There’s a long silence following Carlos’s statement and Tim’s response, which can only be compared to a guest at a restaurant sending my compliments to the chef. A bit of the statement tingles in Jon’s mind, enough to tell him that he’s siphoned off a little of the energy but that Tim—and Martin, who expended more than he should have compelling Tim to stop—took most of it, as they should. Tim pulled his hand free of Jon’s just before the statement, consciously or unconsciously, but Jon managed to grab him back and hold fast. While he definitely doesn’t approve of Tim going around pouncing people and sucking them dry of statements, especially not his cousin, he’s also not about to let him act like having done so means he’s put himself beyond their reach, or their forgiveness. They were prepared for this—they knew it was likely to happen from the moment he opened his eyes in the hospital—and they’ve promised him, over and over, that they aren’t going anywhere. They’re with him, one hundred percent, and they’ll do whatever they have to in order to help him.
Cecil, on the other hand, has made no such promise, and Jon is afraid to look at him for fear of what he’ll see. He’s also afraid to actually look at Tim. After what he’s just done, one of them is probably going to kill the other, and he’s actually not quite prepared to guess which it will be.
To forestall the moment as long as possible, he swallows hard and tries for a sheepish grin as he looks up at Carlos. “I, ah…I need to tell you something as well.”
Carlos’s smile matches his shake for shake. “I kind of suspected.”
“Actually, hold on, Jon.” Tim—who’s managed to slip his hand from Jon’s in a way that didn’t break the actual contact, which is why he didn’t notice—presses his hand against his thigh lightly in a gesture clearly meant to forestall him. Jon looks up to see that he’s looking at Cecil now, not Carlos, but with none of the animosity or hostility or defensiveness he might have expected. Instead, his expression is serious, but concerned and wary. “Are you okay with that?”
Jon isn’t sure what surprises him more—Tim asking the question at all, or Cecil actually hesitating as he evidently considers his answer. Cautiously, he says, “It hasn’t…quite been ten years yet.”
“Is that your rule, or City Council’s?” Tim asks. There’s no accusation or censure in his voice—it’s just a simple question. “If you don’t want him clued in before ten years, that’s fine, we’ll say no more. If you’re worried about a town rule, there’s enough of a feedback loop here that nobody should be able to hear what we’re saying from the outside.”
“Oh, don’t say that, the Sheriff’s Secret Police will break the door down again,” Cecil says with a groan.
“Well, I don’t think it stops mundane surveillance.”
“Oh, if it doesn’t stop mundane surveillance, then they probably won’t even pay attention to the other kind, and I doubt they’re actually actively listening to us tonight. Sure, go ahead.”
Jon glances at Carlos and is relieved, although he can’t say why, to see the same puzzled frown on his face as he can feel on his own. How Tim knows to ask any of that is beyond him, although it’s probably a side effect of whatever happened to him in his coma, which seems to have made him a lot more like Jon Prime than Jon himself is. What’s even more beyond him is how Cecil seems to just understand, and also why he isn’t questioning how Tim knows it.
Still, he’s been given the okay, so he might as well start somewhere. He takes a deep breath. “All right. So. I mentioned that we work for the Magnus Institute, right?”
“Yes, you did. It’s a research institute for the paranormal and supernatural, isn’t it? You’re the Head Archivist, and Tim and Martin work there too.”
“That’s right. Well…it’s a bit more than that. It all starts with—no, it doesn’t, but that’s as good a place to start as any,” Jon amends. “Have you ever heard of Robert Smirke?”
“The architect,” Cecil says, surprising Jon once more. “He designed the radio station.”
Jon’s fairly certain the timing on that doesn’t line up—Smirke died in 1867 and the first acknowledged public wireless broadcast wasn’t until 1906—but he assumes the building previously served a different purpose. “The…architect, yes. Well, he devised a classification system for—” He breaks off. He’s all over the place here. “Someone help me.”
“Help you by explaining, or help you by forcing your brain to connect to your tongue?” Martin asks. It would be harsh if it wasn’t accurate.
“The first one, please.” Jon doesn’t want either Tim or Martin using more energy than necessary.
