And If Thou Wilt, Forget

It was exactly a month after the new staff came down to the Archives that Tim’s luck ran dry.

He’d managed to get into a rhythm—an awkward, almost syncopated rhythm, but at least a consistent one—once he’d figured out the others’ patterns. Sasha was punctual to the extreme, walking into the Archives with a cup of coffee in hand in the mornings in exactly the right time to get her computer fired up to start working at eight and walking out the door precisely at five; she spent the mornings fighting with the computer and the afternoons investigating statements and took her lunch at noon, neatly bisecting her day into four-hour chunks. Jon was prone to coming in early and staying late, but never more than half an hour in either direction—so far, anyway—and he disliked taking the Tube in the dark if he could help it. Martin tended to be early because he was so terrified of being late, which at least meant that Tim had an excuse for not seeing him on the Tube in the mornings; he’d also tended to stay late because he was struggling to finish all of his work before the end of the day, at least until Tim managed to convince Jon to let him type up the statements, which was easy enough that he could finish more or less before Jon was ready to go. Tim cheerfully spent his day doing research and filing as required and left at the same time as Martin to go home, have dinner with Gerry, and take the dog for his evening run; a couple of times a week, he would come back under the cover of deep darkness and try to pull the important files.

He was prepared to swear there’d been somebody else there one night, but when he’d gone to investigate the sound, he’d found nothing and no one. Either he’d been imagining it, or it had been the alleged ghost…or Gertrude was sneaking in without anyone knowing, somehow. Maybe she had an extra set of keys. Tim had to have faith that she had her reasons for not telling him she was there.

In a way, he was kind of enjoying investigating the patently false statements. Jon had announced the creation of what he termed the “Discredited Section”—an area of shelves dedicated to those statements that were obviously and provably false, as difficult as it was to prove a negative—which he “expected to get a good deal of use out of,” as he’d put it disdainfully. Since Tim was the only one of the three who didn’t really have another project…as far as Jon knew, anyway…he was primarily the one to pull files from the shelves and distribute them, and he’d been able to keep any of the real ones from the others.

So far.

Getting through the stack he’d pulled on Monday had been a bit easier than he’d expected; he only had one left that was still open, and he was reasonably sure he’d be able to finish it up by the end of the day. Jon had been interested in this one because it mentioned Jurgen Leitner—he at least had enough knowledge to recognize that name, which was something Tim wanted to poke at when he got the chance—but Leitner actually had little to nothing to do with the meat of it. There was an author involved, though, one whose name Tim vaguely remembered, so he’d reached out to his former boss and received an enthusiastic request-slash-demand for a lunchtime meeting. With that in mind, he’d driven in, stopping to pick up Martin on the way. They’d developed a pretty good friendship in the last couple of weeks, and so far, Martin hadn’t noticed that he’d told Tim far more about himself than Tim had let him know in return.

“How are you doing with those files?” Tim asked Martin as they headed for the side door. It was honestly a crapshoot whether or not Jon remembered to unlock it when he came in. “Anything you need help with?”

“No, I, uh—actually, I’m just about done.” Martin looked pleased and proud of himself. “I’m expecting an email, o-or maybe a phone call, from Tansy Colvin’s cousin to confirm a couple things and then I’ll know for sure if it’s got a paranormal explanation or not, but that’s the only one I have left.”

Tim tested the knob. Locked. “You finished the Bratticks file already?” he asked casually to distract Martin as he palmed the key and unlocked the door, trying to make it look like it had been open the whole time.

“Wasn’t really anything to do with that one,” Martin confessed, surprising Tim. “Once I verified that there’s not actually a Charles Bratticks—the name didn’t come up anywhere and the contact details were made up—I knew it was fake.”

“Jon’s not going to let you get off that easy,” Tim warned him. “You know how he gets.” He did a deliberately poor imitation of Jon’s voice. “‘While the statement may be incoherent and fantastical, we must do our due diligence. You can’t just assume because it’s too hard to look.’”

