And If Thou Wilt, Forget

Two steps forward, one step back. Tim didn’t know if Martin had just been overloaded by the information he’d given him the day they’d been interviewed by Detective Tonner or if he simply refused to believe it, but when they’d returned to the Institute on Monday, he’d been polite but avoided Tim as much as possible. It would have been difficult under the best of circumstances, but with there only being the two of them, it was borderline ludicrous. Tim’s attempt to corner Martin and get him to talk about something had resulted in a minor explosion, so he was letting it go…for now.

What he hadn’t let go was when he discovered Martin gathering a stack of statements with the intention of recording them. Martin’s arguments—that this was literally their job, that they had to keep things running for Jon, and that the work would never get done if someone didn’t do it—were all persuasive enough, especially if you didn’t know how bad it was, but Tim wasn’t backing down on this one. His arguments—that recording the statements was actually Jon’s idea and not part of their duties, that putting them in the computer would be just as effective and important, and that Jon would never forgive Tim or himself if Martin lost his soul—were equally persuasive, and emphatic. Martin, however, was equally stubborn, and they’d ended up shouting at one another, about something that was surely not remotely related to the words actually coming out of their mouths.

Finally, Tim had thrown a Hail Mary, couched as a concession. He’d agreed to split the recording duties with Martin, and even offered to divvy up the files to be recorded so they would each do their fair share. Martin had relaxed, just a little, and agreed. They had decided to designate Thursday as their official recording day, so on Wednesday before he left, Tim split all the files they’d finished their research on into two equal stacks.

If he made sure that all of the statements he was sure were real ended up in his pile, well, that was nobody’s business but his.

Martin shut himself up in Document Storage to do his recording. There was a sort of unspoken agreement that they weren’t touching the Archivist’s office in Jon’s absence, so they had moved one of the spare desks into the room Martin had once slept in to give them a quiet space to record, since the room was soundproofed. The window on the door had been cleaned until it sparkled after Prentiss’s attack, and while it had a shade that could be rolled down, Martin left it up, so Tim could glance up periodically throughout the morning to see him hunched over his laptop, squinting at fiddly handwriting and dictating nonsense, malarkey, and generalized bullshit into the recording app. He looked increasingly frustrated as the morning wore on, and by the time Tim brought him a cup of tea around eleven, he had one hand tangled in his hair and looked as if he was trying to yank his brains out through his scalp.

“Statement ends.” Martin shot Tim a brief look of gratitude—very brief—as he released his hair and reached for the mug. “Honestly, I don’t think there’s a lot to say about this one. Luke Dyer was fifteen when he made his statement, and considering he’s since gone his way through five or six different iterations of a punk rock ban since then, it’s pretty obvious he was trying to create a ‘cool’ persona for himself, get a bit of mystique around his brand or…whatever. There is no evidence of any kind of cult existing, anywhere, matching his admittedly detailed description, which is another reason to doubt it, these things are never that describable. We also managed to get hold of his older sister, and she told us in no uncertain terms that her brother is full of shit and we shouldn’t believe him if he says he saw his own shadow copying his movements. I’m putting this one on the Discredited shelves and calling it a day. End recording.” He stabbed the STOP button on the laptop viciously and sat back. “Ugh.”

“Look at it this way,” Tim said sympathetically. “All this has been building up for months. Once we get through it, we probably won’t have to do more than one or two a week.”

“Why wasn’t Jon recording all this?” Martin asked, somewhere between distressed and annoyed. “It’s, it’s not like him to be so…careless. Like you said, this was his idea.”

“Eh. These are all—” Tim stopped himself from saying unsatisfying. He didn’t get the sense that they were being watched, but Martin didn’t want to know how deep Jon was just yet. “Fake. I think he’s been focusing on the real ones lately. And besides, if you were frustrated by how obviously fake that one was, imagine how he would have felt. We can probably let them go, to be honest.”

“No! No, they—they need to be done.” Martin took a deep breath. “I’ll do them if you don’t want to.”

“Martin, don’t be ridiculous.” Tim studied Martin’s face. He looked…exhausted. His face was grey, the circles under his eyes were almost the color of a bruise, and his fingers trembled slightly around the cup. “I’m not making you do this alone. Are you getting any sleep these days? You don’t look well.”

“I’m fine,” Martin said unconvincingly.

Tim took a deep breath and swallowed the static on his tongue. “Martin.”

He may not have used the Ceaseless Watcher voice, but his Older Brother voice was enough to make Martin wilt. “I—I can’t, Tim. I’m worried about him, and every time I close my eyes, I see…” He flicked a finger in the direction of where the body had been less than two weeks previously. “And, you know, this time last year I was trapped in my house by a thousand worms in a trench coat, so…it’s not a good time.”

