Work Text:
The Canaan Archives
Episode 1: A Tight Squeeze
ABIGAIL:
Statement of Gideon the Ninth, regarding a narrow stone passage that ought not to have been there. Recorded from subject by Abigail Pent. Canaan House, 10/10/10,000.
Statement begins:
GIDEON:
Well, it started because I could hear her calling me. The Reverend Daughter, I mean. I mean, who else would it be? And yeah, it made sense she’d be calling for me, considering she’d gone traipsing off on her own again instead of letting me, you know, do my fucking job. Of being her cavalier. But anyway—
It was yesterday morning. She was calling me from somewhere off in the distance. Like, way off. Really faint. But I was sure it was her. I reckoned she’d gotten herself in a bind. Again. Was pitifully stuck down the ladder or wherever in her bone cocoon. Again. Except this time, for some reason, she’d actually admitted to herself that she—shocker!—needed me. Which must have meant she was in some seriously deep shit.
So I followed the sound of her voice. I mean, what else was I supposed to do? Leave her to die and miss the opportunity to rub it in her face that she needed me?
It led me to a door. Not down the ladder, but in the main part of the house. I think near the Third’s living quarters? But I must have been turned around somehow, because if I was where I thought I was, this door was on an exterior wall. It was wooden. Some dark gaps between the rotting planks. I didn’t think I’d ever seen this particular one before, but it’s not as if I’ve mapped out every single door in this place the way some people have. And it was right out in the open. Not even behind a ta—
—Er, not even hidden, or anything. So I didn’t expect anything weird, right?
I checked the handle, half expecting it’d be locked and I’d have to break it down, rules be damned. But it wasn’t. It opened right away. And that was when I saw that something was really fucking off about this, ’cause on the other side of the door was—
A hole.
And I don’t mean a just a hole in the wall, what’s required for most doors. I mean a proper hole. A certified Drearburh Classic hole, all dark and crooked and smelling of old, dead rock. Calling it a ‘tunnel’ would paint too optimistic a picture. And I wouldn’t count it a cave, either, since it—or at least the stepped path running along the bottom—was clearly carved out by something intentional. Obviously this wasn’t one of the labs. Some sort of trial, maybe?
It was dark in there. A pool of light spilled in from the corridor and trickled down the steps, but it didn’t get very far. It would have been smart to go get a torch. Or even to go full Ninth and nab a fucking candelabra. But I didn’t.
I shouted, “Oi! Twilit Princess!”
And I heard her reply—or I thought it was her and I thought she was replying— “Gideon!”
Which was pretty bad, right? She’d have to be seriously stressed if she was calling me ‘Gideon.’ So I scuttled on in.
After a few steps, the passage slowly began to curve. Not enough that I couldn’t see the open door when I glanced back, but enough that the light from it couldn’t reach the uneven stairs. I had to run my hand along the wall of jagged rock and shuffle my feet to the edge of each step to feel where I was going. I called out, “Tenebrous Highness! How far in are you?” but all I heard back was, “Gideon!”
She didn’t sound all that far away now, so I binned my thought of going back for a light and kept on at it. Every so often, her voice called out for me. Always the same three syllables. Always the same intonation. Something about that was starting to feel weird as hell, but I pushed the creep-factor down. There was probably some perfectly logical reason her voice sounded off—and why she wasn’t actually answering any of the questions I asked her, right? Anyway, I was sure I had almost found her. She couldn’t be that much further, could she?
I went on shuffling down the stairs. Down, and down. And her voice went on calling out. Always just a short ways ahead of me. Almost—and I really didn’t want to think this—almost as if she was retreating down the stairs at the same rate as I was pursuing. No. Not almost. Exactly as if.
I stopped. Abruptly, my gut felt flooded in ice. Carefully, I drew my rapier. Turning—and oh, hell, did I not want to turn my back on whatever the fuck might be down there—I glanced up the stairs. The doorway, thank fuck, was still visible, but only as a distant slot of light, small as Dominicus looks from the Ninth. Skin prickling, I whipped my head back around to face the cold, impossible depths of the passage, my sword trembling uselessly in my hand. If something came out at me from that seemingly-infinite darkness, I wouldn’t see it coming. I might not even have room to prod at it without clipping a wall. The crushing void seemed to close in around me. I was finding it hard to breathe.
“Harrowhark Nonegesimus,” I said with all the force I could muster. “If you don’t respond to me with anything other than fucking ‘Gideon,’ I am leaving. Do you hear me?”
And the voice said, in the exact same rhythm and tone as it had all those times before, one that now fell on my ears as an obvious fraud, “Gideon!”
