And If Thou Wilt, Forget

The tick, tick, tick of the clock was somehow louder than the television directly over Tim’s head. He couldn’t quite make out what was going on, and he didn’t particularly care. There was only one thing he wanted to hear, and it wasn’t that.

The room was austere, far too brightly lit, clean and white and antiseptic, and utterly empty, not that he cared. This wasn’t a situation he wanted witnesses for, especially if…especially if…especially in the worst-case scenario. Tim clenched his hands tightly together, hunched over his knees, and waited.

“Mr. Stoker?”

At the high, lilting voice, Tim looked up quickly to see a tall, slim doctor standing in the doorway, holding a clipboard. Her pleasant voice and relaxed posture were at odds with the truly shocking quantity of blood soaking into her scrubs, turning almost all of the pale blue fabric a purple so dark it was nearly black. Even the cap on her head and the surgical mask stretched across her nose and mouth were smeared with it. It was far too much blood for one person to have lost and survived, and Tim felt something hollow in the pit of his stomach.

He stood up.

The doctor, whose name tag was completely obscured by blood, focused her regard on him, and even though he couldn’t see her mouth, he felt her smile in her voice. “The procedure was a complete success. Come right this way. He’s waiting for you.”

Tim followed the doctor into the white, sterile, blank, far too brightly lit corridors. Her footsteps echoed with a sharp, regular click, click, click as loud and even as the clock had been—it sounded almost like she was wearing high heels, but of course she couldn’t be, that was definitely against regulations. Whatever it was she was wearing, the sound of her footsteps completely obscured any sound he might have been making. The hall seemed longer than it ought to have been, and he didn’t see any turns off of it, not that he was really paying attention. At last, she pushed through a set of double doors, and Tim followed.

This room was far, far darker than the corridors had been, and it took Tim’s eyes a moment to adjust. After a second, though, he focused on the one spot that was brightly lit: a hospital gurney, draped with a sheet that probably used to be white, with a figure lying on it.

Gerry.

Tim let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding and approached the gurney. “Hey, babe.”

Something mechanical whirred, and the gurney—which he now realized was a regular hospital bed—began bending, raising Gerry to a sitting position. He was smiling as his eyes opened. “Tiiiim…”

Tim checked. The voice was coming from Gerry’s mouth…but it didn’t sound right, and his mouth hadn’t actually moved. And his eyes—something was wrong. They stared at Tim, wide and bright and…glassy?

“Gerry?” he said carefully.

Gerry’s wide smile didn’t change, didn’t twitch. He didn’t say anything more. Instead he slowly, slowly rose from the gurney and stood before Tim. He raised his hand, slid his fingers into a long dark lock of hair, wrapped it around them twice, pulled—

Tim stood rooted to the spot in horror as he watched the skin on Gerry’s face—on his entire body—slide upwards like he was pulling the cover off a dish at a fancy restaurant. He pulled, and pulled, and pulled, his head lolling backwards and his eyes closing as the skin slid off, until it hung only on the arm. With a casual flick, he turned the whole thing inside out and slid away, leaving a bare, stripped human figure of muscle and sinew and surprisingly little blood considering he had just skinned himself alive. The head was still tilted backwards, and Tim could still see the long dark lashes fluttered closed, which didn’t make sense, they should have come off with the rest of the skin…

Gerry, or the thing that had once been Gerry, tipped its head back upright, that same fixed grin on its face now showing bare white teeth where no lips covered it, and the eyes opened again, and Tim suddenly understood that they were doll’s eyes, marbles of weighted glass with paint and plastic and hair affixed directly to them so that they stayed in a steady position and seemed to open and shut when you moved the doll one way or another. Those bright fixed eyes stayed boring into Tim, even as the head kept tipping forward, even as the torso bent forward too, even as he once again heard that thin, reedy voice—not a voice at all, not a real voice, just a counterweight forcing air from a set of bellows through a set of reeds to vibrate and sound like a cry—emanate from a mouth that never opened, through teeth that never parted. “Tiiiiiiim…”

