He probably could have handled that better.
Martin stared into the depths of the tea in his mug so he didn’t have to look at anybody else in the room. He knew it was important information they needed, knew he’d have had to tell them eventually, but this might not be the time or the place. And he didn’t have any proof, which had kind of been Elias’ point. It was the truth, though. He’d felt the Knowledge settle into his brain—Elias hadn’t lied, the memory wasn’t false. He’d shot Gertrude Robinson, three times in the chest, without so much as batting an eyelash, and she’d died regretting something undone.
Still, he hadn’t had to say it now. Not right after what they all went through under the Institute. Not with so many other revelations to be handled. But he’d said it and he’d have to live with it.
For the moment, though, he looked into the mug and tried to decide if it would be better to run for his life or try to drown himself by pouring the tea straight down his nasal passages.
“Is that what you meant?” Tim’s voice broke the silence. “When you said it wouldn’t be the first time. That’s what you meant?”
“Yeah.” Martin forced himself to look up. Tim’s face was paper-white; Jon’s was ashen, his eyes huge. Sasha had both her hands pressed over her mouth. “It’s why I believed him when he threatened Jon.”
Melanie let loose with a string of Cantonese hot enough to blister paint. “I knew I shouldn’t have let you go off alone with that bastard. God knows he’s got no reason to let you live either.”
“Or every reason,” Martin pointed out. “I can’t imagine he doesn’t enjoy letting me suffer knowing what I know and knowing there’s only so much I can do about it. And considering how much he did to make sure nobody would trust me or believe me if I tried to say anything, I’m almost certain he gets some kind of sick pleasure out of watching.”
The candle on the shelf flared up suddenly. Jon flinched away from it, obviously expecting the shelf above it to catch fire, but Melanie waved at him to settle down. “It’s all right. Just the ward strengthening itself a little.”
Jon didn’t look too sure, but he settled back down, tucking the jumper a little more tightly around himself as he did so. “R-right. Right, I…okay.” He took a deep breath and looked up at Martin. “You said you’d explain…there, there have been three you mentioned so far. Distortion, Desolation, and Corruption.”
“Four. That—that Mother thing,” Tim said. His hands were clenched tightly around his tea mug, and Martin could see them shaking. “That’s the same sort of thing, isn’t it? And—fuck, you said the Fourteen. Are those part of it?”
Martin nodded slowly. “Yeah, that’s a good place to start.” He set his tea down and sat up as straight as he could, took a deep breath, and launched into the lessons he’d had drilled into his head. “There are beings in this world, entities of deep, dark power, collectively known as the Fears. Robert Smirke divided the beings into into fourteen distinct Powers, each comprising a variety of smaller terrors, some direct and practical, and some more abstract.”
Tim started violently, sloshing tea onto his lap. He quickly set the mug on the table in front of him. “Robert Smirke?”
Melanie handed him an irregular piece of white flannel out of the scrap basket next to her chair. “Are you the guy from Research who used to turn up in the library asking for books on Smirke? I thought Martin said his name was Tim.”
“That’s me, I guess.” Tim’s hands were definitely shaking as he patted himself dry.
Gerry studied Tim critically, then turned to Martin. “You’re selling yourself short.”
“Shut up.” Martin could feel his cheeks turning pink and thanked God the bandages mostly covered them. “I’ve—out of everyone, Tim, you’re the one I thought about telling most, but I just…I didn’t know how to bring it up. And the one time I asked you how you got interested in him, the way you changed the subject without really answering—I was afraid to push.”
Tim closed his eyes tightly for a moment. Gerry stepped in before he could speak. “Smirke’s just one of the people involved in the classifications, and his system is just the one most people use. It covers a lot of ground, I guess. We tried coming up with our own once, but I think we gave up on it after a while.”
“It was a conversation we had one night when we were stargazing in Devon, and we gave up on it because we got distracted by a debate on whether colors or constellations were the better analogy for them,” Melanie said. “And then we were all going to walk away from all of it and it didn’t matter anymore. And then Lily and Aunt Mary pulled their fucking bullshit and we got stuck again.”
“And I say again, you two didn’t have to get back into it,” Martin reminded her.
“And I say again, if you thought we were going to scarper off and leave you to fall deeper and deeper into Its clutches alone, you need to have your head examined,” Melanie shot back. “We’re family, we stick together. Besides, you are—well, you were at higher risk of falling too far than we were. You need a touchstone.” She poked him in the chest, unerringly finding one of the worm holes and making him bite back a gasp. “And don’t you dare say it would have been fine if it had taken you as long as we were safe. You know what losing Gerry felt like—do you have any idea how much worse it would’ve been if I’d lost you?”
