RQ Network Feed Drop – Selene: The Black Pond - Episode 1
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Hi everyone, it's Lowri, voice of Celia in The Magnus Protocol. Today, we're bringing you the first episode from one of the incredible podcasts on the RQ network, Selene, which is created by the brilliant Aaron Riordan. Selene is...

is a narrated supernatural mystery and horror audio fiction with dark humor. Immersive audio brings the city of Selene to life, a city cloaked in darkness and teeming with horrors. This first episode follows Constable Hughes as he begins to investigate the broken ice of a black pond.

A Missing Boy, and The Ransom of an Exotic Bird. You can listen to more of this incredible series with over 100 other episodes by searching for Selene, that's S-E-L-E-N-E, wherever you listen to your podcasts, or by clicking the link in the show notes below. And you can visit RustyQuill.com or CleverThan.com for more information. Have fun and enjoy the episode.

In a strange city lying alone, resignedly beneath the sky, the melancholy waters lie.

What is a lie? It may seem relatively straightforward on the surface, dishonesty or mistruth or fabrication, but it's a very personal and subjective thing, a lie. We each have our own thresholds. Many of us live with little white lies bending the truth. We look into the world and we see it's as if everything is floated on a river of deception. And the mechanisms of society is lying a feature or a bug?

In a strange city lying alone, residedly beneath the sky, the melancholy waters lie. With a glimpse of the glimmering city at dawn, a hushed respite at quiet park's edge, lithe dark fingers of naked trees reaching upward, dusted by newly fallen snow, dye black water in the chill of winter. As little Enoch Green stood on the thin frozen ice of Parvum Pond, Constable Hughes knew he was lying.

Even though his facial expression remained placid, even though his little hand swung the soggy mittens attached to his cuff, his frozen lips didn't move. As Enoch shook his head, even in that small of a gesture, Hughes knew the little bastard was lying. They were literally on thin ice together. It was a chilly morning in the park. The previous evening had been particularly cold, and many of the neighborhood children had been hoping for sufficient freeze to thicken the ice for skating.

It hadn't been quite cold enough, and so Hughes arrived early to post signs around the pond and fountain to prevent anyone from being tempted to wander out and fall through. Clearly it had been ineffective. Constable Hughes wasn't great at his job, and was quite old to still be at the rank of constable. He'd bungled previous assignments and was so bad at paperwork he was ultimately assigned to the park beat, to walk a quiet path, nurse his lumbago, and deal with the irascible row matrons.

He'd befriended a young newsboy nicknamed Shiner, who would hawk morning and evening editions of the Lantern paper at the entrance to the park. Cartoonishly, Shiner often had a black eye in various stages of healing. Rumor was from street scrapping or a rough household. Likely both. Hughes had struck up a partnership with Shiner when he realized the kid was pretty clever. He'd hired him in secret to instigate various petty crimes around the wealthy neighborhood, planning things just so Hughes would arrive in the nick of time to chase him off.

giving Hughes not only an efficient report history, but almost psychic ability to be in the right place at the right time to thwart pickpocketing, burglary, and persistent peeping Tom. Just enough to set the residents on edge and make Hughes a valuable addition to the community. Otherwise, not only would he be bored stiff, but his entire life would be filled in complaints from the well-to-do set about neighbors talking too loudly or the sun being too bright through a specific set of curtains and couldn't he look in to see if there was something he could do about that.

The occasional catch tip was nice, and he and Shiner and the local hotel doorman had a valuable network of gossip. Hughes had a hard time keeping the names straight, but Shiner got kickbacks from the copy desk at the society column. It was from the onlookers' shouting that the constable looked up and saw Enoch standing out on the ice by himself as he placed the last of the signs.

Some of the morning walkers had noticed and were trying to get his attention. Hughes carefully made his way out onto the ice, a crack in his feet. He made the walk to the deep center treacherous as he tested his weight and carefully made his way in inch by inch. It's there when he saw the crack in the ice and the churning water. There have been several kids about that morning near the edge. There have been a few people milling about and some footsteps nearby.

