And If Thou Wilt, Forget

If it had still just been Tim and Gerry working on the Unknowing, they’d have gone and blown it up right away. Not because it would keep the world from ending, but because—as Tim had pointed out—at least the Stranger would be able to hurt fewer people in the attempt. But Elias had already told Jon that Gertrude had been sure it could only be stopped once the ritual had actually started, so now they were just in a holding pattern while they tried to work out the when.

Gerry wasn’t about to be left out of this, but he also wasn’t going to walk into the Archives right about now. The chances were pretty high that Elias knew Gerry was Tim’s partner, and equally high that he at least suspected he’d been helping Gertrude investigate things before that, but he didn’t have any proof. As long as he stayed away from the Institute, they had plausible deniability. Maybe.

He actually found himself hoping the damned thing was sooner rather than later. His nerves couldn’t take too much longer in this holding pattern, and more importantly, the longer they waited, the more likely it was that someone figured out their plans. The Stranger possibly thwarting their plan to disrupt the Unknowing was less of a concern than Elias—or Jonah, whatever they were going to call him—figuring out what Tim and Gerry were really up to. It also increased the likelihood of Tim cracking and telling Jon everything. Which wouldn’t…necessarily be the worst thing in the world, except they didn’t know what Gertrude had laid out in her initial tape for him, so they had no idea how much she’d thought it was safe for him to know.

And, of course, that had been before Tim started transforming into a supernatural guard dog who might literally die if Jon did. Or possibly in place of Jon. Gerry wasn’t sure how that worked, and since they hadn’t found any evidence that this had ever happened before, it was a safe bet that nobody else knew either. That was a boon, since it meant it was something Jonah couldn’t exploit easily, but it also meant they were flying blind, so to speak. Tim hadn’t said as much, but Gerry knew him well, and he was terrified of the consequences of letting anything happen to the Archivist. Granted, there were also drastic consequences to letting anything happen to Jon, namely that Martin would lose his mind at best and become an avatar of something or other at worst, but the consequences of something happening to the Archivist on Tim’s watch would be far, far worse.

They weren’t stupid. They’d both been around too much not to know that the Fears punished failure much more than they rewarded success. The Guardian’s sole purpose was to protect the Archivist, and woe betide him if he was derelict in his duty.

On top of all that, Gerry still had his day job, so to speak. He still had to finish the commission for the children’s hospital, and he’d been totally thrown to be asked to do a portrait of a—minor, but still—member of the royal family. Both had deadlines, relatively short ones at that, and while technically he had a few weeks, he wanted them both done before the Unknowing. Even though the world wasn’t going to end as a result, he didn’t need those hanging over him afterwards.

Best case scenario, he was going to be otherwise preoccupied.

The paintings for the hospital were as good as done, really, and he could work on them whenever he wanted. The portrait commission, though…well, obviously he had to work on his subject’s schedule. And he couldn’t come to his studio—for security reasons, apparently—so Gerry had to go to him. He got a bit of warning, but not much, before a black car was pulling up out front and he was hurrying down the steps, still stuffing the last of his supplies in his satchel and hoping he’d buttoned his shirt properly. Normally he wore trash clothes to paint in, but, well, under the circumstances…

To his credit, the man was an excellent and surprisingly patient subject, willing to take direction and deferential to Gerry’s expertise. He’d designated an entire room just for the painting and promised not to look until he was done, although Gerry wasn’t all that concerned about that. He also shared Gerry’s taste in music, dogs, and, apparently, men, something they discovered when his current paramour wandered into the room thinking they were alone in the house. Gerry knew enough Italian to guess at what the embarrassed man had shouted as he jammed a throw pillow over his groin, and he’d taken it in stride; they’d eventually had an interesting conversation while he worked on the underpainting about what the male version of a “mistress” would be.

Today it was just him and his subject, at least at first. Gerry wanted to work on the parts that he couldn’t do in his studio; he could take liberties with clothing or background, but he wanted to get the face just right, so he was concentrating on that. The man had extremely expressive eyes that deserved to be on canvas, even if Gerry was half afraid that someone else would start looking out of them. He’d barely got started, though, when a young woman in a suit and holding an armful of papers came rushing in, looking worried. She whispered in the man’s ear, and a look of sudden alarm spread over his face.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Delano, but we need to end this session a touch early,” he said in a voice of barely controlled calm. “There is…something of a crisis I need to handle immediately. I hope you understand.”

Since Gerry knew the man did something related to computers for the NHS, if this was a work crisis, it definitely needed to be handled immediately. “Of course. Just let me know when you want me to come back.”

