Chapter 1
It begins like this.
All things are connected, this will always be true.
Dominos line up on a tabletop, threads are selected.
Fear seeps into an unsuspecting world, leaks into another, horror after horror in mutual destruction, never ending discord thrumming through universes.
Another domino is placed, the loom is being raised.
All things are connected. A soul is tied to a door, a spirit sealed into a tome of skin.
(They will never escape, their bodies rot away in unmarked graves, they never knew peace in their pointless lives)
A car moves down a road, seconds from hitting a patch of ice, a pair of garden shears plunge into a chest cavity.
A cancer eats away at a lung, a woman flays herself alive in her kitchen.
An archivist dies. An Eye watches.
(It’s always watching, always seeing, never ending as it consumes, the perfect voyeur, flawless in its monstrosity, an Archivist will always be dying, they will never be eternal)
The dominos are shaking, the threads come closer as a tapestry is woven.
A page burns.
A man steps through a Door.
Everything is connected.
The first domino falls.
-
“Gerard fucking Keay!”
Oliva Collard shrieks, rushing towards him, and for a moment Gerry wonders if this is how matadors feel just seconds before being crushed by a bull. The bull, in this case, being a 5’1 extrovert with choppy purple hair, a truly disgraceful number of bangles on her wrists, and a pair of oversized sunglasses sitting on the tip of her pert nose despite the fact that it’s the middle of February and completely dark outside. Ignoring the sharp looks pointed his way from the other people in the gallery, he instead focuses on her as she flings herself at his chest, grinning wide enough to show off the gap between her two front teeth.
“Hello to you too, green,” he huffs, patting her back, glad to see her despite himself. She pulls away, punching his arm.
“You asshole,” she says admiringly. “Why didn’t you tell me your art got accepted here?”
A pang of guilt hits him, and he flushes. “It’s not like it’s a big deal, also, how do you know about this? I specifically didn’t tell you.”
Olivia rolls her eyes, blue eyeshadow shimmering behind those massive lenses. “There was a flyer up at Gertie’s office. I dropped by to see if you were in, she showed me the flyer and told me you’d be here. Asshole,” she repeats, snagging his plastic wine glass, downing it in a single gulp. “Now, show me your shit.”
Gerry sighs, letting her link arms with him and leads her away from the corner, towards the wall cluttered with paintings, sculptures and glasswork sitting on tables crowded by amateur artists like Gerry himself and their friends, the coffee shop-slash-art gallery packed full of fashionable 20-somethings and down on their luck students with nothing better to be doing. Oliva’s turquoise nails shimmer under the warm overhead lighting. She smells like lilac and fabric dye. Her mouth is painted deep red, and after a moment he realizes she’s been talking.
“Sorry, what did you say?”
She rolls her eyes, giving him an annoyed smile. “I was saying that I haven’t seen any of your shit since we graduated Uni. You’re so secretive with all your art recently.”
“It isn’t very good anyways,” he grumbles guiltily, looking away.
“Like hell it isn’t, you got your work accepted here!”
“This place isn’t exactly the Louvre.”
Oliva waves a dismissive hand. “It’s still a good start. What kind of painting did you submit?”
“Well, it isn’t exactly…normal.”
“None of your art is. Continue.”
“I’ll just let you see it for yourself, here,” he sighs, pulling her up to the canvas carrying his work, the tiny metal plaque drilled into the wall beside it sending a proud little thrill through him. Gerry steps back, letting her have a moment to just look.
Suspended on a five-foot long canvas, swirls of neon and buttery yellow curve themselves into the shape of a man, long and lean and wrong, the shapes and colors shifting into something entirely different if you stared at them too long. A doorknob protrudes from one eye, the other staring in a way that makes even Gerry feel unsettled, the only still element of the whole piece. The canvas is meant to be an optical illusion, something to trick the viewers eye into seeing what isn’t truly there. Something flickers at the edge of Gerry’s eyeline, the fluttering of too long fingers, a flash of stomach churning green, but he looks away, feeling a bit nervous as Oliva continues to stare at the painting with something like awe on her face.
