Work Text:
June, 1971
Sam is dead.
She had caught the smell of the body before seeing it, like the stench of burnt meat at a barbecue persuading through her apartment, and when she had opened the door there he had been: the pitch black corpse of her cat, burnt to the point of looking like a clump of charcoal. The only reason Gertrude had recognised him had been because of his collar, the metal tag molten to the point it was illegible.
If not for the molten tag it’s possible she would’ve disregarded his death as just a cruel but normal act, the result of bothersome neighborhood kids or mean drunkards, but with the metal itself having melted she becomes suspicious.
Summer vacation always leaves her dreadfully bored and unoccupied, this year’s holidays leading her to working more than a few jobs; the library, various paper pushing, clerk jobs – and the position of a glorified little secretary at the Magnus Institute. It’s a horrible gloomy old building and it doesn’t pay that well, but it allows for ample opportunity to visit the library (at least when it is being watched over by the man whose name she hasn’t bothered to learn, who is persuaded into letting her inside the moment she bats her lashes). The library is stuffy and unsettling, the only other people Gertrude have seen visiting it being least to say unique figures, but a small price to pay for the invaluable books within.
Despite the Institute’s reputation as a house of horrors, more than a few times she has found books containing information particularly helpful to various uni assignments. Her classmates had all refused her advice, meaning the Institute was hers.
Her acquaintance with the Institute is how, on the day of her cat’s death, Gertrude knows exactly where to go and find more information about the tragedy which has befallen her.
January, 1972
While the Institute isn’t particularly populated, the inner wing is scarce with people and rarely has a noise level higher than the rustling of paper. Gertrude works mornings and studies in the evenings, refusing to be persuaded into dropping out school for the sake of a ghost house. She is quickly put to work, processing statements and quickly falling into the monotony of translating them from chicken-scratch on the paper to typewritten documents.
Gertrude nearly knocks over her mug of tea one morning, leaping out of the creaky chair when the paper she is reading mentions the fire which only eats, rushing back to the box of papers and putting together scraps. Her own recording of Sam’s fiery death, statements mentioning fire or destruction or devouring – she begins to label the documents with little notes, thematically colored orange.
July, 1973
When walking home, Gertrude sees graffiti on a concrete wall announcing KNOWLEDGE IS POWER, and she can’t stifle a bitter snort.
The first two weeks of her beginning to Know had been the most pathetic of her life, rendered curled up and feeling so incredibly weak and powerless, although KNOWLEDGE IS PAIN doesn’t quite have the same triumphant ring to it.
The Knowing had been what finally pushed her into moving into a flat of her own, unable to stand another second of knowing what her family was thinking, becoming aware of previously unknown specks and freckles in a house she had lived in for twenty-five years.
She still refuses to admit the Institute and its statements having any sort of negative effect on her, convinces herself that she would’ve started smoking a pack a day even if she hadn’t suddenly become somewhat semi-omnipresent.
The staff of the inner wing of the Institute are all quite a bit older than her, and looking back she wonders if it was a matter as basic as being of a similar age that lead her to becoming acquainted with Adelard.
Adelard is no permanent part of the Institute, coming and going as he wishes and returning to share bits of information about macabre filthy incidents from outside the nation.
The only constant at the Institute was James Wright, the new head in charge, always present in his office and watching with pallid grey eyes. As for the rest of the staff, it was a lesser gamble who would be in this day, this week, no schedule to rely on but instead a matter of luck.
Amusingly young for a priest (or whatever he claimed to be), Adelard was less than ten years her senior and had at once become very interested with the work she did. Most people did, usually in the sense of wanting some sort of spooky story, but Adelard at once saw the same pattern she did; various unrelated statements, tied in by a great fear.
She tells him about her cat and catches him by such surprise he gives a little laugh before apologising.
October, 1974
Hill Top Road’s remains does not want her here. Gertrude feels it the moment she steps out of the cab, a physical revulsion pushed against her and an inability to See. Of course, she can’t fault the house for trying – even if it only spurs her on.
