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"So what would you do in an apocalypse?"
"Oh, me? Just die, probably."
How flippantly I used to answer that question. We'd all laugh, and have another round of shots. "Just die, probably". What a load of horseshit. In the moment of happening, your basal instincts kick in and you just go, do, run, stay alive. Even if it's not the apocalypse and just a woman full of worms. Especially if it's a woman full of worms. Or the tall shadow of something that might have been - no. Not Sasha. Even more especially if it's a man - no, not a man, a thing - with long limbs and bright, gleaming teeth in the darkness.
The tunnels beneath the institute were musty, but not in the way that long unused places are. It wasn’t the stench of time, but the stench of decay, of unnatural stone and things that should have been left long buried.
Martin had been ready to fight, when the thing calling itself Michael undid the tunnel, until I pointed out its hands. I don’t know why Martin didn’t notice until I told him. I don’t want to think about why that is, it was so painfully, horrifyingly obvious. I will admit though that I didn’t notice that the door was a not-door until it was too late.
From what I can tell on the tape that was salvaged - and there wasn’t much, unsurprisingly, that place fucked most of it up - time wasn’t passing the way we thought it was. Or at least, how I thought it was. I haven’t talked to Martin about it. Maybe I should, but he hasn’t talked to me about it either. We seem to have mutually decided to not touch it ever again. Maybe that’s for the best.
The corridors were long, endless, and spiralling. It fuzzed my brain in a bizarrely soothing way - it was just so easy to lose yourself in it, padding down that hypnotic carpet, catching fleeting glimpses in the panelled mirrors. Martin was panicking. I was numb. I think at one point we saw someone curled up against the wall but something in her posture made me guide Martin down an adjacent hall. Even now I wish I hadn’t, if she was even real. She was probably just like us. Trapped. I’m still not sure how we managed to get out. I think I found a door, or willed it to be there and it was. All I know is that we slipped out like ... like the universe parted around us in a wave. Then there was the body, and the confusion, and I’d had enough.
God did I want to leave.
But I know now that even when I’m not physically there it will follow me.
I started seeing it in my dreams. His form was always hazy, slipping between round-faced cherub and that long-handed creature from the tunnels. But there was never any doubt as to what he was. The first time he appeared I was breathless and running, jello-like through dream fog. The second, I screamed. The third, I screamed at him. The fourth, he said in that strange echo, “Are you quite done?” I wasn’t.
The fifth time ‘round I pretty much was. It - he had never made any move to threaten or hurt me. Just … waited, and watched as I ran or yelled or whatever I was doing then. Despite the fact that I somehow knew I was dreaming, I also knew without a shadow of a doubt that he was not part of my dreamscape, not some figment of my memories made flesh in unconsciousness. He was there and he wanted to talk.
So we talked.
“Have you ever thought about sprucing up the place?”
I gave him a withering look.
“I’m just saying,” he continued, ignoring me. “The fog is certainly thematically appropriate but ever so boring.”
“Not sure what you want me to do about it.”
“Well,” he said with the air of someone explaining something to a small child, folding his arms across his chest, making the double-image of those grotesque hands seem even more illogical. “It is your mind. It’s malleable to what you want. Try it.”
“I -”
“Try. It.”
I did. I don’t know how to explain what I did except - I mean, have you ever lucid dreamed? It’s just strange. Imagine sitting in your room and forcing your knicknacks and bed and desk to morph into a public park, and it actually does.
“See? That wasn’t so hard, now was it. And now we have a place to sit and chat.”
We did. A dream-figure brought us dream-coffee. Michael never touched his; mine was a hazelnut brew. Not even my favorite. What’s the point of having dream coffee if it’s not your favorite type?
“What do you want?”
Michael laced his fingers and rested his round chin on top, propping his elbows up on the table. It made me feel sick, that double image of impossible hands flickering in and out of view. “Cutting right to the chase, are we? Suit yourself. I thought we might have a little small talk before business.”
I laughed with no humor. “Small talk? ‘Gee, Michael, long time no see! How’re the kids?’”
“Dead,” he said promptly. I swallowed. He giggled, high-pitched and echoing. “Listen.” He leaned forward towards me. “I need you to do me a favor.”
“Please, Michael, tell me why I would do you a goddamn favor.”
“Because I know where your brother is.”
I froze. “My brother is dead.”
“Mm, dead is such a … malleable state. But no, he’s not dead. And I know where he is.”
“So tell me.”
“No.”
