Work Text:
December 3, 1967
Gertrude Robinson had been faffing about the middle of the North American continent for the better part of a week while following up on the possibility that the Dust Bowl had resulted from a partially successful Buried Ritual. So far, the only thing she had learned was that she hated driving in the States. Highway 34, in particular, passed through some of the blandest, flattest country she'd had the misfortune of encountering. Her mind idled, numbed by the monochrome landscape and the gray-on-gray sky.
Was it, perhaps, somewhat darker ahead?
The radio station fizzled out of range. She turned the dial, looking for another, but there was only static. To the west, thunder crackled in the darkening sky and the Eye offered an unnecessary treatise on the existence of thundersnow, which she ignored pointedly. The wind picked up, bringing tiny snowflakes driven directly into the windshield by an impressive headwind. Within minutes, the snowflakes had grown into fat, wind-driven clumps that overwhelmed the wipers, and visibility dropped to nearly nothing.
Snowblind, she pulled over to the side of the road, hoping there was a shoulder, and felt the car slip sideways and down into a shallow drainage ditch that was already half-filled with snow. Well, fuck.
The Eye politely informed her that she would have to either get out of the car to clear the exhaust pipe, turn off the car and lose heat, or die of carbon monoxide poisoning.
Lovely.
She reluctantly turned off the engine, slipped off her shoes, and crawled into the back seat to collect the snow boots she'd purchased in Davenport, counting herself fortunate she'd gone for a long-sleeved knit dress and woolen tights in deference to the negative temperatures, though neither would prove adequate if she was stuck out here for long.
The snow piled up on the windows, quickly rendering it too dark to read or add to her notes. She shivered. Her luggage was in the boot where the friendly gentleman at the airport had stowed it for her. She'd need to get out soon to clear off the back of the car so her emergency flashers wouldn't be completely buried. Perhaps then she could clear the exhaust and run the heat for a while so she wouldn't freeze to death.
She hoped that what was covering her was merely ordinary snow rather than a manifestation of the Buried, but practically speaking, dead was still dead, even if it was brought on by a mundane cause.
Just as she made up her mind to try to dig her way out of the car, an arm in a heavy gray coat swept over the driver's side window, then across half of the windshield. The face that peered in was almost entirely obscured by a wool hat with earflaps and a muffler wound round and round so it covered all but the figure's eyes.
Those blue eyes, covered as they were with thick glasses, shone sharply with concern and bright with just the hint of something familiar. She could see him shouting, but couldn't make out the words well, so she applied some elbow grease to the window and managed to roll it down a handspan.
"Ma'am?" he said. "We've got a little break in the storm, maybe an hour, we gotta get you out of here."
"How did you find me?" she asked, thinking of those suspiciously bright eyes.
"Talk later. We gotta go!" He disappeared for a moment. She leaned out the window to see him ducked down, digging at the snow around the door with a shovel. He popped back up. "Give it a good push now."
Gertrude pushed, and her rescuer pulled, and she stumbled out of the car into the snow. Above her a tractor idled at the side of the road, a big one, with tires almost as tall as she was. She stomped up the incline beside the short, round man, both of them leaning on each other for balance, then clambered up into the open cab. "There's blankets behind you, you'll need them," he said. "Can I have the key to the trunk?"
Trunk? Oh, the boot! She fished in her coat pocket, then passed it to him carefully so it wouldn't slip from his mittened hands. He touched his cap and waded back to the car, then he tugged off one mitten and let it dangle from his teeth while he opened the boot to collect her pair of suitcase and makeup case. There was something dogged about him, a steadiness that suggested that wrestling with the elements was a daily occurrence to be met with stolid practicality.
He closed the boot, worked his glove back onto his hand, and trudged back up the slope to jam the larger suitcase into the too-small space by Gertrude's feet, set the other on her lap over the blankets she'd wrapped round herself, then ran around the back to climb in beside her.
Once he was squeezed in beside her on the narrow metal bench seat, he put the beast in gear and did a several-point turn in the middle of the road. "I borrowed a two-seater from the neighbors. Name's Walter O'Reilly," he shouted over the roar of the tractor's engine.
"Gertrude Robinson." She clutched her purse under the blanket.
"My place is about five miles down the road. We'll put you up there until the storm passes."
They rolled along at a jogging pace, following ruts in the snow that covered the highway. "So, were you just out patrolling the roads in a tractor, looking for damsels in distress?" she asked.
He gave an embarrassed chuckle. "Sometimes I know stuff before it happens."