So the constable pointed at the crack, shouted if anyone was down there. But Enoch wouldn't reply, and the situation became more dire.

"'Harvum Pond is eighty strides across "'and two men deep at the center. "'Its waters are pitch black from dye, "'but we'll get into that later.' "'Enoch was standing out near the middle, "'next to a large crack looking into the dark water. "'Constable Hughes waved a scarf he picked up off the ice "'in the boy's face as he shouted, "'Did someone fall in? "'Is someone down there?' "'He pointed at the stirring waters around the crack edge. "'He tried to shake loose any response from the boy, "'but only saw the absolute faintest of smirks "'in the corner of his mouth.'

This was without question Shiner's scarf. Hughes knew it. The one he used to disguise himself in some of his little jobs, and what he used to keep himself warm. Hughes hadn't seen Shiner in the fog of the morning. He wasn't at his stand with his papers, and now Shiner was nowhere to be found. Enoch technically was not a bastard. He was, however, an orphan, and just recently...

Adopted by Edmund William Green II, a textile maven who had taken the boy in after an accident at one of his mills. An accident that had removed the lower portion of Edmund's own leg, as well as killed both of Enoch's parents. Edmund had taken on as a charge out of responsibility and a solid public relations move, but Edmund had no skill or nurturing for children and kept his distance.

He'd invited a young lady he'd been courting for a morning ride through the park as an opportunity to get to know her better and to get some distance from the child that made his skin crawl. So with Edmund riding around with his new companion Charity Suter, Enoch was sent to play with friends while Charity and Edmund did a tour of the pond a few times in the warmth of a carriage.

Enoch had wanted to go on the coach with him, but Charity pinned his little gloves on and pushed him out to go play and get some air. She scrunched the hat down on his little head almost over his eyes. He tilted his head up so he could look down his nose at Charity with a cold stare. He stepped back, and the carriage lurched away from him. Edmund was Charity's age plus her same age again. He had a determined demeanor, but very kind eyes. It was pretty apparent he was lonely, though he tried to hide it.

She also liked that Edmund didn't really use his servants and insisted on dressing himself.

Charity admitted to herself that in the blue cushions of this luxurious velvet carriage, she could imagine a day with a dashing young man and a steal from Rimbaud in a nest of mad kisses in each soft corner, keeping her safe from the startling monsters and black wolves through the glass. But that was a fleeting craving from a younger her. Nothing serious. Much like one for blueberries and kava this early in the morning. When Edmund asked her what she was thinking about, she stared wistfully out the window. Charity said, "'Nothing.'"

Quickly, she came up with something. She missed the changing of the fall colors, she said. Too preoccupied and regretted not spending more time in the park to watch the leaves. Although this fact was true, the colors changing were one of her favorite things. She chose to lie, but wondered if that's maybe more true than blueberries and kava. As a little exercise, starting when you wake up tomorrow, document whenever you encounter a lie, when you know someone is deceiving you.

See just how many there are in a single day. Even harder, on the next day, task yourself with going through the day and never once telling them. See how tough that is. And for extra credit, because we're ever so good at it, count each time you lie to yourself. Quite difficult to catch, and eye-opening how we fall into habits. Charity could have had any indulgence produced, and Edmund would have felt very satisfied in producing them.

But she hadn't made any requests. The novelty had worn off and she wasn't a little girl anymore. She'd gotten better at momentary cravings versus the real things she'd wanted for herself. She didn't think of herself as a materialistic person, but wondered if she needed to try a bit harder to fit in with this new class of people, even for survival's sake. She didn't want any kind of trade-off to be the nanny of this odd child. It was clear Edmund was relieved to have a barrier between him and the boy's chilly bays.

Enoch just seemed to appear in rooms, usually in the corner, one hand on the furniture, one in his pocket, breathing slowly and not blinking. The house contained decorative statues more animated than he was, and more than once the help had tried to feather dust him while not paying attention.

