Chapter Text
Gerry had already been awake for a long time before noticing it, which is how he knew he wasn’t dreaming.
The sky outside through the window was gray with the promise of dawn, but it made Gerry feel heavy. He was venturing with Gertrude Robinson, head archivist of the Magnus Institute, London, to stop rituals and find out about the Stranger.
A new day meant another horrible story from a local, another day chasing what was probably a circus that would skin them alive and dance on the ashes of their old world.
So he sat on the bed of the hotel room facing the window. Gertrude was down the hall in room 317, and she’d told him to call her on the hotel phone if he needed her. She probably wouldn’t answer anyway, but it was nice enough of her to offer.
Eventually, he knew he had to stand up, so he decided to go see if the breakfast had opened. No sense chasing death on an empty stomach.
He walked over to the door and reached to pull it open, but then he stopped, his hand inches from the handle. nothing had stopped him but paranoia- working with the Magnus Institute meant questioning everything.
And now it had saved his life.
It was hard to make out colors in the dim morning light, but now that he was focusing, he saw that his hotel room door was yellow.
Shit.
Gerry cursed and stepped back. He didn’t know much about yellow doors except that they were bad news. And it trapped you using its yellow doors. Gertrude rarely talked about who or what Entity the doors came from, and he had never pressed her on it.
His mind raced. He couldn’t use the door. Maybe the window? But he was on the third floor. Could he call Gertrude? But even if she did pick up, how could she help? From her side, the door would look perfectly normal.
And then, the door began to open.
Gerry always figured he would die painfully. After learning about the Entities and agreeing to accompany Gertrude, he’d assumed he’d meet his end at the hands of the Flesh, his muscles sloughed off the bones. Or perhaps by the Buried- swallowed up by the ground, death in silence.
And now, here it was. His death.
The door opened fully, and a figure emerged from the kaleidoscopic swirl of colors.
His death did not look like he expected.
The being was tall, absurdly so, like an image that had been stretched vertically. Its hands were huge, the fingers long and sharp and terrible. The smile was wide and bright, the eyes made of rings of bright blues and neon yellows. The edges of the being blurred and pulsed and swirled, but only when Gerry didn’t look at them straight-on.
But other than that, the being looked… normal.
Normal wasn’t actually the right word, but it was close enough. The creature’s hair was wild and… fluffy, a vivid gold.
Even worse, Gerry’s certain death was wearing an eye-assaulting Hawaiian shirt, neon pink with patterns of yellow pineapples bearing lime green leaves. Under that, bleach-white jeans and orange fucking flip-flops.
Gerry knew his best chance was to call Gertrude. Maybe she would be able to help. But he’d have to reach the phone, several paces behind him. He had to stall for time.
“Who are you?” he asked, listening to his voice echo and change in the air, corrupting into static.
The being threw back its head and laughed a haunting laugh, revealing rows of knife-sharp teeth. The sound elongated and looped in some places, echoing, and layering. A migraine swelled in Gerry’s head, but he fought it and stepped closer to the phone.
“People always ask me that, actually! It’s one of my favorite things about organic beings,” the being said, its voice high and cheery, but just as layered and terrible as its laugh. Gerry’s migraine throbbed in time with its words. “Even when something beyond comprehension stands before you, something that’s very purpose is to defy all logic, to be unreal, you try to assign to it a name! As if that would help anything!”
The Spiral!
Gerry swallowed. He focused his gaze behind the creature because looking at the mess of vibrancy turned his thoughts into taffy.
“What, not funny?” It raised its eyebrows, still grinning, before rolling its neck in a viscerally disturbing way and shrugging. “The answer is simple. I am not a who, but a what.”
Gerry turned his gaze to the floor now. Even hearing the being’s voice was drilling into his skull.
“Not to mention names are so stupid,” the being bared its teeth in what was likely a grin. “You are Gerard Keay, but if something were to change, if you were to become a wanted man, you would change your name just like that. It doesn’t define you at all. It is fun to have a name, I’ll give you that.”
“Well, why do you bother to have a name, if it’s so meaningless?” Gerry stalled. Dammit Gertrude, why did you never give me any information about this guy?! Who the fuck…?
The being laughed again, and Gerry’s headache spiked. But he managed another step closer to the phone.
“The meaningless is my domain!” It laughed, opening its arms in a grand gesture, its long, spindly fingers spread wide. “Meaningless things fall to me, you know!”
“…Okay, but what’s your name? You never said.”
The being sighed. “You don’t give things up, do you? It’s… Michael. Call me Michael.”