“Have Merton bring the car around,” the man said to his assistant, who nodded and rushed off. Turning back to Gerry, he added, “I need to get to the office promptly, so I’m very sorry I can’t offer you a ride home. At least let me give you cab fare.”

“Not necessary, sir, I can take the Underground.”

“No, no, I insist. It’s the least I can do for wasting your time.” The man pressed a banknote into Gerry’s hand before he could protest further and hurried off, calling over his shoulder as he did so, “Carla will show you out.”

Gerry rinsed out his brushes and repacked his bag in the few moments before the matronly housekeeper bustled in to take him to the door. Leaving the canvas where it was, albeit facing the wall, he followed her to the entrance, thanked her again, and found himself standing on the street in a much nicer part of town than he usually found himself in. At least not by the front door.

He started for the corner with the intention of flagging down a cab, then stopped. Just opposite him was a wooden stand painted bright, cheerful colors. An elderly woman with gold elephants dangling from her ears hummed to herself as she set out vases, baskets, and other floral arrangements. If he turned to the left and squinted, just a little, he could see a wrought iron arch silhouetted against the leaden grey of the sky.

He was here, he told himself, and he had the time. Might as well pay a visit.

There was a nice arrangement of daisies, and Gerry found a couple of coins in his pocket that meant he didn’t have to ask the woman to break the quite excessively large banknote, then set off for the archway. There weren’t too many people about; apart from it being midmorning on a Friday, it was getting ready to rain, and there was little more cheerless and unpleasant than traipsing about a cemetery in the rain. It also wasn’t in much use as it was, so despite the few faces peering through the archway before moving on, Gerry was fairly certain he’d have the place to himself, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

The grave he was looking for was towards the back, and by all rights it honestly shouldn’t have been there. Even apart from her actual stated wishes—that she’d wanted her ashes sent to Tim, and for him to scatter them on her sister’s grave—there were plenty of columbariums in London, including one in this very cemetery. There was no reason for them to have dug an actual grave for a box no bigger than the average book. Probably there had been reasons, but Gerry was damned if he knew what they were.

He hadn’t been out here since they’d discovered where she was. Nothing particularly clever about how they’d done it. Tim had simply reasoned that the ashes had been delivered to the Institute and that Elias would have disposed of them, then gone to a website that allowed you to search for the location of a grave. Eventually he’d found it, tucked away somewhere few were buried anymore and fewer still visited.

“’So sure of death the marbles rhyme,’” he muttered as he passed through the cemetery gates, quoting the poem Tim had recited after finding the grave. They’d meant to come out here right then and there, or at least in the next day or so, but then Jon had been kidnapped and things had gone to shit, and with one thing and another they’d just plain put it out of their minds. Since he was here, though, the least he could do was let her know she hadn’t been forgotten completely.

Evidently there was a funeral going on. Gerry could hear a chorus of voices singing something in the distance; he couldn’t make out the words, but he assumed it was some kind of funeral hymn or dirge. Probably it was in the chapel—must be loud if he could hear them all the way out here—and for their sake, he hoped the rain stopped before they had to do the actual burial. The hole would already have been dug ahead of time, but the sides would be slick and there was a chance of standing water at the bottom of it. And as bad as the rattle of dirt on the lid of a coffin cold be for the bereaved, the splat of mud was even worse.

He found himself wondering what the weather had been like the day they buried Gertrude.

“Hurry up,” a voice hissed from somewhere up ahead of him. “We haven’t got long. And can’t you shut that stupid thing up?”

“No,” a deep voice replied.

“Not ‘til the rain stops,” said another, the twin of the first—deep, low, and an almost offensively stereotypical Cockney accent.

Something about the voices tickled something in Gerry’s brain. They felt…wrong, but at the same time almost too familiar. Like if he could just listen a little longer, he’d recognize their names. Maybe voices from his past, from his childhood, someone he ought to know but—

A voice in his head that sounded an awful lot like Tim shouted in sudden warning. Gerry didn’t have any fond memories of adults from his childhood, certainly none he should be nostalgic or curious about seeing again. And the first voice, the woman’s voice, had a creepy, otherworldly singsong quality that he could only think of as an Uncanny Valley Girl accent. She certainly didn’t sound like a gravedigger, or a cemetery director.

And the singing was getting louder…

“Be careful,” the first voice said. “It’s no good if you damage it.”

