The last three words of the note were the most terrifying ones. Melanie could handle Running down something for a statement, even if she really wished he hadn’t gone alone. She could handle Be back by nine, even if—maybe because—she didn’t know what time he’d actually written it. She could even handle NOBODY PANIC, underlined seven times, because at least he’d been smart enough to know that leading off with that was the surest way to cause panic.
But Love you all—that was low-key terrifying in a way she couldn’t adequately explain. Martin didn’t just write things like that. He said it all the time, of course, and he meant it, but for him to write it in the letter like that…Melanie couldn’t shake the feeling he was writing it in case he never got the opportunity to say it again.
Which was silly. It was the rest of them that were in danger outside the Archives, not Martin. Sure, things would probably want to get at him—he was the Archivist, after all—but also, he was the Archivist, he could handle himself just fine. Gertrude Robinson had survived fifty years, and she’d done it more or less on her own. Surely Martin would last at least that long, if not longer, since he had all of them supporting him. And he wasn’t stupid, she told herself. If he’d thought it was truly that dangerous, if he was worried something might happen to him, he’d have waited until the rest of them woke up. Or if he felt like it couldn’t wait, he’d have woken someone else up to go with him.
She tried to quell the niggling feeling that, actually, he probably hadn’t thought that far ahead.
It was early enough that they could all pretend the Institute’s quiet stillness was because nobody else had arrived to start the workday yet rather than the Lonely’s influence, but late enough that even Sasha was awake. The cats had been fed and were chasing one another around the Archives—even Nod was awake and participating in the game. Melanie had managed to convince Jon to let her do something about his hair and wrestled it into something approximating a braid. Sasha and Tim had put together breakfast for everyone and were currently engaged in an argument with Gerry over why he needed to eat actual food and not just pass it up because he didn’t get a lot of sustenance out of it.
“You wouldn’t let Martin get away with this,” Tim finally pleaded, setting the squat bun in front of him. “Just…at least pretend you’re eating something.”
Gerry nodded at Melanie and Jon. “They’re not. And they actually need food.”
Melanie looked guiltily at Jon, who had the same expression on his face. She hadn’t realized she was too worried to eat properly, but…
“We’ll wait until Martin gets back,” she said decisively. “It can’t be that much longer now, can it?”
“He said he’d be back by nine,” Jon said, a bit uncertainly. “It’s only quarter to eight.”
“You know Martin. He said ‘back by nine’ as a really, really outside chance. He’ll be back any minute.” Melanie spoke with as much authority as she could muster. It wasn’t so much that she believed it as it was that she needed it to be true. The longer he was gone, the more she worried about that Love you all.
Jon didn’t look particularly convinced. He cradled his mug—cocoa, not tea, Melanie had decided they both needed it after seeing the note—and pressed it to his lips, but didn’t take a drink. He seemed to be staring at a point in the middle distance, or perhaps at the past, or perhaps simply willing Martin to appear by sheer force of thought. Suddenly his eyes focused on something in front of Melanie, and he lowered the mug with a frown. “Were you recording?”
“No, I haven’t recorded in ages, why?” Melanie followed Jon’s gaze and blinked in consternation. Sitting in front of her was a small handheld tape player.
But not just any tape player.
“What the fuck?” she said softly, reaching over to pick it up. Without conscious thought, she slid her hand under the frayed strap of PVC canvas and curled it around the black plasticine back. She traced the scuffed and faded red front with trembling fingers. “How…?”
“They turn up all over the place,” Sasha said with a shrug. “I’ve never seen that one in particular before, but they just tend to turn up.”
“No, I know this one. This was mine.” Melanie turned it over slowly, and sure enough, there it was, scratched onto the bottom in sharp, angular letters: MELANIE B KING. “It was my last Christmas present from Alastair. I had this huge collection of punk tapes I got at swap meets and charity shops, I used to listen to them all the time. But it quit working after a few years and by then everything was on CD anyway and…”
It wouldn’t work. It couldn’t work. It had to be just a broken piece of junk, and how it had ended up on her desk she had no idea. There wouldn’t even be a tape in it, and if there was…
She hit the EJECT button. The tape deck slowly puffed open, revealing a tape that could easily have been an underground band’s demo but could just as easily be a statement. Either way, it looked like it was about halfway through the tape, so at the very least, she could take a listen and see if it was worth rewinding. Scarcely knowing what she was doing, she pushed PLAY.