“Tim, shh, he’ll hear you,” Martin said with a nervous giggle, darting a glance towards the front of the Archives. “It’s—i-it’s a poem. ‘A Positive Reminder.’ I recognized it right off, and, you know, the date was too recent to have been what inspired the poem, so—”

He broke off with a startled oof as he collided with Jon, who had just unexpectedly emerged from behind a shelf with his nose buried in a file. The stack of files he’d been carrying slipped from his arm and landed on the floor, scattering every which way, some of the pages slipping out of the folders as they did so.

“Martin!” Jon snapped, sounding even more annoyed than usual. “Can’t you watch where you’re going?”

“Sorry, sorry!” Martin said quickly. “Here, let me—”

He bent to help pick up the papers just as Jon did, and their heads collided with a thunk that made even Tim wince. They both reeled back with a yelp and a curse respectively.

Tim saw Jon swelling up to yell at Martin further and stepped in, squatting down rather than bending and reaching for the files. “Here, let me help you pick these up…are these ready to go back on the shelves? I can take care of that for you. I’m done everything but the Braisewell file, and I’m talking to someone at lunch to get the last of that.”

“No, these are new,” Jon said, surprising Tim once more. “You’re not the only one who’s nearly completed. Sasha closed out her files yesterday, and Martin only has one left—” He shot Martin a glare, making him flinch. “—allegedly, so I went to get the next stack. No sense in everything coming to a standstill just because I’m recording. We’ll never get through all this otherwise.”

“Ah. Well, I’m not doing much this morning, so—” Tim began.

“I’m going to skim over them and sort them into at least broad categories. Perhaps if they’re at least loosely connected, or taking place in the same areas, we can get multiple sets of answers at once that way.”

Fuck. Tim kept his easygoing grin in place, even as he scrambled for a solution. “I’m happy to do that for you, too. You know, save you time.”

Jon stopped and gave Tim a look that was somewhere between puzzled and suspicious. Tim shrugged and blinked innocently. “You shouldn’t have to do the work for us, you know. Just supervise.”

At that, Jon softened, at least a little. “Thank you, Tim, but I think this qualifies as ‘supervising.’” He took the folder out of Tim’s hand and added, “If you’re looking for something to do this morning, try and get these damned papers to stay together. They get everywhere and it’s hard to keep them straight.”

“Only so much I can do about that,” Tim said apologetically. Martin had made himself scarce, probably to make tea before the workday really got underway, so Tim lowered his voice and took the opportunity to be helpful. “You’re not supposed to use metal fasteners when you’re archiving stuff. It rusts, you know? Not great for long-term storage.”

“That’s why we’re recording,” Jon replied. “And typing them up.”

“Both of which depend on the technology to read those files. Mister Megabytes won’t last forever, and eventually we’re not going to be able to read the floppy discs. And despite what Sasha seems to think, ‘digital’ and ‘permanent’ are hardly synonymous,” Tim pointed out. Jon grunted. “Not everything is going to be on a computer. Even now.”

“Well, you may be right,” Jon said grudgingly. “The older some of these cases are, the less likely it is we’ll be able to find the research on them through the computer, I suppose.” He drummed his fingers against the file at the bottom of the stack. “This one’s nearly twenty years old, and from what I was reading, the man was on drugs. Even if there was any evidence for it, I can’t imagine we’ll be able to find much information on a man living alone with a ‘singing coffin’ in his flat.”

Tim’s blood ran cold, and he couldn’t have said why. “Wait, what?”

Jon dislodged the file and opened it. “Statement of a Mr. Joshua Gillespie, regarding a coffin he apparently had in his house for around two years. I haven’t read it in detail, but frankly, from what I saw, it’s ridiculous. Almost ludicrous. If it wasn’t in Bournemouth, I doubt I would have given it a second glance.” He snorted. “At least my hometown isn’t entirely devoid of paranormal activity.”