Tim nods, as if he was expecting that, which he probably was. “Fear is not a theoretical concept. It’s a tangible, physical being from another dimension, one that’s fragmented into different broad categories. Actually, it’s probably more fragmented than that, while at the same time being less fragmented than that, but that’s neither here nor there. Smirke came up with a list of fourteen broad categories that’s kind of been in use ever since—a previous Archivist had grand ideas of revamping his system, but he was a cocky, arrogant fool and burned through his resources, his luck, and all but one of his assistants before he died at the hands—literally—of a thing wiser heads would have left alone. Collectively, we call them the Fears or the Fourteen.” He glances at Jon. “Is that enough to get you started, or do you need me to keep going?”
“I—no, I’ve got it from here.” Jon feels slightly off balance and he isn’t sure why, but he takes a deep breath and forges on. “Smirke’s Fourteen are, as Tim said, more broad categories than anything—obviously there are more than fourteen things to be afraid of, but the underlying cause of the fear generally falls into one of those boxes, more or less.”
“And that’s what the Magnus Institute was actually set up to study?” Carlos asks.
Jon shakes his head. “Not study. Collect. The Institute belongs to one of the Fourteen—specifically to the Beholding, also known as the Eye or the Ceaseless Watcher.” Among other things, he adds silently. “It’s the fear of—knowledge, really. Of knowing too much, or not knowing enough. Of secrets untold or secrets unrevealed. But it’s also the fear of being watched, or observed, or…noticed. Its antithesis is the Stranger, which is…m-more or less what it sounds like. Things hidden, things disguised, the feeling that someone is following you that you can’t see or don’t recognize. Mannequins, masks, clowns, that sort of thing. Are you with me so far?”
“I’m with you,” Carlos says slowly.
“Right. The—do you want me to explain each one or just name them?”
“Explain. Please.”
“Of course.” Jon should have guessed that, really. “I suppose I should go in the order we kind of…encountered them? That’s not right.”
“Go by statements,” Martin suggests.
“Good idea.” Jon smiles at Martin, who blushes a little. The fact that they’ve all been together for over a year and he can still draw that reaction out of him is endearing. “First one we came across was a Stranger statement, I’ve already told you about that. The next one was the Buried. It’s…well, fairly obviously it’s the fear of being buried alive, or of being suffocated or crushed. I-I suppose debt or, or the weight of expectations could fall under that one too, but I’m not sure we’ve ever encountered that aspect. The…the next new one we encountered was the Vast, which is the opposite of that. Open spaces, empty places—agoraphobia, basically. The sea, space—ah—”
“Deserts,” Carlos says in a level voice. “I would imagine.”
“S-something like that, yes. Ah…I, I don’t actually know what was going on with that bin man and the odd trash, even now,” Jon confesses, “but then there was—there is the Corruption. That’s insects, rot, filth. Viruses, but also putrefaction. It’s…unpleasant. Then there’s the Slaughter, which is…wholesale destruction without purpose. War falls under that category. Next one we came across would have been the Desolation, which is…fire, but also wholesale loss, unthinking or cruel destruction. We used to call it the Church of the Lightless Flame. Then there was the Dark, which is…”
“Another obvious one,” Carlos completes.
Jon nods. “The one after that was the Hunt…it’s, well, kind of what it sounds like. The fear of being chased, of being stalked.”
He waits a moment for Carlos to protest that that’s scientifically unsound, that humans shouldn’t fear that. Instead, he pulls the face he always pulled when they were small children that indicates he’s counting something in his head. “That’s nine. There are still five more to go, yes?”
“Yes. Ah, the—the next one was the End, also known as Terminus, which is…well, death, dying, that sort of thing. The one after that was the Lonely. Also what it sounds like. Some are more obvious than others.” Jon sighs. He still hates the Lonely. “Then there’s…the Flesh, which is, well, it’s body horror, but it’s also…the fear of being eaten. It, it started out as an animal fear and sort of bled over into humanity, which means it tends to get…odd. One of the ones we ran into was a man who was just…nailing meat to every available surface in his flat.”
Carlos glances at Cecil. “You’ve mentioned a time or two that the Founders wore…soft meat crowns?”
Jon’s stomach lurches at the phrase, but Cecil doesn’t bat an eyelid. “Yeah, that’s a pretty well known historical fact around here. It’s probably related. Go on, Jon, you’ve got two more to go.”
“R-right. Right.” Jon tries to recalibrate. “The next one that…wait, how long did it take before we got a Spiral statement? We did get one that first year, didn’t we?”
“We did,” Tim says calmly. “But you can explain that one first, since you’ve mentioned it.”
Jon nods. “The Spiral is…confusion, disorientation, unreality. The feeling that your mind isn’t your own. And then…the last one is the Web.”