“Yeah, I can understand that,” Tim said, as gently as possible. He glanced at the laptop, saw that the file had saved, and closed the lid. “Go home, kiddo, okay? I’ve got this for the rest of the day. Take tomorrow, too.”

“I—I can’t—”

“You can,” Tim said firmly, “and you will. I can handle things. Not the first time I’ve had to, and it probably won’t be the last. Go home and get some rest, take a couple days not to think about this place, and for God’s sake, don’t go looking for Jon. That detective is going to be watching you, because she still thinks you’ll lead her to him, and you don’t want to do that. You’re done your recording for the week. Call it a day, okay?”

Martin gnawed his lip in indecision, then took a deep breath and nodded reluctantly. “Yeah, okay, sure. See you Monday, I guess.”

Tim used the opportunity provided by Martin slowly savoring his tea and packing his things to run up to the canteen and grab a sandwich, then made it back in time to see him out the door with a hug, which, for a wonder, he accepted. He ate his hastily procured lunch, grabbed the stack of files, and went into the Archivist’s office. Probably he could have done it out on the main floor, but it felt more…appropriate to do it in the office. He sat down, kicked back with his feet on the desk, and grabbed the recorder. No sense in starting with the fake stuff—the sooner he got this over with, the better, just in case Martin did decide to come back.

“Right,” he said. “Case number 9900112, Adrian Weiss. Incident occurred in Cratfield, Suffolk, dates unknown but likely sometime in the 1970s. Statement given first of December, 1990. Committed to tape third of March, 2017. Tim Stoker recording. Statement begins.”

It was a nothing statement, in the grand scheme of things. Maybe it would have meant more to him if he’d found it a year ago, with Jane Prentiss lurking beneath the floor and evidence of the Corruption all around them, but under the circumstances, Tim couldn’t bring himself to be all that alarmed about it. His indifference to the research on it had been a big part of the fight he’d had with Martin. Still, it was a statement almost as old as he was, about an incident far enough away that it wouldn’t spill over to them even if Gordon Goodman was still tending the Crawling Rot at his place, and it was too obviously not of the Stranger for Tim to really care. Gertrude probably wouldn’t have even bothered with it at this point. But if it kept Martin from falling deeper into the Ceaseless Watcher, Tim would suck it up and do the recording.

“Statement ends,” he said finally. He sighed and rocked the chair back onto two legs. “Well, this is a nasty, unpleasant bit of viscera, but it’s honestly not that big a deal. Martin went to check out the address Mr. Weiss gave us, and according to him, it was a, quote, ‘pretty unpleasant’ piece of land still owned by Gordon Goodman. Records show he was bequeathed the land from the previous owner, Ms. Margaret Carnegie, when she died in 1982. I’m actually pretty shocked there’s a paper trail, to be honest, but I guess that’s to be expected when these things pass on their…legacy…without keeping the name intact. Cratfield’s one of those towns you either get out of as quick as you can or stay in your whole life, so if this was the sort of statement that could go on the laptop, I’d maybe be a little surprised that it seems like nobody remembers when the patch of land was ‘Maggie’s Dump’ instead of ‘Gordie’s Dump’. As it is, though, I’m just glad Martin got too grossed out to get close enough to knock on the door. A year ago he probably would have, just to keep Jon from thinking he was shirking his duties—who am I kidding, he did do that, that’s how he ended up with the C—with Jane Prentiss stalking him for a week—but at least this time he was smart enough to nope out of there. Should probably be encouraging him to go to therapy for that PTSD he’s got going, but you know what they say, people who live in glass houses…should get dressed with the lights out.”

He set the statement on the desk and stared vacantly at the window of the office. “I read the postmortem reports on Ms. Carnegie, and frankly I wish I hadn’t. Pretty typical of this sort of thing, really. They tried to cover it up and make it make sense, but if you really look at it, I mean, if you know what you’re looking at, you can see she was another Flesh Hive, just like Prentiss. Best I can come up with is that she was more…matured, maybe, than Prentiss? After all, lungs full of newspaper pulp, the statement mentions worms—or at least things like worms—and she was covered in what the doctor described as ‘cancerous growths with significant postmortem autonomous motor function’, which is not your typical cancer. I’ll bet she tried to incubate the larvae until they hatched. I mean, paper wasps are a thing, and Prentiss’s statement began with ‘There is a wasp’s nest in my attic’, so, you know, I don’t think I’m wrong. And if you’ve listened this far, you’ve either got a far stronger stomach than the average person, or you get off on some really odd things. To each his own, but I won’t judge you for your kinks as long as you keep them away from me, thanks.”