Tim fidgeted a little bit with his ring, then made himself stop so Jon wouldn’t notice. It was tempting to let him believe that, to just agree that it was bullshit and let it go…but something told him Jon wouldn’t actually leave it at that. He’d investigate it himself, despite his assertion that it was fake and impossible to research—or worse, he’d give it to Martin. Jon might, key word was might, leave it alone after a cursory investigation and an inability to prove it. Martin, longing for approval, afraid of being caught out as a fraud, and desperate to prove himself, definitely wouldn’t. Tim couldn’t have said how he knew, with a certainty he could feel in his bones, that this was a genuine case, but he did.

And if he let any of the others investigate it, he’d never forgive himself if they got hurt. Or worse.

“Let me do some digging,” he said, reaching out to tug the file out of Jon’s hand and apparently catching him off-guard enough that he didn’t resist. “I’ve got some tricks Gertrude taught me—and she’s introduced me to a few people, so they’ll talk to me if they won’t talk to anyone else. Suspicious, you know? I can’t make any promises about what I’ll find, but I’ll do what I can.”

Jon hesitated for no more than a second before nodding. “Thank you, Tim. I’ll sort the rest of these before I start recording the statements we already have.”

Tim nodded, and smiled, and tried not to show that he was agitated. “Where’d you find all these, anyway?”

“That back corner. I must have straightened it up twelve times in the last three weeks, but it keeps getting…disarranged.” Jon scowled disapprovingly in the direction of the shelves. “I was going to work our way from the front to the back so at least the shelves would be more presentable and organized the closer to the front we were, but in the first place, it’s going to be years before we back there at this rate, and in the second place it was going to drive me mad.”

“The shelves must be uneven back there.” Fuck, fuck, FUCK. Tim had no one to blame for this but himself. He knew exactly which corner Jon was talking about, because he’d taken to stowing any files that felt real but that he hadn’t had time to go through to see if they were useful back there, specifically because he knew Jon was working front to back. He was careful to keep it neat but not suspiciously so…so either the shelves actually were uneven and things were sliding around, or he had heard somebody moving around back there and they’d been rummaging through the real statements.

Which might not be a bad thing. Maybe they’d taken the worst of them. Maybe the only real one left was this one he was holding now. Maybe he’d be able to keep Jon and Martin and Sasha from getting too close to anything before Gertrude got back and gave them the okay.

Yeah, right. And maybe if his grandmother had wheels she’d have been a wheelbarrow.

Tim knew as soon as he sat down and started reading through the statement that finding anything helpful about it wasn’t going to be quick. Since the longer he took about it, the longer he could keep Jon from reading it—and the longer Jon would give Martin, who after all didn’t have Tim’s specific training or connections, to research his own stack of statements—he determined to take his time. He went back over it a second time, more slowly this time, and started making notes of what he could research and what might prove to have some answers.

Jon emerged from the Archivist’s office about half an hour later looking grumpier than usual and deposited a stack of half a dozen files on each assistant’s desk, then stomped back to do his recordings. Tim waited until the door had shut behind him and Martin was distracted by the phone call he’d been expecting, then hovered his hand experimentally over his new cases.

There was at least one genuine encounter in there, maybe two. He could feel it radiating like heat off of the stack of files, and there was maybe a small temptation to pause his research and rifle through them to see what there was. Two or three of the ones he’d set aside were ones he was almost positive involved the Stranger, and he needed to keep the others away from those. Maybe if he let them have a couple of the others, ones where the ritual wasn’t coming up, he could do extra research into the Stranger’s and just…not tell the others. But he couldn’t really do that with Martin and Sasha sitting right there, even if Sasha was focusing on the Archives computer for the moment, so he went back to his research.

This one was the Buried. He could sense that a mile off. Gertrude had taken out the Buried’s ritual years before she ever met him, so it wasn’t exactly crucial or time-sensitive. He almost offered to swap with Martin, but…no, no, he needed to keep going with this one. He’d promised, and anyway, he rationalized, he didn’t know any of the ones in the others’ stacks were real. He was just assuming.

