Work Text:
ARCHIVIST: Statement of Gerard Keay—
GERRY: It’s just Gerry, actually
ARCHIVIST: Very well. Statement of…Gerry…regarding the events that led to his eventual service to the Spiral. Statement taken by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute. Statement begins.
GERRY: Right. I want to be clear about two things. First of all, my Patron isn’t too happy about me doing this. But I have to. Probably makes me a bad avatar of the Spiral, but I feel like there ought to be a written record of what happened. Of what it was like.
Secondly, everyone in this statement is dead, you got that? Don’t try and think otherwise. Sure, some of us are still alive, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t dead.
ARCHIVIST: I’m afraid I don’t understand.
GERRY: Good.
It started with Michael. Not the Michael you’re thinking of, Michael Shelley. One of the Archival Assistants back in Gertrude’s time. I’m sure you know that her assistants had an unfortunate habit of dying off. Michael didn’t fair much better.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Michael Shelley was the kind of person who collected knickknacks in antique shops and painted his fingernails pink. He knitted scarves and baked with the shitty little oven that his landlord couldn’t be assed to fix. He had white walls in his apartment and hated them, always said when he got his own place he would paint the walls yellow or purple or green. Eventually, he just started saying that he’d paint each wall a different color, so he didn’t have to choose.
Also, he was my boyfriend. Gerard Keay’s boyfriend. Probably should have mentioned that earlier.
Look, the reason I’m telling you all this is because I want you to understand what Michael was like. I’m the only one who really remembers him, and it gets lonely, you know?
…Anyways.
Gertrude Robinson, may she burn in Hell, had been on a real ritual-stopping kick at the time. Kind of like what you guys are doing with the Unknowing, but on a much larger scale. She caught wind that an avatar of the Spiral, a guy named Gabriel, was throwing together a ritual he called the Great Twisting. In Russia, on an island called Zemlya Sannikova. Sannikov Land.
She couldn’t stop it alone. See, the Spiral doesn’t really have that many avatars for a reason. Have too many people using your power, and you start to become…less abstracted. More knowable. And that’s no good, is it? So Gertrude’s plan was to force a new avatar into existence during the ritual, to disrupt it. But she wasn’t about to use herself, and she knew I - that is, Gerard Keay - would never go along with it. So she set her sights on poor, naive Michael Shelley, who followed her like a lamb to the slaughter.
He didn’t even know he was going to die.
The Distortion didn’t always used to be alive. For a while, it was just a series of ever-shifting corridors. It didn’t feel, didn’t act on any impulse other than the desire to feed. But then Gertrude gave Michael Shelley a map, of all things, and sent him on his way.
Michael and the Distortion…ate each other. Became each other. And neither was particularly happy about it.
Gerard Keay didn’t know any of that, though. All he knew was that Michael had gone to Russia and he hadn’t come back.
Gerard didn’t do so well after that. Always drunk, not sleeping, getting high off of whatever random shit he could get his hands on…and you know, sleeplessness and drug use are like an all-you-can-eat buffet to the Spiral. It was only a matter of time before the door showed up.
You know the door I’m talking about. Bright yellow, curved handle, has a tendency to trick unsuspecting civilians into opening it? Sound familiar? Well, Gerard started seeing it everywhere. At first, it wasn’t such a big deal. The Entities harassed Gerard all the time, it came with the territory. He handled it well enough.
That is, until it starting taking things. Michael’s things.
It wasn’t much. A photo here, a blanket there. But it really got to Gerard. So much so that he decided to move out of his London home and flee to the seaside.
The door followed him, of course.
By then Gerard wasn’t doing too well. He was paranoid and jumpy and had stopped sleeping altogether. Add that to the fact that he had been somewhat suicidal ever since Michael died, and you’ve got a recipe for bad decisions.
He went through the door. I’m still not really sure why. Maybe he had gotten sick of being toyed with. Maybe he was ready to die. Maybe he just got curious. It doesn’t matter, in the end. He went through, for whatever reason, and on the other side was Michael.
There was a reunion. I’ll spare you the sappy details. Frankly, they aren’t yours to have. The important part is that even after Michael Shelley died, the Distortion was able to cling onto a piece of his humanity, because Michael Shelley had an anchor.
ARCHIVIST: An…anchor?
GERRY: Yeah. You know, something to keep him grounded, something that made him feel human. And for Michael, that thing was me. Gerard. Whatever. The main thing is, even after Michael died, the Distortion could still feel his love for Gerard.
Avatars aren’t super great at feelings. Especially love. But, y’know, Michael tried his best. He offered to help Gerard become an avatar of the Spiral. And before Michael died, Gerard would have said no, of course not, his life is dedicated to fighting the fears, he couldn’t serve one. But just then, at that point in his life, Gerard was tired. He was sick of fighting, he missed his boyfriend, he was already half mad anyway…so he thought “what the hell? Can’t be worse than this.”
Becoming an avatar is a form of death. You have to carve out a chunk of yourself to let your Patron in. And guess what? It really fucking hurts.
Becoming an avatar of the Spiral, specifically, is weirdly ritualistic. The Twisting Deceit isn’t usually that into doing the same thing over and over, but I guess too much spontaneity is a form of predictability.
Michael led Gerard to the center of the Spiral. The Distortion’s the only one who can navigate those halls, even I can’t do it. Mostly I just wander around and hope that Michael’s feeling cooperative.
The center of the Spiral looks different for everyone. For Michael, it was a mirror. For Gerard, it was a book.
The book stood on a pedestal in the middle of an octagonal room. On the cover was a warped image of what had once been an Eye. Gerard flipped through the pages and discovered that the book was a detailed, intricate record of his mind. All the memories and thoughts he had ever had were written out plain as day. New pages appeared in the back as the book perpetually updated.
Gerard knew what to do. He had been doing it his entire life. He pulled his lighter from his pocket and set fire to the pages.
And so Gerard Keay Ended.
STATEMENT ENDS