(familiar theme music: acoustic guitar, church bells, a faraway female voice)
VOICE OF MAKO MORI: Welcome to Season Two of the Black Tapes Podcast.
(theme music fades out)
NEWT: Gotcha! I’m back. Just thought it would be funny to put Mako’s intro again.
Aw, you missed me. I can tell!
NEWT (VO): This season, we’re continuing our exploration of belief and the search for truth, and our profile of the enigmatic Dr. Hermann Gottlieb. We are examining his collection of unsolved cases, pursuing the theory that they are connected.
Our story progresses in order, week by week. So, if you’re a first-time listener, welcome to the show! You’ll have to start at episode one if you want to have the faintest idea what I’m talking about.
(brief musical interlude)
NEWT: So, yes. I am back from my leave. I’m feeling a lot better. Shortly after we finished recording episode 204 and began the usual editing process, I collapsed from exhaustion. I spent a night in the hospital; upon my release, I decided maybe everyone was right and I should take a break.
Imagine that!
So, I packed my bag for Florida and got three good weeks of sun and sand at my retired uncle’s beach house. In the daytime I worked on my sunburn lines, and at night the sound of crickets, birds, and waves sang me to my humid rest. Turns out that ambient noise helps. I wouldn’t say I got any full nights of sleep, but I definitely got above the three-hour mark most nights. Some nights even four.
We’ll see if this trend continues, now that I’m back in my city apartment at my high-stress job, with only the traffic to lull me to sleep. But I feel optimistic.
(interlude music #4)
NEWT (VO): A lot happened in the three weeks I was gone. Which is, of course, exactly what I was afraid of. When I would call Mako from Florida, she wouldn’t tell me anything. For the first week of my vacation, I stewed pretty miserably on that. Then I had to let it go. I just...
(takes an exaggerated deep breath)
(exhales loudly)
NEWT (VO): ...Serenity, now!
That worked. For a few weeks. But now I was back, and I needed to dive back in.
NEWT: Okay. Okay, okay.
MAKO: (amused) Okay!
NEWT: Okay! (audibly smiling) Hit me. Updates.
MAKO: (laughing) How much coffee did you have?
NEWT: None! No coffee! All natural! I’m high on life!
MAKO: (still laughing) I can see your coffee mug, right there, Newt!
NEWT: Lies! Slander. Updates!
MAKO: (clears throat) It is good to have you back. We made some good progress on the boy in the pool. I think we’ve found the right incident, so I have an interview set up for you.
NEWT: That’s amazing! Who with? What was it?
MAKO: Slow down. We’ll get to it.
NEWT: And how is the good doctor?
MAKO: ...He seems fine.
NEWT: What—have you not heard from him?
MAKO: Oh, no. I’ve definitely heard from him... He called during your break to ask how you were doing.
NEWT: Oh?
MAKO: (exasperated) He called frequently.
NEWT: (amused) Oh! I’m touched.
MAKO: You’d better call him.
NEWT: (still amused) I guess I will.
MAKO: I also spoke to Dr. Marlow. I’ll play you that interview in a minute.
NEWT: What about?
MAKO: Well, I... I was curious about the thing from your sleep note.
NEWT: (more subdued) The whispering?
MAKO: ...Yeah.
NEWT: Did she... recognize what I was saying?
MAKO: Not exactly. But she had some ideas. So, we’ll get to that one. And last, Raleigh...
NEWT: Mmhm?
MAKO: Well... (hesitant) I actually haven’t heard from Raleigh. For... a few weeks.
NEWT: Oh. Really?
MAKO: Yes. He told me he was going to Tuscany the week after he got back to Paris. Then, nothing.
NEWT: Do you think something’s... wrong?
MAKO: As in, is he upset? Or as in, did something... happen to him?
NEWT: I didn’t want to sound paranoid, but...
MAKO: Well, I don’t know. He hasn’t answered my messages. I’m going to reach out to other Paris contacts and see if anyone knows what’s... up.
NEWT: Hmm. Not good. Yeah. I’ll try, too.
NEWT (VO): We spoke to Raleigh’s flatmate in Paris. He said Raleigh will disappear from time to time on assignment. He said it isn’t unusual for Raleigh to drop off the grid for a few weeks. Particularly if he’s getting into something complicated or, potentially, political. Raleigh’s boss, though, said she didn’t know of any particularly risky stories he’d been working on recently. He does freelance work, so it’s possible it was for another news service. But...
All the same, it’s a bit troubling. We’ll keep looking, and keep you updated.
(interlude music #5)
First on the docket was the boy in the pool.
Our trusty interns looked long and hard for a news story about a boy in a swimming pool. Unfortunately, there have been a fair amount of accidental drownings in Lincoln over the years. There was only one in the timeframe of Hermann’s childhood, and the victim was a girl.