A sense tugged at Tim—not exactly of danger, just that the Archives had been breached. He kept talking into the recorder as he tipped the chair back onto all fours, brought his feet to the ground, got up, and walked slowly to the door. “Gordon Goodman is on record as the one who found Ms. Carnegie’s body. The corpse went missing that very same night, which isn’t a surprise either. Either Mr. Goodman wanted to keep her close as part of the hoard, or he was hoping to use her in some kind of ritual. Or maybe he did care for her, in his own way, and wanted to honor her in the way she’d want to be honored rather than what was—hold on.” He yanked the door open. “Hey!”

Melanie King, in a distressed leather jacket and oversized distressed denim jeans, stood at the door to the Archivist’s office, one hand raised as if to knock. She started and turned. “Oh, yes, hello?”

She looked like hell and smelled like airports and felt like trouble. She wasn’t an active threat, but she was definitely touched by something—no, Marked, it was too deep to just be a touch—oh, yeah, he could practically taste it now. There was a difference between old blood and new, blood waiting to be spilled and blood leaking from a vein, and Tim could tell the difference as easily as any Hunter. Wolves, MWDs, and LGDs, they all knew them, they just responded to them differently. Hunters followed the blood. Soldiers wallowed in it. Melanie hadn’t gone fully over to the Slaughter yet, but it certainly clung to her more closely than it had before.

He knew that, because if she’d been this deeply Marked by it when he’d seen her two weeks previously, he’d have gone for her the second she laid hands on Martin.

He was opening his mouth to tell her to get out while the getting was good when the ring on his finger tightened slightly in warning. Someone, probably Elias, was spying on them, which meant he’d have to be careful with what he said and did; he didn’t know what the man could perceive, or who he could perceive it from. He changed tack from openly hostile to…well, passively hostile, he supposed. “The Archives aren’t open to the public.”

“Er, I know.” Melanie seemed a bit dazed, or at least slightly out of it. “There, there wasn’t anyone on the door, though. I’m…” She gestured at the office door. “I’m looking for the Archivist?”

“You and everyone else.” Tim cocked his head to one side, realizing they’d never technically been introduced and the only reason he knew who she was was because of the Eye. “It’s Ms. King, right?”

“Melanie is fine. Is he here?” Melanie took a step away from the office door.

Tim noticed she was favoring her right leg, just a little bit. The smell of blood was a bit stronger now, and he wasn’t quite sure if it was in his head or an actual smell, but he was sure the intensity was centered around that leg. “Are you all right?”

Melanie looked faintly surprised that he’d noticed. “Oh, um, no. Not really. Got shot. Sort of. In India.”

Tim raised an eyebrow at the sort of. “I’m sorry?”

“Oh, it’s mostly fine now,” Melanie assured him, as if that was what his comment had been in reference to. “I can walk on it, at least.” She paused, then added, “It’s what I wanted to talk to Jon about.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet,” Tim said, unimpressed. He jerked his head towards the room behind him. “If you want to give your statement, I can take that for you.”

“Oh. Er, I suppose. You mean, you mean now? Right.” Melanie crossed the few feet to him as she spoke and dropped into one of the two chairs they’d placed in the room.

Tim shut the door behind her and, for good measure, drew the shade. His back was still to Melanie, but she was still talking. “Um, well, I flew out, and I’ve been, well, that is, before that I was, I was looking at some books. Er, there were history books that were talking…”

“Stop.” Tim turned around, frowning. “If you want to give your statement, at least wait for me to set it up for you. If you don’t…”

Melanie frowned back at him. “Look, are you sure I can’t just talk to Jon? You know, Jonathan Sims? He still works here, right?”

“He’s still the Archivist, yes,” Tim said, coming back over and dropping into the chair he’d been using before. He set down the recorder and rocked back in the chair again. “But he’s not working here at the moment.”

Melanie narrowed her eyes suspiciously at him. “Okay, I’ve obviously missed something. What’s going on here?”

“Short version, Jon’s currently on the lam because he’s wanted for murder.”

At that, Melanie laughed and mimicked Tim’s pose. “What, he finally snapped, did he? Or did he accidentally bore them to death?”

“I didn’t say he did it, I just said he was wanted for it,” Tim pointed out. “Old man who used to work with Gertrude Robinson, I don’t know his name, so I’m just calling him Dr. Black if I have to put a name on him. We found him in the Archivist’s office, beaten to death. Nobody’s seen Jon since, but none of the blood in the office was his, so he’s fine, wherever he is.”

