Estimated reading time — 8 minutes

ASYNC INTERNAL DOCUMENT

Interview & Field Report — Case File 23-DELTA

Prepared by: Senior Archivist T. Caldwell
Subject: Wanderer Designation WD-041 (“Carla”)
Status: Recovered / Stable / Cooperative
Classification: LEVEL 2 — RESTRICTED CIRCULATION**
Date of Report Compilation: [REDACTED]

—

PREAMBLE

This document consolidates findings from three separate interview sessions conducted over the course of what we approximate as six days post-recovery. WD-041 was found at Egress Point 7 — a parking structure in [REDACTED], Ohio — by field operative H. Moss, who reported the subject sitting cross-legged on the concrete of Level P2, facing a structural column, unresponsive to verbal contact for approximately four minutes before reorienting.

Subject presented with: moderate dehydration, early-stage malnutrition, abrasions on both knees consistent with prolonged crawling on carpeted surface, and a total absence of personal identification. She was carrying a single item — a ballpoint pen with no ink remaining. She had been writing on her own left forearm and upper arm with the empty pen. The impressions were deep enough to be legible.

They read, in full: room 188 room 188 room 188 room 188

Subject was brought to our nearest intake facility. She did not resist. She did not speak for the first eleven hours. When she did speak, she asked for water first and a notebook second.

We gave her both.

—

SESSION ONE — DAY TWO POST-RECOVERY

Archivist Caldwell: Can you tell me your name?

WD-041: Carla. Carla Espinoza. I had ID. I don’t know what happened to it.

Caldwell: That’s fine. We don’t need it. How are you feeling?

WD-041: Like the lights are too bright. (pause) Sorry. That’s not — I know these are normal lights. I know that up here. But something lower down still doesn’t believe it.

Caldwell: Take your time.

WD-041: I’ve been taking my time. I’d like to stop taking my time, actually. I’d like to just say it.

Caldwell: Go ahead.

WD-041: I was in the Backrooms for — I don’t know how long. My best guess is three weeks but it could be more. Time didn’t work right in there. You know that, right? You know about it?

Caldwell: We do.

WD-041: Okay. Good. Because the first person I tried to tell — after, I mean, before you found me — they looked at me like I was describing a dream. And I needed someone to not look at me like that.

Caldwell: We won’t.

(Subject paused here for approximately forty seconds. She looked at the ceiling. She appeared to be conducting some internal inventory.)

WD-041: I went in through a gap behind the shelving unit in a storage room. Work storage room. I was doing inventory at the restaurant where I work — worked — and I leaned too far to reach something on the top shelf and the wall just… wasn’t there anymore. Not like it broke. Like it had never been there. Like I’d been wrong about it this whole time.

Caldwell: Level Zero?

WD-041: The yellow place. Yeah.

Caldwell: Did you encounter any entities on Level Zero?

WD-041: (long pause) I saw something on the second day. I’ve thought about how to describe it a lot since then. You know how in old photographs, sometimes someone moves while the shutter’s open and you get that blur? That smear of a person? It looked like that. But it wasn’t moving. It was standing completely still and it still looked like a smear. Like whatever it was, it was moving so fast on some level that even at rest it couldn’t fully resolve into one place.

Caldwell: Did it approach you?

WD-041: No. I approached it. (She noticed my expression.) I know. I know how that sounds. But I had been alone for — I thought it was two days. I was desperate. I got within maybe thirty feet and then it made a sound and I stopped.

Caldwell: What kind of sound?

WD-041: It laughed. It wasn’t a human laugh. It was too — even. Like someone had recorded a laugh and then smoothed it out in editing until it was perfectly metered. No feeling in it. Just the shape of a laugh.

I turned around and walked the other way. I didn’t run because I was scared that if I ran it would mean something different — that it would change the situation from “ignoring me” to “chasing me.” So I walked. Very fast. For a long time.

It didn’t follow me. I don’t think.