Gertrude huddled deeper into the blanket. There was something familiar about the feeling she got from the man, a kinship she'd learned not to trust. He felt like the Archives, but warmer, even in the bitter cold of the Iowa winter. The Something that watched and waited, pried and judged inside the Magnus Institute had a recognizable character that Knew her. This man felt, in some senses, the same.
Something about him, though, made the weight of his attention seem anchoring rather than oppressive. She reminded herself that the feeling was likely a lure and resolved not to soften to it.
The snow was no longer falling, but the wind hadn't let up much. Snow still whirled in the air and stung the small bit of her face she left uncovered so she could see the road ahead.
"We're not going to make it to my place," Walter O'Reilly lied. "There's a schoolhouse up this way. We'll hole up here until it lets up, then I'll take you straight into town."
Half a lie, then, unless the Eye was toying with her.
There was nowhere Gertrude could go. If the man had merely wanted her dead, he could have just left her to freeze in her car. That meant he must want something from her. She'd been acutely aware of her vulnerability as a woman traveling alone since she'd begun her research into prior Rituals, but until now the Eye had given her just enough warning to escape any untoward advances.
O'Reilly, beside her, huffed indignantly.
She'd bet good money that O'Reilly was a supernatural threat, rather than a natural one. He'd be after information--secrets, personal or professional. She could be certain of nothing but that she was trapped with a potentially dangerous agent of the Eye, one who had changed his plans so as to trap her in an empty building.
"I coulda trapped you just as good at home," O'Reilly said.
"What?" she snapped.
"I said I coulda trapped you just as good at home if that's what I wanted to do."
Gertrude felt a chill in her gut that had nothing to do with the wind and swirling snow. "Don't read my mind."
He hunched over the wheel. "I'm just trying to drive, ma'am, honest."
The tractor followed the curve of the road and the headwind picked up, making talking impractical. In another few minutes, he turned off the road and up a trackless hill to stop near a picturesque little red schoolhouse half-swamped by snow.
"You oughta come inside unless you want to freeze." He collected her suitcase, opened the schoolhouse door--it wasn't even locked!--and shoved it inside before coming back for her.
"You want a hand down, ma'am?" The mittened hand he held up to her was trembling, but that had to be just the cold. And the fear--well, that had to be her own.
"I can manage it," she told him. She slid slightly when she hit the ground but kept her feet and made it through the door with her makeup case and the blankets.
"Shake the blanket out before the snow melts into it," he instructed, then pushed behind her to close and bar the door.
She did as she was told, then backed warily against the wall beside her makeup case. There were some things she could use inside it. Strychnine, a dagger she'd liberated from Artefact Storage that ought to be able to at least wound a monster, even if it turned out to be unusually sturdy.
Walter O'Reilly looked hard at her again. She stared right back at him. He shrugged. "You might oughta wait until I've got a fire started before you try to murder me." He collected a stack of split logs from a rack in the corner of the room, along with a tin of tinder and matched. "I'd rather you didn't though, if it's all the same to you." His tone was soft, self-deprecating, but his voice shook as much as his hands.
He had a point. She knew better than to lie to him again, but she felt the need to clarify her position. "I haven't decided what to do about you yet."
"I wish you would. Makes me nervous, you staring at me like like I'm gonna do something to you." He kept stacking wood into the little stove at the center of the room. After a few minutes, he got it lit, then he took off his scarf and coat and hung them on hooks on the wall. He sat down in front of the stove. "It's warmer over here," he said. "You're welcome to come closer if you don't bring the--the knife with you."
She was tempted to tell him she was fine, but she was awfully cold. Dangerously so, if her numb fingers and toes were any indication. She approached cautiously, knowing he might turn on her at any time, but all he did was make space for her beside the stove.
The heat was heavenly. She held her hands out. They ached as the feeling came back to them. Her host watched from his spot a couple of feet away. "They're not frostbit," he said. "That's good at least. Easy to get frostbit on a night like this. You can lose toes just like that!"
She nodded.
He divided his attention between Gertrude and the fire. "We're likely to be here till morning. You hunt--people like me, or something?"
"Not--actively. But I've generally found that people who treat with the supernatural are up to no good."
"Well, I didn't sell my soul to the devil. What I got, I come by it honest. My uncle Ernest used to say there were fairies in the family tree if you go back far enough." The pile of wood in the stove settled. He added another log to the top and moved the others around to let the air flow through. "Like, the Irish kind of fairies, I mean. Good Neighbors."