I felt rage bubble up my throat as I repeated his own negation back at him. “‘No.’”
“Not until you do me a favor.”
“Fine,” I spat. “What’s your fucking favor.”
“I need you to find a woman named Elizabeth Bleys. She is hiding someplace where she shouldn’t be, deep within one of my temples. I want her removed.”
“Removed.”
“Yes.”
“Removed how.”
“Any which way you think is appropriate!” Michael smiled very widely. I looked away.
“Any tips? Hints? Can I phone a friend?” I shot back.
“Oh, that won’t be necessary,” he breezed. “You know it all already.”
And I did, like he’d oh-so-gently dropped a novel’s worth of information into my brain with those sharp hands of his. My dream coffee cup fell with a clatter to its saucer and Michael laughed and laughed and laughed.
---
I took a leave of absence from the Institute the very next day. It’s funny - I didn’t feel the familiar tug of the place as i walked down the scuffed steps to the London pavement. Maybe it knew this wasn’t a permanent leave, so it was content to let me take a break. I didn’t say goodbye to any of the other staff. Why bother? They knew I’d be back.
I booked the first flight I could find to New England that was within an hour’s drive to where I needed to go, and I was watching English soil recede from sight within five hours of fleeing the Institute. All I brought was a backpack with a change of clothes and my phone and charger. I wouldn’t be there long.
In and out. Go in, get this lady, get out. Knock her out if I had to. Certainly don’t hurt her. Find out where my brother is.
If he even still …
I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me that Michael might be lying until I was ten kilometers up. I mean, why would he lie? Unless he wanted something from me? But why me, he could have hassled anyone else to get rid of this lady, someone more qualified. It didn’t make any sense. He had to be telling the truth.
Had to or I might as well have gone mad.
At some point I dozed off and had blissfully blank dreams. Just mist and haze and the vague feeling that it was a bad idea to fly, for some reason. Something about heights. Something about an open blue sky.
---
When we landed it was late morning, despite having left London in the afternoon and having gone through an eight hour flight. The time change wasn’t helping the pounding headache I had, which in turn was not ideal for the vertigo. I felt it as soon as I stood - the cramped cabin around me began to spin and swim and I had to tightly grip the seatback in front of me for a long, tense moment before things stabilized. A handsome young flight attendant was giving me a concerned look as he did a last trash collection down the aisle.
“Sir, are you alright?” His eyes were big and brown and I thought abruptly of Martin.
“Yes, fine, thanks,” I said. I could tell I sounded as distracted and muddled as I felt. “Just a little claustrophobic. Ready to get outside.”
“Well, it’s good that the weather here is nice,” he said bracingly. “Warm compared to the UK right now. You have a great vacation, sir.”
“Yeah,” I said, watching the attendant continue to move down the aisle, smiling widely. “Vacation.”
I got the cheapest rental money could buy, meaning what my brother used to lovingly call a ‘trolley with an engine’. No heat, no AC, no radio, not even a damn clock on the dashboard. This one was extra special - it was so bare-bones that it still had crank windows. I tossed my phone in the back seat with my backpack; I wouldn’t need it for directions. Besides, it was too rushed to get any sort of international plan in place. It was basically a very expensive piece of useless metal right now. I very nearly had a fatal accident right at the start - damned Americans and their right-hand driving - but it happens, I was fine, everyone was fine, it’s fine. I wasn’t sure how much of a drive I had ahead of me, but I automatically merged onto a nondescript freeway and I was on my merry way.
The building was probably imposing and very old-school by American standards but it resembled plenty of antique buildings back home; all cracked stone, weaving ivy, dark wrought iron fences. I knew I was here but I was actually at a bit of a loss of where to go next; it didn’t look quite abandoned, but I didn’t think it was still in use as a psychiatric facility. There were cars parked in a side lot. Lights were on in windows. I circled the block a little anxiously, my stalwart little car chugging faithfully along, until I passed a commemorative plaque. I pulled the car up to the curve, slapped the hazards, and practically rolled out of the driver’s side to take a closer look.
“Facility blah blah blah psychiatric blah blah blah in use from 1836 to 1942 at which point blah blah blah now administrative staff for St. Jude’s Hospital blah blah decommissioned blah blah.”
I didn’t realize until I finished that I was tapping my fingers distractedly against my thighs. I shoved my hands into my jeans pockets - almost too aggressively - and I exhaled heavily, glanced down the street -
There was someone in the window.