Then, one of our interns thought maybe we had been searching too narrow. He expanded some search terms and took out “swimming,” searching for ponds, lakes, other bodies of water.
He found something.
“Missing Child Found Dead in Vernal Pool.” The Lincoln Journal. August 12th, 1984.
Alex Calder had been missing for eight days when his body was discovered in the woods, several miles away from his house. The pool was a vernal pool, those impermanent woodland ponds that fill up from rain and groundwater and then dry up again in an annual, annular cycle. They’re normally quite shallow.
But Alex Calder didn’t drown. His cause of death was strangulation.
NEWT: Do you remember it?
WOMAN: Like it was yesterday. I won’t ever forget it.
NEWT (VO): There wasn’t much about it online, because it was so long ago. All we found was that little article in the archives of the town newspaper. So Mako found former police chief Helen Franken. She’s retired now, but she grew up in Lincoln, like Dr. Gottlieb. She offered to share what she remembered with us, as well as the records to which she had access. The records were pretty sparse.
FRANKEN: The boy was around my little sister's age when he disappeared. It was all our parents were talking about. It was the summer, I remember, cause summers were peaceful back then. Kids would just go out all day with their friends, running around doing what-have-you, and then come home when the sun went down. One night, Alex Calder didn’t come home. Eight days later, his body was found in a puddle in the woods near the Audubon preserve.
NEWT: What had happened?
FRANKEN: Abducted. He was kidnapped. They caught the guy not long after—a gas station attendant up near Lowell. Name of Copley. He had no priors, but when they brought him in, he confessed to three other murders. Two women, a man. He died in prison sometime in the 90’s.
NEWT: Did he ever give a motive?
FRANKEN: He was evil. Pure and simple.
NEWT: Uh, that was all?
FRANKEN: That was all. Some people get pleasure from doing wrong to others. Sometimes that’s all.
NEWT: In the Calder case, was there anything... ritualistic? About the murder? Any signs, or engravings, or things like that?
FRANKEN: Not so far as I know. The guy was just a nutjob.
NEWT: Oh.
FRANKEN: I remember the footage of him going to court. His eyes were so dead. He smiled right into the camera... Gave me a terrible chill.
NEWT: So how did they find his body after those eight days?
FRANKEN: Hmm.. I think it said in the file. Ah yeah. (sound of papers) A local kid reported it. Name of Clifford Styll, looks like.
NEWT: I see.
FRANKEN: But I’ll send you a copy of the file. You should be able to track Styll down if you want to speak with him too.
NEWT (VO): That’s exactly what we did.
I wanted to bring the Calder case to Dr. G, but I wasn’t sure how he’d react yet. I still hadn’t spoken to him since coming back from my leave. But I decided I wanted more information first. I wanted to dig on my own for a while and see where that would get me.
(interlude music #5)
NEWT: Hello? Is this Clifford Styll?
CLIFFORD STYLL: Speaking.
NEWT (VO): Clifford Styll was born and raised in Lincoln. He has since moved to Michigan, where he works as a manager for a construction business. He graciously agreed to speak with us about his experience.
NEWT: So it was you who led the police to the body of Alex Calder?
CLIFFORD: Yeah, yeah. It was.
NEWT: You were how old? Eleven?
CLIFFORD: Yeah. I was young. Looking back, it’s kind of... kind of wild. You know?
NEWT: I mean, yeah. That sounds, like... super traumatizing, dude.
CLIFFORD: Maybe. I wasn’t messed up about it at the time. I guess I... I didn’t really understand what was going on. I was too young. And my older brother shielded me from a lot of it.
NEWT: Did you and Alex know each other well?
CLIFFORD: Sure. We were neighbors, so we hung out a lot, with the other kids from the block. Best friends. Back then, it was like, whoever lived on your street, they were your best friends. And it was summer, so we were outside all the time. Biking, hiking, riding to the different streams, swimming or just throwing stuff. Making forts in the woods. Trying to build a dam in the stream to make ourselves a swimming pool. That kind of stuff.
NEWT: Right. Sounds fun.
CLIFFORD: Well, then Alex disappeared. The whole neighborhood went into lockdown. No one my age was allowed outside without adult supervision—we were like, 11. But my mom, she worked a lot. So I still had a little freedom. Since my friends were stuck inside, I ended up following my big brother and his friends around that week. When they’d let me.
NEWT: Is that how you found his body?
CLIFFORD: Well, that’s the thing. I didn’t actually find the body myself. I was just the one who told the police about it.
NEWT: ...Oh. But you’re the one who told the police? It says you led them right to him.
CLIFFORD: Sure. Yes. But I didn’t find him.
NEWT: That was... your brother and his friends?