Laughter, some unholy amalgamation of the guffaw of the stage and the cackle of the insane and the giggle of the innocent, came from somewhere to the left of where he stood. Tim turned his head, expecting to see the doctor who had brought him in, but instead—oh, dear God, no—lurching towards him, wearing the bright and colorful costume of a Zanni, two bright red diamonds painted on the cheeks, laughing and weeping at the same time, was Danny, or at least something that looked like Danny but made of wax, which was melting, dripping off him, and yet he was still coming, still reaching out for Tim—

“Tiiiiiim…” The reedy voice drew Tim’s attention back to the thing that had once been Gerry as it practically folded in half, hanging that way before slowly, painfully, beginning to straighten once more. The head lolled to one side, and Tim took an involuntary step backwards, nausea rising in his stomach as he realized that a huge section of the muscle and skull beneath was gone. It should have exposed his naked brain to the air, but there was nothing, just an empty, gaping, jagged hole, a hollow, like a porcelain doll dropped by a careless child…

In that moment, Tim realized his feet were no longer stuck. With a choked-off sob, he turned and fled back into the corridors.

The lights were off now, the halls felt narrower, and his footsteps clanged and echoed as he ran, like he was tearing through a spaceship in a science fiction film, but he didn’t stop, he kept running blindly, slamming into walls and caroming around corners as he encountered them. Behind him he could hear the sounds of pursuit, the drag and slide of the thing that wasn’t Danny’s feet and the measured thuds of the thing that had been Gerry and the laughter, the awful, echoing laughter, and that thin, reedy thing that was not a voice wailing, crying something that sounded so much like his name, and he’d lost them, he’d always meant to hold on to them but he hadn’t, he’d lost them, he had to get out and maybe if he could find Gertrude she could help him save them—

He slammed into what at first felt like a wall but swung outward like a door, and he felt cool air on his face and smelled an odd mix of gunpowder and ozone and burnt steak, and he’d made it out of the hospital, he was somewhere safe, he was—

His foot encountered nothing and he windmilled, trying to stop himself from falling, but he overbalanced and tumbled off the edge. Twisting, grabbing, he managed to catch the side of the building, but he could feel gravity trying to drag him away, there wasn’t enough of an edge to get enough leverage to pull himself up, he didn’t dare look down…

A figure stood over him, looking down at his hands, and his lungs flattened against his rib cage for a moment before he registered the bright green eyes, the thin lips, and the carefully piled hair of the woman standing over him.

“Gertrude?” he choked out. God, please let him be able to trust her…

She looked over her shoulder, a frightened look on her face, and then bent and reached for Tim’s hands. He let go with one hand and reached for her, but in that instant, his other hand lost contact with the side of the building. He reached out—missed—he was falling, but not falling, but not not falling, he was falling away from her, and he saw her wide eyes in the moment before scarlet poppies suddenly began blooming on her chest, spilling from her mouth, her ears, her eyes, the laughter was getting closer and the things that were no longer the people he loved were reaching for the one person he had left and dragging her back, and he was falling, but he knew in that moment with a crystal clarity that he would never hit the ground, there was no ground for him to hit, he would never know where he was, there was no up, there was no down, there was no side to side—

“Tim! Tim! Wake up!”

Tim’s eyes snapped open. The first thing he saw was a pale face—Gerry’s face—bending over him, eyes wide with concern. Still in the throes of what he’d just seen, what he’d just experienced, Tim’s fighting instincts came into play and he bolted upright and scrambled back, drawing back his arm to throw a punch.

Gerry immediately backed off, hands up defensively and somehow looking even paler than before. “It’s okay, babe, it’s okay, it’s me, it’s just me. You were having a nightmare.”

A nightmare.

Tim’s breath stuttered in his chest as the adrenaline left him in a rush. He dropped his hand to the bed and stared at his partner. “Gerry?” he said, a little uncertainly.

“Yeah, Tim, it’s me.” Gerry moved back towards him slowly, as if worried he would spook him if he moved too quickly, and touched his cheek lightly.

At the sensation of real skin on his, the comforting smell of Gerry’s soap and the ink and paint that clung to him, something in Tim broke. He lunged forward and clung to Gerry, burying his face in the crook of his neck.

“Jesus Christ, that sucked,” he whispered.