Her voice cracked. Melanie had hardly ever cried in all the years he’d known her, not even when they’d buried her father, but as she looked up at Martin, there were tears beginning to gather in the corners of her eyes. Martin bit his lip and hugged her; she resisted for a moment, then sighed and slumped against him, wrapping his shirt around her hand almost unconsciously.
Tim seemed visibly affected by the whole thing. Sasha looked back and forth from Martin to Melanie to Gerry. “So…what are the Fourteen Fears? Corruption, Desolation, Distortion…”
“Uh, the Distortion’s one of the smaller bits, technically.” Martin glanced over at the old glass insulator from a telephone pole, inverted and mounted to the wall and filled with beeswax. “Smirke’s Fourteen are—well, I mean, they’ve all got a bunch of different names, but at their most basic, it’s the Corruption, the Desolation, the Spiral, the Vast, the Buried, the Dark, the Slaughter, the Hunt, the Flesh, the Lonely, the Stranger, the Web, the End, and the Eye.”
Jon got a vague look in his eyes for a moment. “The statements…the real ones. The ones we can’t use the laptop for. Are those—do the Fourteen have something to do with all of those?”
“I think so, yeah. Pretty much all the ones we’ve found so far do.”
“Jane Prentiss is the Corruption,” Sasha said slowly. “Or was? She’s dead now. Does that mean the Corruption is dead?”
Melanie shook her head. “She would have been of the Corruption, she wouldn’t be the Corruption. These things can’t really exist in our world. Parts of them can, but not all of them. It’s like—like a human trying to get into an anthill. You can put in a finger, or a toe, maybe a whole foot if you’re small or you force it, but you’re not going to fit all the way in.”
Jon shivered slightly. Martin winced, remembering the reports they’d found about Prentiss being found with her entire arm shoved into a wasps’ nest. “So the Corruption is—is insects? No—no, wait, you said…Ivy Meadows, that was the Corruption too. It’s…disease?”
“Ivy Meadows?” Gerry repeated. Horror suffused his face. “Oh, Melanie, no, it—whatever the statement was, it’s from before they were there, right?”
“After. They told us he died of smoke inhalation, remember?” Martin swallowed at the memory of Nicole Baxter’s description. “I don’t…I don’t think that’s true. I don’t know if he was still alive when it burned. I hope he wasn’t.”
Melanie clutched him tightly for a second, then took a deep breath and eased away from him. Whatever emotions she may have been feeling, she covered them with a deep swig of tea. Martin turned back to Jon. “But yeah, the Corruption is…it’s filth, rot, disease. Insects are part of it, too. Infestations and plagues and…all that sort of thing.”
“Desolation—what’s that, then? Is that…no, that wouldn’t really be death, would it? I-I assume death is the End.”
Martin couldn’t help but shoot a glance at Gerry. “Yeah. Terminus, the End, that’s death. Desolation is…wholesale destruction. Fire, mostly, but I-I guess you could make an argument for flooding or famine, too. Unthinking, careless loss.”
Tim twisted his hands together. “The Distortion’s part of the Spiral, right? I guess that’s…things not being what they are? Unreality? The idea that you can’t trust your mind?”
“Basically,” Martin agreed. “And yeah, the Distortion is to the Spiral like Jane Prentiss is to the Corruption.”
Sasha tilted her head to one side. “So what’s the difference between the Slaughter and the Flesh? I’m guessing Flesh is all those weird…meat-related statements, right?”
“The Flesh is body horror, fear of being eaten, that kind of thing,” Melanie said. “Slaughter is more wholesale violence. Bloodshed without a purpose. War falls under that one, too.”
“Fear of being eaten?” Jon said, sounding horrified. “Hold on, that—is that really so common a fear that it would have given rise to an entire entity?”
Gerry barked out an unamused laugh. “You think people are so special it’s only our fear that counts?”
“Oh, God.” Jon’s eyes widened. “That…I suppose that’s where the Hunt came from, too?”
“Yeah. That’s why those two get so…when animal fears start bleeding into human fears, things can get bad.” Martin realized his hand was starting to cramp and set down his mug, slowly flexing his fingers to regain the feeling in them.
Sasha counted on her fingers for a moment. “The Dark seems pretty obvious. Same with the Buried. And I guess the Vast is the opposite of that?”
Gerry nodded. “Insomuch as these things have opposites, yeah. It’s more complicated than that, really, but not to hear Smirke tell it.”
“That makes sense. He was all about balance,” Tim murmured. “Uh, so…the Lonely seems pretty clear, too. So that just leaves…the Stranger, the Web, and the Eye, you said? I’m guessing the Web is…spiders? Like that Carlos Vittery statement?”
