Chapter Text
Another dud. Martin closes his laptop’s recording software with a sigh. As annoying as it is to investigate ‘normal’ statements- for lack of a better word- he’s glad he doesn’t need to bother Sasha about this one in particular; despite being about a possessed nightgown, the account was earnest and poetic, bringing to mind his own embarrassing amateur poetry. He related far too much to the statement giver to be properly annoyed at the obviously fabricated story, and he knew he would react defensively if asked to look into it. Not to mention there wasn’t much to look into in the first place, considering any identifiable details were replaced with philosophical tangents. He cringed in solidarity reading a particularly whimsical line— “Could the subtle tenor of my soul be unconsciously yet desperately calling out to the energies beyond?”— and put the page down, taking a deep breath.
At the sound, Tim stops writing immediately and shoots him a grin.
“What, is it gory?”
Surprised, Martin mumbles some unintelligible denial under his breath. Tim walks over and pulls himself onto Martin’s desk, completely unaware or uncaring of his careful organized piles of paperwork. Feet banging on the metal drawers rhythmically, he continues, “Please tell me someone eats their own toenails or something. I’m dying to read something more interesting than this guy’s clogged drain. Sometimes drains just make weird sounds!”
He’s obviously trying to get Martin to open up, to create a camaraderie of sorts between the two archival assistants, but Martin wishes he would just stop trying. It’s already exhausting to keep up the facade of a competent researcher; he can’t also play at being an interesting friend. Martin shrugs half heartedly, obviously uncomfortable, hoping he can get Tim to drop it out of sheer willpower.
Undeterred, Tim chuckles, cooing. “Aww, you’re embarrassed!” He suddenly gasps, leaning into Martin’s view of the page. “No…don’t tell me there’s monster fucking. Scratch that, PLEASE tell me there’s monster fucking-“
Before Tim can catch a glimpse, Martin stumbles out of his chair, statement frantically pressed to his chest. He’s terrified; of what, he hasn’t even processed yet, but he can feel the adrenaline making him jittery and desperate to resolve the situation. He deliberately pushes his desk chair back into place and makes eye contact with Tim, whose laid-back posture and shit-eating grin has been replaced with a worried frown. “Hey… You know I won’t read something if you ask me not to. Are… you ok?”
The question bounces around Martin’s head, seemingly getting louder and more intrusive the longer he stays in the room. He feels overwhelmed and unsafe, pierced by the obvious authenticity in Tim’s voice and body language. The height of his emotion blurring any motivation to seem normal and respectable, he stutters, “I’m.. I’m going to go make some tea,” before quickly escaping to the break room.
Martin leans heavily against the counter and tries to catch his breath, realizing belatedly that he’s still tightly clutching the statement in his now sweaty hands. He looks down at it without really seeing it, annoyed at himself for letting the situation escalate so quickly. And for not getting along better with Tim and Sasha. Especially that. As bad as his work performance probably is, he wishes he could be comforted by the knowledge that he’s contributing to the work environment, relieving tension and supporting them, as friends should. And friends are exactly what Sasha intends them to be; she nonchalantly calls out to them to join her for lunch as she’s heading to the break room in the afternoons, and she’s planned some type of outing for that night. He can’t even remember the details, only that he isn’t planning on coming along.
Martin dejectedly fills the tea kettle and sets it on the burner, staring at it mindlessly until he hears the beginnings of a boil. It’s his form of meditation, he thinks, as he pulls three mugs out of the cupboard. Whoever first said ‘a watched pot never boils’ completely missed the point; watching water boil or paint dry is mind numbingly dull, yes, but those who respond with impatience squander the opportunity to simply…detach from the world for a while. To let your thoughts wash away and drift off to a simpler place. He took up the practice in high school and has been practicing it ever since, so much so that recently that inner place is becoming more tangible somehow. Sometimes he can almost feel a chill in the air.
Just as Martin reaches for the teabags, he starts to hear heavy footsteps coming toward the Archives. Confused, (no one comes down here if they can avoid it) he walks into the hall, just in time for two large men to stop in front of him, looming menacingly.
“Uh-what… can I help you with?” He suddenly wishes Tim were here.
“Delivery.” says one.
“For the Archivist.” says the other.
The first to speak pulls a nondescript package, about the size of a book, out of their heavy-duty coat, and gestures for Martin to take it. He steps back further into the doorframe, starting to doubt they have clearance to be in the Archives to begin with.
“Oh! Well, if you fill out some forms upstairs I’m sure they’ll be able to-”
“We’ll just leave it with you.” says the first, handing the package to Martin, who accepts it instinctually. It’s lighter than he’s expecting it to be.
“Make sure she gets it.” says the second.
Shocked, Martin simply watches as the men leave, realizing only after they’ve turned a corner that he can’t remember what they looked like.