“Oh.” Melanie thumped the chair back onto all fours; Tim could sense the pain and guessed she was putting too much strain on the injured leg tipping it back like that. “So, what, he’s supposed to have suddenly just murdered some stranger?”

Tim nodded once. “With a pipe.”

“What, like burned him to death or…?”

“No,” Tim said impatiently. “I just said ‘beaten to death’. Think Cluedo. The police suggest Jonathan Sims, in the Archivist’s office, with a lead pipe.”

“Oh! Sorry, I just pictured him with like a smoking…” Melanie mimed pulling a pipe out of her mouth. “You know? I mean, that—that doesn’t sound like him, does it? I’ve only met him a couple of times, but beating an old man to death seems kind of out of character for him.”

“I know. He’s never even laid a hand on Martin. Unlike you,” Tim couldn’t resist adding. Melanie glared at him. “But the police are convinced he did it. Seems like most people in the rest of the Institute are, too, and I think Martin’s going to go full Rocky on the next person that suggests it.”

“Rocky…Horror?”

“Balboa. Jesus, what the fuck is wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with you?” Melanie snapped. Tim dropped his own chair back to all fours and straightened up as his hackles rose in warning, even as the ring abruptly loosened on his finger. “You’re sitting there talking about a murder like it’s a game—”

“You think I’ve never dealt with this crap before?” Tim snapped back. He held up the back of his hand, showing her the worm holes that matched the ones dotting his face. “The last Archivist was also murdered, in the same office—she was shot, by the way—and believe me, I cared about her a lot more than I do some random stranger. Gertrude’s dead. Sasha’s dead—”

“Jesus. Which one?” Melanie interrupted.

“Which—wait, what?” Tim asked sharply. “What do you mean, ‘which one’?”

Melanie threw up her hands. “Oh, you know what, I am not doing this again.”

She knew. She remembered the original Sasha, Tim knew it with a certainty that had nothing to do with the Eye—but, yes, the Eye, like a petulant child determined to prove that it did too know the right answers, it did, you didn’t get to say you knew better than it when it knew the answers, rushed in to point out the seedlike pinpricks of the Mark of the Stranger dotting just below her eyes. Tim was about to ask her to describe the original Sasha when another realization hit him, all of a sudden, and he suddenly got angry. Very angry.

“You told Jon that wasn’t Sasha,” he said, and he could hear the faint edge of a growl in his accusation.

Melanie bristled at him. “Yes? Of course I did. He was trying to fucking gaslight me and—”

“He didn’t know,” Tim interrupted. The growl was getting more and more insistent and he had to work hard to keep it under control, not because anybody was watching but because he was not going to give into it with no one here to actively protect, and if Martin came back unexpectedly he didn’t want him to see him like that, not yet. “Nobody knew. Something killed her months ago and took her place and you were the only one who knew, you and her godmother, and nobody believed her either because she’s just a little old lady with early onset dementia, but you…you told the Archivist, and you got him curious, and he went looking, and he found out. And he tried to avenge her death, and this happened.”

“So, what, you’re blaming me for all of this?” Melanie’s eyes blazed as she got to her feet, hands balled into fists.

Tim rose up to his full height. He didn’t loom over her, because there was no point, but he sure as hell squared up against her because these were his Archives, damn it, and she was not going to endanger his flock any further. “You know what? Maybe I am.”

The door opened just then. Tim turned, fully prepared to tell Martin to get out of the way and let this woman out and by the way why hadn’t he gone home like he was supposed to, and stopped when Elias Bouchard, his expression completely bland and inoffensive, stepped into the room. He glanced at Melanie, then at Tim with a raised eyebrow. “A friend of yours?”

“She was just here to give a statement,” Tim said, forcing himself to sound pleasant.

“I see,” Elias said, then turned to Melanie. “Well, good to meet you.” He held out his hand. “Elias Bouchard. I run the Institute.”

“Melanie King.” Melanie visibly forced herself to relax and shook his hand.

“Ah, you’re not the Melanie King who runs Ghost Hunt UK, surely?” Elias actually sounded impressed. Tim didn’t trust that for a minute.

“Used to,” Melanie said shortly.

Elias winced. “Ah, of course, my apologies.”

Melanie frowned at him. “You used to watch it?”

“I’m sorry to hear it’s no longer running,” Elias said, which wasn’t an answer, as he finally let go of her hand. She surreptitiously wiped it on her jeans, which almost made Tim soften towards her. Almost. “Your techniques were rudimentary, but you showed surprising promise. On occasion.”