As they rounded the circle, Charity noticed there was some commotion at the water's edge, and people were gathering and pointing. She stopped the coach and rolled the window down to see what was happening, and spotted the constable and Enoch in a tussle out on the ice. She stopped the carriage and ran for the crowd. Edmund limped after her with his cane.

As all of this was going on, Madame Viola, matron of the Walker fortune, finished her hot egg phosphate and pushed herself out of her morris chair, stepped to her park view window, and slid open the curtains with a gasp. She told her manservant Pumble to take her prized peacock Plum for its morning saunter. Pumble had been gone for some time. Seeing the commotion out on the water had Viola in a panic. Plum had quick little legs and a bad habit in past winters of slipping its decorative leash and darting out across the ice.

From her second story view, she saw it across the park's pond, the gathering crowd and the stirring of the water. Panic set in as she furiously rang the servants bell and called for Pumble with increasing intensity. But Pumble was nowhere to be found. The stirring crowd was growing more concerned, some of them convinced they'd seen someone fall under the ice. Additional constables arrived on the scene to help, and with some of the more stalwart men began forming a human chain from the edge to the center.

Looking into the churning water, Hughes wasn't foolhardy enough to jump in to see if anybody was down there on a mere guess. It'd be easy to get lost under the sheet and freeze of lungs full of black water. He handed Enoch over the human chain that had made its way out to them and took a pole another constable handed him to prod the water for a body. A call went out across the wire and a few moments later, the force brought in a cart with rigging ropes and a hoist to drag the pawn.

Another man from the dock, a diver in cold weather gear, was suiting up to go bashing through the ice. Time was getting away from them. If someone had fallen in, it was getting to the point they'd be lost. They quickly set up the legs and ropes of the rigging, stretched ropes to the edge, and placed the hoist in the water in an attempt to hook anything of size. Dark ice and slush was making it very difficult. Constables canvassed the area and went door to door to do a family headcount to see if anyone was missing. Hughes let the younger men take over the search as he made his way back onto the street.

He slumped onto a park bench, breathing heavily, trying to catch his breath. Someone handed him a warm cider with a nip of rum, and a constable set a small crate next to him. In it was various items they'd gathered scattered across the ice. A scarf, three cigarette butts, a couple large buttons, and a rotten turnip. Any footprints were long gone from the snow and commotion.

Shiner wasn't at his corner. Pumble wasn't anywhere in the crowd, let alone a fancy bird. And Enoch was wrapped in blankets, getting warmed up by a group of ladies as they fawned over him. Enoch stared emotionless into the distance. Charity stood quietly nearby. And a very rare sight, Madame Viola in her housecoat, looking desperately around for some assistance in her cherished pavo crustatus. Plum. Lying evolves as we go through life. Did you know that even babies lie?

Sneaky babies calculate unnecessary cries. Sinister pre-verbal machinations. Perhaps we lie even in utero. From infancy and into old age, lying is a matter of survival. Our primal desires want things, the rules of our society say no. So we create lies to avoid uncomfortable realities. Lies are the way we cope with our imperfection.

As frustrated as Hughes was with Enoch, he himself would commit a few lies that day, and would spend the evening in his own state of omission. If omission is the threshold, I've lied to you already. See, because what I know is that by nightfall at the medical examiner's office, the report would read accidental death as it sat near a zipped up cadaver bag, a toe tag with no name, and not attached to a toe.

In the next room, under the radiant heat of the open boiler doors, in hard flickering light shadow, a tiny shape shivering, coated in animal fat, atop a pile of blankets and adorned with only a top hat. Perhaps the mystery is what fell in the water that morning, or perhaps it's what was under the ice to begin with. Shall we get to a discernible truth, or will it remain nowhere to be found?

A momentary glimpse into one little bouquet of lives in one modest corner in a strange city lying alone resignedly beneath the sky where the melancholy waters lie. Join us for this season of Selene. Selene.

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To listen to more of Celine and check out their other content, search Celine wherever you get your podcasts or click the link in the description of this episode. And as always, you can visit RustyQuill.com for more information. Thanks for listening.