–
“Wait, wait. You seriously don’t remember what they looked like?” Sasha frowns, trying to put the pieces together.
Martin’s in the midst of his third retelling of the ‘Incident of the Mysterious Package’, as Tim has been calling it. They’re all standing around his desk, Sasha having joined after Tim’s excited theorizing became too intrusive for her to work.
“I...no. I only remember my own perception of them: big, intimidating, deep voices—”
“This has to be something supernatural!” Tim gestures wildly as he rants, eyes lighting up with excitement. “There’s no way some apparently indescribable men just happened to show up at an institute dedicated to studying creepy stuff with a creepy package!” At this, he stares suspiciously at the eponymous square-shaped parcel, drawing everyone’s gaze to it. It’s nondescript, wrapped in brown construction paper, with some numbers written on the front in what seems to be sharpie, but no markings otherwise. The paper is a bit damp. Martin hasn’t been able to stop himself from glancing at it every few seconds since he put it down on his desk. He feels oddly attached, as if merely receiving the package made him responsible for it.
Ever the pragmatist, Sasha recovers first. “Well, it wasn’t a coincidence. Martin said they asked to deliver it to ‘the Archivist,’ meaning someone must have sent them here specifically.”
She takes a deep breath to let that information sink in; the tension in the room is palpable. “..but, even though they said “she”, they could be referring to Gertrude; maybe it's one of her old contacts or suppliers, or maybe it’s an old statement giver wanting to include proof…”
“Maybe it’s a magic book that turns you into a cat when you read it!” Tim’s boisterous outburst turns meditative in an instant. “The existential horror of being perceived as an unconscious animal despite your attempts to communicate and being manhandled without your consent—”
“The point is,” Sasha interrupts firmly, “we won’t know any more until we open the damn thing.”
Martin, breathes a sigh of relief, glad Sasha finally made it to the conclusion he had reached twenty minutes ago. The curiosity has been eating away at him, but a surprising sense of possessiveness had stopped him from saying anything. He spent much of the conversation in a loop of theorizing ways to smuggle the package away so he could open it alone and berating himself for even considering it. The guilt stops him from responding.
Sasha, distracted by some sort of inner turmoil, doesn’t notice. “We really should hand it over to Artifact Storage and have them process it. That’s protocol.”
“No way. You know we’ll never get it back, and that’s assuming they even get to it, with the amount of backlog they have.” Tim leans back over the desk, grabs the package, and backs up from the group in one smooth motion, startling Martin out of his reverie.
Sasha immediately reaches toward him. “Tim, don’t open it! We don’t know what it is, it might be dangerous, you said it yourself, Tim—”
The sound of paper ripping stops her instantly. Martin feels his heart beating in his throat, true terror filling the silence and stopping him from forming any expectations. Even Tim looks worried as he finishes unwrapping the parcel.
It’s a journal. Or maybe a hand-bound book. The cover is floppy but thick, covered with iridescent scales that shine even in the dingy light of the archives. It looks harmless. There’s a dark thin cord wrapped around it that Tim carefully unwinds before gently setting it on the desk, open-faced. He wipes his hands brusquely on his jeans.
Sasha shoots him a dirty look. “If that book cursed you or something, you’re still gonna die. Trying to get the cooties off because you just realized you’re impatient to a fault won’t do anything.”
“No, no, I mean—I know that! It’s just… such a weird texture.” He makes a face of distaste. “It’s like… almost, sticky? Like you expect it to be sticky, but it’s not.” Tim grimaces at Sasha’s unimpressed stare, clearly aware of the inadequacy of his description. “Whatever! Just—Touch it yourself!” He gestures angrily at the book before taking a huge step back, obviously letting Sasha take the lead as penance.
Immediately tuned into the task at hand, she examines the open pages carefully. Martin’s on the other side of the desk, but although the book is upside down from his perspective, it doesn’t make much of a difference. The pages are dark green, almost black, and covered with indecipherable, barely legible runes of some kind. They seem to be indented into the page instead of written, causing the material to warp slightly. After attempting to read the script for several minutes—it’s almost impossible to see, much less comprehend—Martin refocuses on the page as a whole, and realizes it must be covered in some type of gloss or varnish, as it’s slightly reflective. Against his better judgment, he gingerly runs a single finger down the page. It’s jarring, although he shouldn’t have been surprised; it's tacky, almost sticky, to quote Tim, making his skin crawl a bit. If he had to pick an adjective, he would say it felt waxy. “This is so weird,” He whispers under his breath.
“Yeah,” Sasha replies, still beside him, examining the writing. Martin smiles despite himself, feeling closer now to his coworkers—no, friends—than he’s felt in weeks. They have a collective problem to solve, one that he has a role in, albeit small. The knowledge that he’s contributed fills him with a deep warmth, and it's in this mood that he agrees to go out for drinks with Sasha and Tim when they ask.