Chapter Text
Martin dreamed that night of opening the door to the Archives and walking down slimy cement steps, stopping in front of a wood oak door. The door had a plaque in front of it, reading in embossed letters ‘THE ARCHIVIST’. He looked down at his hands, only to find himself holding a mug of steaming tea. The mug had a kitten on it, with the word ‘CAT-FINATED’ underneath. It was quite cute.
He reached out with his left hand and twisted the brass knob, gently pushing the door open. The room inside was dark and dim, lined with shelves crowded with filing boxes, endless stacks and stacks of paper. It loomed above Martin’s head, shadows nipping at his heels, and in the center of the room was an imposing oak door with a tall, slight, unspeakably handsome man sitting behind it.
The man was unfamiliar. Strikingly handsome, exactly Martin’s type, he had curly natural hair that puffed around his head in an uncontrolled cloud. His face was narrow and thin, elbows jutting out like bones, and he was dressed in a shabby and overly large tweed jacket, grey slacks, and soft wool jumper. He was graying at the temples, and he appeared to be asleep at his desk, chin bent down to his sternum.
Martin crept forward, gently placing the tea at the corner of the desk. It was crowded with papers, a clunky computer shoved in the corner and a small stack of notebooks laid over a collection of pens to stop them from rolling away. Small glasses sat folded on top of a crumpled take-out box. The scene was charmingly domestic - some kind of historian or researcher, falling asleep at his desk. Martin felt a burst of warm fondness bloom in his chest, as if the man was an old friend who he was always happy to bring tea to.
And, well, he was rather handsome. Before he could think about it too hard, because some part of Martin was aware that this was nothing but a dream, he reached out a hand and brushed one errant curl from the man’s face. There. Perfect.
The man opened his eyes, and Martin was struck with a unique and bone-deep horror, because the man had no eyes. They had been scooped out, roughly and unprofessionally, as if with a spoon. Empty eye sockets, oozing yellow pus and lined with viscera, gazed sightlessly in Martin’s direction, and the man’s mouth gaped open slightly. Martin jerked his hand back, clutching it to his chest, sucking in a breath as his heart jumped five beats in his chest.
Then the man that should not have been alive at all spoke.
“Help me...help me…”
For some reason, although Martin was more scared than he could handle, although his hands were trembling so much the thick tea spilled over the side of the mug and fell on the ground, sizzling and eating through the hardwood, he leaned in. He didn’t run away. Since when did Martin Blackwood not run away?
“What’s wrong with you? How can I help?”
“Help me,” the man moaned, as black ichor oozed from his unintelligently gaping mouth, “help me.”
“I don’t know how,” Martin confessed, frantically hissing as the splotches of acid tea sprayed onto his shoes, quickly eating through the leather. “I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s wrong -”
The horrible, pathetic creature, so desolate and lonely, moaned again. It was a terrible sound. Lonely and despairing, like an animal mourning its child, but it held echoes of something unearthly and wrong. Like nails across a chalkboard, it was uncomfortable and disturbing, but it was so sad too.
“I can’t remember my name,” sobbed the creature that must have been The Archivist. “Help me, Martin.”
“Okay!” Martin yelled - half out of pity, half just because he wanted it to shut up. “I’ll help you! Please, please stop making that sound!”
Then the creature screeched, a horrible sound that vibrates your bones out of place, and Martin felt his eardrums rupture. He screamed too, losing grasp of the tea, barely cognizant of the way the mug shattered on his floorboards and spilled poison tea all over the floor. The creature mourned itself, cried out in desolation over sustaining an existence that was so anathema to everything good and kind, and it wrapped Martin up in its sorrow until it was him and he was it and there was no longer any meaningful difference.
Martin felt a ghost-like spectre of fingers clasp around his own eyeballs, ready to pluck them from their sockets, shrill caterwauling bursting Martin’s ear drums again and again, and it wasn’t until he realized that it was nothing but his alarm that he was able to wake up.
Martin woke up shaking in fear, forgetting for a brief second where he was, but all that awaited him was his small, narrow bed in his cramped flat. He had a vague sensation of terror, of black ichor and acid, of a premonition, but the more he tried to hold on the more the dream slipped through his fingers, and by the time he had grabbed his dream journal and pen on his nightstand it was gone.
He sighed, placing the book back down on the bed and silencing the alarm. Martin fully believed in significant dreams, but you had to remember them for them to have any real meaning. He had always liked the poetry of it, the faint skimming of your fingers over the inexplicable. Guess it wasn’t to be today.
It wasn’t until he washed his face, brushed his short hair, pissed, and opened up his cabinets in his kitchen to find his favorite mug of tea that he saw the CAT-FINATED mug that had guest starred in the dream, and the memory hit him like a mack truck.
It was almost exciting. Nightmares that were eerie and desperate were fascinating. Maybe the handsome man was a lost, drowned spirit? A murdered soul, left to wander the Earth bound by chains? How spooky! This would make a great story idea.
It would be a tale of love, Martin decided, as he ate toast with one hand and scribbled in his ideas journal (‘Think Happy, Be Happy!’) with the other. Definitely a love story. The hero has a unique empathetic talent, able to read the latent feelings and thoughts from other people and things. His job is as a ghost hunter, using psychometry to read the lives of ghosts and help puzzle out their past so they can move on. The love interest would be a ghost trapped within the walls of an old manor, desperate for connection, yet not quite ready to move on…
That had always been a talent of Martin’s. To grow so wrapped up in the story or the language or the idea that he could forget the fear or the unhappiness. Martin had borne many sad years just like that, just by keeping his mind pleasantly somewhere else. It was a very healthy coping mechanism that always worked.
But, Martin thought as he burrowed into the packed sardine tube that natives called the London Underground, the Institute never took any Statements that were just spooky dreams. Tons of those didn’t make sense. It was definitely nothing supernatural. But it was fun to think that it could be, that maybe there was a chance, in some other world…
Oh, well. Life was boring when you were a research assistant with the Magnus Institute. Martin wrote some story ideas on his phone, letting his mind settle into the easy routine of the commute. Get ready for another boring day.
“Transferred?!”
“Yep! Starting right now, we are the newest archival assistants.” Tim carefully slotted his laptop and case into the box, far more casually throwing in his collection of stress toys. Tim made a big show of how relaxed and laid back he was, but sometimes Martin felt as if he had a lot of pent up anxiety. Or pent up...something. “Got the call from Rosie this morning. You, me, Sasha James.” He grinned broadly at Martin, like a shark. “I hope your will’s written out.”
Martin felt his stomach drop from underneath him. His head was swimming in cotton fog. Transferred. With no warning. What had he done wrong? If they hated him so much why didn’t they just fire him? Oh, god, they found out about the CV. But there was no way Tim and Sasha had lied on their CVs - what had they done wrong? It was hard to imagine Tim doing anything wrong period.
“Who’s going to take care of my Mum,” Martin whispered.
Tim didn’t look sympathetic. He looked a little manic, actually, tossing his earthly possessions into the cardboard box and hoisting it up. Martin politely did not notice how ripped he was. Tim definitely noticed Martin not noticing, but instead of teasing him about it he just put a flattened box on Martin’s own desk for him to pack up too. Martin slowly began arranging his potted plants, books, and secret ‘How-To’ manuals inside, taking extra care with his snacks and mug collection. He would need them in the coming days.
The research assistants around them didn’t look sympathetic either. They weren’t even looking at him, all bent over their own desks working studiously away. It was like Martin and Tim were now the untouchables, no longer acceptable for polite society. Pity was definitely lurking behind some of their expressions, but a profound sense of relief was tangible. At least it was those guys. Not us.
Well, Martin thought spitefully as he finished packing up his box and hoisted it up, someday it would be you. Then you’ll regret not showing a little bit of empathy.
They trudged their walk of shame through the open office plan, through the crowded hallways lined with eye shaped windows that Martin had always found just a bit gauche, towards the desolate and murky stairwell that lead to the basement. Tim kept up an inane running commentary the whole time, wondering if it was possible to get out of their contracts by being turned into vampires. He only stopped talking when they walked out of the stairwell and almost walked straight into a six foot tall woman with long, curling hair down to her back, easily carrying three boxes with one hand. She looked just as manic as Tim, but far more sincere about it.