She kept her eyes on him, as though she could protect herself when he decided to drop the innocent farmer act. "The beings behind these kinds of--powers--always exacts a price for them."
O'Reilly scoffed. "They made me get up out of my warm house and drive through the snow in a tractor to pick up a woman who thinks she knows all about evil monsters but don't know enough not to go out in this weather. I think that's price enough."
She sighed. Then offered, "I don't know how to drive a tractor."
"Didn't think you would," he replied, puzzled.
She explained slowly, as if to a small child. "If I killed you I'd be stuck here and as good as dead. Because I can't drive a tractor."
O'Reilly peered into the woodstove, poked it until the wood settled, and set another log in on top. "It's been a cold winter. The ground's frozen solid."
"What?"
Radar copied her condescending tone. "If I wanted to bury you. It's been a cold winter and the ground's frozen. I wouldn't anyway, but if I did, I couldn't do it here."
"Truce, then?" she offered.
"Truce," he agreed with clear relief. "Weather will let up by morning. I'll drop you in town. There's a diner there."
"Is it any good?" she asked.
He shrugged. "Don't think they got British food, but the pie's all right."
"I'll treat," she offered, feeling like the offer would serve to cement their truce.
They sat in front of the stove as the storm-dimmed afternoon gave way to night. The only light came from the wood stove. Gertrude felt a hint of a more malevolent darkness growing in the close, unfamiliar space. The wind outside howled like wolves. The doors and windows shook with the force of it.
O'Reilly said, as though he was just making conversation, "I helped build this schoolhouse, when I was a kid. It'll hold."
"Thanks." She rested her chin on her hands and tried to figure this strange man out. He plucked her thoughts out of her head as though it was child's play, but he seemed more afraid of her than she was of him.
He turned away from the stove to fix his eyes on the pitch-black corners of the schoolroom.
After a moment, he added, without taking his eyes off the corner in deepest shadow, "Those things. The things in the dark. You seen them?"
"Not firsthand," she admitted.
"How do you know they're real, then?"
"I just do. Part of the job. Part of the--" she gestured with hands he likely couldn't see. "The monster we serve."
"I told you, you got me all wrong. Only God I serve is the One we nailed to a cross." He stared into the darkness, pensive. "Even if I do seem to have to do all His good work myself."
"I haven't seen any evidence of benign gods in all my travels." His naivete was beginning to wear on her, especially as she became more aware that it wasn't an act.
"You ever really looked?" he challenged, still distracted by whatever he was looking at.
She really ought not to bother arguing with the man. She stared into the low flame flickering among the coals until she became dangerously drowsy, and then she scrubbed at her shins under the woolen blanket to wake herself back up.
O'Reilly seemed to have no trouble staying awake.
Gertrude yawned, and blinked hard, fighting sleep. Outside, the howling wind and pitch blackness put her to mind of monsters in the dark again, and she swore she could feel hulking shapes in the corners of the room, waiting for them to drift off.
"You could help, you know. Keep your eyes on them and they won't come at you."
Oh.
O'Reilly had a Statement. Perhaps he might share it with her, to pass the time. "You've seen something, haven't you?" she said.
His shrug was barely visible in the darkness. "Maybe. It was a long time ago. I was just a kid." Gertrude felt the attention of the creature she unwillingly served pour over them, both unsettling and reassuring. The creatures in the corners of the room, felt more than seen, retreated under its gaze.
"Just a minute. I--collect stories like this. For my research." She wouldn't be able to write it down in the dark, not now, but she suspected it would stick in her memory until she had access to pen and paper and light. "If that's all right."
"It's all the same to me, ma'am."
"Right. Statement of Walter O'Reilly, concerning an encounter in South Korea in the summer of 1952. Statement taken by Gertrude Robinson, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London, February 10th, 1967. Statement begins."
O'Reilly's voice softened, grew younger under the influence of the retelling.
"I served as a unit clerk for a mobile army surgical hospital during the Korean War. MASH units, they were called. I handled the radio, correspondence, supplies, that sort of thing. One day, I was driving the doctors back to Uijeongbu from a medical conference--it was more like a drinking conference for all I could tell, but the war had a slow month and there you go. Conference.
I have a pretty good sense of direction, or at least, a sense of the best way to go--which doesn't always mean the fastest way to get where I'm supposed to be. It doesn't steer me wrong. Mostly. I took a long cut to avoid some North Koreans and I got us lost. I couldn't see behind or ahead very far and I didn't know the right way to go. It was scary, like something out there didn't want me to know the right way.