I turned and ran. Or I tried to. It was more of a scrabble, really. You can’t really run up stairs in the dark without tripping, and the pissing rapier didn’t help. Not that my trusty two-hander would’ve served me better in a place like that. Finally coming to terms with the fact that I’d gotten myself into a situation that I couldn’t cut my way out of, I shoved the sword back into its scabbard and took a moment to collect myself. It was fine. I was fine. That definitely wasn’t my adept down there. And if somehow, beyond all reason, it was her? Well, she’d just have to bide her time until I came back with help and a light. I’d just stumbled into a lyctor trial, that was all. One that for some reason hadn’t been put down the ladder like the others. Or, more likely, she was playing one of her horrible tricks on me. I could see the exit, and, importantly, I couldn’t hear anything chasing me. No other footsteps on the stone stairs. No telltale rattle of bones. I straightened up—
—and whacked my skull on the stone ceiling.
“FUCK!” I screamed, throwing my arms about my head as the pain seared up and down my spine. “Shit!”
“Gideon!” The voice was…louder, now. That was not good.
Recalling one hand from the task of cradling my poor, throbbing cranium, I tried to draw my rapier again. The pommel struck the wall before I could even halfway free the blade. Had the passage been so tight on the way down? I was sure I would have noticed it.
And again, ever so slightly nearer, “Gideon!”
I shoved the sword right the way back into its scabbard. Think, idiot. I could have angled myself so that I was drawing parallel to the walls of the passage instead of crosswise, but the fact remained that despite the ample horrible dark crevices available for use in the Ninth House, I had never trained for anything quite like this. Priority: getting the fuck out. If the owner of that voice followed me all the way back up the steps, I could confront them there, with the benefit of light and space and even footing.
Forcing myself to turn my back on the darkness once more, even though it made every one of my hairs stand on end, I ducked my head and hurried upward, this time trailing a hand along the ceiling instead of the wall. The rectangle of light at the top of the stairs grew larger.
The ceiling grew lower.
The walls grew closer together.
The voice, now mere meters behind me, repeated, “Gideon!”
No room to stand. No room to fight. No room to turn around and catch a glimpse at whatever was following me. No room for the light to reach that far even if I could.
I crawled. First on hands and knees. Then on arms and legs. Escape—God! It was so very close—three meters perhaps—and less now—and now no more than a body-length away. But for each step I wriggled my way over, scraping my back raw upon the ceiling, the next was worse.
And the voice, now nearly on top of me, called my name.
I knew now that it wasn’t hers. Had never been hers. Barely even fucking sounded like hers. And how had I ever mistaken it for hers when it so very clearly wasn’t? Why had I been so eager to believe she would call for me?
Three more rough-hewn stair steps left to the light of the corridor. In theory, it was so near I could have reached out and touched it. I couldn’t actually, because my arms were pinned in a weird position and I couldn’t get either of them over the lip of the next step because my body was in the way, and I couldn’t move my body out of the way because the ceiling was right there.
With entirely too much effort, I shouted something. Not sure what. If anybody was around to hear me, they wouldn’t know, either, but hopefully they’d come to investigate. I couldn’t hear anything but the blood pounding in my ears.
Think. I’d have to back up, retreat down a step to get my arms out in front of me, and then try to slither up again in a way they wouldn’t get jammed between my tits and the floor. I could do that. It’d just have to back up. Just—
And then something—something cold and rough and damp—grabbed me by the ankle. A mummified hand? The loop of a rope? I drew in a breath to scream.
Or tried to. The passage was now so close around me that my ribs could not expand. And now it—they—both the passage and the grip upon my ankle—began to squeeze. And the voice cried, victorious, “Gideon!”
It was probably about then that I passed the fuck out. ’Cause I couldn’t breath, you know. At any rate, next thing I knew I was back in our rooms, lying in a heap on the floor, and Harrow was stood over me. Just staring. When she saw I was waking up, she stalked off without a word. So, yeah. No idea what that was about.
[Pause]
ABIGAIL:
Statement ends.
GIDEON:
I know that makes it sounds like I was dreaming, but I wasn’t.
ABIGAIL:
Oh, I wouldn’t say so! If dreams often leave you covered in visible scrapes and bruises, Gideon the Ninth, you would have to be a very violent sleeper!
GIDEON:
Right. Right. Do you want to see the welt on my ankle? It’s narsty.
ABIGAIL:
I’ll take your word for it. Is there anything else you’d like to add?
[Pause]
GIDEON:
A few times since, well…sometimes I still hear that voice. The fake Harrow, somewhere off in the distance. And…and a couple of times I’ve found myself starting to follow it.
[Pause]
ABIGAIL:
Thank you, Gideon the Ninth. Thank you for talking to me.
[GIDEON abruptly remembers she’s supposedly taken a vow of silence.]
GIDEON:
Wait…shit!
[Tape recorder clicks]