“Thanks…I think,” Melanie said dryly.

“Ms. King was just leaving, wasn’t she?” Tim prompted, a bit viciously.

Melanie shot him a glare, but said, “Sure.”

“One moment, Ms. King.” Elias’s eyes never left Melanie, but Tim was absolutely certain he was monitoring Tim’s reaction carefully. “Tim has filled you in on recent events, I believe?”

Ask him how he knows that, Tim thought at Melanie, but she either had zero extrasensory perceptions or was deliberately ignoring him, and honestly, either was possible. “I mean, a bit.”

“Then you are aware there is currently a vacancy for an Archival Assistant?”

“Yes. And an Archivist.” Melanie shot Tim a dark look.

“Oh, I don’t think we need to worry about that just yet,” Elias said pleasantly. “But the Assistant role…”

Melanie blinked. “Hang on, are you offering me a job?”

“What? Fuck that,” Tim spat.

Elias ignored him. “You have some assistance in the field, I believe.”

“Well, yes, but…” Melanie began.

“But she doesn’t want to work with us,” Tim pointed out. “And we don’t—”

“I don’t believe I asked you, Tim,” Elias interrupted. “Well, Melanie, do you want the job?”

“Um, well, I, it’s rather sudden, but—” Melanie hesitated, glanced at Tim, and scowled. “Yes. Yes, I do.”

“No, you don’t,” Tim said sharply. “You don’t know what you’re getting into.”

“Tim,” Elias said in a warning tone, “this is not your call.” Turning back to Melanie, he added, “If you want to come up to my office, we’ll have a proper interview. Hopefully get all the paperwork signed.”

Melanie nodded. “Lead the way.”

As Elias turned away, she stuck her tongue out at Tim, then followed him out of Document Storage.

“Hey, wait! No, no—damn it all to fucking hell!” Tim dropped the recorder carelessly on the pile of statements, not caring what happened to it, then pushed the door open. “Hey, get back here!”

For a poncey middle aged bureaucrat in very slippery shoes, Elias could move awfully fast when he wanted to, and he and Melanie were somehow already out of the Archives when Tim got out to follow them. He cursed under his breath again and hurried to catch up with them as they climbed the stairs. “Look, you really want to work somewhere that’s had not one, but two murders in the building?”

“Neither of them were assistants, were they?” Melanie shot back.

“No, the assistants didn’t get beaten to a bloody pulp, or shot, but that doesn’t mean nothing ever happens to them.” Tim waved pointedly at his face. “And anyway, working here is like working for the fucking Hotel California. You can clock out anytime you like, but you can never leave.”

“Oh, now you’re calling me a job hopper?”

“I’m not—no, Jesus. I’m just saying if you want to leave—and you will—you won’t be able to,” Tim warned. “Ask him if you don’t believe me.”

Elias ignored him, which was…annoying, but Tim had grown up with a younger brother and he could deal with annoying. He also knew how to weaponize it, and so followed Melanie and Elias up to the office, arguing with Melanie the entire way. Maybe if he was obnoxious enough, she’d decide this wasn’t worth the paycheck and leave.

Rosie stared at him with wide eyes as they came up the steps, but didn’t say anything. Elias, however, stopped ignoring Tim the moment they reached his office and he stepped back to block him from following Melanie into the office. “Tim. I believe you have work to do?”

Tim drew in a breath to argue—what was Elias going to do, try to fire him in front of Melanie and prove his point?—when something, for the briefest of seconds, caught his eye. A box that had been placed out of sight, in such a way that nobody would have given it a second look even if they knew it was there, nestled between some accounting ledgers and antique books. If Tim hadn’t been standing in the exact spot he was in, twisted at the exact angle he was, he would have missed it entirely.

And its contents.

He processed them in a split second, then exhaled sharply. “Fine. Fine.” He glared at Melanie. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” With that, he turned on his heel and stormed away, slamming the office door behind him so abruptly that he knew Elias hadn’t gotten out of the way fast enough to avoid getting it in the face.

The lucky thing about Elias interviewing Melanie was that it would take his entire focus for the next several minutes, possibly as much as half an hour. Which meant Tim was free, once he got back in the Archives and sequestered himself in the Archivist’s office with the knowledge that nobody would bother him even if they did turn up, to pull out his phone and hit the first preset number.

“Hey, babe,” he said when Gerry, warily, picked up on the other end. “No, no, it’s fine, nothing catastrophic happened, not exactly. Just—can you stop by the vet and get Rowlf’s paperwork? I’ll explain when I get home, but I think we’re going to need it in the next couple of days.”