So I drove a little faster, even though there were potholes that made the bus bounce up and down like it was gonna lose an axle or tip right over. Nothing changed. I was just there, in the forest, driving, with no idea where the road was taking us or how long it would be before we got somewhere. I wouldn't have minded just about anywhere, so long as it wasn't in enemy territory.
Didn't matter anyway. The bus made a horrible rattling noise and stopped dead in the middle of the road, blowing steam like nobody's business. We got out, and from there it looked like we mighta been going in circles. The whole forest felt wrong. It didn't feel all the way real, and it felt dangerous, like there were enemy soldiers behind every tree even though there weren't. One of the officers, Frank Burns was his name--and he was a piece of work if there ever was one--made me walk a hundred yards or so into it, to see if we could see any other roads, or landmarks, or any way out.
There wasn't nothing, so we went back.
It got dark. Not quite like this, not at first. Just the regular dark, with the forest noises you know could be animals that might eat you, or North Korean soldiers that would kill you soon as look at you. Frank kept talking into this half a walkie talkie, even though there was no one on the other end. And he didn't see anything wrong with going on and on about just what a guy ought to be scared of.
But then, they all started saying it was my fault we were stuck out there. I shoulda known the way to go, like I usually do, and I shoulda kept the bus running so we wouldn't get stuck. They tried to take it back, but I you know, they were right. It was my fault. It was my job to make sure nothing bad happened, and I failed at it.
So I told them I had to use the latrine and I left. Just walked straight out into the forest and hoped I'd know the way to go. Even though my knowing was all on the fritz and I shouldn'a trusted it. It got real dark, then. Like the Dark that's in the corners right now. The kind of Dark that feels like it's glued to your eyes, and it don't matter if they're closed or open.
But this Dark, it had teeth.
I heard them first.
People. Talking in Korean, mostly.
Screams, far off. Crying--sobbing--closer up. Moans.
Like wounded, coming in off the choppers.
And ripping, tearing sounds.
And out there, in that blue that's darker than black ever could be, the outlines of giant mouths full of long, jagged teeth.
I knew for a fact I was gonna die.
And that was when a hand grabbed my leg. I jumped and screamed, but it held on. And then there was another hand, and next to me a whole other person, scared and hurting and hanging on to me like I was the only thing between him and those teeth.
I ain't gonna tell you I didn't grab onto him just as hard. I was afraid enough to die, but now there was some Korean guy--might have even been an enemy, I didn't know, right there with me and I couldn't bear the idea of having to listen to him get chewed up by all those teeth.
If I died first, then I wouldn't have to hear it.
So I stared those teeth down, and just like that, I could see. First, just the shape of the heads full of those horrible teeth, dark on dark. It felt like my eyes were touching them more than seeing them--pressure instead of light and color. The mouths closed around the teeth and the things shrunk back. Afraid. Of me.
Guess they didn't like being stared at.
"I see you! You can't hide from me!" I shouted at them.
I was never the best soldier. Just couldn't stomach the thought of killing. Couldn't even handle bayonet practice against soldiers made of straw. But I hated those things with the teeth.
"You're nothing but shadows!" I yelled. "Stories made up to scare little kids!"
The man clinging to my arm started shouting in Korean. I screamed myself hoarse and kept my eyes right on them. Like I could burn them away by knowing what they were.
Finally, I could see the forest around me, not clearly, but the shapes of trees and ferns and rocks, instead of monsters.
I looked at the Korean soldier clinging to my arm. He was North Korean after all. All the rest of the guys he was with got swallowed up by the dark. He'd heard them all die. I knew all that, just looking at him.
It made me feel dizzy and sick, but a piece of me wanted to know everything about the guy. And I knew I could if I looked hard enough.
He let go of my arm and staggered back so fast that he tripped and fell to the ground. Before he scrambled to his feet, he waved the sign for the Evil Eye, the fist, with the thumb stuck up between the first two fingers like so, then he turned tail into the woods and was gone.
I think I fainted.
I remember opening my eyes, looking up through the trees at the stars.
When I thought I could stand without throwing up, I started to walk back to the bus. I knew right where it was, like there was a string pulling me along toward it. Like--like I could see it, even though there was half a mile of brush between me and it, and it was still the middle of the night. Just like normal.
When I got back, the Korean soldier was there, and everybody was busy so they didn't notice me for a minute. Then they all jumped on me a patted me like they didn't think I was really there and alive.