CLIFFORD: Yes... It was, really, kind of strange. That’s why it stuck with me.
NEWT: What happened?
CLIFFORD: Well, (sighs) I was biking around the neighborhood by myself. Because none of my friends were allowed. It was a hot day... Like, really hot. August hot. Like the air is a roasting marshmallow, and it’s about to go from golden to on-fire. You know?
Well I was bored. So I went to find my brother, Jackson. He was hanging out at a friend’s house. As I got there, they were all about to leave, and they let me tag along. It seemed like they were all following his one friend, but I didn’t really know where. I just got on my little bike and tried to keep up.
We rode south, towards the Audubon. We went—far, farther than I’d ever ridden with my friends, and the sun was beating down on us. We followed a stream next to the road, until it broke away from the road. Then, we got off our bikes and started walking. We followed the stream down to a pond in the woods. I'd never seen it before.
I was sweating like crazy by the time we hit the bottom of this little gully. It was cooler there, I remember. We stopped. Everyone was following my brother’s friend, and he didn’t seem to know where to go next. He looked all around, then started walking up a slope. We all followed after.
It was kind of creepy, a little, because it seemed like he didn’t actually... know where he was going. Like, he kept saying, “I think it’s this way... I think it’s this way.” It sounded like he was going on intuition, or something. Or going on a memory he couldn’t quite recall. I remember wondering if maybe he was in a trance.
We went down the other side of the slope, and he said, “It’s around here,” so the boys all started to fan out and look. I didn’t. I just stood by a tree, sort of watching, cause I still didn’t really know what we were looking for.
Maybe this is my memory playing tricks, but the sun went behind a cloud. And just then I hear him—my brother’s friend, yelling. Not words. Just yelling. We all go running towards him, down the hill where he was standing, and I see this pool of water... Not much more than a big puddle, right? With some little trees growing up out the middle of it? I remember I didn’t actually realize what we were seeing, cause I was thinking it looked like a fairy pool or something, but then I see this... thing, this mound, lying there at his feet. It was... it was Alex.
He had a red sweater on, and it was covered in dirt. He was lying face down in the water, with his legs just out on the leaves. The boys turned him over to see, to make sure, but my brother Jackson stayed back with me. He made me turn and face the other way. So that I wouldn’t see. To this day, I’m pretty grateful for that.
NEWT: Yeah... I bet.
(beat)
NEWT: So then you were the one who notified the police?
CLIFFORD: Yeah. They thought I should be the one to do it, because Alex was my friend, or something. I don’t really know. My brother’s friend, Hermie, I think he didn’t want to take credit for the finding.
NEWT: Your—your brother's friend, his name was Hermie—?
CLIFFORD: Yeah, Hermie. Hermann Gottlieb.
NEWT: (shocked) Hermann Gottlieb was your brother’s friend? He was the one who found the body?
CLIFFORD: Yeah. He was my brother's best friend. Do you know him?
NEWT: I... I do. Yeah.
---------SPONSOR BREAK #1---------
⏮ ⏯ ⏭
NEWT (VO): So. We had finally found our connection to the boy in the pool. There was a connection, all right. But, I will say... it really wasn’t the connection I was expecting.
From the moment we watched the Karla tape, my idea of Hermann’s childhood—his origin story, if you will—became muddled. I realized there was a lot more we didn’t know. A lot more he hadn’t, wouldn’t tell me. So, baby Hermann and his sister saw Laurie-and-Lucille-Hall-esque shadow figures; he even thought they were haunting his family. Now, teenage Hermann was a Caitlin-Lightcap-style psychic, leading police to the body of a missing boy.
I didn’t know how to fit these younger iterations of him into my picture of him as an adult.
Sometimes, a big revelation like this can make you feel like you don’t know someone at all. Like they’ve been hiding the “real” them from you all this time. Strangely enough, that wasn’t how I felt. I didn’t feel betrayed. I was just relieved. I had known all along that things weren’t lining up—like I was trying to do a puzzle without any of the edge pieces.
Now, something finally made sense.
Crazy, of course. None of this made sense. But I felt like I had a shape for what it was I didn’t understand. I had finally found the edges.
Now, I just had to fill in the gaps.
(interlude music #5)
First, let’s go to Mako’s interview about my weird sleep-talking tape. She sat down with Dr. Marlow again, our rare manuscript expert from episode 204. You remember her—the one who cheerfully invited demons into her little bookstore, right in front of my eyes?
MAKO: So, I’m going to play a clip for you. This might not be anything, but I just want to give it a try.
DR. MARLOW: Okay.
MAKO: I just want you to tell me what you hear. What words, what language. If any.
DR. MARLOW: Hit it.
(audio from episode 2x03 plays—Newt's sleep note)
(whispering)
(shifting)
(semi-audible whispering)
(end of tape)
DR. MARLOW: Could you play it again?