The commemorative plaque was framed on either side by large windows, slightly above the level of my head - off street level to prevent peepers, presumably - and to my left was a shadow on the glass.
It was tall - too tall, too thin - with a halo of wiry hair. I watched, horrified, as it slowly pressed a single hand against the glass. Its nails were ragged but long, and I could hear it deep in my head, the screech of keratin on glass panes -
A hand grasped my shoulder and I whirled around, hands pulled up near my face, ready to punch and panic.
“Whoa there, son, take a breather.”
I was a cop, I thought wildly, was I doing anything illegal? Would I go to jail? In America? I was good as dead. As my breathing slowed, though, I realized it was some sort of security guard. He was shining the flashlight directly into my face and I dropped my gaze to the pavement.
“The grounds are closed,” he said with the air of someone who was well accustomed to dealing with hooligans. “You can come back tomorrow during visiting hours from eight to five.”
“Sorry,” I said, not knowing how else to respond.
“Can’t have people just wandering around, so I’d appreciate it if you vacated.”
“Right. Right! Sorry,” I repeated, backing towards my car. “I’ll - I’ll come back tomorrow, thanks, have a good night.”
“You too,” the guard said, and the flashlight beam retreated back into the darkness. I sat in the driver’s seat for a moment, breathing heavily. I could feel in my gut, so strongly, that tomorrow would be too late. I had to act and I had to act now. But how would I get in? The doors were, presumably, locked, and I had that guard to avoid now. I buried my face in my hands with a groan. What on earth had I gotten myself into?
“I don’t know, I think you’re doing a wonderful job,” a voice said in my ear. I bit back a very undignified scream.
“Michael. How lovely of you to join me.”
Michael oozed from behind the driver’s seat and into the passenger’s side next to me. “I call shotgun!” He giggled, high and uncanny as always, and fixed me with a sharp and unwavering gaze. I met it as best as I could. “You’re doing wonderfully. And you are so, so close - tantalizingly so.”
“Great, thanks for the feedback!” I said, dripping with sarcasm. “It’s too bad I can’t get in.”
“And why not?”
“It’s closed. Locked up for the night.”
“Oh, what’s a lock to a master key?” He idly raised one hand and loudly scraped the roof of the car with one horrifying fingernail, leaving a groove. “You still don’t know what you’re doing, do you?”
“Tell me, how would I have any idea what I was doing with this.”
“Come now! You’re an archival assistant, are you not? I would have thought that our dear lovely Archivist has impressed some research skills onto you. I suppose not.” He abruptly punctured the roof with his nail. “Would you like to know?” Without waiting for a response, he continued. “Of course you do. As much as I love reeling you in to my camp, the Watcher has certainly left an impression on you. So I’ll tell you. Smirke designed this building, you see. It's mine." I didn't argue the point. "Dear Lizzie worked here as a temp for a while on the museum staff. But she stayed after hours - too long, too late. She micromanaged. I didn't realize what she was until it was too late." He was silent for a bit, and I waited. He seemed to be waiting as well. "The Web," He said, exasperated, when he realized I wasn't going to say anything. "The spider. She was attempted to infiltrate, I suppose, but very quickly realized that she'd underestimated. Her God dumped her abruptly, and now, well. Now she's overrunning the place. It's very unsightly, you know. I'd like you to clean it up."
“So what do I do now, then?”
Michael pointed out the front windshield with one long finger. Up ahead, at the center of the block, was a small gated-in courtyard, with a dark door leading into the building. The gate was padlocked. “What about it?”
“Climb the fence.”
“Okay, great, I’ll be in the courtyard, but then what?”
“Climb the fence,” Michael repeated. “Just do it.”
I stared quizzically out the windshield, opened my mouth to say something, glanced to my right - he was gone. Typical. Just typical. I heaved another sigh, made sure that the security guard was well out of sight, and made a break for it.
Climbing the fence wasn’t too hard; I’m no adonis but I’m pretty limber, and I was able to haul myself to the top in short order; it was about three meters, maybe four? Off the ground, and I decided that it was a short enough distance to just drop from the top, so I did - but I knew as soon as my feet hit the ground that I’d made a mistake. The world around me was hazy, staticky, heavy - and the feeling was not unfamiliar. I was back in Michael’s world.
I resisted the urge to have a panic attack and slowly turned. The door to the building was ajar, just slightly, just a sliver of darkness beyond. I shivered and moved where I had to - forward.