Gertrude Robinson’s voice came through, sharp and clear. “Get out of my Archives.”
There was a click, which made Melanie think the recorder had stopped, but then someone took a deep breath and Martin’s voice began a summing up, and she realized it was something he had listened to and made a recording of. His brief supplemental made her glad she hadn’t listened to it.
Then he said the words Hill Top Road, and she suddenly felt nauseous.
She jerked open her desk drawer and began rummaging through it as quietly as she could while still listening to the tape. Tim’s lips pressed into a thin line as Martin started enumerating all the ties the lot of them had to Hill Top Road, especially when he started listing off the Entities they knew had been active there. His revelation that the Dark had been what was after him struck her like an almost physical force, momentarily stilling her explorations, and she could tell from the long silence after he revealed it that it had struck him just as hard.
Then he recovered and spoke in a voice that sent a chill down Melanie’s spine, for reasons she couldn’t explain. “Right. I think this is a thread I need to pull. I can make the next train to Oxford and probably be back before everyone wakes up properly. It’s time to finish this once and for all. I’m heading to Hill Top Road.”
Click.
“Fuck,” Gerry spat. His hands were trembling. “Of fucking course it was the Dark. He wasn’t afraid of us leaving him behind, it was because he stopped to wipe off his glasses—I should have guessed, back then that was one of his biggest fears…”
“Martin? Afraid of the dark?” Sasha said incredulously.
“Of going blind. He’s worn glasses since he was three, and every year the glass gets thicker—he was afraid he’d eventually—” Gerry broke off. “Where the hell did you get that?”
“Aji Susie.” Melanie thumbed the switch on the password journal her mother’s youngest sister had given her at the funeral—you deserve a secret place to put your secret thoughts—that she’d never used until she started working for the Institute. She rattled off an old Cantonese tongue twister, and the journal opened with a faintly warped beeping sound, exposing the actual notebook.
Melanie’s written Chinese wasn’t going to win her any scholarship prizes, and probably even someone who read it properly wouldn’t be able to understand hers—she was sure there were errors in her characters that changed them from what she’d actually meant to write into something wholly inappropriate—but it served her purpose, which was to make notes about things she didn’t want anyone else to know about. She paged through a bit until she found the section she’d marked off to write down notes about all the statements around Hill Top Road. The first time Martin had mentioned it, she’d made the connection to the Halloween party and decided that might be something worth being concerned about, so she’d started jotting it down every time it came up and trying to make connections.
“Ivo Lesnik,” she murmured, running her fingers down the characters. “Desolation with hints of the Web. Father Burroughs, he felt the Desolation but something had already Marked him, so whatever that was he brought with him, probably the Web. Ronald Sinclair, opposite of Lesnik’s, heavy on the Web with the appearance of Agnes Montague as the Desolation. Anya Villette, definitely the Web, maybe a bit of Spiral flavor…shit!” She read her notes twice to make sure she wasn’t mistaken.
Jon had suddenly gone ashen, which told her he was thinking the same thing. “Anya Villette. Didn’t she mention a crack in reality? And we couldn’t find any record of her existing. You don’t think—”
“There’s no basement in that house,” Daisy said. She shrugged uncomfortably at Melanie’s look of surprise. “I’ve been trying to clean up the bits Basira left unfinished when she…went upstairs. Found her notes on that one a couple weeks back. Took me a while to figure out what she was getting at, but I pulled up the house plans. Poured concrete foundation. Something about a fire risk.”
“So he’s probably not in another reality,” Tim said. “Which is great. But you’ve mentioned the Web four times in a row. And whether he meant to or not…”
“There were an awful lot of Web-based metaphors in that summing up of his,” Sasha completed. “Why did he even need to go?”
“We’d have to listen to the statement to figure that out,” Gerry said slowly. “Probably.”
Melanie slammed her password journal shut and stood. “Right. You do that.” She turned and started across the Archives.
“Where are you going?” Sasha asked, sounding bewildered.
