. Present: The Hermit, reversed; isolation, exile. Future: Ten of Swords, Upright; disaster, betrayal, defeat. Suffice to say, these were not comforting cards. They were right about the trauma in the past, they were right about the loneliness I often feel. I suppose they were also right about the future, although obviously I didn’t know that at the time.

I dismissed this reading as coincidence and silliness. They weren’t some magical, prophetic pieces of paper, they were just a bit of fun. I had a little laugh to myself and texted my friends’ group chat about the doom I had just been foretold. I suppose the lack of reply should have been some indicator that perhaps the Hermit card was right about the present.

On Thursday that week, I suppose I was betrayed in a small way. It turned out my best friend was gossiping about me behind my back. Nothing big, nothing important in the grand scheme of things, I suppose, but it was a small betrayal. I thought nothing of it until later, remembering how the cards had foretold betrayal. It was just a coincidence, I told myself.

The next week, I read my tarot again. If people were going to be betraying me, I’d rather know. The future reading was the Seven of Pentacles reversed, supposedly meaning hard work without reward. When I went to hand in an essay I had spent three hours writing that week, my professor told me that he had set that for his other class, and we didn’t have to do. Three hours wasted.  

This continued for weeks. I would read my tarot, my supposed doom would be foretold, and something small and bad would happen. I know it was silly, I know it went against all the science I believed in, I know that nothing that was happening was even very severe, but I got scared of those cards. I’m not a complete idiot, I’ve seen all the horror movies, so after a few weeks I simply stopped reading my tarot. It was just a slew of bad luck, nothing to do with those creepy cards, I told myself. I didn’t really think stopping would change anything, but there was that little voice in the back of my head, that little superstitious anxiety. I thought it would help, and it did. For one week. That bad luck that had been plaguing me for so long stopped, almost the day I usually read my tarot. By the next week I had almost convinced myself that it had all been just a series of unfortunate events, nothing to do with the cards and just another coincidence. But that was when the dreams started.

I used to read my tarot before going to bed every Sunday, find out my luck for the week ahead. Like I said, the first Sunday I did not, the week following was bliss. But the second week, the 10th February, I got ready as usual, deliberately skipped my tarot reading, and climbed into bed. Now, normally it takes me an hour to get to sleep on a good day. I usually put on a podcast or some music and try to sleep, only for my mind to be invaded by a million tiny anxieties keeping me awake. But not that night; I was asleep the minute my head hit the pillow.

In my dream, I was at that charity shop where I first bought the cards, except it was… different. I couldn’t tell what it was at the time, when you’re in a dream everything seems normal, but when I awoke and remembered this dream, I remembered thinking it peculiar that everything in this shop - every item, every person - was coloured in that black and white and blood red of the cards. This wasn’t unusual, although I rarely remember my dreams, the ones I do remember are bizarre like this. There was a dream I once had, I must have been ten, where the people had orange and purple and green legs, but in the dream I thought nothing of it. Sorry, I’m getting off topic.

I was in the shop, oddly coloured as it was, and I approached the shelf where I had found the cards. The colouration here was even stranger, with the china and antiques only in that ivory white, and the red stain of the deck a blot on the shelf, redder than it had been in the waking world. I reached towards it, I could almost touch it- And then my alarm went off. That always happened in dreams, your alarm waking you halfway through. I do remember thinking it strange that I had remembered that dream and no other, as usually when I remember one I remember multiple. However, I felt the strangest sensation that I had had no other dreams that night, and from the moment I placed my head on the pillow eight hours prior, I had been in that dream and none other. Silly thinking, of course dreams did not work like that.

What was more peculiar, however nothing to be concerned over, is when the next night I had the exact same dream, and I woke up at exactly the same point. Of course that’s nothing unusual, I always repeat the dreams I remember. Ok so maybe they rarely seem to repeat so precisely, and maybe two nights in a row was bizarre, but dreaming about a pack of cards was not the strangest thing I had ever dreamed about and of course I wasn’t going to assume there was anything unnatural about it, I mean it was a dream for goodness sake!

The third night, on Tuesday, I was very tired. I supposed I was not sleeping properly, as the past two nights despite my eight hours unconscious on both occasion it felt as if I had not slept at all, and I was beginning to drop off in my lectures. I decided on an early night, certainly a rarity for a university student, I know, and headed to bed at only 9pm. As I have said, I was exhausted. That night, it seemed the dream was longer. It started as the previous two had, however when I reached the shelf and reached out my hand, my alarm did not go off. I clutched at the deck, which, although it seemed normal at the time, was in a wooden case exactly as I had envisioned when first buying it. Ornate, with the figure of Death emblazoned on the lid. There was still no company name, however.