Inside the facility was clammy and musty and reminded me, bizarrely, of the tunnels beneath the archives. I let the non-panicking portion of my brain file that away for later; maybe this was more of Smirke’s handiwork, somehow, or at least Smirke adjacent. I was able to navigate to the window I’d seen from the outside pretty quickly. The halls were bare concrete, linoleum tiles long since ripped up and bare bulb fixtures buzzing overhead. On my left were the gaping mouths of empty doorways leading to darkened rooms, and on my right were the rows of windows I saw from outside. When I reached a point fairly close to where I remember being outside, I used my shirt sleeve to rub around some grime before trying to peer out. What I saw confirmed my suspicions. Where before there was innocuous streets, humming lamp posts, gum-pocked sidewalks, there was now only a flat horizon of a surface so generic and plain that it became difficult to look at. Like when you glitch out of bounds in a video game - no one was ever meant to go here, so why waste any processing power on making it look like anything? The sky beyond was a swirling oilslick of colors that actually made me feel a bit nauseous. I pulled away from that window pretty hastily. Wherever I was, outside was not somewhere I was meant to be. Not yet.
A sudden noise jolted me out of my horrified contemplation of Michael’s world. It was distant, slightly echoing off the stone walls, and - crying? It sounded like someone crying. I shivered again and, spurred onwards because, well, where else would I go? Outside? Unlikely. So I wandered deeper and deeper into the depths of the defunct facility, hating every second of it. The crying changed locations a few times but I was bizarrely able to keep track of it. Sometimes I’d hear something from one of the dark rooms beyond the empty doorways that lined the halls. I ignored it as best as I could. For some reason I knew that those things were not what I was there for. It was almost cliche; I’m no stranger to horror movies. I’ve seen The Grudge, and The Shining, and all sorts of films - and these halls were pulled straight from some joint nightmare that Stanley Kubrick and Guillermo del Toro had together after one too many drinks.
Time passed, I knew that much. The exact amount, well, who could say? Definitely not me. The screams faded and amplified and danced around me periodically, and I’d long since become lost. I tried not to worry about how I’d get back out. Whether or not I ever would. I entered a large cross-section of different hallways; either side, right to left, stretched more indomitable hazy darkness. I passed a few without incident, and then -
I knew immediately, glancing down that side corridor, that I’d found her.
I could barely see past a few feet, through thick pearlescent cobwebs. Dreamlike, I reached out. They melted before my touch, like cotton candy, dissolving into cloudy whisps. The crying was closer and louder now, I could make out individual words.
“Kill me kill me kill me kill me kill me kill please oh god end this kill me - ”
The webs became thicker and I couldn’t part them so easily any more. Instead of melting at my touch they clung like lint to my hands, my clothing, my hair. Normally this would have disgusted me - I don’t mind spiders too much, I actually like them, really - I’ve always hated the way that cobwebs felt on my skin - but I felt strangely disconnected from my body. The haze of webs around me felt just unreal enough, just enough like something fabricated in my own head, that they weren’t having that same impact.
I reached the end of the hall without even realizing. I was idly picking a particularly large clingy bit of fiber from my shirt sleeve when I glanced up and saw her. The hall was a dead end, and the doorways lining either side were completely webbed over. I could hear some frankly horrifying noises from the insides. Like tortured animals being slowly eaten alive. The dead end of the hall was encompassed in a giant sprawling net, and at its center was a girl. Each of her limbs was completely encased in silk, pulled taut, and the image of someone being tied up to be drawn and quartered rose unbidden in my mind. She had thin dirty blond hair in a sticky halo around her tear-stained face. At my appearance her ceaseless chant had risen to a crescendo, “Kill me kill me please god end this kill me - ”
“Could you do me a favor and just, be quiet, for just one minute?” I said, probably too patiently. She didn’t. “I want to help! I just need a moment to - to think - ”
She was still screaming and crying and I felt something inside me click. I collapsed to my knees. There was a ringing in my head, resonating with her pleading, my head was buried in my hands suddenly, my vision was swimming - and everything went suddenly, painfully quiet. I looked up. My hands were red.