There is no safety measures other than police tape, the PD investigating it as an arson due to the mutilated corpse of Raymond Fielding. There had been no sign of Agnes Montague, the apparently quite notorious owner of the house, but what truly did catch Gertrude’s attention had been the newspapers letting on about an unusually high temperature which destroyed the house’s foundation.
The same sort of unusually high temperature which not only could render a house to nothing but finely milled ashes, but also the kind that could’ve melted the metal tags of a pet collar. She still has the tags, tucked into the plastic bag belonging to the document of #1971-06-11, sometimes taking them out just to look at them and run her finger along the molten lines.
All she does manage to find in the ashes of Hill Top Road is a small tin box, miraculously having survived the fire and containing a few strands of long brown hairs. It does not escape Gertrude’s thoughts that with it so meticulously placed, unburnt and not found by the police, it is meant for her.
The excitement of it had completely swallowed up any second thoughts, holding the little box while in the cab home and tapping her nails against its wooden cover.
Thinking back, it was stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid, but she had been young and hungry and too eager. Spending a good few days tracking down various books at the Institute, statements and documents regarding the Lightless Flame.
“I’m going to Scotland,” she told James Wright in the following afternoon, and when his objections hadn’t been a matter of life and death she had simply continued with her plans.
Gertrude had taken a 5:20 AM train to Edinburgh, arriving five and a half hours later. She had been too swept up in plans and studies to remember eating, meaning she barged out of the train to stretch, smoke and then track down a small food stand and devour a lukewarm plate with a can of Coke while she answered the owner’s various questions about London.
Next train was at 12:31 PM, towards Pitlochry. It had been freezing cold, perhaps a little ironic considering the purpose of her visit, and when she finally arrived to her hotel she wasn’t opposed to the idea of sleeping for a couple of hours, crawled around the space heater.
If it hadn’t been for the late season, she would’ve instantly headed into Tay Forest Park to burn the box, but decided that stumbling into foreign forests at night to conduct occult rituals was a little beyond her pay-grade.
After a delicious breakfast consisting of eggs, bacon, potatoes and the thickest coffee she had ever tasted, she headed to Loch Faskally. There was a small visitor centre before the forest park began, and she had been somewhat unable to resist the urge to buy a small token of her journey: a postcard of the lake, with illustrations of trout and salmon in the corners and Loch Faschoille written in bold yellow letters. She had carefully tucked it into her journal, and then wandered out into the Scottish woodland.
She found what she Knew to be the right place after perhaps forty minutes of walking through the cold forest, a mountainside buried by dirt and moss so that only hints of boulder were visible, and set to work quickly.
Stupid. Foolish, idiotic, immature.
Yes, she was young, but she still should have known that her movements were too precise, that she whatever she did was guided by something beyond and not necessarily the Beholding. She should have known that she didn’t Know, that whatever this was it was something different guiding her to how to put together the circular altar, read from the books, set a small fire and toss the tin box into it. A stupid, stupid young girl.
It isn’t immediate. As the box burns, Gertrude feels it at first as her heart quickening its pace, faster and faster until it felt like she was going to vomit it out, and then it hurts. Like someone is playing her nervous system like an accordion, like a migraine so intense the only way to be rid of it is through smashing her own head, like being turned inside out and flayed with a hot iron.
She doesn’t know if she’s screaming. The pain is so awful that truly the only solution must be shrieking and howling, but if she does she doesn’t hear it.
November, 1974
“Can you see her?”
“I’m telling you, Adelard, I feel the little shit. Not see, not hear – feel, like something dripping on my back, crawling inside me, not like the vermin you deal with but… oh, to hell with it.”
She hands him back the cigarette and takes the opportunity to sip at her scotch as Adelard sucks the cigarette down and then shoves it into the ash tray. He insists he’s trying to quit them, calling Gertrude an awful influence and claims to deal with his addiction by only smoking in her company.