He was probably right, but still, just assuming.

At the very least, it killed time during the morning. When the hot spot shut off, he saved his work and powered down his laptop. Martin, working away opposite him, looked up in surprise. “Where are you going?”

“Meeting someone for lunch to close out that file,” Tim reminded him. He’d told Martin that on the way in, but sometimes you had to remind him two or three times because he’d get distracted and forget.

“No, I mean—you’re coming back, aren’t you? Why take your laptop with you?”

Because he didn’t trust Sasha not to hack into it, was the answer. In the month he’d known her, Tim had quickly realized that she was catlike in that she couldn’t stand being denied access to anything, so if there was a secret out there, she’d find it. And if Martin went to lunch and left her in the Archives alone, he was pretty sure she would want to look into his laptop just to see if there were things he had in there that he hadn’t shared with the others. There wasn’t—or at least not much—because he wasn’t entirely stupid, but he didn’t think she was above at least trying to get into his email and see what he and Gertrude had talked about, if nothing else.

He shrugged carelessly. “Habit, I guess. Gertrude always warned me not to leave my laptop down here unattended.”

“I’m surprised she knew what a laptop was,” Sasha grumbled from where she sat with her back to them. As if in response, Mister Megabytes honked an error at her.

Tim was momentarily torn between the need to defend Gertrude and the desire to let the others keep underestimating her, then leaned into the joke. “She was convinced it would come to life and eat her. See you later, Marto.” He patted Martin on the shoulder and headed out before he said something he would regret.

The Braisewell file might have been taradiddle from beginning to end, but it at least had given him an excuse to call Lou again. He’d been worried about how she would react. Turned out he hadn’t needed to. She immediately got the business part of the meeting out of the way by informing him that the statement was almost word for word a summary of the plot of a poorly written book Thaddeus Braisewell had tried to sell as “based on a true story” and he’d probably done it to give it legitimacy, and they spent the next hour catching up. Louisa Wexler was significantly less serious than Gertrude Robinson but no less sharp, and Tim had forgotten how much he genuinely enjoyed her company.

“I hope good old Gertie knows what a gem she has in you,” Lou said as they left the restaurant, having permitted Tim to pay for their lunch only because he’d promised to expense it back to the Institute. “We went to school together, has she told you that?”

“She doesn’t talk about the past much,” Tim hedged. It was true, but he also wasn’t going to admit that she was currently missing. “Is that why you suggested I apply at the Institute?”

“Truth be told, Timmy boy, I didn’t think you’d apply for a job,” Lou admitted. “When I suggested you go in for an interview, I meant to go talk to her about whatever happened to Danny. I could see it was eating you up inside and that you didn’t know how to talk about it. Figured it was either a Cain and Abel situation, in which case you’d go to your priest, or something you couldn’t wrap your brain around, in which case it would be right up Gertrude’s alley.” She touched his hand. “I let you go because I could see she’d already helped you. And I can see it’s done you good, being there, doing that kind of work. You look a hell of a lot better than you did the day you packed up your office. Gertrude’s good for you.” With a laugh, she added, “And that new man of yours probably doesn’t hurt.”

“Not unless I ask him to,” Tim quipped, earning him a groan and a sock on the shoulder. He laughed, too. “I enjoy the work. Miss you and the gang, but…you’re right. I think this is where I need to be.” He held out his arms for a hug. “Good to see you again, Lou.”

“Good to see you, too, Timtam.” Lou hugged him tightly, then kissed his cheek before patting it twice. “Don’t be a stranger.”

Tim’s good mood lasted until he walked back into the Archives to see Sasha hunched over her desk, tapping at a laptop that definitely wasn’t hers while Jon stood behind her, arms folded and scowling. She shook her head in frustration. “I don’t get it. The settings are fine, and it hasn’t done that to any of the others.”