All feeling came suddenly rushing back to me and bile rose in my throat. I choked it down and stumbled back the way I came, ripping at web, leaving red-stained silk as I went. I think I might have been crying, though I couldn’t be sure. As I reached the main halls again I was blinded suddenly. Had I died? It was so bright, too bright, it hurt so much after being in the dark halls for so long -
“Hey! I thought I told you to get lost! How did you get in here?” It was the security guard from earlier, I realized with a jolt, shining that damned flashlight again. I felt my fingers flex unconsciously, and I shivered and finally looked away from the beam of light. “I’m talking to you, dude, I’m gonna have to call the police!” I did my best to ignore both the guard and the urge to turn back to him, teeth bared in a manic grin. I wondered if my eyes would reflect like an animal. I shook my head, both to clear it and to look like I was protesting. I needed to get out. I could hear the guard slowly approaching, one hand on a baton (or gun, most likely, I realized - this was America, after all) and I abruptly remembered something from when I was trapped with Martin.
Slowly, I reached out and placed one bloody hand flat on the concrete wall, ignoring the warnings from the approaching man, and, remembering what Michael told me in my dreams, willed.
And there was a door. It was red, so red that my handprint didn’t show up on it as I pulled shakily away. I could still hear the guard behind me, but overlayed on that I could hear quiet giggling. My hands wavered as I grasped the brass knob, ignoring the shouts behind me, and as I pulled it open I was pushed heavily from behind, and I fell through, landing on my hands and knees, and -
“Whoa there, Tim, that’s quite the spill.”
I looked up. I was sprawled on the floor in a horrifyingly familiar room. Basira was behind me, looking studiously at the door I’d stumbled through. “I don’t know what you could’ve tripped over, you klutz,” she teased without malice, reaching out one hand to help me up. I looked down at my hands. They were clean. I took Basira’s hand and let her help haul me to my feet.
“Blech, you’re a bit clammy,” she complained, trying to surreptitiously wipe her hand on her jeans and pausing to look into my face. “God, Tim, are you alright? You’re pale. Aren’t you meant to be on vacation for the next few days? Are you ill?”
I shook my head, not sure which question I was answering. “I’m fine,” I answered automatically. “I forgot - I forgot my phone here when I left the other day, I was just coming to pick it up. Made a wrong turn by accident.”
“All right,” Basira said, obviously not buying it but already resigned to letting it go. “Rest up. You seriously don’t look well. If you’re not doing better in a day or two I’m making Martin drag you to a clinic.”
I was already waving her off as I left the room. “Have a good weekend,” I said automatically. “It’s Tuesday!” She protested as I pulled the door shut behind me. I looked at my hands again. Still clean, if a bit chapped. I swallowed heavily and took off at a sprint. I needed to get out of here.
I felt a lurch as I stumbled out the front door. God damn it. “Michael!” I bellowed. I didn’t bother trying to keep quiet. It didn’t matter. I was back in his world.
“Hallo, Tim!” I whirled around. He was leaning against the doorframe of the dream archive. Somehow it was large enough to accommodate his hands. “I really must thank you. You did such a thorough and wonderful job.”
“Shut up,” I said vehemently. “Hold up your end of the bargain now. Where is he?”
“Who?”
“Don’t be fucking coy with me!” I shouted. “Where is my brother!”
“Why would I know that?” He laughed and it echoed around my head.
I stared up at him, horrified. “You said -”
“Oh, come now, Tim,” he admonished, giggling. “I lied. He is most certainly dead.”
“You -” I couldn’t spit the rest of it out because I was already lunging up the stairs. My fingers jammed painfully against the door. “You don’t need to be so upset,” he complained, on the street now. I whirled around. “I needed to get you going somehow, you know? And look at how well you’re doing now! All the way here from America, I must say that I’m impressed. My quickest protege so far.”
I rankled silently and slowly descended the steps to stand eye-to-eye with him. Despite his horrifying hands, I was still a good few inches taller than him so I could seethe from the higher ground. The blonde lashes framing his very blue eyes reminded me suddenly of a Raphael painting. “Why did you do this,” I whispered, but I knew the answer already.
Apparently he decided to humor me, because he reached up with one impossible hand and cupped my face, almost gently, as he leaned forward and up. It felt like someone putting a plastic bag full of pebbles on my cheek. “Oh, Tim,” he murmured in my ear, standing on his toes. “My darling Tim. I’ve been there your whole life. I didn’t do anything. I just spurred you along.”
His teeth were very even and very white and razor-sharp on the edge of my ear. The world swam, I might have screamed, and I finally jolted up in my bed, sweaty and clammy, tangled in sheets that, for a moment, I did not recognize. I felt a lot of things in that moment; despair, certainly. Horror. Perhaps a smattering of helplessness.
Despite all that, what bubbled to my lips was a laugh.