“You lads got the email too, then?” Sasha asked, grinning broadly. Martin knew her - well, not to brag, but he knew basically everyone - but it was as distantly as he knew everyone else from Artifact Storage. That lot was...they were a bit weird. “Wicked, am I right? This is going to be so much fun. Archive assistant!”
“You’re barking mad, James,” Tim said flatly. He lead the team down the hallway, Martin huffing and struggling to keep up with the unfairly long legs of the other two, and Tim elbowed the door open and propped it open so Sasha and Martin could slip inside. “This is a death sentence and you know it. How long do you think we have? Two months? Gosh, even three?”
“Stop whining, Stoker. I’m from Artifact Storage. We eat death curses for breakfast.”
“Death curse?!” Martin squeaked. “Who said anything about a death curse?”
But, as Martin knew full well when the two others gave him an unimpressed look, nobody needed to say anything. Everybody knew.
The Archives were, in a word, dusty. With an open office plan, four abandoned desks pushed against each other, and bookshelves filled with boxes, papers, and books lining the walls, it looked very much like every other office space in the building. There was a small kitchenette near the front, with a fridge, sink, and keurig, and an ajar door lead to another small hallway. Martin could faintly see three doors in the hallway - one clearly labelled ‘RECORDING ROOM’, another labelled ‘LIBRARY’. It was impossible to make out the label on the last door. The entire space looked straight out of the 70s, with wood paneling and grimy corners, and the dust was so thick in the air Martin had to fight a sneeze. It looked as if nobody had been down here in a long time.
Which was, of course, true - the last assistant, Emma Roberts, died three months ago. It had taken that long to replace her. Martin wondered how it felt, to sit alone in an office room all day, never interacting, never leaving. Martin himself had barely seen her. Sometimes he used to see her in the cafeteria, huddled in the corner, shoving food in her mouth as quickly as possible so she could escape back to the archives. She had always looked a bit hunted.
“Home sweet home!” Tim announced, kicking the door shut behind them. It clicked shut with a disturbing finality, like a coffin lid closing, and Martin fought the urge to gulp. “I call the one closest to the door.”
“I call the one closest to the hallway!”
That left Martin with the one awkwardly in the center, across from Tim and next to Sasha. She was unloading a great deal of laptops from the box onto her desk, as well as more Funko Pops of Overwatch characters than anybody really needed. She even had a little bisexual pride flag she put in a cup, which Tim grinned at and pinned up his own miniature bi pride flag on the corkboard divider between their desks. Martin sighed and, embarrassed, took out his own plastic figurine of a penguin swinging a gay pride flag and put it next to his work computer.
“Hah! Homos have overtaken the Magnus Institute Archives!” Sasha collapsed on her rolling chair, easily spinning around. She grinned fiercely at them, wild hair tangling around her shoulders. “Well, if I’m stuck here with anyone, I’m glad it’s with Stoker and Blackwood. You two are fun. What’s your opinion on arson?”
“Mildly negative,” Tim said hesitantly.
“Positive,” Martin said immediately.
Both Sasha and Tim stared at him. Martin flushed. What? He had been a teenager once.
They shot the shit like that for ten or twenty more minutes, waiting for somebody to come down and tell them what to do . So far as Martin was aware, they did have a Head Archivist - he remembered Gertrude, unfortunately - but since she had ‘gotten got’, as Tim put it, by the curse years ago, nobody had ever met her replacement. Surely the Head Archivist was going to join them eventually and tell them the situation.
“Maybe Mr. Bouchard will come down and explain,” Martin volunteered weakly. “He always seemed to be more involved with the Archives than the other departments…”
Tim silently pantomimed, hypothetically, the act of bashing in someone’s head with a large pipe.
“Yeah, I’m with Tim,” Sasha said, slipping off her heels and propping her stockinged feet on her desk. “Never forgave the man for ruining the Artifact Storage betting pool of who would be the first to choke the life from Leitner’s beady little eyes. I had at least five hundred pounds riding on me being the one to crack. Personally, I thought it would be Tom. There’s something not quite right about Tom.”
“Did anybody win?” Tim asked in morbid fascination.
“Oh, yeah. At least three people predicted it would be Elias. Easy bet, honestly.”
“Maybe we can just check the Head Archivist’s office?” Martin suggested, stopping all conversation short. Both of his coworkers stared at him, eyes wide, as if he had just said something either very brave or very stupid. In their workplace, it was frequently the same thing. Martin hunched over a little, feeling like an idiot. “I mean, maybe he was already in, and he just hasn’t heard us talking…”
“How could he not?” Tim asked skeptically. “I bet he works off site or something.”
“We can’t just keep sitting around!”
“Why not?” Sasha said, shrugging. “So what if nobody shows up to give us any work? Then we get to goof off until the curse hits us. Get paid to nap.”
“Sounds good to me,” Tim said.
But it didn’t sound good to Martin. What about performance reviews? What if they found out that he lied on his CV - alright, granted, to be fired would be a relief and a blessing. But still. He could get his pay docked. He needed the money. Or maybe they feed people without high school degrees to Artifact Storage. He didn’t know what they did down there.
Besides, they couldn’t just... not have a boss. Or any work. That just wasn’t how things were supposed to happen. If they didn’t have a boss, or any work, or anything to do, then all pretense was officially surrendered, and they really were just waiting around to die mysteriously and horribly.
And if there was one thing Martin refused to do, it was surrender pretenses. He was not much in the habit of lying to himself, but he was very much in the habit of lying to other people.
Right. That was that, then. Martin stood up, steeling his expression. He clenched his fists, and with careful clarity of purpose strode towards the door to the hallway and thrust it open. “I’m talking to our boss. This is ridiculous.”
“Wait, Martin, no! You’re too young to die!” Tim said, scrambling up after him. “What’s wrong with just goofing off?”
“Your work ethic leaves something to be desired, Tim!”
“Crazy motherfucker,” Sasha said, immediately following after Martin, as if she was impressed. Tim scrambled up after them, bringing up the tail, as Martin strode with purpose down the hallway. He saw another door that he hadn’t noticed before, unmarked. They would have to explore later. “Do I get your penguin when you die?”
“Yes, Sasha, you can have my things when I perish from knocking on our boss’ door.” God knows his mother wouldn’t want them. Martin came to a halt in front of a likely looking door at the end of the hallway. Likely, because a plaque on the front of the door read in large, embossed letters ‘HEAD ARCHIVIST’.
It was like in his dream. Just like in his dream, actually. A bit...a bit too much like his dream. But it could just be a coincidence. All doors in the Institute basically look the same. Even if the sense of deja vu was unmistakable, and even if Martin’s hand hovered over the doorknob as Sasha started filming him on her phone and Tim called him a moron, he knew that it was just a coincidence. It had to be.
Martin opened the door.
The office of the Head Archivist was dark, shadowed and dim, and it was difficult to make out what was inside. Martin could see the outline of bookshelves lining the walls with a desk in the middle of the room and two chairs pushed up against it, just like in his dream, but he couldn’t make out any finer details than that. Probably for the best. Nobody was in here, obviously. Strange that it was unlocked, but maybe they could just walk back and -
Then Sasha, the absolute madman, flipped the lights on. And they all screamed.
There was a man sitting behind the desk. Natural hair, tall and lanky and nothing but sharp points and elbows, sitting stiffly and unnaturally still. A piece of paper was in front of him, with an old fashioned tape recorder weighing down the corner. It was almost the man in Martin’s dream, except for one vital aspect - the man was absolutely covered in eyes.
They opened on his arms, on the back of his hands, trailing up and across his cheeks and disappearing under his high collar. With sick fascination, Martin found himself wondering if he had them in his mouth. He had two eyes in the normal place, with a third large one placed directly on his forehead, and each one was an unearthly shade of fluorescent green.
None of them tracked the assistants, or reacted to the light. Only the one on the forehead seemed to have any sort of awareness of recognition, following the movement of the assistants into the room. When Martin glanced behind him, he saw Tim looking absolutely disgusted, and Sasha looking on in morbid fascination.
“Is it…” Tim’s lip curled in disgust. “Alive?”