“Stop self pitying,” he tells her and she scoffs. “It’s a bad look on you. Now, tell me again what she looked like and start from there.”
Gertrude lets out a rattling sigh and pinches her forehead where a migraine is already making itself known.
“Tall,” she mutters. “Around my age. Ruddy hair, thin. Pretty.”
“I’m sure I don’t need to tell you whose description that matches,” he says with a self-pleased soft smile that makes Gertrude pinch her eyes shut to avoid it. It’s worse than the leers James’ offers, because Adelard is always correct and lacking in the smugness she has learnt how to deal with.
Sometimes when Gertrude closes her eyes slightly she can see it, an overlaying image of Agnes Montague when she looks into the mirror, like someone has put two images on top of a projector. It imbues her with such a horrible feeling of weakness, not even her own reflection belonging to herself, and a horrible wish that Agnes feels the same way. She can’t explain the feeling to Adelard, can’t even explain the feeling to herself other than it being some sort of tether so vast she can’t even see where it goes.
It is the Mother of Puppets, of course; the tether is one of spider silk and marionette strings, but rather than a master controlling a puppet it is two dolls yanking one another along.
Gertrude has taken to staring into the mirror and boring into those horrible yellow eyes, hoping that wherever Montague is she feels the same entrapment as Gertrude does – that their suffering is mutual is the only comfort she finds in this situation, bittersweet and malicious.
January, 1979
She’s graying.
It shouldn’t take her by surprise: her father always claimed she was the spitting image of his own mother and the entire patrilineal side of her family went grey early, the smoking which she ought quit, not to mention enduring enough stress for a lifetime after 8 years of employment.
But it still takes her by surprise, looking in the mirror to meet Agnes as has become routine, and then seeing silver strands of hair extending from her temples. She lets out a little affronted gasp seeing them, as if betrayed by her own scalp. It is a stupid notion, she has no more control over what color her hair is than she has over the fading scar across above left eye – courtesy of an agent of the Buried from last year, nearly having knocked her unconscious in an unplanned squabble.
(She had only minded the gash above her brow for a week. After the swelling had gone down it had sort of melted into her appearance, making her left brow looking like it always was in a frown.)
With her hair down she looks far too much like her own mother, so Gertrude tuts and simply chooses to ignore the fine threads of white leaping across when she puts her hair up.
April, 1981
Years later in life, Gertrude still curses herself for letting Agnes get the drop on her. Almost ten years of serving the Beholding and yet she still somehow manages to be surprised, manages to be caught off-guard by things she did not foresee.
It is while she’s visiting Sheffield, walking aimlessly morning so she may appreciate the cold early-summer sun. After nearly a decade of work, she has began to allow herself some relaxation – partly for its benefit, and partly because it angers James Wright something fiercely that she’s not spending her time honing her abilities. If Gertrude wasn’t damn stubborn she would think that this had proven him right.
She’s waiting to cross the street and absentmindedly reading the paper when she at first feels and then sees her, on the opposite side of the road, stood in the crowd and taking all of Gertrude’s attention like she’s a lighthouse at night. There’s nothing particular about her appearance, nothing out of the ordinary, but she forces Gertrude to do nothing but stare.
To see Agnes in person does not compare to the faint image in the mirror, to see her in motion and with those almost glowing yellow eyes that do not allow Gertrude to look away. She doesn’t like it, she hates it, she’s not used to being on the receiving end of it.
And then Agnes Montague is gone, vanished within an instant. The traffic light still shines yellow, and Gertrude narrowly avoids being hit by an aggressively honking car when she rushes across the street. She looks around, lets the Eye extend and See, but the woman is gone, leaving behind only the smell of charcoal and pine-tree sap.
July, 1981
It is 7 in the afternoon and the sun is still up, giving off a faint orange light that pours through Gertrude’s windows and reflects off her vases so blindingly that she can’t work in her kitchen. She’s instead sat in her living room, a few candles lit for the sake of comfort and she watches as the flames grow tall simultaneously with a buzzing sound at the back of her head.