November and December had passed mostly in a blur. Tim wasn’t exactly resigned to Jon’s dogged insistence on investigating everything and pulling reports himself, but he’d backed off a little—emphasis on a little—so Jon didn’t think he was gunning for his job. He’d considered bringing Sasha into things a time or two, but the more he watched her, the less sure he was that that would be a good idea; call him paranoid, and maybe he was, but she seemed to talk to Elias more than the rest of them combined and he couldn’t shake the suspicion that she was actually spying on the Archives for him. Martin, despite Jon’s derision, was doing a lot better with his research, but he seemed happiest in the afternoons when he sat at the computer and typed up their files. Tim was still looking for anything he could find on the Unknowing, but with both Jon and Sasha around, it was getting that much harder to do during working hours. And Jon had started to come in earlier and stay later, with the grumpy explanation that nothing was ever going to get done if he didn’t, so it was becoming riskier and riskier for Tim to sneak in after hours.

He was becoming quite well acquainted with midnight.

The Institute had closed for the entire week between Christmas and New Year’s, including a half-day on Christmas Eve, which even Tim knew was unusual, particularly the half-day. Normally they were just closed on the mandatory public holidays, but for some reason this year Elias had generously given the entire Institute ten and a half entire days off. Jon, who continued to be a bit more mellow off the clock than he was on it, had insisted on buying everyone lunch after they’d closed up, and they’d actually had a rather enjoyable hour speculating on why Elias had done it, the “theories” getting wilder and wilder until both Martin and Sasha were laughing so hard they couldn’t breathe. The cheery round of “see you next year”s had left Tim cautiously optimistic that things would be better.

Naturally, they hadn’t been. Martin had actually beat both Tim and Jon back to work on the fourth of January, looking pale and drawn and not particularly communicative; conversely, Sasha was ten minutes late, and Jon for some reason took that out on Martin until Tim intervened. He hadn’t exactly been in the best of moods himself—he’d really been hoping Gertrude would fucking turn up by now, and while he knew she’d be pissed if she found out he’d wasted time looking for her instead of working on the Unknowing, he was running out of leads and wanted, needed, to bounce some theories off her. He and Gerry had even spent a couple of days during the break fruitlessly searching the length and breadth of London for her, to the point that they’d even managed to wear Rowlf out. Instead they’d run into a relatively minor but still rather nasty devotee of the Vast who’d probably left a bit of a mark on them, or at least on Tim; he’d thought they were escaping it by taking the chase through a narrow, almost claustrophobic maze of industrial units on a rooftop until he leaped through a gap between two electrical behemoths and almost went straight over the edge of the HSBC building. His quick reflexes and Gerry’s unexpectedly strong grip were the only things that had kept him from being a smear on the pavement of Canary Wharf.

He hadn’t mentioned that to anyone at the Institute, but it definitely put a damper on the New Year’s celebrations.

Gerry stroked Tim’s hair comfortingly, grounding him to the present. “Want to talk about it?”

Tim stayed quiet for a few moments until the worst of the urge to shake had passed. Finally, he said softly, “Just…everything. My brain decided to throw all my worst moments and fears into a blender and serve them up to me all at once. I was in the hospital waiting for you to come out of surgery, only when I got back to see you, you pulled off your skin like that clown did Danny—and then Danny, or what was left of Danny, was there too, and you were both chasing me. And then, naturally, I went straight over the edge of a roof into the Great Big Nothing, and Gertrude tried to help me and I couldn’t connect with her fast enough, so she got torn to pieces—probably—and I was just falling…” He sighed heavily. “Jesus. It felt so real.”

Gerry kissed the top of Tim’s head and held him a little tighter. Quietly, he said, “Maybe you should call out of work today.”

“I can’t call out for a nightmare. And I don’t think I could fake being sick well enough to get away with it, not with Jon.” Tim managed to sit up, but he didn’t let go of Gerry. “Besides, I don’t really want to leave Martin alone with him. Sasha might step in if it gets really bad, but she won’t step in before that and Martin doesn’t need to deal with that.”

“Tim, babe, you can’t fix the whole world.”

“That doesn’t keep me from being obligated to try.”

Gerry didn’t argue with him, but after Tim got back from taking Rowlf out for his very chilly morning walk, he insisted on giving him a ride to the Institute. Tim put up a token resistance, but Gerry looked so serious he really couldn’t argue too much. He gave him a kiss when he dropped him off, got out, tugged his coat tighter around himself, and turned the knob on the courtyard door. It yielded immediately, which was good.