One of the eyes on his hand blinked. It didn’t answer as many questions as they hoped it did.
“I’ll give you five quid if you poke it,” Sasha whispered to Tim.
“You worked in Artifact Storage!” Tim hissed, shoving her forward a little. “You go poke it, you crazy woman!”
But it was Martin who walked up, Martin who stood in front of the desk and the monster. Because it was a monster, undoubtedly - there was nothing human in those eyes, something distinctly unphysical about the way it held its limbs. Like they were being held up by puppet strings, not by its own power. Unearthly and wrong and stinking of evil like rot. The figure was unmistakably putrid and grotesque, like those pictures of the bedrooms of 4chan members. It made Martin want to look away. Something else made him want to keep looking.
He remembered, in a heavy rush - Martin, help me. Help me, Martin. This creature didn’t even seem like it could talk. But it had talked, and it had talked to him. It had wanted him. Nobody, not even nothing, had ever wanted Martin before.
Maybe it was that something that possessed Martin to speak. “Uh, sir? My name’s Martin Blackwood. This is...this is Sasha James and Timothy Stoker. We’re your new assistants. I wanted to know, um, if there’s anything...you need?”
The figure didn’t move, didn’t respond. But the eye on the forehead flickered to him. Too late, Martin realized that the tape recorder on the desk was running. Had it been running when they came in?
“Sir?” Martin tried again, lifting a hand. “What’s your name?”
“What are you doing here?”
Everybody but the monster jumped a foot in the air and screamed, whirling around. Elias Bouchard, Director of the Magnus Institute, was standing in the doorway, frowning slightly at all of them and looking around the room with a faint distaste.
“Mr. Bouchard!” Martin squeaked. “We were looking for -”
“The Archivist? Congratulations, you found it. Everyone out.” Elias stood back, pointedly gesturing for them all to get the fuck out, and everyone quietly shuffled the fuck out in shame. “I don’t even want to know why this door was unlocked…”
They soon reconvened in the main office space, everyone sitting politely at their desks as Elias looked over all of them. It wasn’t the first time Martin had ever seen him in person, but he could probably count the number of times they had met on one hand with fingers left over. He was shorter than Martin remembered, with a lightly lined face and close cropped snow white hair complementing his grey wool suit. He looked...well, he pinged Martin’s gaydar hard, is all he’d say about it.
“Congratulations on your reassignments. I have taken care to select the most qualified team for this role,” Elias said smoothly. Tim was glaring at him. Sasha was looking at him as if he was a particularly fascinating bug, which was how she looked at everyone. Martin was panicking. “I hope that the adjustment period is smooth for all of you. Please let me know if there’s anything I can do to make it easier, or if there’s any questions I can answer.” Sasha raised her hand. He ignored her. “In order to make this adjustment as easy as possible, I ask that you all wait for further instruction -”
“Did you really beat Jurgen Leitner to death with a pipe?” Sasha asked loudly.
“It was self-defence,” Elias said, without missing a beat. “Please don’t interrupt any further. When you file the paperwork for your transfer -”
“Is it true that you shot Gertrude Robinson in the chest five times?” Tim asked, also loudly.
“Self defence.” Okay, Martin actually bought that. “When you submit your paperwork to HR, please remember to get your previous manager’s signature. Your benefits are slightly different, so -”
“Who’s the Archivist?” Martin asked, and this time Elias actually fell silent. “Is - is something wrong with it?”
“What do you mean by that?” Elias asked frostily.
Martin gulped. “I just mean - it looks a little...sick?”
It did look sick. Hollow, unearthly, and just a little pungent. Martin’s beloved cat Snuffles had died recently of a wasting disease, probably the result of an unfortunate encounter with the corruption. How she looked in the weeks before her death, her big eyes that used to be so full of love now hollow and glassy...it reminded Martin of the Archivist. Just a little.
“The Archivist is being adequately fed,” Elias said, in clipped tones.
“Are you taking it for walks?” Tim asked. “Because I had this dog, right -”
“The Archivist does not need walks,” Elias said shortly. “Do not go into that room again. Do not interact with it. I am going to lock the door to its office, and you are not to go inside it again. Am I understood?”
Everybody nodded, Tim and Sasha more eagerly than Martin.
“Excellent.” Elias huffed a breath, surveying them all with a critical eye. He lingered over Martin, which made him hunch a little. “I have great faith in all of you. You are all talented, capable people, if occasionally annoyances. Hopefully you’ll last...oh, maybe two months this time. Good day, everybody.” He re-doffed his hat, in the most 1950s way physically possible, and nodded at all of them before turning on his heel and casually leaving the room, only looking backwards when he was opening the door to the rest of the basement. “Good luck and all hail the Eye. And I will appreciate it if you all keep Martin away from lighters this time.”
With that mysterious parting shot, all assistants were left alone to stare at each other, with everything and nothing explained, alone in a damp and musty basement.
Martin hadn’t intended on working as a human sacrifice in a cult dedicated towards worship of a fear entity. It was just that sometimes shit happened, you know?
Nobody ever really intends on joining cults. You don’t wake up in the morning and go ‘top of the morning to you, Mr. Sun, I think I might join a cult today, tally ho’. It just doesn’t happen. But there is a certain point where, well, nobody’s calling you back on your job applications, and you need to make rent, and you have to take care of old Mum even if she hates your guts. So you fudge a few things on your CV. You start looking at shadier places, which mostly means just evading a lot of MLM scams. And eventually one of these shady places ends up being the Magnus Institute, which you just interview at as a lark, you won’t actually get hired so there’s no need to panic about your qualifications or the job or the fact that you just saw someone sacrifice a goat on your way walking to the interview room -
And then you get hired. And, really, you realize that you never liked goats that much anyway.
Your rent’s paid, which is nice. You’re eating more than beans on toast. You even save up a bit of money to send back to Mum. Things are going pretty good. Even if all the other employees make a lot of jokes about being unable to quit, they’re just jokes. You don’t want to quit. Then all the employees make jokes about how they’re water turning the wheel of the infernal fear entity that governs all their lives, well, sometimes jokes are a bit morbid and strange and not actually funny. That’s fine. Then finally someone remembers to slip you the employee handbook, and it says on the front page in big letters ‘HOW TO SURVIVE YOUR NEW CULT’.
That’s when you decide to make the most of your situation. You keep your head down. You realize that you’re a cultist now, and sometimes that’s okay. You aren’t really doing anything too immoral, just some research. You have to wear a weird robe sometimes and say random phrases like ‘All Hail the Eye!’ all the time, but really, you’ll believe anything for twenty five pounds an hour. It doesn’t interfere with your life too much, so you don’t think about it too much.
You’ve heard all the off-color jokes about how the boss is a homicidal maniac, or how HR is literally zombies, or about how everyone in Artifact Storage keeps getting eaten by those evil books by that douchey Leitner guy who lives in the basement and eats rats. That’s fine. Everything’s fine, so long as it’s not your problem.
Then it is your problem. And you really, really don’t know what to do about it.
Anyway, Martin’s life wasn’t a disaster and it was perfectly fine. That’s why, after Elias left, he locked himself in the bathroom and had a panic attack. He would have taken the Archival library, but Tim had already called that room to have a violent freak-out in, and Sasha was in the recording room praying frantically for her life.
They eventually all reconvened in the office space, exhausted and terrified and bored, and sat in silence next to each other.
“My parents are going to freak,” Tim said finally, always uncomfortable with silence. “First we lost Danny to the Stranger, now they’re going to lose me to the Eye. Or something. This sucks.”
“Hey, I almost got got by the Stranger a few months ago,” Sasha said, faux-cheerfully. “Small world. How’d it happen?”
“He went to a circus. Got free tickets from his uni.”
“Ouch. Rookie mistake.”
“Yeah. He deserved it, but it still hurt.” Tim slumped on his chair, staring absently at the ceiling. “I deserved this too, I suppose. I got too deep into the wrong crowds. Heard whispering about how the Magnus Institute was educational and had cool books . Last time I attempt literacy.” His tone was bitter, and Sasha reassuringly patted his back. “How’d you run into the Stranger?”