This time she feels Agnes before she even knocks at her door, and this time her chest is thrilling with burning curiosity and triumph because this is her territory, this time she is ready. There is a knife disguised as a shoe horn hanging from the coat rack, purchased for situations similar to this one and eager to be used.
Gertrude opens the door and a puff of warmth hits her, as if the heat wave has returned but only right outside her apartment.
Seven years of being tethered together, and only now does she get a good look at the woman whose soul has been tied to hers with cobweb and ash.
Agnes Montague has not aged a day. She is quite a bit taller than Gertrude, with pointy features and a long face that still looks to be in its early twenties. Her eyes are yellow, or if one is a romantic perhaps amber, with a thin mouth and a somewhat prominent chin, with straight brown hair that almost reaches down to her elbows.
“It’s you,” Agnes simply says and her voice is low and smooth. Gertrude can very much envision the statements she’s heard about her to be true, the woman is quite intimidating simply by just being.
“Yes it is,” Gertrude replies drily. “How did you find me?”
“I knew where you were.”
Gertrude’s eye involuntarily twitches – no, she very much does not like the roles being reversed, and for once being the one who does not Know.
The candles in her apartment all become a little dimmer when Agnes is inside, as if outshined. Gertrude politely asks her if she wants anything to drink, and Agnes cryptically responds “I don’t know,” and Gertrude makes them both coffee. Agnes does not drink it, simply holds it in her hands and occasionally looks at it.
“Would you like to make a statement?” Gertrude asks her and Agnes looks at her quizzically. There is something about the way she moves which makes Gertrude think of dreams, slow movements as if gliding through thick water.
“That’s what you do, yes?” Agnes responds “I hear them sometimes when I’m asleep. People talking, giving their statements and talking over and over again. About their fears, about us.”
The us in question clearly regarding the followers of the Lightless Flame, and Gertrude hurries to fetch her recorder. It’s not for the Archives, no, it is for Gertrude herself, for her infinite need to Know and to know about the bizarre woman sat in front of her.
Agnes calls Gertrude her anchor. Gertrude discovers herself to be strangely fond of the term.
November, 1986
As Mary Keay begins to withdraw herself from the Archive, Gertrude decides that she refuses to lose herself. The Institute allows for very little care, for empathy and sympathy and friendship, and the death of Eric Delano made the realization come crashing down on her: she will remain herself and not become another brick in the wall of the Archive.
Perhaps it is the fear of loss of autonomy which drives her to do it, to internally yank the chain she knows is connected to Agnes, let the Eye guide her. They meet up in Cambridge, and for all their familiarity Gertrude flinches when Agnes reaches for her face and touches the mole on her chin.
She is very acquainted with what servants of the Desolation can do, agents with a far more distant connection to the Lightless Flame than Agnes does. She has seen the work of Jude Perry and Eugene Vanderstock, and for one very brief second Gertrude’s heart stops as she thinks this is the end of her tale.
Agnes skin is very warm to the touch, like she is running a high fever. Her finger digs a little at Gertrude’s mole, nail scraping, and then she says;
“Thought it was a speck of dirt.”
The rest of Agnes is just as warm – her mouth is burning hot and her fingers leave little red marks as if scalding, like holding a hot cup. Her kisses taste like rich sap and mint, so warm that Gertrude sometimes has to pull away to gasp for air or she feels as though she will succumb. She tells Gertrude to not be gentle, and Gertrude has no intents to do so.
Twenty years later when she’s speaking to Arthur Nolan, Gertrude lies and says she never met Agnes. The followers of the Desolation already dislike her enough as it is, there’s no need to make some of the agents outright envious.