Jon went extremely still. Martin had to fight very hard not to go over and hug him. “That’s part of it, yeah. The Web is…manipulation, being controlled, but also being trapped. The idea that something you can’t see is pulling your strings and making you do things.”
“One of the names for the Web is the Mother of Puppets,” Melanie added.
Sasha clapped her hand to her mouth again. “The spider in the boiler room—you said—”
“Yeah, maybe not the most brilliant thing I’ve ever done, but it made sense at the time,” Gerry admitted. “Not the stupidest either, but—”
“Yeah, we’ll get to that.” Melanie scowled at Gerry.
Martin took a deep breath. “I think the Web might’ve had something to do with today. There’s…a plan, maybe? I dunno. The Web’s probably one of the smarter Entities. But if we were manipulated to kick this off…I can’t say I like that, actually.”
“No,” Jon said quietly. “No, I don’t either.”
“What about the last two?” Sasha pressed. “The Stranger? That’s—well, I guess that’s pretty obvious. It’s…”
“It’s the unknown, the uncanny. The creeping sense that someone’s following you,” Melanie said. “And…other stuff. Masks. Clowns. Mannequins…shit.” She smacked herself in the forehead. “Sarah Baldwin. Fuck. I am such an idiot.”
Jon looked up at Melanie, evidently distracted for a moment. “You…your statement. That’s what you encountered?”
“You made a statement?” Gerry said, aghast.
Melanie ignored him. “That’s what I brought with me. In retrospect, I’m pretty sure Sarah was somehow involved with the Stranger. But I don’t think she…” She muttered something under her breath and looked up at Martin. “You can’t See the statements, can you? What about me?”
“Neens…”
“No, you said you’d Look when I was ready. I’m ready.”
“Melanie, please. Not tonight.” Martin took a deep breath. “I’m tired, and…i-it was hard enough after Gerry walked in, okay? I don’t think I can turn it off after I’m done if I try again tonight. Not until I’ve Seen.”
“I—oh.” Melanie bit her lip and shot a guilty look at the other three members of the Archival team. “Right. Sorry. Didn’t think.”
Tim frowned, but it looked…worried more than anything. “You…wait. You kept talking about…seeing. On the tape, I mean. You took off your glasses to look out the door at Prentiss, same as you did when—when he came in, and when we were in those tunnels, you said it was a strain for you to see down there. What’s…” A horrified look came over his face. “Oh, Martin, no. No, don’t tell me—”
Martin winced. “This…is not how I wanted to tell you guys this, but. Um.”
Sasha sat up straighter. “The Eye? Whatever it is, it’s—you’re part of it, aren’t you?”
“We all are,” Tim said, his voice soft but certain, his eyes never leaving Martin’s. “Aren’t we? That’s what you meant when you said you couldn’t set up the wards in the Archives. Why you can’t keep the Fourteen out. The Magnus Institute is the Eye. Fuck me.”
Martin, who knew Gerry well, kicked him in the ankle to keep him from even thinking about quipping Don’t mind if I do. “Not exactly. It’s for the Eye, but it isn’t the Eye itself. The Eye—the Beholder, the Ceaseless Watcher, It Knows You, whatever you want to call it—it’s knowledge. The fear of secrets exposed, o-or of being observed, of being watched. Hidden things, forbidden knowledge, all that sort of thing.” He stared down at his bandaged hands, unable to meet anyone else’s gaze. “I’ve been wrapped up in it a hell of a lot longer than I’ve been at the Institute, honestly. We all kind of have, I’ve just…had it a bit worse. Doesn’t help that I leaned into it more than I should have. But…yeah. I kind of think the Archives is the most concentrated part of the Institute, but…”
“It’s where all the knowledge is gathered,” Gerry pointed out. “It’s where everything is studied, where everything will eventually be collected. It’s where the most is understood. And who gathers the threads together but the Archivist? There’s a reason it’s the only part of the Institute that can be accessed without going through the main part of the building.”
“You’re not helping,” Martin muttered.
“So what did you mean? About…Seeing?” Sasha prompted. “What does that mean?”
Martin took a deep, steadying breath. It didn’t help much. “It…I can see when someone, or something, has been…affected by one of the Entities. Aunt Mary used to call it being Marked. If I concentrate, or, well, it works better if I take my glasses off and kind of unfocus my eyes, actually. Took me way too long to realize why that was. But anyway, if I do that, I can see the Marks on a person. Or an object. Mostly I use it on books.”
“So you can find Leitners?” Sasha had an audible frown in her voice.