MAKO (VO): She played it back a couple more times.
MAKO: Do you recognize it?
DR. MARLOW: (sounding unsure) It sounds a little like... Something. Would you wait here a moment?
MAKO: Of course.
MAKO (VO): She got up to go look for something. I waited in her little workshop for a few minutes. Then she came back with a big, dusty book.
(muffled thump of book being placed on table)
DR. MARLOW: Have you heard of the Pilori, Ms. Mori?
MAKO: I don’t believe I have.
DR. MARLOW: They’re similar to fae—watchers.
MAKO: Like faeries?
DR. MARLOW: Yes. But not the Tinkerbell variety. More of the Rumpelstiltskin persuasion.
MAKO: Oh. So what does that mean?
DR. MARLOW: In some folklore, fae, like Rumpelstiltskin, are extremely malevolent. They trick and kill children, or trick their parents into signing them over to serve the fae.
The Pilori were a sect or group of faeries who believed that there was a certain power to certain words and phrases. A power to summon or bind. But, they believed that only certain special humans had the ability to channel this power.
MAKO: Certain words or phrases, as in... spells?
DR. MARLOW: It’s similar, I suppose. The Pilori believed that only certain people were born with this ability, this special verbal ability. That’s why they had an interest in certain human children. (pages turning) You remember the story of Rumpelstiltskin? He was one of the Pilori. In some versions of the story, he is interested in the child for this ability. That's the reason the mother eventually gains control over him by speaking his true name—a sort of poetic turnabout.
MAKO: Okay. I’m not sure I understand. What was this ability? What did the Pilori want... children for?
DR. MARLOW: No one really knows. The Pilori weren't a terribly popular myth, but they pop up a few times. (sound of pages) Sometimes by that name, sometimes known simply as the watchers.
MAKO: Watchers of what, exactly?
DR. MARLOW: The children. The children who had this power. They themselves could never have it, but they wanted access by proxy.
MAKO: Okay.
DR. MARLOW: The idea of powerful words always stuck with me. (taps page of book) It’s from this story here. It’s in Old English, but you can take a look.
MAKO: Thank you. (book sliding across table) It is an interesting idea.
DR. MARLOW: Powerful words, powerful speakers. Not so different from what you do, is it? As a reporter?
MAKO: And you? You’re the one with the book of spells.
DR. MARLOW: (laughs) This is not a spellbook. It’s a compilation of stories. And in this metaphor, I think I’d be the custodian of the texts.
MAKO: (laughs politely) So, this is an interesting myth. But what does it have to do with our recording?
DR. MARLOW: The phrase he was saying, it sounded a little like “Thes ár sægeth.” That’s this, here (sound of tapping on page), at the beginning of the incantation.
MAKO: What does it mean?
DR. MARLOW: Ár means messenger, or herald. The other two words, you can still kind of hear in modern English. Thes is “this,” and sægeth is “sayeth,” or “says.” So the invocation is, “This messenger says...”
MAKO: And... what do they say?
DR. MARLOW: Well, in your recording, the speaker didn’t say anything else that I recognized. Just that. I may be reaching, of course. I really like this story.
MAKO: Can I take a picture of this?
DR. MARLOW: Yes. But no flash, please.
NEWT (VO): Well that’s... interesting.
MAKO: You don’t sound like you bought it.
NEWT: Neither do you.
MAKO: I did like the story. And Dr. Marlow. She’s a character. But actually, I think this picture was most interesting.
NEWT: The picture? Of the book?
MAKO: Yeah. It was a super old book, and like she said, it was in Anglo-Saxon, so I couldn’t read it. But this symbol at the top of the page looked familiar...
NEWT: Oh yeah. That does look familiar. Hmm.
MAKO: I remember it from the pictures you took on the island.
NEWT: Oh, yeah! Wow. Good eye, Lady Danger!
MAKO: (chuffed) Thank you.
NEWT: I remember it now. I think Dr. G said it was some kind of cult symbol. I’ll show it to him and ask if he knows about it.
MAKO: You have a lot to ask him about, huh?
NEWT: Yeah. I do.
MAKO: Have you called him since you got back?
NEWT: Not yet. But I guess it’s time.
(interlude music #3)
(sound of door opening)
(someone stands up)
HERMANN: Newton. Good to see you back.
NEWT: Hi! (...) It’s good to see you too, Hermann.
(footsteps with cane)
(pause)
NEWT (VO): Dr. G crossed the river for a visit. Like Mako said, we had a lot to catch up on.
(interlude music #5)
I updated Dr. G on my vacation and my rest cure. Once he was reassured that my brain was back in working order, we got to the good stuff.
NEWT: Have you ever heard of the Pilori?
HERMANN: Yes. They’re fae folk.