“Where do you think?” Melanie demanded without turning around or slowing down. “I’m going to find Martin.”
“Melanie, wait, I’m coming with you.” Jon scrambled after her and caught up halfway to the door.
“Neens!” Tim’s voice was sharp and commanding. It actually stopped Melanie in her tracks, and she turned around—just in time to catch the set of keys Tim had thrown at her. He looked worried but resigned. “Take my car. You’ll get there faster. We’ll try to get hold of him. Just…be careful.”
“Sure.” Melanie jangled the keys and continued out the door.
The first part of the journey was done in relative silence, with Melanie concentrating on getting out of London as fast as possible and Jon concentrating on not letting the seatbelt cut him in half when she took a turn too fast. Once she hit the M40 and the more or less straight shot to Oxford, and had time to think again, she said, “Martin’s was blue.”
“What?” Jon started and turned to look at her.
Melanie didn’t take her eyes off the road, which would have been dangerous at the speed she was driving, but she watched him from her peripheral vision. “The tape recorders. Alastair—Granddad—that’s what he gave all three of us for Christmas that year. It surprised all three of us, because he usually gave us each something different, something a bit more personal, but…he’d just had a stroke, so we assumed he hadn’t been feeling well and went for something easy. Martin’s was blue. Gerry’s was this weird mustard yellow, I think.” She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel briefly. “Martin used to record himself practicing his pieces on it, and later on he’d record his poems sometimes. Dunno if Gerry ever used his.”
Jon hummed briefly. They traveled a bit further in silence before he said quietly, “He hasn’t told me about the Halloween incident yet. I guess he didn’t want to think too hard about the Lonely, but…if it was the Dark…”
For a moment, Melanie debated telling Jon that it was Martin’s to tell, but…really it had been all of them, and it wasn’t like Martin would get mad if she did. Probably. “We’d gone to a party. Mum and Dad met in a support group for single parents, and one of the other parents hosted a party at her dad’s house on Hill Top Road—not 105, it was something like 118—for Halloween every year. I found out later it was inspired by the Agatha Christie book. Anyway, the year before Mum and Dad got married, they agreed to let Gerry be the responsible one for the three of us, so we went alone. I loved Halloween back then, loved getting to dress up and be—something I wasn’t, you know? The party was fun—or at least I was having fun—games, dancing, spooky stories, the lot. They were getting ready to do a snap-dragon—”
“Is that the game where you try to snatch raisins out of a pan of burning brandy?”
“Yeah. Martin was right, it would’ve been dangerous with my costume. I was dressed as the Beast—you know, from the Disney movie—and I had way too much fake fur, I definitely would have gone the way of the king and his cronies in ‘Hop-Frog.’ Anyway, we didn’t end up doing it, because Gerry grabbed us right before it started and said we had to go.”
“Why?”
“He didn’t say then. Later, when we finally made it to the train and were on our way home safe, he told us he’d overheard two of the girls in the washroom talking about how annoying I was, saying they’d only invited me because Martin wouldn’t have come without me, that kind of thing, and it got his back up, so he dragged us both out of there.” Melanie sighed at the memory. She’d idolized both Judith and Helen, tagging along after them like a puppy on the rare occasions she wasn’t spending time with her brothers, and finding out they’d been secretly laughing at her the whole time had hurt—not as much as it would have if she hadn’t been so relieved they made it out, but enough. “We cut across the park. It was raining to beat the band, and Gerry and I were under the umbrella—Martin had this big old coat on as part of his costume that kept him dry enough, so he was trailing along behind. We were holding hands, but…well, I had gloves on, and it was so cold I was going a little numb, so I didn’t notice at first when he let go and stopped to wipe his glasses because he couldn’t see. I realized we’d lost Martin somehow—and we shouldn’t have, we were in an open field on top of a hill—so I made Gerry stop. We went back for him, but…everything got so far away and muffled. We were shouting his name, but he couldn’t hear us, or we couldn’t hear his answer, and…” She swallowed hard.
Jon swallowed, too. “How—how did you find him?”
Melanie glanced at him briefly as she changed lanes to go around someone who was driving sensibly under the conditions. “Started singing.”
“A sea shanty?”