“No—well, yeah, but those just give off a vibe. Even I can pick up on them sometimes, and I’m rubbish at it,” Melanie interjected. “Or I used to be. I’m better than I was. But Martin can Look at books and tell us what Entity they belong to, which is useful, because otherwise we’d have to read them to figure it out. At least it tells us what to look out for after. Turns out these things really don’t like people breaking their toys.”
“But you can see them on people, too,” Sasha persisted. “So—the people who come down to give statements. You know what…what Entity they were affected by?”
Martin nodded, but still couldn’t bring himself to look up at the others. “Yeah, but not from—I didn’t Look. I-I try really hard not to Look at people if I can help it.”
“Why? It seems like that would be the most sensible thing to do. Books can’t hurt you as much as people can, right? Why wouldn’t you want to have as much advanced warning as you could?”
“Christ, Sasha.” Martin gritted his teeth and closed his eyes tightly. He could feel the pressure building up behind them, hear the soft sounds of static gathering. Her words were tempting, too tempting, and he was very close to being too tired to resist their pull. Pushing the Eye back was going to take everything he had, and even then it might not be enough…
A hand clamped around his wrist tightly, digging painfully into the holes there. Melanie’s voice crackled with a combination of anger and a power she very rarely tapped into as she snapped out five words in Arabic. The static and the pressure died almost instantly.
In the sudden silence, Melanie let go of his wrist and rubbed his back gently. “You okay?”
Martin took a deep breath, then another. “Yeah. Thanks.” He risked looking up. Sasha was staring up at the candle on the bookshelf with wide eyes—Martin could see a scorch mark on the underside of the shelf—but Tim and Jon were both looking at him, and the concern in their eyes sent a prickle of shame up his spine. He dropped his gaze again. “Sorry.”
“You aren’t the one who needs to apologize,” Melanie said sharply. “You don’t say things like that. What’s wrong with you?”
“Melanie, she doesn’t—” Martin began, instinct driving him to protect his friends, to take the blame for himself.
“No, stop it, this isn’t on you, Martin. I know you just found out about these things, but Jesus, you don’t ask someone who’s just told you they’ve been given powers from an evil fear god why they aren’t leaning into it more. That’s just common sense. And the wards don’t do shit if you invite Them in. What if that incantation hadn’t worked? It doesn’t always.”
“It only works when she’s pissed,” Gerry interjected. Something ice-cold touched the back of Martin’s neck, and he yelped in surprise, jerking away from it. He looked up to see Gerry pull his hand back, guilt written all over his face. “Sorry. Forgot how cold they were.”
Martin grimaced slightly, then took a deep breath and turned back to face his…well, coworkers, he wasn’t sure they’d still call him a friend after this. Sasha had her fist jammed into her mouth. Tim and Jon both looked like they wanted to throw up. “To answer your question, Sash, it’s…apart from the fact that I try not to use it too often, it’s really invasive. Someone being Marked isn’t—it’s not just a matter of seeing something a bit scary. It’s something you fear all the way down to the bone. It’s traumatic. And to just—go around and stare at people and immediately know not just that they’ve been through some absolutely horrible experience that’s never going to leave them, but what precisely it is that was after them, and probably still is? That’s just…I can’t do that to people. Not unless they ask.”
Sasha lowered her hands enough to say, “But Melanie asked, and you said no. And…”
“I know. I Looked at Gerry when he came in. That’s…a little different.” It sounded weak even to Martin’s ears, and he hastened to explain. “He’s supposed to be dead, remember? I-I had to Look. I had to…make sure it was really him. I thought it might have been the Stranger. It wouldn’t be the first time It stole a dead man’s skin, that’s for sure.”
Tim let out a sound Martin didn’t think he’d ever heard anyone make before, let alone Tim—a sharp, wounded, heartbroken little cry—and pressed his fist to his mouth. The candle flared again. Martin swore in Polish and slammed his eyes shut as fast as possible. “Shit. Shit. Tim, I’m sorry, I—I didn’t mean to—I’m sorry.”
There was a muffled sound Martin couldn’t quite identify, but Melanie’s hand rubbed at his arm in a gesture he could tell was meant to be comforting. “He’s shaking his head, Martin. I think he means it’s not your fault—yeah, he’s nodding, that’s what he means. Okay, I think that’s enough for tonight. You lot need sleep. We can…discuss this in the morning when we’ve all had a good night’s rest. C’mon, I’ll—it’s probably safest if you stay here tonight. I’ve got a couple spare beds.”
“I—thank you,” Jon said softly.
“Yeah, sure. Just remember I’m not doing this for you.”
Martin buried his face in his hands, not sure if he was overwhelmed or embarrassed or both. There were a few soft murmurs he couldn’t quite make out, not until someone whispered, “Good night, Martin.”
And then, for a few moments at least, he was blissfully, totally alone.