February, 1991
“Elias Bouchard,” the young man introduces himself and gives a lazy smile. “I’m the new filing clerk that–“
“Yes, yes, I know,” Gertrude interrupts. She had asked Wright for an assistant weeks ago, and when she shakes Bouchard’s hand she feels a little disappointed. As far as filing clerks go he doesn’t look completely incompetent, with heavy honey-brown eyes and wavy dark hair. He smells of cheap cologne and smoke, but he politely stretches out his hand for her to shake.
“Start with the pile marked with blue,” she tells him once the pleasantries are done, and Elias gets to work instantly. It is mindless and simple tasks, but the young man somehow manages to keep himself occupied with it for long enough for her to almost forget about him.
November, 1995
“Fourteen of them, at least according to Smirke,” Mary informs her as the tape rolls and Gertrude writes in her yellowed notes.
“I have eleven written down,” she says and pushes the paper over so that Mary can squint at it through her glasses and scrutinise Gertrude’s efforts.
“Yes, of course – They Hunger For Me, I Do Not Know You and It Is Not What It Is. Or, in more clinical terms, the Flesh, the Stranger, and the Spiral.”
“I never saw the need for the the more poetic terms,” Gertrude says and writes down the given names, the back of her head buzzing with delight as it subconsciously begins to connect various statements. Mary simply shrugs at her.
“They’ve been around for millennia. I suppose it only was natural for people to begin to romanticise them in whatever way they found possible. The Eye or the Beholding certainly is a more flowery way of wording what certainly is paranoia.”
“I suppose.”
Gertrude taps her finger on the page, silently wondering if there is any need for there to be fourteen and if the number in particular has some importance. She hears her Catholic grandmother echo about the seven sins and the seven virtues, but dismisses the thought because she can’t imagine all of this stems back to the Bible.
“Well then,” Mary says and stands up slowly. “I believe that is all I can tell you, dear. Thank you for having me.”
“No worries,” Gertrude responds dryly, not at all satisfied with what she has been told. A little tendril of Knowing buzzes at the back of Gertrude’s head and as Mary grabs the door knob she asks,
“How is Gerard?”
Mary freezes up, and then the compulsion takes place.
“He’s fine,” she says, and a soft smile spreads across her face. “He’s turned thirteen so he’s having some phases, as they were. He likes rock ’n roll, always has his Walkman in hand, so I’m thinking about getting him some tapes for Christmas – have you heard of AC/DC? They’re Australian.”
“I’m familiar,” Gertrude responds.
May, 1996
No one expects James Wright to randomly step down when he does, not even giving a formal goodbye but simply a letter and announcing no one if not Elias as the new head of the Institute. Gertrude doesn’t have any particular feelings about it – she never got particularly along with Wright and the man had been seen even less than usual the last few weeks. No, more than anything she feels unsettled at Elias being chosen. Not envious or jealous, just a low feeling of dread in her chest. Bouchard was still the most recent addition to the inner wing of the Institute, having worked as an archival assistant for a little over a year.
When he comes to visit, there is something almost subtly triumphant in the way he acts (and why wouldn’t he be, why wouldn’t he be happy over his new position of power?).
“I look forwards to our continued cooperation, Gertrude,” Elias tells her with a broad smile and his grey eyes glitter.
October, 2006
Dikson is pitch dark by the time they arrive, their captain cheerily informing them in a thick Russian accent that this time of year they don’t see the sun in the slightest. He speaks about this with the same sort of enthusiasm as a tourist guide would, and Michael listens to him with his face contorted with concern.
When stepping ashore the snow is so thick it crunches beneath their boots, Michael hovering by Gertrude as if afraid that she might slip. The entire trip he has been busy worrying for her, treating her like a brittle old dame and taking comfort in seeing her outwardly lack of fear.
Dikson could be mistaken for abandoned, a fishing port with a population so small that it’s no wonder an agent of the Forsaken would choose to pick them up here. The town has no motels and no inns, meaning that they won’t be staying in the town for more than a few hours at most. They take refuge from the cold in a small cabin by the seaside, and when Michael nervously smiles Gertrude almost pities the fate she has assigned him.