NEWT: Yes. Our rare books expert showed us this page from a book about them. Does any of this look familiar?
(sound of paper)
(beat)
HERMANN: She showed you this, in connection to what?
NEWT: ...It’s a long story.
HERMANN: The symbol at the top of this page is the symbol of the Cult of Tiamat.
NEWT: Yeah. We thought it might be. I remembered you mentioning it in the bunker on the island.
HERMANN: Yes. This manuscript looks extremely old. When does it date?
NEWT: She said the 11th century.
HERMANN: Hm. A little late for Anglo-Saxon.
NEWT: (teasing) That’s what I said.
HERMANN: ...In any case, much earlier than the Cult of Tiamat was formed.
NEWT: Do you know a lot about them?
HERMANN: Not as much as I’d like. But I’ve been... Well, they’ve been cropping up lately. Particularly the symbol.
NEWT: How so?
HERMANN: I’ve been cleaning house in Lincoln. Going through a lot of old boxes. Things belonging to my father. I’ve seen this symbol in a few places.
NEWT: Among his things?
HERMANN: His papers. Some letters. Other places as well.
NEWT: Really?
HERMANN: Yes.
NEWT: Was your dad, like, a member?
HERMANN: Of the cult? I doubt it.
NEWT: Ah. (pause) Could we maybe... take a look at the letters?
HERMANN: I wasn’t able to make much of them. I doubt you will be able to either.
NEWT (VO): I wanted to bring up what we found about the boy in the pool—to say the name “Alex Calder” to him and see what his face would do. But now that the moment was here, I hesitated.
I decided to wait. I wanted more first. I wanted to keep digging—to talk to Clifford’s big brother, Jackson. I didn’t like the idea of him barging into my investigation before I finished building it, and then trying to talk his way out again.
I knew he would be upset with me for going behind his back, but I had to.
So for now, this secret stayed with me; and the rest, with him.
(interlude music #5)
NEWT (VO): There was still one other thing we had to talk to Dr. G about that afternoon.
MAKO: So, as you know, we get a lot of messages from people claiming to be Vanessa.
HERMANN: Yes.
MAKO: Well, since the last season, the size of our audience has spiked. There have been a lot more “Vanessa” messages, too.
NEWT: I don’t know how likely you think she would be to contact you via the podcast...
HERMANN: Extremely unlikely.
NEWT: ...Right.
MAKO: Well, just to be sure, we pulled the ones that seemed strange to us. I’m going to play them for you.
HERMANN: (clipped) Go ahead.
(click)
(message plays)
FEMALE VOICE: (deep) Hermann it’s me. Your wife. I miss you. I have important information about the painting. I sent it to you. Call me back at [bleeped]...
MAKO: Anything?
HERMANN: No.
MAKO: No?
HERMANN: (dismissive) That person sounds nothing like my wife.
MAKO: Okay. (click) Next one.
(message plays)
FEMALE VOICE: (breathy) Hermann, it’s Nessa. They finally found me. I need your help... I’m being held. I’m in a compound in [bleeped]. Please hurry!
HERMANN: (mild disdain) That’s not her. She would never call herself “Nessa.”
MAKO: Fair enough. Last one.
(click)
(message plays)
COMPUTERIZED FEMALE VOICE: Hermann G., please don’t worry. It’s me, wolf’s sister. I left you something under the North Star.
(someone moves in chair)
HERMANN: Play that again.
MAKO: The—the robot one?
HERMANN: Yes. Play it again.
MAKO: Okay.
COMPUTERIZED FEMALE VOICE: Hermann G, please don’t worry. It’s me, wolf’s sister. I left you something under the North Star.
HERMANN: Could you send that to me, please?
MAKO: Sure?
NEWT: (cautiously) Why?
HERMANN: (low) I think that might be from her.
---------SPONSOR BREAK #2---------
⏮ ⏯ ⏭
(interlude music #4)
NEWT (VO): Dr. G’s reaction to the message took me by surprise. He seemed shocked himself. We go through messages like these all the time, but we've never included the recordings in the episodes, because, well, they never amount to anything. All fakes. But this one, apparently, was different.
Hermann said explaining would be difficult, so he asked me to come to his house in Lincoln the next day. He said rather than tell me, he would show me. So I borrowed Mako’s car and made the drive up for a second time.
(sound of front door closing)
(footsteps, interior door opening)
NEWT: Wow. It looks totally different in here.
HERMANN: Yes. Marian has been helping me redecorate.
NEWT (VO): Last time I visited, Hermann had just moved back into his parents’ old house in Lincoln. It was sort of empty and hollow then; all shiny hardwood floors and dust, all the furniture shrouded in plastic like big inert ghosts. The plastic was mostly off now, and the walls were repainted in different colors. I could definitely see the touch of a younger, more hip person in some of the color choices.