“Heh. No, we hadn’t started using those yet. It was ‘Somewhere Out There.’ You know, from An American Tail.” Melanie took a deep breath and started singing. Her voice was better than it had been at nearly ten, but the song was a bit higher than her usual range. “Somewhere out there, beneath the pale moonlight…someone’s thinking of me and loving me tonight…”
Jon nodded and surprised her by singing the next line, quietly enough, but with absolute sincerity. Melanie jumped back in when her part came around again and knew they were both thinking of it bringing them to Martin.
The rain had stopped, sort of, by the time they got to Oxford, but it was still grey and gloomy and, in Melanie’s opinion, mildly foreboding. She pulled Tim’s car to a stop in front of a house with a sign proclaiming it to be for sale, two houses down from their destination, then paused with her hand on the gear shaft, staring at the shrubbery.
“Jon?” she said quietly. “What’s today?”
Jon blinked at her, obviously confused, the door half open. “The twenty-fifth, why?”
“Just wondering.” Melanie’s sense of foreboding only increased.
She stepped out of the car, locked it, and put the keys in her pocket. Before she followed Jon up the block, though, she reached over and snapped a lilac bloom off the laden bush in front of her, then tucked it behind her ear.
105 Hill Top Road was a perfectly ordinary house. Two stories with what looked like a half-story on one end, no porch, a poured concrete foundation as Daisy had said. It was painted an innocuous grey, the door a slightly faded red. There were no curtains, no shutters, and no lights. For all intents and purposes, it was completely abandoned. For a moment, they stood at the end of the walk.
Jon stared up at the house. “Martin would hate it if we gave in to Fears trying to claim us just to save him.”
“Yep,” Melanie said, eyeballing the door.
“But he’d be the first one to bind himself to something in order to protect us.”
“Yep.”
“So we’re going in.”
“Yep.”
“Whatever it takes?”
Melanie met Jon’s eyes and saw her own feelings reflected there. “Whatever it takes.”
Jon nodded. “Good. Just so we’re on the same page.” He frowned and touched the lilac behind her ear lightly. “What’s this?”
Melanie shrugged. “‘Makes a spanking plume, even if you can’t eat it,’” she quoted.
“Oh.” Jon obviously didn’t understand, but just as obviously, he seemed to get it. He turned around and reached for a lilac bush nearby, hesitated, then shifted to a different bloom and broke it off. As he was tucking it into the end of his braid, Melanie spotted the cobwebs, sparkling with rain, spread over most of the shrub.
Great.
She squared her shoulders and reached into her jacket. “Full frontal charge, or are we trying to be subtle?”
“Because that worked so well when we tried it at the Trophy Room.” Jon balled his hands into fists. “Let me be the one to slam face-first into the wall this time.”
Either Jon had better luck than Melanie did or whatever was in here wanted them to come, though, because the door opened easily under his hand. Melanie drew her trusty knife as they stepped in and closed the door behind them.
The interior of the space was actually quite nice; if not for the long commute, and the fact that the Web had too much to do with it, Melanie might have been tempted to find out how much it was per calendar month. The walls were painted a delicate shade of cream, the floors seemed to be genuine hardwood rather than laminate, and the light fixtures were quite nice as well. There was no furniture in the house, unsurprising as nobody lived in it, but it didn’t look terribly abandoned.
Except for the thick layer of cobwebs.
“When was this house built again?” Melanie asked. Despite her earlier thoughts about subtlety, she kept her voice low. It seemed appropriate.
“2008,” Jon said, and he, too, barely spoke above a whisper.
“Ten years’ worth of cobwebs would be a lot,” Melanie said. She heard the lie as soon as it was out of her mouth and added, “But this isn’t natural.”
“No.” Jon looked around, gnawing on his lip. “I wonder…”
Slowly, carefully, he reached out and brushed one of the cobwebs, almost like he was plucking the string of a guitar. He stood stock-still for a minute, almost like he was listening, then huffed a humorless laugh and shook his head. “I don’t know why I thought that would work. I’m—I’m not part of the Web. I thought if I gave in a little…but, but I don’t know if I can use what’s here without giving in a lot.”