The Archives, when he stepped through it, were pitch black, which wasn’t.

“Jon?” Tim called into the darkness, pulling the door shut behind him. “You forgot to turn the lights on, boss.”

There was no answer. Tim swore under his breath and switched on his torch, sweeping it around the room. Nothing but the rows of shelving and statements greeted him, that and an almost oppressive silence. He gripped the torch tighter, feeling the bite of the ring on his finger, and repeated just a dream, just a dream, just a dream over and over in his mind as he made his way to the light switch and clicked it on.

Someone yelped in surprise directly in front of him, and there was a rustle and a rattle and a thud. Tim yelped, too, jumped back, and swung the torch high over his head, ready to bash whatever he’d startled until it stopped moving and then interrogate it as to what it was doing there. He froze when his brain caught up with his eyes. “Jon, Jesus.”

“Tah—Tim?” Jon leaned against the wall, other hand pressed to his chest. His keys and laptop bag were on the ground at his feet, and he looked as though he had just aged another decade. “What are you doing down here?”

“Didn’t realize how early it was.” Tim bent down to pick up Jon’s things and handed them to him. “The courtyard door was unlocked.”

“Damn. I was so tired last night when I left I forgot to check.” Jon sighed heavily. “I suppose I ought to check and see if anything is missing, but honestly, how would we know?”

“I’ll look around,” Tim promised. “Most of my research is in a good place right now, so I can take the morning to see what’s out of place. I still know it better than you guys do.”

“I—yes, quite. Thank you, Tim.” Jon cleared his throat and began taking off his coat.

Tim hung his own coat on the rack, stuffed hat and gloves into the pockets, and set off to look over the shelves. While he was at it, he took the opportunity to switch a few files around. The back was pretty disorganized as it was, but Tim found a few statements that spilled over to two or three pages, removed a random page, and slipped it into another folder. He made a mental note of which ones he did it to, though, so he could come back and look at them later. Maybe now that Jon had left the door unlocked at least once, he’d be less suspicious if Tim came in early that way and he happened to catch him.

Truthfully, he didn’t think anyone had broken in. It was possible Jon had forgotten to lock the door, like he thought. It was also possible Elias had unlocked it for the express purpose of seeing how Jon, or the other people in the Archives, would react to it. Maybe, just maybe, it was Gertrude who’d used her spare key—or picked the lock—and was hiding somewhere in there. Tim was willing to concede that wasn’t likely, but it was the other part of the reason he’d volunteered for this search. If he came across her, or any hint she was there, he wanted to be the one to discover her so he could help her hide if she needed to. Or, in a pinch, help her bury Jon’s body.

Of course, he found nothing, which put him in a bit of a bad mood by the time he made it back to the group. He hid it as best he could, though, and greeted Martin as cheerfully as possible before settling down for his morning’s work.

Sasha, as usual, went to lunch first; Martin was waiting on a call back on a statement, so Tim went at the same time. Normally he didn’t eat anywhere near the Institute, everything was so damn expensive, but he didn’t really feel like popping up to the canteen and he was still unsettled enough by his nightmares that he thought the walk in the crisp January air might do him some good. It was clear and sunny, which also helped, and Tim felt at least marginally better by the time he made his way back. He was fine. Gerry was fine. Danny was somewhere that nothing could hurt him anymore (he hoped), and whatever was left of him wasn’t really him. Gertrude, wherever she was, was fine. Everything was just—

Halfway down the steps into the Archives from the courtyard, he froze in the act of pulling off his gloves. There was a feeling in the air—a taste, a smell…he sniffed, and then his eyes widened. Salt. Damp. Cold. It was faint, but it was there. The Lonely had come to the Archives.

And Martin was there.

Tim dashed across the Archives and burst through the shelves, trying not to think too hard about his dream again. He pulled up short when he reached the cluster of desks and Martin looked up, blinking in surprise but apparently unharmed. “Tim? Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, just—thought I smelled something.” Tim tried to smile and took another sniff at the air. The tang of the Lonely was still there, but it didn’t seem to be clinging to Martin. Lying through his teeth, he added, “Must’ve imagined it.”