There were some paintings and framed prints decorating the walls. No family photos, though. Made me wonder whether the Gottliebs had any.
(walking)
NEWT: Love the paint. And the rugs. Much less...
HERMANN: Impersonal?
NEWT: (politely) ...Uninhabited?
HERMANN: Fair. Marian has also been helping me reorganize my space, and my personal files.
(door opens)
--------- ⏹ Stop ---------
“...through here.” Hermann held the door for Newt as they stepped into the kitchen.
“So what’s this thing you can only show, not tell?”
“Several things, actually,” Hermann said. “I’ll fetch them.”
Hermann disappeared through the swinging door on the other side of the room. Newt looked around the empty, half-lit kitchen. The black and white tile gleamed a dull green with the indirect light from the back yard. The kitchen was on the north side of the house, so it received no direct sunlight, but it was just past noon on a bright September day, and the whole meadow outside was aglow. A warm breeze came the window above the long kitchen table. Newt wandered towards it, absently rolling down his sleeves. As bright as it was outside, it was shady and cool in the Gottlieb house.
Now that the house was furnished, Newt felt less like an intruder in a museum. Hermann, too, seemed more relaxed.
Newt breathed the clear air for a moment. The air of the New England woods was so different from Florida's heavy ocean air. A fly ambled across the screen outside. Soon winter would come, and that fly would be dead. No—flies don't even live that long, Newt thought. That fly would never see October.
There was a noise and a sound of frustration from a few rooms over. Newt smiled vaguely and leaned on the table. The smell of the air—that was one of those things you didn’t realize you'd miss. Like the taste of the tap water from home. That, he had missed. Florida tap water tasted foreign and awful, like alligator sweat. It was good to be home.
Tap water. You missed such unexpected things.
“Do you need a hand?” Newt called. It occurred to him that carrying boxes was hard when one hand was using a cane.
“I’m all right,” came the reply. There was another clunking shifting sound, then silence. A moment later, he heard Hermann’s footsteps. Hermann pushed the door open with his back and came in, a cardboard box under his arm. He set it down on one of the kitchen chairs. Newt watched him bend to do so.
He had gotten a haircut in Newt’s absence. At the back, the cut was so close on his scalp that it looked like speckled white sand. Newt rubbed the back of his own neck.
Hermann straightened up. “Please,” he said, slightly breathless. “Sit.”
Newt did so.
“Are you recording?”
“Uh... Yes. I just let it run, and then edit it later.” Newt looked up at him, tapping at the recorder in his breast pocket. “Did you... did you want me to pause it?”
“No, no. Nothing like that,” Hermann said, sparing a small glance for the recorder, in which Newt caught the discomfort they were both, today, agreeing to ignore. “I only wanted to offer before we... get ‘into it,’ as you might say. Could I get you something to drink? Coffee, tea?”
“Oh,” said Newt, smiling at the unexpected offer. “Thanks. Just water would be lovely.”
Hermann disappeared behind him, the tripled sound of his step bouncing off the tile. Newt listened as he opened a cabinet and, with a slide and then the slightest ring, took out a glass. Outside, sparrows were chattering. Newt rested his head in his hand, looking not at the box, not at Hermann, but outside. He didn’t know what was inside the box. Surely, only more questions. With his other hand, he lightly touched the button on his shirt cuff.
Yesterday, at the studio, Hermann had been visibly relieved to see Newt again. Before leaving, he had given Newt something: his suit jacket. “In the confusion after the gallery and the—emergency room,” Hermann said, “Your jacket ended up with me.”
Newt had thanked him and taken it. It was not until later, when he got home, that Newt noticed the button. The loose button on his sleeve had been sewn securely back into place. The thread was black, but not quite the same black as the thread of the other buttons.
Behind Newt, Hermann set the glass down on the counter. “Tap or filtered water?” he said.
“Tap is good,” Newt said, eyes still fixed on the tree outside. Slowly he twisted the button on his shirtsleeve.
Hermann returned and set the glass down beside him.
--------- ⏺ Rec ---------
NEWT: So. Tell me. What’ve you got? A new black tape? It feels like it’s been forever.
HERMANN: Fortunately—or unfortunately, depending on your perspective—no.
(sound of a box full of objects being placed on a table)
NEWT: What is all this stuff?
HERMANN: Personal effects.
NEWT: (amused) Only you would refer to a box of what appears to be precious mementos as “personal effects.”
HERMANN: If you know so much about what’s in the box, I suppose I don’t have to show it to you?
NEWT: (teasing) Touchy, touchy.
NEWT (VO): I sat in the tidy, tiled kitchen while he rooted through a cardboard box. It was a long kitchen table, meant for a large family. The whole first floor was fully furnished now, and what was more, it felt lived-in. If I walked in as a stranger, I would have thought a whole family lived there.