The North Korean soldier fixed the bus. Even though he wasn't on our side. He watched me, close, the whole time he was with us, like he wasn't sure what I was. Like you do, Miss Robinson.
And then, when we left, he shook my hand. And I guess that must have been a thank you. I never saw him again.
I hope he got home all right.
"Statement ends."
O'Reilly was quiet.
"Thank you, Mr. O'Reilly," Gertrude said.
The farmer stared into the coals. "It was like I was back there," he murmured.
"I'm told that can happen." On the bright side, Gertrude guessed that she wouldn't haunt his dreams.
Perhaps he would haunt hers, instead.
"Seems the Good Neighbors have left us," he added. "You do that?"
"I think you did, actually. I did hope--a Statement--would tip the scales toward our side. They're polar opposites--what sees and knows too much and what lurks in the dark."
"Hmm." O'Reilly put another log on the fire. "Tired me out. You know how to tend a wood stove?"
"Well enough."
"Better be. Don't let the fire go out."
He didn't speak again. In a few minutes, she could hear his snores.
She woke him a couple of hours later when she could no longer trust herself to stay awake. He poked at the logs in the stove with a nod of approval, added another, and steeled himself before the fire. She respected the terms of the truce and allowed herself to nod on the stool until dawn.
A nudge to her foot awakened her. "Best we get moving if we're going to catch Pat Henderson on the way into town."
The abrupt transition to wakefulness nearly startled her off the stool. When she righted herself, she saw the door propped open and her suitcase already wedged into the space below the tractor seats.
Gertrude wiggled her toes in her boots, which had not improved on being slept in, wrapped the blankets around her wool coat, and collected her make up case. The snow was up to her knees. and the wind was still bitter. O'Reilly took the case from her at the door and again helped her onto the tractor's seat before passing it back to her.
He trudged through the snow to the other side, started the engine with a crank in the front, and then climbed in. The short trip down the steep hill was much more frightening now that she could see. At the bottom, O'Reilly lined the tractor up with the edge of the highway and turned it off. "Pat will be by in a minute."
Gertrude wondered whether this Pat was a more formidable sort of creature of O'Reilly's acquaintance. Nothing to be done for it in this weather and in the middle of nowhere.
"Pat's got a farm a couple miles up the road from my place. The only kinda creature he is is a creature of habit."
A sharp huff of laughter escaped her just as a battered truck made its way slowly up the road with a plow attachment bolted to its front.
"That's our ride," O'Reilly said.
He helped her back down off the tractor. There was never any performance of chivalry about it, simply the practicality of her being a city dweller in clothes poorly suited to the weather. It was refreshing.
The truck was more battered-looking than the tractor, but it had the mercy of an enclosed cab. O'Reilly took the middle seat, leaving Gertrude pressed up against the door, which was better than being sandwiched between two middle-aged men of the "showers after work" persuasion.
"I see you found her," the larger man, presumably Pat Henderson, remarked as he pulled back onto the road.
"This is Miss Gertrude Robinson. She's from London," O'Reilly said by way of introduction.
"Pleased to meet you, ma'am. What possessed you to try to drive through last night's storm?" These folk did not mince words, did they?
"I'm sure that I do not know. Let us hope I am not possessed in such a manner again," she told him primly.
"Listen to that! You really are from London!" Pat exclaimed, all too merrily for the subject matter.
The drive into town passed uneventfully enough. Pat Henderson asked a lot of questions about London, though they seemed to be largely informed by children's stories. Yes, Big Ben was real. Yes, she had in fact had a nanny for a portion of her childhood. No, the rooftops were not haunted by cheerful, filthy chimney sweeps.
The truck pulled up to a hotel at the edge of town. Henderson helped carry her bag to the door. She ought to warn him, at least, about the danger he might be in. She stopped him just outside the door. "That friend of yours isn't normal," she started.
"You can say that again," he said with an indulgent smile.
She tried again. "He may act like a nice person, but he's involved with powerful supernatural forces that are always up to no good. Whether he understands that or not. You'd be better off keeping your distance."
"Thanks for your concern, but I'll take my chances," Henderson said, his tone suddenly chilly. "Walt's been a good father, a good friend, and a good man for as long as I've known him. I think, ma'am, you should think on how you treat people who are just looking out for you."
He left her in the hotel entryway without a further word.
Gertrude watched the plow pull out of the parking lot. It chafed at her, leaving O'Reilly here unchallenged, but she supposed it was a fair trade. As for Mr. Henderson, she had done her due diligence. If he chose not to listen, that was his problem now, not hers.