Gerry flattened himself behind a crumbling mausoleum, pressing into the narrow space created by two sculped ersatz columns connected by a low arch. He clutched the daisies tighter and listened as hard as he could. Someone spoke in a low murmur he couldn’t quite make out over the eerie chorus, which he now recognized had no words at all, and then the first voice spoke again. “Well, we wouldn’t have to if someone had kept a better lookout. Really, how stupid do you have to be to let someone like that give you the slip? Honestly, you’re both lucky I didn’t decide to use you two for my costume instead.”

“Weren’t on duty when it ‘appened,” the second voice—or maybe the third—said sullenly.

“Didn’t tie him down last, neither,” added the third—or was it the second?

“Oh, just…forget it,” the first said with a dramatic sigh. “This will have to do. It’s a shame neither one is as powerful as the one that got away, but surely one of them will be good enough.”

There was a slightly wet, sticky, tearing sound, almost like someone peeling off a pricing sticker that had been affixed directly to a salted ham, and then a new voice yelled in triumph. “Got it!”

“Good. Now, let’s get going. Lots to do before the big day!” Two dull, hollow clunks, like someone using a pair of cups to imitate a horse’s hooves, and then…

Footsteps.

The singing drawing ever nearer.

Gerry sucked in a sharp breath and held it. He pressed himself tighter into the niche and silently willed them to go around the other side of the sepulcher, to leave the cemetery in a different direction, to do whatever it took not to know he was there.

The prayer Tim had recited when they were exploring the tunnels rose unbidden to his mind, the one to Saint Lucy. He’d told Gerry afterwards that he used it to open his eyes and See, but he’d also mentioned Lucy had plucked out her own eyes, or something like that, so perhaps she was also the one you reached out to when you wanted things to stay hidden and unseen. He’d never believed in anything before, but if there was someone up there listening, it was the thought that counted, right? Surely they listened to anyone who reached out in earnest, not just born and baptized Catholics.

Closing his eyes, Gerry tried to concentrate on the words of the novena. By the light of faith which God bestowed upon you, increase and preserve this light in my soul so that I may avoid evil…

The chorus got louder, until he felt as though he had been placed in the center of the choir loft at the church he and Tim had gone to in New York City in a mass gone horribly wrong. He should have been obvious, should have stood out like a sore thumb lugging a bag full of painting supplies and clutching a dozen smiling daisies…

…but, to his surprise and relief, it began to fade out again, along with the footsteps, until all was quiet. Gerry waited a moment more, just to be sure, then opened his eyes.

He was still in the cemetery. Still alone. And, thanks be to the God he was suddenly completely willing to believe in, still in one piece.

Taking a deep breath, he straightened, wincing at the stiffness in his limbs, and stepped away from the mausoleum. He didn’t doubt for a minute who had been on the other side of it—okay, he wasn’t sure about the fourth voice, not specifically anyway, but there was no question who the first three had been. It also wasn’t hard to guess what they were in trouble for. But what the hell had they been doing in the cemetery?

He strode around the end of the mausoleum and got his answer.

Gerry had seen a lot of horrible things in his lifetime. He’d seen beings that seemed to be made of living shadow and white teeth, books that shed the bones of birds and small animals, and cuts of meat that bled and screamed no matter how thoroughly you cooked them. He’d seen piles of bodies after fires, the aftermath of suicides, and the carnage of battlefields playing out over and over as the ghosts desperately strove to change their fates. He’d seen his mother carve off squares of her own skin to dry them for book pages, his father sit high above him in a chair with raw wounds where his eyes had once been, and his own head cracked open and sewn back together. He’d thought he had a fairly strong stomach, especially at this point. But at the sight before him, he reeled back with his hand clapped over his mouth, fighting the urge to be sick.

As he’d half predicted, there was a hole, an open grave, with a mound of dirt slowly sliding into mud next to it. There was no tarp stretched over it to protect it, though, no carpet laid down to protect the priest’s shoes, no chairs for the bereaved. There was a coffin, but from the dirt and grime worked into the cracks and crevices, it was not waiting to be buried, but rather had been dug up…and forced open. The lid, splintered around its edges, lay twisted and broken on the ground next to a crowbar splattered with mud. And next to it…

He wasn’t sure how long the body had been dead, but it was a testament to the embalmers’ work that it was still recognizable as a body. It wasn’t bloody, fortunately, those fluids had likely long ago dried out, but the muscles and tendons were, in many places, still intact and recognizable. There were a few places where shriveled organs or bare bones showed through, but remarkably few. And it was obvious that such had happened because they had clung to the skin, which was completely gone. The entire body, crown to sole, had been peeled, degloved, and exposed.