“Maybe someone burnt popcorn up in the break room.” Martin saved whatever he was working on and closed his laptop. “You okay if I head up to lunch now?”

“Yeah, go ahead.” Tim took off his hat. “I’ll hold down the fort until Sasha gets back.”

Martin smiled, retrieved a brown paper sack out of his desk, and headed out of the Archives. Tim hung up his coat and hat, waited a moment to be sure he was on his own, and then started going through the stacks of statements on everyone else’s desks. Jon must have found another Lonely statement—a bad one, if the smell still clung to it, or at least a recent one—and if he could find it, he could keep it away from the others. Definitely from Martin.

The door to the Archivist’s office flew open. Tim spun around, fully expecting that this time Gertrude would be stood there, impatient at the delay and demanding he explain what had happened and why her office had been rearranged. Instead, he saw a woman of about his age, her pretty face creased in annoyance as she stomped out the door and slammed it behind herself.

Tim looked at her, and saw the fog swirling in the pupils of her eyes, and slowly eased away from the folders.

The door to the office opened again, and Jon stepped out, one hand clamped over his nose and mouth. He spotted Tim over the woman’s shoulder and said in a muffled, slightly nasal voice, “Tib, would you show Biss Hearde oud of de Iddsdidude, blease?”

“Sure thing,” Tim said before the woman could deny she needed assistance. “Right this way, ma’am.”

The woman reluctantly followed Tim to the steps. As he held the Archives door for her, he said, “So is your name Hearde or Hearne? Sounded like you broke his nose, so I can’t tell.”

“I hope I did,” the woman said under her breath. In a more normal tone of voice, she added, “It’s Hearne. Naomi Hearne.”

“Tim Stoker. Nice to meet you. Sorry you had to deal with giving a statement to Jon, he’s not got the greatest of bedside manners.” Actually, Tim didn’t think they’d had a live statement come down to the Archives since he’d started working there, but he very much doubted he’d been able to hide that he didn’t believe in whatever she’d had to say. “The last Archivist was better.”

“He couldn’t have been worse,” Naomi grumbled.

“She,” Tim corrected her. “Her name was Gertrude Robinson.”

“Sorry. Well, he took it, at least.” Naomi sighed. “He said you’ll be looking into it, but he didn’t sound like he expected you to find much. But it’s true. It happened.”

“I believe you.”

Naomi stopped and stared at him suspiciously. “You don’t even know what it is I saw. What happened to me.”

Tim shrugged. “No, I don’t. Not specifically. But I’ve been working down here longer than anyone else right now. I’ve got a feel for when people come down here with true stories of what happened to them, and I’ve usually got a pretty good sense of at least the vague idea of what happened.” He grinned at her. “Sometimes I even know how to help.”

“Uh-huh.” Naomi took a half-step back that would have offended him if he’d actually been hitting on her. “What did you have in mind for me?”

Tim pursed his lips thoughtfully, studying her. Finally, he said, “There’s a group that meets in the Chelsea Physic Garden on Sunday afternoons, picks one of the plants growing there, and has a debate on its use in current science. You’d probably enjoy the discussions, and you’d make a lot of friends with the same interests as you.”

Naomi blinked. “How did you know I was a scientist?”

“Your shirt. You’ve got a bit of the dye they use to highlight cells on the pocket. Don’t know too many people that use that particular dye who aren’t scientists.” Tim put a hand on Naomi’s shoulder, hesitantly. “You don’t need to be alone, Ms. Hearne. Not if you can help it. That’s the worst thing you can be right now. Just stay safe, okay? Don’t cut yourself off. Maybe reach out to a few people you haven’t spoken to in a bit. They’re likely worried about you. They won’t be offended if you reach out after…however long it’s been.”

Naomi stared at him for a long moment. Tears filled her eyes. The fog didn’t exactly dissipate, but it thinned out a little, like it was being blown by a storm from out to sea. “I’ll—I’ll keep that in mind. Thank you, Mr. Stoker.”

Tim nodded, and smiled, and escorted her out the door. He shook her hand at the door of the Institute and watched her leave, then sighed and turned back towards the Archives. He was still going to look through those statements, but maybe it wasn’t as urgent. At least it wasn’t likely there was anything in there that would directly hurt any of the others.

Still, he felt a little better. That was one he could save, at any rate.