“So…? What do we think?”
“He’s beautiful,” she says finally, and it sends something sharp up his throat, the admiration in her tone, the fact that she wasn’t tricked by the illusion into thinking it was merely another shitty piece of the modernistic bullcrap she hates so much.
“Yeah?”
“Yes. What’s his name?”
Gerry chews on the inside of his cheek, the figure at the edge of his vision glowing brighter, phantom hands caressing the top of the canvas. “He doesn’t have one.”
“No?”
“No.”
And that’s that. Olivia shrugs, signature smile gracing her features as she finally rips her gaze away from the wall. “It’s amazing, Ger. I love it, really.”
Despite himself, Gerry grins. “Gee-Gee thought it was creepy.”
Olivia laughs. “It really is, but I think that’s what brings it together. Now, what say you that we get smashing drunk and make this a party?”
-
Gerard has always seen things others can’t.
He’s been this way since he was young, since the institute and the tests, since they opened that door in his mind and triggered something that seems irreversible. At least that’s what Gee-Gee thinks, pieced that little theory of hers from the wreckage of his memories, and he knows she thinks of it each time he forgets something he shouldn’t, finds himself caught between the real world and the ghosts in his head.
Gerry remembers some things from the institute of course, remembers the long halls and mirrors and the bright lights they’d shone into his eyes, the scent of a broken ink pen seeping into his subconscious whenever he lets his guard down for a moment. He remembers sheets of questions and electrical cords and muttered words, things like Kohlbert, Piaget, Milgram, remembers ink blots and test results and sitting inside a dim room for what felt like days, only to be told that he was ‘highly empathetic, illogical, intelligent, and altogether not a good fit for The Program’. Mostly, he remembers his mother’s disappointment, her distance, the illness that followed just months after he was released from the institute. Her funeral was held on his birthday, and on the drive to it, Eric’s car hit a patch of ice, sending both Gerry and his father directly into oncoming traffic.
No one attended Mary’s funeral and Eric died on the way to the hospital, leaving Gerard all alone with only one known living relative and a fresh bunch of individuals haunting his brain. Gertrude Robinson, previously Keay, arrived at the same hospital her daughter died in to find her only grandson sobbing in his bed as he screamed at some invisible being to just tell him what his name was. Gerry, of course, doesn’t remember any of this, remembers only bits and pieces of his life immediately following the crash, all of it fragmented and half-tainted by visions of puppets and scarred scholars and a too-tall man with long fingers and curling blond hair. The visions were worst in the early days as he recovered from his injuries, doctors and child psychiatrists scrambling to come up with answers for this old woman and her grieving grandson, Gerry often waking covered in sweat, screaming and shaking as figures moved through his room, flickering in and out of his vision as Gertude tried to calm him.
These days, he’s better at managing the visions.
If he throws himself into his work hard enough, he can keep them at bay, ignore the mournful stare of the scarred man, avoid the sight of the man who looks just like him staring at him in the mirror, the eye at his throat boring into Gerry until he feels sick. If he lets these ghosts escape onto the canvas, he half hopes it’ll just make them fade away eventually, but thus far, it’s done jack-shit.
Shaking those thoughts from his head and kicking off his boots in the front hall, he whistles to alert Gee-Gee he’s home, heading straight for the kitchen to find something to soak up the leftover alcohol from his evening with Olivia. After loading a bowl with some take-out curry from the night before, Gerry stumbles into the living room and flops down onto his designated couch, glancing at Gee-gee curled in her armchair, reading some paperback novel while an American sit-com drones on in the background.
“Hey Gee’s,” he says after a moment.
“Hello, Gerard. How was your art show?”
“Good. Olivia showed up, you traitor.”
A faint smile curls across her face, but she still doesn’t look up. “Did that dreadful painting win any awards?”
“Yeah, the ‘creepy as fuck’ award,” he grins.