—

SESSION TWO — DAY FOUR POST-RECOVERY

Subject arrived at second session with the notebook we provided. Several pages had been used. She did not show us the contents and we did not ask. She seemed measurably more composed than Session One — better posture, more direct eye contact. She had asked facility staff for a hair tie and had her hair pulled back. Small behavioral detail but notable: she sat with her back against the wall, facing the door.

Caldwell: You mentioned before the interview that you wanted to discuss the Poolrooms.

WD-041: Yeah. Because I think your files on them might be incomplete.

Caldwell: What makes you say that?

WD-041: Because the notes I found in there — the ones left by other wanderers — they all said the same thing. Don’t go in the water. And that’s right, that’s correct advice, but it’s incomplete. It doesn’t explain why in a way that would actually stop someone.

Caldwell: How would you explain it?

WD-041: The water looks perfect. That’s the first thing. You come through the archway and the room is enormous — like an Olympic pool but wider, and there are more pools beyond it, and more beyond that, and the ceiling is low and the light comes from underwater somehow, this blue-white light, and it reflects on everything, and it’s the most beautiful thing you’ve seen since you got in. After days of yellow and that smell, it’s — (she stopped)

Caldwell: Take your time.

WD-041: I almost went in. I had my shoes off. I was sitting on the edge with my feet dangling over it, and the water was right there, and it was cool, I could feel the cool coming off it — and then I looked at my reflection.

Caldwell: What did you see?

WD-041: Me. Normal me. But the reflection was — delayed. Like a half-second behind. Every movement I made, it copied, but just a fraction too late. And after a minute I realized it wasn’t copying me anymore. It was still moving. On its own. While I sat completely still.

I put my shoes back on and I left and I didn’t look at the water again.

Caldwell: Did you observe anyone else in the Poolrooms?

WD-041: There was someone already in the water when I came through the archway. Floating on their back. I called out to them. They didn’t respond. I could see their face — eyes open, looking at the ceiling. They looked calm. (pause) They looked like they’d stopped being somewhere else and decided that was fine.

I don’t know if they were alive. I don’t know what alive means in that place past a certain point.

Caldwell: You said our files were incomplete. Is there anything else?

WD-041: The sound. If you’re near the Poolrooms, even rooms away, you can hear something that sounds like someone doing a slow breaststroke. Rhythmic. Patient. In water that, if you go look, has nothing in it.

That’s the thing your notes should say. Not just don’t go in. They should say: something is already in there, and it’s been in there much longer than you.

—

SESSION TWO — CONTINUED: ON ROOM 188

The following section was initiated by the subject. She set her notebook flat on the table and folded her hands on top of it in a gesture that read, to this archivist, as deliberate composure.

WD-041: I need to talk about Room 188.

Caldwell: Go ahead.

WD-041: It took me a long time to find it. I don’t know if “find” is even the right word — I think it found me, or decided I was ready, or something like that. The numbering in the yellow place doesn’t go in order and most rooms don’t have numbers at all. But I kept seeing 188 scratched near baseboards, near doorframes. Twice it was written on the carpet in something that had dried dark. I followed it.

Caldwell: What was in Room 188?

WD-041: A desk. Office desk, laminate wood, the cheap kind. A chair. A lamp that was off but warm to the touch, like it had just been turned off. And on the desk — (she opened her notebook and slid a page across the table to me. It appeared to be a hand-copied transcription.) — this.

[Document insert: Subject’s handwritten copy of text found in Room 188. Transcribed below for record.]

—

“If you are reading this, you have been here long enough to find it. That means you are still here, which means you are doing something right, which means you deserve to know.

The Backrooms are not a place. A place has edges and reasons. What you are in is something that exists because space has a margin and you found yours. It does not want you here. It does not want anything. Wanting requires caring and this does not care.

The entities are not hunting you. Most of them are as lost as you are, only they have been lost longer, and the longer you are lost in here the less you resemble what you started as.

Keep that in mind. Not as a warning. As a timeline. You have time.