“I’ll keep you from falling too far into the manipulation if you keep me from going full red rum on whatever we find in here that isn’t Martin.” Melanie looked around the room, then grabbed Jon’s arm tightly. “Look, over there!”
Jon looked in the direction she had indicated. “Stairs. You think they’re on the upper story?”
“Positive. It’s a spiral staircase.”
“You think the Spiral is involved too?”
“No, Jesus. Don’t you know the poem?” Melanie started dragging Jon towards the stairs.
“Poem?”
“‘The Spider and the Fly.’ It’s the third line. ‘The way into my parlor is up a winding stair / And I’ve a many a curious thing to show when you are there.’”
Jon swallowed. “I, ah, take it that doesn’t end well.”
Melanie paused on the first step and smiled grimly at Jon. “‘Oh, no, no,’ said the little Fly, ‘to ask me is in vain / For who goes up your winding stair shall ne’er come down again.’”
“If Martin’s up there…” Jon looked up, then stepped onto the stairs himself. “Let’s go.”
The upstairs hall seemed just as abandoned as the ground floor, albeit shorter. There were doors on either side, firmly shut, and at the very end of the hall a door that stood ajar. Melanie glanced at Jon. “I hate being led.”
“Me, too,” Jon agreed, “but I also don’t want to waste time. If Martin’s here, he’s in there.”
“Agreed.” Melanie sighed. “Spooky door ahoy.”
She thought she was prepared for whatever she would find in there. She wasn’t.
The first thing that struck her was the size of the room. It was a bare, unfinished gable attic that took up fully half the upper story, with a high roof that extended further—the source of the potential extra half floor they’d noticed from the outside—and unlike the other rooms had only a single high window, through which only the weakest of light came through. In fact, the room looked far, far older than the rest of the house, a feeling that was only enhanced by the cobwebs. The second thing that struck her was the woman standing a few feet away, watching them with a playful smile on her face. She was quite pretty, really, with dark skin, bleached blonde hair, and what looked like a short lace veil covering one side of her head. Other than that, the only thing she wore was a kind of white gauzy scarf that wound its way around her and only barely concealed her breasts and genitals. In each hand, rather incongruously, she held what looked like some kind of wands, and she almost looked like she was posing for an artist.
The third thing that struck her was the enormous thing dangling from the ceiling.
To call it a thing was a bit of an injustice, really. It was clearly human, or at least human-shaped…and from the size, it was almost certainly Martin. But it—he—was entirely encased in a thick white cocoon of silk, wrapped up like…well, like a fly in a web. Rather than a solid cylinder, though, it was as though each limb had been thoroughly wrapped individually after being posed in a way that had to be painful. He dangled upside down by one ankle, the other leg bent to cross perpendicular behind the first, his arms seemingly bound behind his back but remaining akimbo.
“Martin!” Jon and Melanie yelled in unison. The thing that was undoubtedly Martin did not respond, but, thankfully, he was at least moving.
The woman laughed and stepped forward, slowly and carefully, somehow neither dislodging nor shifting the scarf that Melanie could now tell was also woven from cobwebs. Her low, warm voice was almost seductive as she recited.
"Come hither, hither, pretty Fly, with the pearl and silver wing;
Your robes are green and purple — there's a crest upon your head;
Your eyes are like the diamond bright, but mine are dull as lead!"
Jon turned cold eyes on her, but Melanie could feel him shaking slightly. Still, he spoke bravely enough. “Who are you? What have you done?”
“Who am I? I’m hurt!” Poem notwithstanding, the woman’s eyes glittered with amusement. “Don’t you know my name by now, Jon? Can I call you Jon?”
“Does it matter if I say yes?” Jon’s hand found Melanie’s. “You’re—y-you’re Annabelle Cane.”
Melanie recognized the name—it had come up in a statement before she’d joined the Institute properly, and later there had been mention of a woman in statements that almost certainly matched her description. Definitely a Web avatar. She squeezed Jon’s hand in return as Annabelle smiled again. “I am. As for what I’ve done…nothing I wasn’t asked to do, I’m sure.”
“By who?” Melanie snapped. “The Mother of Puppets?”
Annabelle’s smile indicated they were sharing a joke, and Melanie felt slightly sick. “Do you really think I could have captured your brother if he didn’t want to be caught?”