“What do you want from me?” Gerry asked, throat dry.
“What does anyone want?” Now this creature, this… Michael, shrugged, bones shifting wrongly under the skin. “What’s the point of wanting when everything dissolves into nothingness in the end?”
“I don’t follow,” Gerry said, risking a final step back.
“I didn’t think you would,” Michael answered. “Your kind is so uncivilized.”
Gerry feigned anger. Letting Entities think they were rattling you or pissing you off was a great tactic to letting them think they were winning and drop their guard. “How can you say that when you go around killing people like nothing!”
Something flashed across Michael’s face- or maybe it was the pulsing light. Either way, it was gone instantly, the wicked grin back in place. “And humans are never at fault? One minute, you’re helping them, and the next moment you are in Zemlya Sannikova.” Michael tittered like he’d told some hilarious joke.
“Zem- what?” In his mind, Gerry went through the motions of the riskiest part of his plan. He imagined the steps he would take, noted the positions of the buttons he’d have to click, and imagined praying Gertrude would pick up before he died.
“Zemlya Sannikova,” Michael said. His voice had lost some of the reverberations and gave Gerry less of a headache, and his smile had dimmed. Was he weakening? Gerry didn’t dare to be so hopeful. “You have never heard of it. It is one of the places that aren’t.”
“Places that aren’t,” Gerry repeated.
“You travel with the Archivist, do you not?”
Gerry nodded.
Michael’s lips curled back up into a rictus, his voice swelling with echoes. “Well, then you can expect to find yourself somewhere as well. Do you trust her, Gerard Keay?”
“Not exactly,” Gerry said.
And he lunged for the phone. He punched in her number and held the phone to his ear, not daring to look over his shoulder. He didn’t want to see Michael looming above him, eyes swirling, mouth agape and ready to devour him.
Click.
“Hello?” said Gertrude.
Gerry opened his mouth to shout for help, but there was another click, followed by silence.
Michael had not moved from the door, but now he held one end of the phone’s wire in his spidery hand. “I overestimated you,” he said, tossing the wire aside. “I didn’t think you’d be so dependent on her. I would be doing you a favor by allowing you through my door.” He stepped aside and gestured at the hotel door, still yellow and spinning with lurid reds and pinks and purples.
“No,” Gerry said, dropping the useless phone. “You’ll have to kill me.”
“Oh?” Michael grinned wider, somehow. He tilted his head farther than it should be able to go, that fluffy golden hair covering one of his neon eyes. “I’d hoped you would say that.”
That was usually something someone would say right before they killed you, but Michael turned around.
“I won’t even have to deal with you!” Michael crowed over his shoulder. “She just might just do it for me.”
“You’re insane,” Gerry said, realizing his mistake in word choice as Michael laughed again. “She would never- she’s cold, but she wouldn’t- what, murder her colleague?!”
Michael shook his head lightly. “Tch,” he tutted. And then, sarcastically, “I’m sure that’s true. But what’s true anyway?” And with one last grin and an echoing laugh, he stepped through the door and was gone.
Gerry waited until he was sure the door wasn’t yellow before running down the hall and pounding his fist against Gertrude’s door.
She opened and squinted at him. An old lady. A bitter one, yeah, but she still cared about him- valued him in some way, right? And Michael only existed to sow distrust and delight in the ensuing chaos. Gerry couldn’t let that happen.
And still, the first thing he asked was, “Gertrude, where’s Zemlya Sannikova?”
Her expression didn’t change, but her hands, which had been flipping through statements, froze.
“Where did you hear such a word?” she asked, sounding genuinely curious as she shuffled to the bed and sat back down.
“I just… I was reviewing some old notes you gave me,” Gerry lied.
“It must be from my earlier notes. Zemlya Sannikova is a myth, like Atlantis, that I was looking into when I was young and naive. It doesn’t exist.” It seemed viable, but her tone sounded wrong.
He thanked her and slipped back into his room. He pored over a map Gertrude had given him, and then put the search word into Google. Nothing. Zemlya Sannikova didn’t exist.
Michael was just trying to mess with him.
Places that aren’t.
Why would ‘someplace that wasn’t’ be on a map, anyway? If this… Zemlya Sannikova was really a place that wasn’t meant to exist, then it wouldn’t be on a map anyway. But then why was Gertrude so vague about it?
It’s nothing, he told himself. An old woman being particular. And it’s not like she wasn’t usually vague- she never really talked to him unless she needed something, which was okay with him.
Zemlya Sannikova.
It could easily be nothing- a trap set by an eldritch creature- but it made him uneasy.