The exit will not look like an exit. It will look like a mistake. A door that shouldn’t be there. A hallway that goes the wrong direction. A gap. Do not think about it. Walk through it the way you’d walk into any room, like you’ve done it before.

You have done it before. You just don’t remember which way the world goes.

— D”

—

Caldwell: The signature. Just the letter D.

WD-041: Yeah.

Caldwell: Did that mean anything to you?

WD-041: (very quietly) I think I knew who it was. I think I met someone while I was in there — not directly, but through things they left behind. Notes. A backpack. A jacket. I don’t know how far back they went in, or if they ever got out. But that letter was theirs.

Caldwell: How can you be sure?

WD-041: Because the jacket I was wearing when your operative found me — (she looked down at her hands) — the inside collar had a name written in marker. The way your parents mark your clothes before summer camp. It said DANIEL.

(Neither party spoke for approximately two minutes.)

Caldwell: We’ll look into it.

WD-041: Please.

—

SESSION THREE — DAY SIX POST-RECOVERY

Subject was notably quieter in this session. She had slept, visibly. She came in with the notebook again, but didn’t open it. The session was brief by mutual agreement.

Caldwell: Is there anything you want to add to the record before we close the formal interview?

WD-041: Two things.

First — the breathing in the walls. Other reports mention it. I want to confirm it. And I want to add something those reports may not have: it’s not one thing breathing. It’s a rhythm that multiple things are sharing. Like they’ve synchronized. And it’s patient. It’s not hungry-patient. It’s just — waiting-patient. Whatever those things are, they are not in a hurry.

Second — (she looked at the wall to her left for a moment, then back at me) — when your operative found me in that parking structure. He said I was unresponsive for four minutes before I came back.

Caldwell: That’s correct.

WD-041: I wasn’t unresponsive. I was listening. I was checking that the hum was gone. (pause) I needed to be sure the lights weren’t about to change color.

Caldwell: And were you? Sure?

WD-041: I’m here, aren’t I?

(Subject declined to continue the session after this point. Interview formally concluded.)

—

ARCHIVIST’S NOTES — POST-SESSION ADDENDUM

WD-041 is, in this archivist’s assessment, one of the more cognitively intact recovered wanderers logged in recent cycles. Her account is internally consistent across all three sessions, with no significant contradictions and a level of specific observational detail that is difficult to fabricate or confuse.

Several elements of her testimony warrant immediate cross-referencing with existing case files:

1. The entity described in Level 0 — the “smear” figure with the metered laugh — does not precisely match any documented Smiler behavior. It may represent a variant, a subtype, or something we have not yet formally designated. Flagged for Entity Classification review.

2. The Poolroom reflection anomaly she describes — delayed mimicry transitioning to autonomous movement — has appeared in two prior testimonies (see: Case File 09-ALPHA, Case File 17-BRAVO). This archivist recommends elevating Poolroom threat classification from CAUTION to CRITICAL.

3. The text recovered from Room 188, if authentic, represents the first written communication recovered from an entity or long-term wanderer that demonstrates awareness of exit mechanics. Its implications are significant. Cross-referencing the signature “D” with all prior case files is now a Priority One task.

4. The name DANIEL in the jacket collar. We have three active open cases with that name. Two are recent. One is from — (see attached addendum, CLASSIFICATION LEVEL 3 REQUIRED).

Subject has been offered continued housing at the intake facility. She accepted. She has requested, specifically, a room with a window.

We gave her one facing east.

She sleeps with the curtain open.

—

Document compiled and submitted by:
T. Caldwell, Senior Archivist
Async Recovery & Documentation Division

This document is the property of Async. Unauthorized distribution constitutes a breach of operational protocol. If you have recovered this document outside of an Async facility and do not know what Async is — find an egress point. We will find you on the other side.

We are looking.

—

[END OF FILE 23-DELTA — PENDING CLASSIFICATION REVIEW]

Credit: Marc Levis