Melanie stood her ground, with difficulty. “Yes.”
Annabelle laughed, but she didn’t argue with Melanie, which told her she was right. Jon’s grip on Melanie’s hand was almost hard enough to hurt. “If you’ve hurt him, I swear by all that is holy you won’t live to regret it.”
“Now, Jon,” Annabelle remonstrated. “What makes you think I want to hurt anybody?”
“He’s tied up in your fucking web!” Jon blurted. He yanked his hand from Melanie’s as he said this, balling his hands into fists once more.
“Is he? Look again. Tell me what you see.”
As much as she didn’t want to, Melanie complied. Something about the pose was familiar…
Annabelle began humming merrily. Melanie was about to tell her to knock it off, that she didn’t understand sea shanties at all and anyway that wasn’t a shanty, when the tune struck her. It was “Lannigan’s Ball”, a jaunty Irish folk tune…and one that had formed the basis for one of the songs on High Noon Over Camelot, her favorite Mechanisms album—Jon’s, too, it was one of the things they had bonded over that first day, and they’d both agreed it remained their favorite album even after The Bifrost Incident. She looked at the wrapped form of Martin again and knew exactly what it reminded her of.
The Hanged Man.
Melanie wasn’t super familiar with tarot. She’d had exactly one reading, just before leaving for college, and she’d honestly been a bit dismissive of it. But when she’d realized the songs on High Noon Over Camelot were named after tarot cards, she’d looked them up, and even though she didn’t remember a lot about them, there was one thing about the Hanged Man that had stuck with her: The rope keeping him hanging was not very tightly bound, and he could easily free himself if he wanted to. He was exactly where he wanted to be.
She glared at Annabelle. “You fucking posed him. I don’t think he could get himself down from there in the state he’s in.”
The gleam in Annabelle’s eye indicated Melanie had passed some kind of test. She swallowed down on the surge of anger that rose up in her. Giving in to the Slaughter wouldn’t be good; she might hurt Martin, or Jon, if she couldn’t pull herself back in time. Things felt…thinner here, harder to resist, and she knew if she gave in she wouldn’t be able to pull herself back.
Still, she tightened her hand around the handle of her knife.
“Maybe you’re right,” Annabelle allowed. “But I think he prefers being the one being there.”
“To what?” Jon demanded.
Annabelle tilted her head and studied Jon. Her smile now was almost pitying. “To you, of course.”
“Is that a threat?” Melanie growled.
“Perish the thought!” Annabelle laughed. It was an engaging laugh, the sort of trill you were tempted to join in with, but Melanie was more tempted to start attacking. “It’s the opposite, actually.”
“What?” Jon and Melanie said in the exact same tone.
Annabelle’s expression grew serious all of a sudden. She gestured to Jon with one of the wands, which Melanie realized now were knitting needles made of some kind of bone. “I hope you know this is for your protection. You wouldn’t like the consequences if Martin hadn’t chosen to do what he’s doing.”
Melanie tried very hard not to look at Jon. That was a little too close to the conversation they had had outside for comfort, and there had been an awful lot of spider webs. Annabelle had probably heard them. She was probably using it to manipulate them. That wasn’t happening. Not on her watch.
She brought the knife up to a usable position. Jon spoke before she could. She could feel how scared he was, but he sounded pissed. “His choice or not—or whatever you’re trying to claim—we’re taking him home. Now. Let him go.”
“I’m hardly keeping him captive.” Just like that, Annabelle’s mischievous smile had returned.
It took every ounce of control Melanie had to keep from going full Slaughter. She took a deep, slow breath and angled the knife forward.
“Get out of my way,” she enunciated clearly, “or it goes in your neck.”
If anything, that just made Annabelle smile more broadly. She didn’t say anything, just stepped grandly to one side. She kept backing away without a word, until she stepped into the mass of cobwebs in the corner and seemed to fade into them. The silence in the room, save their breathing and the faint creaking as Martin’s cocooned body fought to get free, told her that Annabelle Cane had gone.
Melanie took another breath, then looked over at Jon, who looked shaken and frightened. She didn’t blame him.
“Come on,” she said shortly. “Let’s get him out before he suffocates.”