I remembered Robert Motherwell’s creepy interview, when he said Dr. Gottlieb was “a lonely man” who “liked to be alone.” Which part of that was true? Former, latter? Both, neither?
As I sat there, I wondered about all that furniture, the framed prints instead of photos. About the kind of person who moves from a city apartment, back to the family homestead, alone. I wondered about the kind of life Dr. Gottlieb wished his house was home to.
Then I thought about the tall men he and his sister saw outside their screen porch, all those years ago—not 15 feet away from where I sat now.
Finally, he found what he was looking for.
HERMANN: (subdued) Here it is.
(sound of something being set down on the table)
(object being slid across table)
NEWT: (surprised) Is this... your wedding album?
HERMANN: Yes.
NEWT (VO): Wow. Here was a part of Hermann’s past I never expected—or wanted?—access to. I flipped through the photos slowly. Seeing Dr. G like this—so young, in a tux, hair slicked back, smiling... I mean, the guy never smiles. It was weird. I almost couldn’t believe this was the same person.
Hermann and Vanessa Gottlieb were married in the fall at the Fairmont le Château Frontenac, a beautiful, castle-like hotel in Quebec City.
NEWT: God, what year was this?
HERMANN: 1997.
NEWT: Ah. I should have been able to guess that by the bridesmaids’ hairdos. So you were how old? You don’t look old enough to be marriageable. Nevermind a PhD.
HERMANN: I finished my doctorate soon after.
NEWT: Ah. Just Mr. Gottlieb. (shudders) Ooh. Nevermind. Do not like the way that rolls of the tongue.
HERMANN: (disapprovingly) Mm.
NEWT: So, this... has something to do with the message?
HERMANN: (clears throat) Yes.
NEWT: Do you know why Vanessa would call herself “the wolf’s sister?”
HERMANN: Not “the” wolf. Her message says “it’s wolf’s sister.”
NEWT: Okay...?
HERMANN: I believe it’s actually Woolf’s sister. Virginia Woolf had a sister.
NEWT: And she was...?
HERMANN: ...Named Vanessa. Vanessa Bell. (sound of page turning) Vanessa—Gottlieb—was quite fond of Virginia Woolf. Is quite fond.
NEWT: (...) Okay. Was there something else? Something you needed to bring me here to show me this?
HERMANN: Are you familiar with Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116?
NEWT: Uh...
HERMANN: “Let me not to the marriage of true minds, Admit impediments. Love is not love, Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove.” (...) Etcetera.
NEWT: (hesitant) Sounds familiar?
HERMANN: Vanessa read me that poem, here. At our wedding. As her vows. To me.
NEWT: Oh. I see. (pause) Um, that’s sweet? But what does...
HERMANN: The North Star. She mentions it in her message. One of the central metaphors of the poem is a nautical metaphor: “It is an ever-fixed mark, That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wand'ring bark.” Steering a ship by a star.
NEWT: Okay. But those lines don’t actually mention “the North Star.”
HERMANN: It’s a commonly accepted interpretation. One I know Vanessa shared. Shares.
NEWT: (doubtful) Okay.
(sound of tapping on page)
HERMANN: Under the North Star. She means here. She’s left me a message here.
NEWT: At the hotel?
HERMANN: Yes.
NEWT: Hm. Maybe...
HERMANN: The fact is, no one else would know these signals but her. It is true I do not know her intent. But the message could not be from anyone else. It is at a discursive and connotative level which could not be faked.
NEWT: (...) I’m not sure I understand.
HERMANN: There’s something else here as well.
NEWT: Yeah?
(sound of paper on table)
HERMANN: These are some of my father’s documents. Letters.
(sound of papers sliding)
NEWT: The symbol...
HERMANN: (grim) Yes. I found these letters hidden behind a photo in a frame. I don’t know what they... I don’t know what they pertain to. I have other materials of my father’s as well. I’m sure it’s all of interest to you, somehow or other. I’ll have Marian bring it over tomorrow.
NEWT: Thank you.
HERMANN: Certainly.
(beat)
NEWT: Was there... something else?
HERMANN: Was there?
NEWT: You just look like you’re thinking. About something else. What’s up?
HERMANN: It’s the... (reluctant, but saying it) Well, the symbol. I did some more research on it last night.
NEWT: Okay. Can you tell us what you found?
HERMANN: In parallel with their beliefs about incantations and invocations, the Pilori believed that symbols had power. They held that there were certain sigils that could summon or bind, like invocations.
NEWT: Okay...
HERMANN: Take Rumpelstiltskin, your scholar’s example. He was a watcher. The folklore surrounding him indicates that if you learned his true name, you’d be granted power over him. In fact, in the original legend, it was a symbol, not a spoken name.