They had also destroyed the eyes.

Gerry stumbled away and fell to his knees, fumbling for his mobile phone. He knew there was nothing the police could do about this, but, well, he also knew this wasn’t the sort of thing he could just walk away from or cover up. If nothing else, it was a public health risk. He dialed 999.

At the dispatcher’s instructions, he retreated to the gates of the cemetery and waited until the police arrived, then led them to the spot. The cemetery director showed up, too, looking horrified and disgusted in equal measure, although he seemed more annoyed at having to allow a large portion of the cemetery to be closed than by the desecration of the body. He kept asking when the ground would be released.

Gerry answered the police officer’s questions as honestly as he could. Yes, he’d been coming to visit an old friend. No, he hadn’t seen anything until he’d come around the mausoleum. No, he definitely hadn’t heard the coffin being opened, that was the sort of thing he’d have heard. No, he’d not been to the cemetery before, he’d been out of town and went to look up his friend upon his return, only to learn that she’d died while he’d been gone and buried in the intervening time. No, he hadn’t made it all the way to her grave yet, he honestly wasn’t completely sure where it was, except that it was back in this area.

“I suppose it could be worse,” he heard the cemetery director say sourly. “At least it’s not someone who has visitors all the time. She’s been here a year and never so much as a rose petal. Her family didn’t even bury her, assuming she had any.”

“Who did?” the second officer asked, sounding bored.

“Oh, some academic think tank, I think they said she’d worked for them. Ah, the Magnus Institute? That sounds about right.”

Gerry, and both police officers, froze at the mention of the Institute, and Gerry whipped around and strained over the crowd to look, properly, at the tombstone for the first time.

Gertrude Robinson, 6 June 1944 - 15 March 2015. In the sight of God.

“Oh, shit,” he whispered.

“Didn’t they pay for the other one too?” the officer who was talking to Gerry asked in a low voice. “Shit, are we going to have to talk to that Bouchard guy again?”

“No,” his partner said firmly. “No, it’s—it’s a coincidence. The scuttlebutt at the Yard is that he just paid for that because he felt guilty and—”

“Wait, sorry,” Gerry interrupted. “What other one? Are you telling me there’s a body snatching epidemic?”

The senior of the two officers pulled Gerry off to one side and spoke quietly. “You didn’t hear this from me, mate, but there was another case just like this, on the other side of London, just a couple days ago. ‘S why we’re here, this isn’t usually our beat, but we caught the other one and they think it’s related. Nobody knows who the other body is, but what I heard is that it’s a man they found murdered at the Institute a while back. They still don’t know his name, so they buried him as George Icarus. At least the poor bloke isn’t in a potter’s grave.”

“Yeah.” Gerry’s stomach was doing flips, but he tried to play it cool. For now, anyway.

The second he was released, he strode out of the cemetery, went a few blocks away, and hailed a cab. Once he arrived at his destination, he sprinted for a narrow alleyway. Just before he ducked under the small doorway, he texted Tim: [Tunnels. NOW. Be there in ten.]

The twists of the tunnels were no match for him today; he knew them too well. Sprinting through the corridors, he made it to the room he and Tim had set up as their war room a split second before Tim burst into it, followed closely—and unsurprisingly—by Jon, both of them looking a bit drained and a lot worried.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” Tim demanded. “What have you found?”

Gerry caught his breath as best he could. “The Unknowing. It’s soon. Real soon. Maybe a week.”

“How do you know?” Jon asked, and then flinched back as the static left his tongue.

Gerry would have answered anyway, as best he could, but the Ceaseless Watcher took his tongue and brought it to bear in full eloquence. “I was near the cemetery where Gertrude is buried, so I stopped to see her. When I arrived, I heard voices that could only be Breekon, Hope, and the Dancer, plus another person, talking about costumes and preparation and blame. They didn’t see me, they left without noticing me. But when I stepped around where I was hiding, they had dug up Gertrude’s grave and turned out the body. The police let slip they did the same thing earlier this week to another grave, one labeled ‘George Icarus’ and paid for by the Magnus Institute. No prizes for guessing that it was Jurgen Leitner’s.”

Tim put a hand over Jon’s mouth and took a deep breath before addressing Gerry. “What did they want with their bodies?”

“Their skin, Tim. Both bodies were skinned, head to toe. And I heard Orisnov telling whoever was doing the skinning to be sure they didn’t damage it.” Gerry looked from Tim to Jon and back. “They have an Archivist’s skin after all. The Unknowing is coming, and it’s coming up fast. We’re officially out of time.”