“Oh, me and the other girls in Artifacts had a girl’s night and got drunk. Jenny dared me to smash the creepy fuckin’ table, and you know I never turn down a dare,” Sasha said cheerfully. “Good thing I’m a complete monsterfucker, or that could have ended up terribly. I mean, it did end up terribly - she never did the dishes, and was way too needy in bed, so I had to dump her, but you know.”
“Yeah. Good thing.” Tim was silent for a long minute, before casually saying, “After Danny, you know, I thought I wanted to die. But now that I actually know I’m subject to a death curse on the job I can’t quit that’s going to rip me apart in two months or less, I actually don’t want to die. Funny how that works out. What about you, Martin?”
They both looked at Martin, as if he had some cool supernatural encounter to impact, but he was just deep in thought. Or maybe just deep in a memory - in the musty scent of the Archivist’s office, in the way the single forehead eye tracked him, help me, help me, help me Martin.
“We can’t just give up,” Martin said slowly. “Sure, we might inevitably die. But we will definitely inevitably die if we don’t even try to get out of this. We don’t have any work, right?” Both of his coworkers shook their heads. “So we have nothing better to do than try to get out of this. We have - how long, do you think?”
Both his coworkers looked at each other, and Sasha slowly said, “They tended to last longer under Gertrude. Eric Delano, Michael Shelley, Emma Roberts...I think the longest lasting one out of those was Emma, and she worked here for almost nine years. Since Gertrude bit it, nobody’s lasted longer than three months.”
“Then we have three months,” Martin said, with far more resolution than he felt. He stood up, clenching his fists, and by now both his coworkers knew him well enough to look scared when he got that expression on his face. “We start now. We have all the resources of this Institute at our disposal. We’ll figure out what we have, the enemies we’re facing, and we’ll handle them. We will survive this, if we work together.” He took a deep breath, and as casually as he could, he said, “Maybe the Archivist will help us. I feel like - like it’s the key to this, somehow.”
“Maybe it’s what’s trapping us here,” Tim said, leaning forward, eyes alight.
“Or maybe it’s trapped here too,” Sasha pointed out. “Elias was way too big on us not going in there.” She frowned. “He acted like he knew us…”
“Hannah from accounting says the bloke’s mind reader, I’m not surprised.”
“Oh, Hannah’s a big old gossip.”
“So we’re in agreement?” Martin asked loudly, cutting through the rising argument. “We have to do something?”
Both his coworkers looked at each other, then at him, and shrugged in unison. Not quite a Three Musketeers moment, but it would have to be enough.
What else could they do?
“Three months.” Martin took a deep breath. “We can do this.”
“Can we do it tomorrow?” Tim asked, raising his hand. “I’m tired. If our boss is a crazy monster demon thing that doesn’t care what we do, I’m going to take a nap.”
“Agreed,” Sasha said, pulling out a bottle of Jack Daniel’s from her desk drawer. “Slainte, bitches.”
They were going to die.
It was strange and incongruous, to spend eight hours at work discussing how to avoid your inevitable death - suggestions ranged from ‘Murder Mr. Bouchard’ to ‘Murder the Eye’, as if that was possible, and quite frankly Martin wasn’t sure if he believed in the Eye anyway - only to ride home on the tube, to buy the same tasty pretzel from the Pretzel Man manning his little cart, to unlock your front door and collapse on the couch as you pull your shoes off.
The one bright spot in his day, really, was the rare buzz of a text on his phone. It was from the woman he was buying his new kitten from, showing him pictures of her holding the baby and grinning. Martin couldn’t fight a grin too, typing back a smiley face and a note that he was excited to meet her. It would be another week before she was ready to be seperated from her mom, but Martin couldn’t wait.
His fingers lingered over the phone. If he was going to die in two or three months, was it responsible to adopt a cat? Who would take care of her? What if she starved to death in his apartment alone, mewing pathetically at the door, uncared for and unloved? Would she even know that he was gone?
Martin slowly typed out a text - Sorry, but some stuff came up and I don’t think I can adopt her anymore - before his finger hovered over the send button. He didn’t want to die catless. The last three months of his life might as well be nice, right? The woman he was buying the cat from could just take her back if necessary. She’d understand.
It wasn’t the responsible thing to do. But Martin wasn’t very responsible.
He deleted the text. Martin wasn’t a pessimist. There was a lot of things that Martin wasn’t. Sometimes it felt like there were more things that he wasn’t than things that he was.
Martin wrote a few more lines of his new story, trying to sketch out an outline and get a feel for it. It could be good, he knew. Maybe it even would be good, if he could write it. But the story was somehow less engaging now that he knew that the mysterious Archivist was real, that it was a monster with overly long teeth and eyes that blinked, and that it was a creature in pain. He had never really been an RPF fan.
So he composed some poetry instead as he stirred the spaghetti in the pot on the stove. He kept half an ear on the news - the Cult of the Forgotten Dark was buying new property in London, it seemed - as he absently tried to string words together.
He ate his food, wondering if monsters ate food. He watched some daytime drivel telly, wondering if monsters enjoyed telly. Wondering about all of the decades of telly he would never get to watch, if he didn’t survive this. He worked on the poem, but it didn’t really get anywhere.
Retro low wave new wave tape deck, you played your mixtape as I sat on the stoop with my sneakers on the boiling cement... no.
Retro low wave new wave tape deck, you recorded my words as I spilled my heart to you ...no and also untrue.
Why were you recording me? Was what I was saying so valuable?
That’s not even a poem.
Words chased each other like dogs, snapping at each other’s tails, in Martin’s mind as he crawled into bed, but if it was chaos then it was a familiar one, and he was soon lulled to sleep as he tried to think of synonyms for ‘eye’.
Martin dreamed that night of opening the door to the Archives and walking down slimy cement steps, stopping in front of a wood oak door. The door had a plaque in front of it, reading in embossed letters ‘THE ARCHIVIST’. He looked down at his hands, only to find himself holding a mug of steaming tea.
The mug had a kitten on it, with the word ‘CAT-FINATED’ underneath.
It was quite cute.
Martin got a very, very strong sense of deja vu.
Then reality hit him over the head like a brick, and Martin frantically threw the entire mug down the hallway. It crashed on the cement floor, splintering with a crack like a gunshot into a thousand pieces, and tea seeped everywhere. It began eating through the floorboards, just like yesterday, and Martin quickly escaped into the Head Archivist’s office.
Just like last night, just like today, the Archivist sat behind the desk. His skin was clear of eyes, and Martin remembered with a flush just how attractive he was. The gaping pits for eyes were less cute, but nobody was perfect.
Martin closed the door behind him, breathing deeply and eyeing the Archivist like it was a tiger in a cage. It didn’t ooze anything this time. It just hunched over the desk, elbows propped on the desk and hands pressed against its temples in a move that was remarkably human.
“Um - Mr. Archivist? Sir?” Martin asked hesitantly, stepping forward. It looked remarkably sad. “Listen, my coworkers and I, we need you. We’re your assistants, and the position is super cursed, so we were wondering -”
“Help me,” the Archivist moaned, looking up at Martin. Martin could practically fall into the black holes where his eyes should be. “Help me, Martin.”
“Okay. Okay! I will do that! I just need a wee bit more information.” Martin stepped closer, in the hopes that he could elicit some sort of - something out of it, but all it did was moan again. “Maybe it could be a we help you, you help us kind of thing -”
“It hurts,” the Archivist moaned.
But Martin found it difficult to be sympathetic. Being ripped apart by evil fear monsters in three months would likely hurt quite a bit too. “Use your words, mister,” Martin said sternly. “I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s wrong.”
The Archivist’s eye sockets oozed at him sadly. “It cuts me into ribbons. It hurts to think. Martin. Help me.”
“How do you know my name!” Martin exploded, throwing up his hands. “Why are you in my dreams? Are they - are they prophetic? What’s going on? Why are you doing this? Please, I just - I just want to not get eaten! What if I need help too?”
The Archivist swayed in its seat silently, head tilted towards the ceiling, and Martin felt abruptly a little bad for yelling at it.
Finally, in a hoarse and grating whisper, it said, “I unlocked the door.”
And the revelation was so overwhelming that Martin woke up.
On his way to work the next morning, Martin took a detour and bought some chalk and some tea.