NEWT: So, if you had his symbol, you’d get some sort of power over him? Like stealing his Social Security Number?
HERMANN: His—yes. (small laugh) I imagine that in some translation along the way, the word for “name” and “symbol” were conflated.
NEWT: That’s interesting. Does that help you understand your father’s relationship to this symbol, or...?
HERMANN: No—no. Maybe. Not really. But I’ve... seen it before.
NEWT: Where?
HERMANN: Vanessa.
NEWT: Really?
HERMANN: She wore a ring that she would never take off. It was gold, with a flat gold top. No stone. No marking. But she never took it off. Never. Not for swimming, washing dishes, gardening. If I asked about it, she told me it was simply a family heirloom. I often wondered about it, but I let it be. Maybe her reticence makes it sound important, but I never interpreted it that way. There were many things about which Vanessa was reticent.
Well, once, we were traveling in Prague. She needed an emergency appendectomy. Before her surgery, when she was under general anesthesia, the nurse took all her jewelry off, including the ring. When I was sitting by her bed in the recovery room, I saw it in a plastic bag. It was on the table next to her bed. I could see the inside of the ring. There was a symbol engraved there. It was this symbol.
NEWT: Oh.
HERMANN: Vanessa woke up, and before she said a word, she was reaching for her hand to check if the ring was still on. She got very agitated when she realized it was gone. I helped her put it back on, but she was quite upset that someone had taken it off... At the time, I simply put it down to post-surgery anxiety.
NEWT: But now...?
HERMANN: I don’t know what to make of it. It was the symbol. It was the Cult of Tiamat.
NEWT: Why do you think Vanessa would have had that?
HERMANN: (worried) I have no idea.
NEWT: But you really think she left you that message?
HERMANN: I know she did.
NEWT: Are you going to go to the hotel and find out?
HERMANN: What else is there to do?
(interlude music #6)
NEWT (VO): What indeed?
The next day, Marian brought us a few boxes of Lars Gottlieb’s files. There were journals, papers, and research materials spanning about forty years. A lot of it was anthropological and mythological research. There were some behavioral studies on tribes untouched by outside civilization. But I didn’t find anything related to anything that might be related to the Black Tapes, except tangentially.
Nothing but the letters. As Hermann said, he found them behind a picture frame. This is a pretty intriguing place to keep your mail, so I was already pretty interested in what the letters might contain. They were old, typed, undated, but if I had to guess, I’d say 70’s.
It looked like Gottlieb Sr. had been communicating with someone in Istanbul—the postmark and stamp were Turkish. Hermann’s name was mentioned in all three letters.
Whoever was writing to Lars about Hermann was mostly concerned with logistics like room, board, dates, travel. And at the top of each page, the symbol was stamped like a letterhead: the sign of the Cult of Tiamat.
MAKO: These sound like he was preparing to send his son off to boarding school.
NEWT: Right. Dragon-worshipping cult school. All German boys gotta go sometime.
MAKO: Mhm.
NEWT: It does track with what Karla told us about Lars bringing Hermann special, weird presents.
MAKO: I suppose so.
NEWT: But Hermann says he never went to any Tiamat school. Or even Turkey. He went to a totally boring boarding school. In England.
MAKO: So maybe these plans fell through for some reason.
NEWT (VO): I called Dr. G and left a message. The next day, we came into the office to find a message in our inbox—not from him.
MAKO: Newt.
NEWT: Yeah?
MAKO: Check the show email. There’s a message from an encrypted sender. Audio file.
NEWT: Oh. Kind of looks like the...
MAKO: Like the Vanessa message. Yeah.
NEWT: (softly) Uh-oh.
MAKO: I’m going to play it.
COMPUTERIZED FEMALE VOICE: Don’t go. They know.
(interlude music #5)
NEWT (VO): I called Dr. G right away to tell him. But I didn’t get a reply. I waited a few hours, but I was too agitated. I called again. I, uh... I called a bunch more times.
Then I called Marian at the Institute. I asked where he was. She said he had driven to Canada for a short business trip.
“To Quebec City?” I asked. “Yes,” she said. She didn’t know exactly when he left, or how long he planned to stay.
I asked why he wasn’t answering his phone. She said she didn’t know.
MAKO: You’re serious?
NEWT: Why wouldn’t I be?
MAKO: Newt...
NEWT: I’m going. Sorry. (...) I’ll call you when I land. If he got on the highway this morning, I should get to the city around the same time.
MAKO: And if he left yesterday?
NEWT: I’ll find him.
(beat)
MAKO: Okay. Be careful.
NEWT (VO): Next time: The Black Tapes takes a field trip up North.
See you then.
(outro music plays)
⏺ Rec