“Spiders?” Carlos asks.
“And…manipulation. Being trapped, being controlled by someone else. Puppets…there’s, there’s a bit of overlap there with the Stranger.” Jon hesitates. “Charlie’s ‘auntie’—the one he talks to at night? She is—was—i-it’s hard to—”
“Is,” Tim says. “She’s not exactly dead, but she’s not alive either. She just sort of…exists on Death’s doorstep. A cobweb on the porch, if you will. But she’s part of the Web.” He blinks. “Sorry, Jon, didn’t mean to interrupt you.”
Jon shakes his head. “It’s fine. But…yes. Those are the Fourteen. We at the Magnus Institute don’t…exactly study them, but we kind of do. That’s at least the purpose of the upper floors—Research, Artifact Storage, and the like. Down in the Archives, though, our job is mostly just to…well, store their stories. That’s where the statements come in. Anyone who’s ever had a paranormal or supernatural encounter of some kind—or thinks they have—can come to the Institute and make a statement about it. Usually they write them down, but occasionally someone insists on giving their statement in person and one of us takes it. Usually Tim these days.”
“Usually Tim if it’s real,” Martin corrects him. “Or, well, if it’s actually related to one of the Fourteen. Some of the things people give statements about really happened, but have perfectly ordinary explanations. Others are hallucinations, or completely made-up stories trying to puff themselves up or pull a prank. We don’t bother Tim with those.”
“Why is that?” Carlos asks.
“There’s…an energy to them,” Jon says slowly. “The ones that are true encounters with the Fourteen, that is. They…draw on the Ceaseless Watcher. And Tim is…best situated out of all of us to make use of that power. Martin and I can use it to some extent, but it wears us out faster.” He swallows. “Anyway, that’s…that’s the broad background. I’m not sure how much you want to really hear tonight, but…”
Carlos cocks his head thoughtfully at Jon. “So all you do is just…collect statements? Why?”
Jon winces. Of course they’re going to have that discussion now. “Uh, well…partly because it feeds the Eye, and we’re all bound to it as Institute employees, or at least as Archival employees. The original purpose of it, though—at least as far as we can tell…” He swallows. “Most—there are people who follow all of the Fourteen. Some get powers from it, we call them avatars. And each of them has…a ritual. Something they’ve designed to end the world and remake it for one of the Fourteen. They can’t exist in our world as it is, you understand. The problem is that, because—as Tim said—they’re both more and less fragmented than they appear, you can’t just bring one into the world. Jonah Magnus, the original founder of the Institute, realized that the solution was to bring all of them in, under the auspices of one Fear—for preference, the Eye, since he thought that would make him the master of the ruined world. So he set up the Institute to collect all the stories in one place and draw them to the Eye—to the Archivist. He hoped that by marking the Archivist with all fourteen Fears, he could use them as the keystone of such a ritual. He spent two hundred years working on it—ah—”
He hesitates. That, if nothing else, must be the point where belief tips over into incredulity, and he prepares to explain. But Carlos simply frowns. “When was it supposed to happen?”
“Inasmuch as these things happen on a schedule, it probably would have been this past Thursday,” Tim says quietly. “But it won’t. Jonah Magnus—and all his various incarnations—is dead, and his ritual died with him.”
“Oh. Good.” Carlos breathes a sigh of relief. “I didn’t want to have to worry about another apocalypse.”
Jon blinks. “Another one?”
Carlos waves the question off as if it’s unimportant. “It’s a good thing you figured it out before it happened. How did you figure it out?”
“We—we had help.” Jon swallows. “This is going to be…I, I know all of this is fairly unbelievable, but…”
“I believe you. It’s at least scientifically probable.”
“Well, this isn’t,” Jon says dryly. “We found out about it because it did happen. In another…timeline, I suppose. Another universe, whatever you want to call it. Jonah Magnus succeeded, he got the Archivist—me—marked by all fourteen Fears, and then he hid the words of his ritual in a statement and fed it to him when he was vulnerable and not expecting it, and he read it and ended the world.”
Tim and Martin both hug him simultaneously. Both of them know, even if it wasn’t actually him who did it, that he still feels guilty, like it’s somehow his fault. Just like both Martins feel guilty that they didn’t stop him, and Tim feels guilty that his counterpart in that other universe ended his life on such bad terms with the Primes. Sasha and Melanie don’t feel guilty about much, but then, they don’t need to, do they?