The tea was because he could already tell that they would desperately need it. The chalk was because they had found a big, dusty chalkboard in the back of the library behind some sketchy looking shelves. The chalkboard had some spindly writing on it, almost indecipherable and apparently written in some kind of code, and everyone had been so spooked by the reminder that once upon a time real people had worked and lived and drank tea here that were now gone that they erased it very quickly and began writing their own battle plans on it. Sasha took over for this aspect, because she was a very action oriented person, and she had the best handwriting. She said that nuns had beat it into her.
Because they were all scientists, except for Martin, Sasha began with the hypothesis. Martin and Tim sat obediently at the sole table in the small library, Martin with his hands folded politely on the table and Tim with his arms crossed, watching her scratch out ideas and concepts and research.
“Fact: No research assistant has survived more than three months since Gertrude Robinson bit it.” Sasha nearly ordered her list in looping cursive that seemed oddly incongruous with the awful contents. “Fact: we are all bound in service to what is probably an infernal fear entity, but might just be a really big extradimensional lobster with a god complex. Fact: our job has no actual responsibilities. Fact: our boss is the physical embodiment of the eye emoji.”
“Don’t forget about my prophetic dreams,” Martin said eagerly. He had been very detailed in his account of last night’s dream. Neither Sasha nor Tim were overly impressed by it, not entirely buying that he had been dreaming of the Archivist since before they were introduced, but they would have to be idiots to dismiss the possibility that Martin could see the future out of hand.
“That’s under supposistions.” Sasha neatly tapped the supposistion column. “Supposistion: the Archivist is sentient or something in some way. Supposistion: the Archivist and Elias aren’t exactly on the best of terms. Supposistion: it has a mystical, psychic connection with Martin.”
“Why Martin?” Tim asked, quite reasonably. “Out of everyone, why Martin?”
“He eats the most sugar before bed?” Sasha asked, also reasonably.
Martin, who privately liked to believe that it was because the Archivist knew Martin was the nicest and most friendly research assistant, stayed quiet.
“Which leads us to the hypothesis!” Sasha said grandly, writing it out over the top of the chalkboard. “All three of us - Sasha James, Tim Stoker, Martin Blackwood - will die in three months if we don’t actively prevent it, and that the Archivist may be vital in this plan. Now!” She tapped the chalkboard forebodingly. “Resources. What resources do we have?”
Their resources were, basically, the Archives. They had free reign of that place. Nobody ever came down here, not even the cleaning ladies. They seemed to have greater access to some online files. They had the library full of spooky stuff and the other staff members. They had Sasha’s technological know-how, Tim’s connections, and Martin’s…
“What can you do?” Tim asked, narrowing his eyes at Martin.
Martin couldn’t help but bristle. “I’m currently the only person who can communicate with the fear monster locked in its office, which will probably come in handy someday.”
“Alright, point taken,” Tim said placatingly, holding his hands up. “Your spooky dreams will be the key to this whole mystery.”
“So, what, you’re the Archivist whisperer?” Sasha asked, less impressed. “Go whisper, then.”
“Wh - not the whisperer - what would I even - no!”
“Why not?” Tim asked, damnably reasonably. “Worst thing it can do is like. Eat your face.”
“It’ll be valuable data if it eats your face,” Sasha said encouragingly.
Martin crossed his arms too, sinking a little in his seat. He found himself mumbling, a little embarrassed. “I don’t want to.”
“Sorry,” Tim said, pleasantly with an edge of madness, “what was that?”
“I said I don’t want to.” Martin felt his cheeks burn. “We had a fight.”
“With that thing?” Sasha asked.
“In your dream ?” Tim asked.
“Game plan!” Sasha said loudly, drawing out a new list. “I’ll try to access Elias’ encrypted files on my laptop. Tim will go through the Archival library and try to see if there’s anything in here that can help us. Hopefully notes from old assistants, that kind of thing. Martin will commune with the monster locked in his office and report back.”
“I don’t think -”
“I thought you said that it was key to everything,” Sasha said innocently. “So you don’t think it’s important?”
“I didn’t say -”
“So you agree we should work on cracking it open like a nut?”
“I’m not a fan of that metaphor -”
“Glad you agree.” Sasha slammed the chalk down on the chalk tray, propping her hands on her hips. “Break, team! Good effort, here!”
What Martin was concerned about, of course, besides the obvious, was that everybody knew Elias had eyes all over the Institute in a very literal way, and him showing up just as they entered the Archivist’s office was far from a coincidence. Martin was a millennial, and moreover a cult member, and as a result he was exceptionally blase about invasions of privacy and the feeling of being watched. All the spyware on their computers, all the highly visible cameras at every corner, the way that the workplace raffles always gave away an Amazon Alexa...Martin found it almost a little comforting. When he mentioned to Sasha that he wanted curry that night, and then his phone brought up suggestions for curry places on his way home, that was just natural.
But, for the purposes of trying to evade Elias, it was inconvenient. As Tim and Sasha scattered with mission and purpose to fulfill their duties, Tim carefully popping open his top buttons and Sasha grabbing her laptop with surety, Martin felt abject despair at being given the easiest job yet feeling incapable of doing so.
If he tried to go inside the office again, Elias would show up. Martin was fairly sure about this. Was it possible to occlude Elias’ vision? Not inside the Institute. Maybe he could fall asleep again...but the Archivist was never really helpful in his dreams either. Distract Elias? He’d have to enlist Sasha or Tim on that, and neither of them were important enough to talk to him without an appointment. Maybe he had a magic crystal ball in his office that Martin could steal…
The Archivist’s words, haunted and lonely, echoed back in Martin’s mind.
Martin took a deep breath and stepped into the small hallway, taking another breath for good measure, and watched his hand move towards the doorknob and twist it open almost of its own accord. His hand pushed the door open, and Martin’s feet walked him inside.
There was no time to waste. He had no idea how close Elias was. He turned around, closing the door behind him, and sure enough when he looked on the floor he saw a large metal key, nothing more than twisted steel, lying on the floor. He picked it up and slotted it into the lock, twisting it firmly, and pocketed the key. It was only then that Martin realized, as Director of the Institute, Elias likely had a key to every door in the place. Well. Too late now.
He turned around, and was not surprised to see the Archivist in the same position as yesterday. Sitting stock still and rigid, covered from head to toe in eyes, only the large one on his forehead tracked Martin’s movements. Martin walked slowly closer to the desk, watching the way the forehead eye watched him, his heart hammering in his chest. His palms were sweaty, and he wiped them on his trousers.
“Mr. Archivist?” Martin whispered.
The Archivist didn’t respond, mouth slightly open. Martin was beginning to suspect that it wasn’t capable of responding, at least in real life.
Alright. Alright, Martin could work with that. A soft click echoed through the office, and Martin looked down to see the tape recorder slowly running a reel. Haunted tape deck. Alright.
On second thought, Martin grabbed a chair and pushed it up under the doorknob. There. That would hold Elias off, at least for a while.
Martin drew out his phone and used it as a torch, wincing when he saw the eerie way the Archivist’s eyes reflected the light like cats, and began attempting to shift through the papers on his desk. They were all statements, which confused Martin. Everybody knew the vast majority of the statements were crud. Why bother going through them? If the Archivist couldn’t move, speak, or respond, then what was it doing with them?
He quickly scanned the first one. It was on...yep, that was definitely the Lonely. Martin recognized a few key points - the sense of invisibility, the masses of people despite feeling alone, the need to remember loved ones. Judging from the girl’s autobiography, she was a prime candidate too. Looks like the Archivist kept an eye...or many eyes...on the statements that had some semblance of truth to them. Hm.
All the other papers on the desk were similar, statements that clearly held some aspect of truth to them. Martin recognized the Dark, the Corruption, and a particularly disturbing Stranger one right off the bat.
Martin carefully stepped around the desk, until he was practically bumping against the Archivist’s chair. It smelled like old wood and musty statues, strongly evoking the sense memory of stepping into London antique shops. Something about its scent screamed its inhumanity to Martin. Something else about it was very comforting.
With excessive caution Martin teased open the top left desk drawer. Inside were...more statements. Alright. Underneath that he found...staplers, extra pens, a great deal of hair ties, an afro pick, cellotape, and some brochures. Martin was left imagining the monster sitting in the chair next to him picking his hair, typing it back with his smooth and deft hands, always losing his pens and having to dig through his desk for more.