“What’s up?” Tim asked, unslinging his laptop bag and setting it in his chair. “Computer eat one of your files?”

“Something like that,” Jon groused.

Sasha glanced up at Tim. “The audio file got corrupted. I tried cleaning it up, but it’s really badly damaged. And trying to re-record it did the same thing.”

“Maybe you need to reinstall the software?”

“I did. And I did a test recording, and it was fine. And then Jon did a test recording, and it was fine. And then he read the first part of a statement, just as a test, and—” Sasha pressed a button on the laptop.

Tim jumped as a horrible, discordant squeal came out of the speakers. It almost sounded like words, somewhere, but he couldn’t make them out clearly. “Jesus Christ!”

“Yeah.” Sasha, mercifully, stopped the playback. “It’s just that one statement, though.”

“No, it’s not,” Jon said with an exasperated sigh. “It’s the one I was trying to record, which was that statement about Old Fishmarket Close up in Edinburgh, and then it was a rather useless fragment I would normally not have bothered with but thought would do for a test, and then it was this one.” He waved at the folder on the table next to him. “But none of the others. I don’t get it.”

Tim looked at the file Jon had waved at. His stomach flipped as he realized which one it was—Joshua Gillespie’s statement. “What was the other one? Old Fishmarket Close?”

“Guy who said he had an encounter with a creeper in Edinburgh a few years back that just kept saying ‘Can I have a cigarette?’ over and over,” Sasha said. “Like six people went missing at the same spot over the years, and at least three of them were smokers, too. And then there was a weird cell photo of a seemingly empty alley, but when I cleaned it up a bit—okay, a lot—it looked like there was a hand in it. So, maybe not totally fake.”

No. No, not fake at all. Tim’s stomach lurched so hard it practically walked out of the Archives without him. He tried to keep his tone light…and maybe distract them a bit, too. “Huh. Weird. And here I thought Gertrude was just bad at technology.”

“What do you mean?” Jon asked sharply.

Tim shrugged and began unpacking his laptop again. “I didn’t say anything because I figured you’d have better luck, but I asked Gertrude once why we didn’t have people who came to give statements record them as audio files rather than write them down. She said she’d never had any luck with computer recordings, and people tended to look at her funny when she asked them to record on the tape recorder.”

Jon straightened. “There’s a tape recorder?”

Shit. Tim froze momentarily before turning to Jon. “Uh, yeah, or at least there was. Haven’t seen it since I got back, though. And there aren’t any tapes lying around.”

“Well…it might do,” Jon said thoughtfully. “In a pinch. At least for the more…difficult statements. See if you can find it. It’s a bit easier to find blank cassette tapes than it is to find recorders in stores these days, so if you can find the one we already have, I can try that out.” He turned to Sasha. “Go to lunch now that Tim’s back, Sasha. I’ll go when Martin gets back. If he manages to get back in a timely fashion.”

Tim bit his tongue to keep from saying anything about that. Sasha nodded and got up. “Right. See you in an hour. Good luck with the hunt, Tim.” She waved and strode out of the Archives. Jon scooped up his laptop and headed back to the Archivist’s office.

Left alone, Tim sighed deeply, then turned to study the Archives. He knew most of Gertrude’s hiding places, and he also knew there had been at least two recorders, so even if she’d taken one with her wherever she was, he could almost certainly find the other. Did he want to, that was the question. Maybe if he pretended he couldn’t find it, Jon would just put a note on the difficult statements and move on.

No, probably not. More likely he’d just go online and find one somewhere. Besides, Gertrude read them into the void sometimes and got the same power from them. Even if Jon wasn’t really the Archivist, even reading them would probably bind him closer to the Eye, make it harder for him to walk away…or for Gertrude to release him once she came back. At least maybe if he found it himself, he could mitigate the damage a little.

Heaving another sigh, he set off into the bowels of the Archives. Him and his big fucking mouth.