Carlos looks, to Jon’s mild surprise, at Cecil, whose expression—like Tim’s—remains unchanged. Turning back to Jon, he asks hesitantly, “So did they…get a message to you? A tape, a radio broadcast…?”
“They…oh, God.” Jon licks his lips. “They…came back. My counterpart—the Archivist who ended the world—and his, well, his plus-one, his partner. His husband, now, they got married a year ago. Charlie’s auntie got one of the other avatars—the Keeper, they call him—to help navigate them through a corridor that eventually led to a door that sent them back in time. They wound up in our Archives—God, three years ago?”
“Two and a half,” Martin murmurs. “April of 2016.”
“Right, two and a half. Anyway, they…told us what was going on, and gave us a few clues to help us prevent things from getting worse. We’ve been calling them the Primes. Publicly, they’re Walter and Kieran Koskiewicz, but…they’re Jon Prime and Martin Prime.” Jon shrugs awkwardly. “Jon Prime is the new head of the Institute, after he killed Jonah Magnus. Well, someone had to take it over, and he was really the best option, all things considered. He’s able to keep everyone who works for the Institute safe, and he’s powerful enough that nothing else threatens us.” He looks up at Carlos a bit sheepishly. “He’d, ah—he’d like you to call him sometime this week. If, if you feel up to it. He misses you, too.”
Carlos frowns slightly, even as his face softens. “Of course. It must be hard to leave behind everyone you know to go to a world where they don’t exist the way you left them.” He tilts his head at Tim. “Why didn’t…Tim Prime and Charlie Prime come through with them?”
“My counterpart died in that world,” Tim says quietly. “Long before the world ended. There was another ritual—the Unknowing—they didn’t know it was doomed to fail no matter what, Jonah took care to keep them from knowing that, and things had gone…badly between them up until then. Tim Prime sacrificed himself to stop the Unknowing. And, really, it wasn’t entirely useless, because a lot of people would have suffered if the Stranger hadn’t been blown to smithereens, but it still cost them their Tim, which I don’t think Jon Prime ever fully got over. As for Charlie…we don’t know. The only reason we met him is because the three of us had started getting close and went thirds on a home of our own, and he happened to live next door. They never met him in their world and none of us know what happened to him. The path that brought them here was one way only, so we have no way of knowing what happened…after. Only that after the Primes went back, one of their friends who was left behind was able to successfully end the Eyepocalypse. Charlie’s auntie—Annabelle Cane—came back in time as well after that, so she only knows that that part was successful, but even she didn’t know what happened beyond that point in the world they left behind.”
“Few of us are ever granted the opportunity to know after we make a change what happens in the world where we kept going,” Cecil says in a thoughtful tone of voice, very similar to the one Tim just used. “And we rarely get to see what happens to the world we leave behind. But it is a great and wonderful blessing that we get to see what happens in the world we step into, and that we get to know what happens when we do make a change. When we make a change, we make a choice to make the world, if not a better or even a worse place, at the very least a different one. And sometimes, that is all we can ever hope to see.” He blinks, then gives a small, rueful laugh. In a much more conversational tone, he adds, “I’m sorry, you didn’t need that from me.”
Tim chuckles a bit. “Occupational hazard. I get it.”
Carlos stifles a yawn; a second later, Martin tries to suppress one of his own. Cecil immediately gets to his feet. “It’s been a long day for you three—travel can really take it out of you. Carlos and I are both off tomorrow—well, we’re off in the morning, anyway, my show doesn’t start until the afternoon—so sleep in as much as you like and we’ll do breakfast and show you around town after, how’s that?”
“Sounds good to me,” Tim says. He stands also, tugging Jon’s elbow lightly. Jon stands, along with Martin, as Carlos also gets to his feet and smothers another yawn.
Cecil smiles. “Good night.”
There’s a short round of hugs, but oddly, after Cecil says good night, nobody else does. Instead, the three of them troop off to the guest room, change into their sleeping gear, and curl up in bed. By unspoken agreement, Jon and Martin maneuver Tim so that he’s lying in between them. Jon’s honestly not sure if that’s because they think he needs comfort or because they’re afraid he won’t be there in the morning if they don’t hold onto him.
Jon’s last thought, before he falls into the sleep of total exhaustion, is that he’s not sure what worries him more—the fact that Tim compelled a statement out of Carlos, or the fact that he and Cecil seem to be operating on the same wavelength.