The door rattled, and Martin fought a squeak of guilt. “Martin, what did I just say?”
Martin, very quietly, opened up the bottom drawer. It was filled, from bottom to brim, with tape recorders. They were all empty. Martin closed the drawer. What was with this thing and tape recorders?
“I gave explicit instructions to stay out of this room, Martin. Cease this nonsense and leave it at once.”
“I can’t hear you,” Martin called back, “there’s a - er - door in the way!”
Muffled cursing from the other side of the door. Martin quickly looked through the three drawers on the other side of the desk. More statements, more tape recorders, but there was a small, glossy piece of paper lying on top of a glasses case, which Martin quickly snatched up and scanned.
It was of the Archivist. He looked a little like he did in his dreams, with clear skin and premature crow’s feet, but his eyes were a brilliant and stunning green. He looked unhappy, slightly out of focus, standing next to the sign in front of London Aquarium. He was wearing a jumper that had a large picture of an octopus on it, with text that read out ‘AQUARIUM EAST LONDON - HAVE YOU SEEN IT?’. He was scowling.
There was someone behind that camera. Someone who badgered him into buying a silly jumper, who made him pose like a tourist in front of a sign and take a photograph of him, to preserve precious memories. Someone who gave him that polaroid to keep and treasure and remember, that he kept secret inside his desk.
The door clicked. The door pushed roughly against the chair, sending it screeching against the hardwood.
The forehead eye hadn’t stopped watching Martin. It watched him now, unblinking and without any spirit or emotion. Martin thought about grafts, about grafting a branch of a tree onto another tree. Martin thought about parasites. Martin thought about jumpers and whoever stood behind a polaroid camera.
Before he could even think better of it, Martin abruptly grabbed the arm of the Archivist’s chair. The Archivist didn't react, but the forehead eye went so far as to blink in what Martin imagined might have been surprise.
“Listen,” Martin whispered harshly. “You want my help. I swear, I swear I’ll help you. But you need to help me, because otherwise I won’t live long enough to do anything for you.”
The Archivist didn’t react. Damn it, damn it! What could Martin say that would get it reacting again? What could Martin say to wake up the human inside?
“Do you want to see the person behind the camera again?” Martin whispered desperately. “If you keep us safe, I’ll make sure that you two are reunited. Don’t you want that?”
The forehead eye widened. The tape recorder buzzed and buzzed. The door to the office was shoved open, with a very unamused Elias kicking aside the chair.
“Mr. Blackwood. I shouldn’t be surprised that you’re -” He stopped shortly, staring at the Archivist. Martin had shoved the polaroid in his pocket frantically, probably creasing it irreparably, but Elias didn’t even seem to be looking at him. He was looking at the Archivist, eyes wide and somewhat unfocused.
Something hurt Martin’s brain, like nails on a chalkboard. It hurt Elias far worse - he hissed, pressing a hand to his temple, and Martin fought the urge to hide behind the still unmoving Archivist.
“You’re signing his death warrant,” Elias spat, face twisted in something far uglier than Martin had ever seen. The Archivist didn’t respond - or maybe it did. “Fine. Have it your way. On your head be it. But that will be nothing new.”
The Archivist didn’t react - maybe. The buzzing and static in Martin’s mind began to grow louder, almost frantic, and it didn’t recede until Elias turned sharply on his heel and...walked out the door. It clicked shut behind him.
It was only when Martin exhaled that he realized he was holding his breath at all.
It wasn’t an answer. It wasn’t a promise. But it might as well have been, and Martin wondered with a sinking feeling what exactly he had gotten himself into. How could the Archivist help him? It couldn’t even help itself.
But...even Martin could tell that it was powerful. Everybody knew that Elias had some weird demigod powers. The Archivist seemed even more powerful than him. Maybe if Martin was just able to...wake it up, then it could break the curse. It seemed to want to break the curse.
The thought was cheering, even if Martin was only fractionally further along in his quest than he had been five minutes ago. But he had a goal, and maybe even an ally.
If he could trust the physical embodiment of an eldritch fear entity on earth. Which...he probably couldn’t. But…
“Thanks,” Martin whispered. “You really helped me out.”
It didn’t say anything. Just stared, absently and without any real focus, into the distance.
“Can you talk? Non-psychically.”
It didn’t say anything. Possibly in response.
“Okay. Well, uh, thank you anyway. Is there anything you, uh, need? A - a pillow?”
It didn’t say anything. Possibly sarcastically.
“I’ll bring some tea next time,” Martin said firmly. Tea made everything better, he firmly believed. Or, at least if it couldn’t actually fix anything, it could make you feel better. “If you drink...tea...I don’t know if you only eat like, the souls of the damned. I don’t think I can bring you those. I can try!”
The tape recorder clicked off, and Martin understood that somehow as a dismissal. He set his chin firmly, and nodded at the Archivist. “Right. Thank you. I’ll be back. I promise.”
It didn’t say anything. But Martin was okay with that.
Tim and Sasha were much more successful than he was, which was to be expected. They had uni degrees, while Martin had very accomplished lying skills. However, they didn’t have psychic connections to a monster straight from a Gothic novel, so who was winning now?
They were in the library again, which was quickly becoming the meeting spot for these plans. They sat around a wood table, slouching in the uncomfortable seats. Sasha was talking about stealing a maybe only slightly haunted couch from Artifact Storage, and Tim was talking about bringing in some blankets for the draft. Maybe it was true what they said - that you could get used to anything.
“I’ve been looking up everything related to the Eye I could,” Tim reported, as Sasha made notes on her laptop. Martin was playing with his fingers, thinking about the polaroid in his pocket. He wanted to take it out and look at it, but he was scared. “Mostly bullshit propaganda, a lot of half-truths, some history. Nothing too good. But speaking of Martin’s mystery man, the Archivist is alluded to quite a bit. Apparently it’s a personification of the Eye’s power on Earth. How it uses its power on us, you know. Jonah Magnus talks the most about it. I got the feeling that the Magnus Institute was made to...hold it?” Tim made a vague ball with his hands. “As a way to lock it up? I couldn’t tell.”
“The financial records back that up,” Sasha agreed. “Way more money is funneled to the Archivist than any other department. It doesn’t seem like it, but the Archives really is the heart of the Institute. Gertrude Robinson milked Elias for thousands. It’s fucking awesome.”
“You hacked into Elias’ bank records?” Martin squeaked.
“What, like it’s hard?”
“I don’t think we have to worry about Elias right now,” Martin said, wincing. “I mean, we definitely still should, but I think he’s going to...leave us alone?”
Both his coworkers stared at him, looking slightly intimidated.
“How - how did you get him to do that?” Tim asked, looking strongly as if he didn’t want to know the answer.
“I sicc’d the Archivist on him?”
“I was really afraid you’d say that.”
Martin explained what happened shortly, drawing out the polaroid and passing it between his coworkers. They both spent a long time staring at it, especially Tim, whose expression seemed distant and far away. As if he was remembering something he’d rather not remember.
“So it used to be human,” Sasha said finally. “It’s pretty weird, right? Like, you look at it now, and you get a strong sense of wrongness and non sentience from it. It just feels wrong.”
“The hundred eyes might have something to do with that,” Tim said dully.
“Yeah, but it’s beyond the eyes,” Sasha insisted. “It’s just not right. It’s not meant to exist. But when I look at this picture, I see a person. They’re not the same, but they aren’t as different as all that, right? It’s bizarre.” She frowned at the picture, lightly lifting it back from Tim. “So who was this guy, anyway? If we get his name I’m sure we can find out. Maybe if we see what happened to him, we can stop it from happening to us.”
But nobody knew his name. They looked at each other, slightly lost, because nobody knew, and it seemed a little rude to Martin that the Archivist had gotten their boss to back off from their secret criminal activities and they didn’t even know its name. Or the name it used to have. An unmarked grave, sitting in a wooden chair, a single eye out of dozens tracing Martin’s footsteps…
“The Archivist and the Director aren’t always on the same side,” Martin said slowly. “Elias can’t control it. The Archivist protected us from it -”
“It protected you,” Tim pointed out. “You’re its bestest buddy now. Keep mind walking with it or whatever, Martin. It’s our best bet right now to make sure that Elias doesn’t suddenly think our skulls need a good lead piping.”