I slid open the box and pulled out the cards, and seated myself at a table that, as far as I am aware, did not exist in the real shop. And then I began to read my tarot. I seemed to have little control over my actions in that dream, however I don’t believe I tried to prevent my reading. It was just a dream, after all. I shuffled the deck as I did when awake, and drew my past, present, and future as when awake. I’m afraid I do not remember which cards I drew that night, as every night from then on I had that same dream and drew different cards. It all blurs together after a while. What I do know is that from that night, the disasters started again.

I would lose important work or destroy my favourite clothing or a friend would end ill and I’d have to present a project on my own, or any number of unlucky but small occurrences. Every night I had that dream, and every day a new disaster would strike. They were never severe, although the first degree burns from coffee and small cuts from cooking were some of the worst of the events. It was like death by a thousand cuts, this constant bad luck. I already had depression at the time, and this certainly did nothing to help.

Eventually, I picked up the tarot again. It was a Sunday night again, the 10th of March I think, and after four weeks of bad luck, I had had enough. Maybe these cards were haunted or cursed or whatever, but the once-a-week disaster was worse than every single goddamn day, not to mention the fact that I was constantly tired these days, and not a small number of disasters had happened due to my falling asleep, and it was getting difficult to tell what was magic bad luck and what was just regular bad luck. ‘Magic bad luck’, God I sound insane.

And you know what? The dream didn’t happen that night. I swear I’m not making this up, I know it sounds ridiculous, I don’t know what’s wrong with me, maybe it’s my subconscious mind giving me excuses, but every week I draw my tarot, every week a disaster happens, and the dreams went away.

And now I come to the reason I’m here. The thing about the disasters is they aren’t totally random. I draw the Lovers, and I find my partner had cheated, or I draw Three of Pentacles and whatever group I’m a part of falls apart. Some of the links are more tenuous or less spiritual, like cutting myself shaving after drawing something with a sword, or getting a sunburn after drawing the Sun. I suspect breaking my weighing scales came from drawing Justice.

Last Sunday, I drew Death.

I know Death doesn’t mean anything to do with dying. I know it’s about rebirth and change and cycles. But if drawing the Sun can give me a sunburn when I’m outside for less than an hour, I dread to think what Death means.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the first card I ever drew from this deck was Death. I know that sounds stupid, of course it’s a coincidence. All of this is just a stupid coincidence. But too many bad things keep happening. Maybe I’ll be lucky, maybe Death means the end of a cycle. I drew Death at the beginning of all this, maybe Death means the end too. But the end of what? This bad luck, or someone’s life?

I can’t keep living like this. The bad luck is getting worse. What started as papercuts and torn documents is now mistakes costing hundreds of pounds and friends being attacked and falling shelves breaking my bones. That’s how I got this cast. With the dreams, it was one piece of bad luck a day. Even reading the cards myself it seems to be that bad now. I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up.

I need help. Tell me I’m not crazy or I don’t know tell me I am. Just… Help me.

Archivist

Statement ends.

Simply put, there is nothing in this statement that could lead to further investigation. These so-called disasters are too minor to follow up, and Mr Lodge has provided no information on these cards that could detail which deck he is referring to, and does not appear to have left any copy of the cards in our possession. The fact that they appear to be hand-painted and ornate, yet only tricolour is unlikely and certainly an anachronism if they are as old as Mr Lodge suggests.

There is no evidence to suggest Tarot cards have the power to either prophesize or determine futures, and this supposed bad luck is likely, as Mr Lodge states in the only sensible part of his statement, a coincidence.

While it is certainly worrying that these dreams occurred only when he was not reading his Tarot weekly, it is likely a subconscious reaction to the stress of this ‘bad luck’. Additionally, the suggestion that in the first two dreams there was not enough time to draw cards despite lasting the whole night, but in every other dream there was time, is illogical.

What is concerning, is that upon investigation, it was found that Mr Lodge was found dead in his student flat three days after his statement was taken on the 10th of May 2007. However, this death was ruled a suicide. Mr Lodge stated a history of depression, and Tim was able to locate medical records indicating severe depression and anxiety and three years of therapy. Given this, and the bad luck Mr Lodge perceived himself as having, there was likely no supernatural causes to this death.

End recording.

#the magnus archives #the magnus archives fanfiction #short story #short stories #writing #writer #horror #fanfic #fanfiction #statement fic #I literally wrote this so long ago I had forgotten about it but hey I may as well stick in my entire backlog of writing #Wordcount: 3273