The words made Martin flush, although he wasn’t quite sure why. “I don’t even know if it likes me or not…”
“Only you would be worried if an Eldritch abomination likes you or not, Martin,” Tim said flatly. He nicked the polaroid back from Sasha, squinting at it. “Who are you, Joe Spooky?”
Wouldn’t Martin like to know.
The next dream was different.
Martin was beginning to wonder if this was going to be an every night event. Not that he necessarily minded, of course, it was just that usually roughly 70% of Martin’s dreams were of the wet variety and he quite appreciated the stress relief. But maybe this was more important.
He was in the Institute library. It was the largest room in the Institute, and fairly grandiose, with large arching ceilings and floor-to-ceiling windows that let soft London light stream in. The bookshelves were old and carved, and held promises of fantastic tomes and hidden secrets. Martin had always adored it, had adored the scant tables full of tired grad students and the click of the librarian’s heels as they strode down the aisles searching for books. It had always felt so official and professional and academic, exactly what Martin had always dreamed of being. The library felt like an aspiration for the kind of person Martin wanted to be. The kind of person he’d probably never get to be.
Now, in the dream, he was standing in the middle of a cramped aisle, surrounded by bookshelves. Judging from scanning the titles, he was in the middle of the Beholding section, under the ‘S’s. There was a man just ahead of him, angled so Martin couldn’t see his face. But his profile was familiar: tall, lanky, skinny, with uncontrolled hair.
He was holding a book open in his hands, thick and bound with leather, but as Martin drew closer he saw that there was no writing in it. Every page, weathered and old, was completely blank.
Which made sense, because when the Archivist turned around Martin saw that it had not magically grown any eyes. But it seemed more present than usual - it almost seemed happy to see Martin. It snapped the book shut, the ghost of a pleased expression on its face.
“Right on time. You’re predictable, Martin.”
“I’ve been told that,” Martin said, shocked still. “Sorry - you can talk? And say things?”
“A steam locomotive is a type of railway locomotive that produces its pulling power through a steam engine,” the Archivist informed him, somewhat nonsensically. “These locomotives are fueled by burning combustible material – usually coal, wood, or oil – to produce steam in a boiler. The steam moves reciprocating pistons which are mechanically connected to the locomotive's main wheels. Both fuel and water supplies are carried with the locomotive, either on the locomotive itself or in wagons pulled behind.”
“Uh. Right. Listen, Mr. Archivist -”
“The monarch butterfly or simply monarch (Danaus plexippus) is a milkweed butterfly (subfamily Danainae) in the family Nymphalidae,” the Archivist continued. “Other common names depending on region include milkweed, common tiger, wanderer, and black veined brown. It may be the most familiar North American butterfly, and is considered an iconic pollinator species.”
“Okay. Right.” Martin stepped forward and, with daring that surprised himself, grabbed the Archivist’s arm. “I need you to focus. I know you used to be human. I know that you were alive, once. I guess that person could be dead, but - but I don’t feel like he is. What’s your name, Archivist? Your real name?”
The Archivist stopped short, expression puzzled. It tilted its head, creasing its eye sockets. “File corrupted. This information cannot be accessed.”
“What about where you were born? Your mother’s name, your father’s?”
“File corrupted,” the Archivist informed him severely. It didn’t move from his grip, pliant and supple. “Information cannot be accessed.”
“Okay. Great. So - so you don’t remember.” Too late, Martin realized that he was still holding its arm, and that it was sending Danaus plexippus fluttering through his stomach, and he quickly released it. “And you can’t hold a conversation. That’s fine. What do we need to do, Archivist? What can I do to help you?”
It was silent for a long moment, and Martin almost wished for the eyes back - even if they were wrong and inhuman, at least the forehead one seemed to have some semblance of attention. “No information found. The Archivist cannot be helped.”
“Then why do you keep asking me?!”
“Don’t you ever need what you can’t have?” the Archivist asked, and Martin stopped short. “Pity me, Martin. I walk endless dreams and you were the only one to ever want to help me. You were the only one who ever cared. There are people in London who will help you, Martin. Find Gerard Keay. I can help him help you. But I can’t help myself.” The Archivist dropped the book, and it shattered on the floor like it was made of ceramic. It hunched in on itself, curling up, hugging itself. “I did this to myself. Help me, Martin. Help me. Help me -”
Finally. Finally, something useful! “I said I will, didn’t I?” Martin said, as soothingly as he could, but even he could only do so much. “Come on, chin up. I’ll help. Don’t worry. No, please don’t cry -”
But the Archivist was crying, and then he was screaming, and Martin was tossed out of the dream by the scruff of his neck like a drunk at the bar.
There was no Gerard Keay in the phonebook.
There was no Gerard Keay in the internet. When Sasha looked it up, there was no Gerard Keay registered to vote. When Tim swindled his way into the city records, they couldn’t find evidence of one living in London. There was one that had, famously, murdered his mother and was sent to prison over it, but everyone doubted it was the same guy, seeing as he was dead and all.
Tim and Sasha proclaimed it a dead end, but seeing as it was literally their only lead they kept at it. There was nothing in the employee records, less than legally obtained - and, for that matter, no employee records of their mysterious and ruggedly handsome Archivist Joe Spooky, as Tim had begun calling him - and not so much as a credit card bill. Gerard Keay, whoever he was, was a ghost.
After a fruitless day of searching, they began to get more creative. Sasha disappeared into Artifact Storage to milk her contacts there, Tim hit up his old buddies in research, and Martin baked a batch of biscuits and made his rounds among the secretaries and receptionists.
“What, Gerard Keay?” Diane asked, nibbling her choco chip biscuit. “He should be sleeping in the stacks right now. Lazy bugger.”
A stunning and unprecedented double victory for Martin.
He texted Sasha and Tim the news, and they came running down to the library. Sasha kicked the door down in her high heels, and Tim was panting and out of breath when they practically crashed into the reception desk. Diane looked unamused as she delicately nibbled on her biscuit. Martin didn’t even have time to glow with quiet happiness that he had his coworker’s numbers. Nobody ever gave him their numbers!
“Where in the stacks, Diane?” Tim panted, fists clenching so hard on the counter that his knuckles turned white. “Where is he?”
“What are the chances?” Sasha whispered to herself. “Is this the work of fate? An uncaring god?”
“I’m not his mother,” Diane said crossly. “Thank goodness.”
“I know where he is,” Martin said, startling everyone.
And he did. He was right where Martin thought he might be - in the section on the history of the Beholding, under the ‘S’s. Exactly where Joe Spooky - damn it, now even Martin was calling the Archivist by the dumb nickname - was last night. But he wasn’t bent over books or rattling his chains. In fact, he appeared to be asleep.
Gerard Keay lay in the middle of the aisle, exactly where the Archivist had been last night, head pillowed on a particularly thick encyclopedia. He was snoring loudly and obnoxiously. The first thing Martin noticed about him was the frankly improbable size of his gauges. The second thing he noticed was the eyeliner, My Chemical Romance shirt, vans, and baggy jeans with wallet chains. He looked like he had walked straight out of a 2008 Hot Topic. He was a young man, much younger than Martin, and his placid sleeping face betrayed a youth that seemed at odds with the improbable number of scars littering his body. Most notably, his shirt was hiked down a little, revealing a large eye tattoo covering his clavicle. His hands had tattoos of eyes on each knuckle. The effect reminded Martin uncomfortably of Joe Spooky. The Archivist. They were not going with Joe Spooky.
“Is that him?” Sasha whispered. “He looks like an undergrad.”
“How is this kid going to help us?” Tim whispered skeptically back. “He looks like his bedtime is midnight and his Mum just, like, doesn’t understand.”
“Joe Spooky - I mean, the Archivist said that he was our only hope,” Martin whispered furiously back.
“Hah! You’ve submitted to calling it Joe Spooky!”
“It’s so rude!”
“It’s so rude how it keeps staring with its billion creepy little eyes -”
“Why are you talking so loudly in a library,” Gerard Keay said, very loudly, in a library.
All three assistants froze guiltily.
“I told everyone else,” Gerard said, still without opening his eyes, “I don’t do exorcisms, seances, summonings, tarot readings, investigations, pentagrams, scrying, ritual incantations, human sacrifice, animal sacrifice, amoebic sacrifice, spells, magick, magic without the k, magik without the c, or wicca. I’m a monster hunter. All I do is hunt monsters. And books.”
The assistants traded glances.
“We’re the archival assistants,” Sasha said finally, stepping forward. “We don’t need you to do any of those things. We just need information.”
Gerard Keay opened his eyes. They were a watery blue, but scanned the small team with a critical eye. “The archival assistants.”
“That’s us,” Tim confirmed. “Sorry, how old are you?”
“Thirty three,” the obviously nineteen year old said. He closed his eyes again. “Sorry, can’t help you. I’m taking a nap.”
“You don’t even know what it is we want,” Tim snapped.
“You’re fully aware of the curse placed on the position and you’re invested in not dying, so you want me to break the curse for you?” Gerard asked, without opening his eyes. “Been there. Done that. I’m the best demon slash book hunter in Great Britain. Never lost a demon. Never failed to find a book. But there is one case that I will always regret. It was a cloudy day. December 23rd, 2015. Almost Christmas. When the broad walked in, I knew she would be trouble -”
“Is he going to tell us his life story?” Sasha whispered to Martin.
“ - it was my greatest failure. I can’t help you. Nobody can help you. Write out your will while you still have the chance. If you have any valuable books...you know where I am.”
Martin had not wasted almost an entire day of his very limited time tracking down their only lead to be turned away by an art major. He walked forward, crossing his arms and looking down at the kid. The kid didn’t bother opening his eyes, as unimpressed by him as ever.
Well, fine. So what if Martin wasn’t impressive. Or a demon hunter. So what if he only had three months to live. He wasn’t going to spend that time giving up. And he wasn’t going to be intimidated by a film noir wannabe.
“The Archivist asked us specifically to find you,” Martin stressed. He rapidly called upon his most useful, and indeed only, skill: rampant lying. “It said that you were the best demon hunter in the whole world. That you were the only one who could uncover the truth.”
Gerard cracked open an eye. “It said that? It talked to you?”
“Sure did,” Tim jumped in, walking over and flashing his most signature winning smile. Gerard blushed a bit. “Go find legendary demon hunter Gerard Keay, Joe - The Archivist said. He’s always a good help to desperate folks. Because that’s what we are. Desperate.”
Just to cover all their bases, Sasha batted her eyelashes too. “We’re just so desperate.”
Bingo. Gerard flushed deeper, but after gesturing for them to step back he rolled to his feet in one smooth motion. It was only then that Martin noticed that he was wearing a black leather trenchcoat, which had apparently been repurposed as a pillow and now resettled into a creased and somewhat crumpled overcoat. He surveyed the three of them with a critical and cutting teenage eye. The most cutting eye of all.
“You three are going to be trouble,” he proclaimed finally, like he was nailing his 95 theses to the church doors. “I can smell it on you. However, I will help you. Why? The Archivist appears in everyone’s dreams. Everyone who’s connected to the veil. But it never speaks to us. Why? Nobody knows. But it spoke to you.” Gerard sized Martin up, gaze lingering on his roundness and his friendly shape. “Why you, of all people?”
Martin didn’t know. He shrugged helplessly. He didn’t really know anything that was going on in his life anymore. Nothing made sense, and adult life was distressingly confusing.
“Quick question, Gerard,” Sasha said, half-raising her hand. “Why were you sleeping in the stacks? Are you a student?”
“My education was in the school of hard knocks,” Gerard said severely, effectively conveying that he had never stepped inside the school system in his life. “I just sneak in here to use the showers and get some reading done sometimes. It’s not a crime.”
The assistants stared at him blankly. Finally, Tim said cautiously, “Are you homeless ?”
“My home is the open road.”
So that was how Martin, Sasha, and Tim recruited a homeless teenager into their fight against death, fate, and god. It didn’t seem like he would help very much. But surely, Martin reasoned, a homeless teenager who sleeps in a library must know an awful lot about most things. Homeless people really seemed to have life figured out, to Martin.
Besides, there was one thing that Gerard - “Call me Gerry, if we’ll be working together” - had neglected to mention, and one thing that Martin’s coworkers hadn’t picked up on. The Institute had a security guard on staff. His name was Chris and he was partial to jammy dodgers, although he was trying to watch his cholesterol. Chris wasn’t overly attentive to his job, but he was a fair hand at making sure vagrants didn’t spend all day sleeping in the stacks for weeks at a time.
Which meant that Gerry had a connection to the Institute that he hadn’t divulged. That Elias, maybe even the Archivist, wanted him there.
Being a detective hurt Martin’s brain. He hoped this was over soon.
It was lunch time, the employees milling about aimlessly as they packed up their lunches and went to the cafeteria in silent celebration of their ordinary lives, but today Martin and the others spent it cooped up in the Archives. They had meant to interrogate their newest lackadaisical ally, but he had ended up interrogating them instead.
Also, Martin ‘accidentally’ let it slip about the cot he had found in a small room off the library, and had ‘accidentally’ slipped Gerry a key, which made him a lot more co-operative. He pretended not to notice Sasha and Tim’s alarmed looks. He wasn’t going to let a young guy sleep in the stacks for whoever knows how long. It was cruel. The Institute had a shower in Artifact Storage too. It turns out that you really could live here, if you had to.
They weren’t completely sure if they had the authority to do all of this. But the Archivist had gotten Elias to give them space, which probably meant that nobody was going to stop them, so...why not?
“My life is disintegrating,” Tim said, dead eyed, as Gerry ruthlessly skittered his chalk over their carefully laid plans and monologued about how they were all bad. “This isn’t how I wanted to go out.”
Martin frowned as Sasha patted him sympathetically on the arm, taking notes on what Gerry was saying with her other hand. “How did you want to go out?”
“Big revenge plot against the Stranger,” Tim said glumly. “I was imagining explosives and a crowbar and everything. But everybody knows that archival assistants die mysteriously, covered up by the police.”
Some part of Martin, of course, agreed - that it was a terrible thing, to die unknown. But a larger part of him thought that it wasn’t so bad. He had lived unknown. And people always wanted to go out as they had lived, right?
Of course, this train of thought led him to the Archivist. Martin perked up immediately, raising his hand and stopping short Gerry’s extended lecture about the nature of reality to a fascinated Sasha and a bored Tim. “Gerry, would you like to meet the Archivist?”
Gerry scowled. “No.”
That stopped Martin short. “Are you sure? You might be able to like...get a read from him or something?”
“I’ve had quite enough interaction with archivists, thanks,” Gerry said coldly, and turned back to his chalkboard. “Now, we all know that the Magnus Institute is a hotbed for supernatural activity, and that it is one of the premier centers of worship and sacrifice in the world. Although the general public remains ignorant of the fear entities that control our lives, one may argue that humanity has subconsciously understood their existence for quite some time. For example. Lovecraft was said to have a special connection with quite a few of them…”
“Did you know Gertrude?” Martin asked.
“I thought I did,” Gerry said shortly. “Anyway, how does the Magnus Institute worship the Eye? Why do its employees have no fear of death or paganism? The answer lies within the Statements. The Magnus Institute is one of the first temples of worship of the Entities in the United Kingdom, and as such it’s an unprecedented bank of knowledge.” He turned to the assistants, who were all looking politely attentive. “I trust you’ve already combed through all of the available statements on the Beholding and any information on Rituals publically available. Of course, I’m the world expert on rituals, but it doesn’t hurt.”
Everybody stared at him blankly.
“Like,” Tim said finally, “the shite that Londoners come in with about the one time a giant spider ate their cat?”
“That is why the Institute technically exists,” Sasha pointed out. “I always thought we just took them so the acquisitions department of Artifact Storage can steal the cool shit people find in the charity shops.”
“We haven’t looked through any of them,” Martin said apologetically to Gerry, who looked horrified. “I was mostly just in research, which doesn’t really interact with them...do you think they’re important?”
“Holy shit, you’re all doomed,” Gerry said.