“Language, Gerry.”
“Yeah, yeah…”
They sit in silence for a while, a weeping man made of fog hovering by the lamp as Gerard eats, watching the TV as Gertrude turns pages every so often. Finally, she stands, marking her page and patting the top of his head. “Take a shower before you sleep, you smell like a margarita,” she says affectionately before moving down the hall and disappearing into her room. Gerry lazes around for a few minutes more, turning off the telly and finishing his bowl, brushing past the misty figure as he enters the kitchen to wash it. In the silence of their home, in his half-drunk state, the visions press oppressively against the edges of his vision, stronger than they’ve been in years, their bodies more solid, their voices a whisper at the base of his skull. A woman lights herself on fire by the fridge, a man Watches him, a wolf tears out the throat of a body in handcuffs just behind his back. And, as always, the smiling man is there, feeling like an acid trip burrowing into his brain. Dropping the bowl into the sink, Gerry finally looks to the Watcher, eyes burning as he rasps, “what do you want from me? What’s going on?”
Knowledge. Says the voice in his head. Wake up, Gerard, it’s time to come home.
-
This is stupid.
It’s three in the morning, the sky outside his window is dark, he’s been on the road for hours, driving farther and farther from home. Gerry should be in bed right now, sleeping off an impending hangover, not parked in front of the ruins of the Magnus Institute in the search for something that was destroyed years ago. At least he’s alone, the visions seemingly gone for now as he braces himself, tugging his jacket tighter as he climbs from his piece of shit car, wincing at the winter chill against his skin. Scaling the fence easily, he finds himself trekking through the burnt-out husk of the building, mud sticking to his boots as he looks around. After nearly half an hour of aimless wandering, he finds something strange, something that makes the hair raise up on the backs of his arms, though for what reason he can’t be sure.
In the middle of the floor there’s a gaping hole.
“It’s just a hole,” Gerry mutters, a quick peek inside revealing a floor beneath it, cluttered with junk.
“What the hell,” he murmurs, kneeling and leaning over, trying to get a better look. The floorboards beneath his feet creak, the only warning he has as the soggy wood gives under his weight, and he tumbles through the gap, letting out a sharp cry as his shoulder scrapes open against one of the jagged splinters. Gerry lands on one of the tables below, the air knocking out of his lungs as he rolls onto his side, coughing and wheezing for breath.
“The fuck—” he manages eloquently after a moment, rolling off the table and catching himself on his hands and knees, gripping the edge of the table as he hauls himself to his feet. Looking up at the hole in the ceiling, he scrambles desperately to think of how he’s going to get back up. Pulling out his phone, he looks despairingly at the ‘no signal’ notification, turning on the flashlight app and pointing it down the hall. The ceiling is too far to reach without a ladder, there has to be some kind of staircase down that way, some way to escape. It shouldn’t hurt to look, he tries to reason, pretending his hands aren’t shaking as badly as they are, blood soaking through his now ripped jacket. Tucking a loose strand of hair back into his bun, Gerry edges down the dark hallway beyond the cramped room he’s currently in, the voices murmuring in his head once more, getting louder as he moves deeper into the ruins, flashlight held in front of him like a weapon as he glances into each room he passes by.
The doors are all gone.
That might be one of the most unsettling parts, Gerry thinks, broken glass crinkling beneath his feet as he looks into a room, the whole area feeling like something out of a lost memory, like he’s been here before, searching through the archives in some other life. The déjà vu is a familiar sensation by now, but that doesn’t make it any more pleasant. His vision flashes and the hall morphs into something clean cut and dimly lit, a tall figure waiting at the end of it. Gerry blinks, and the man disappears, replaced by a door, the knob glinting dully under the white light coming from his phone.
Oh.
Well shit.
Theres something different in the air now, his momentary shift pulling something free, a crackling energy in the hall that smells of burning sugar and blood. Despite himself, Gerry takes one step forward, another, another, another, until he’s face to face with the door, his every nerve screaming at him to run, to ignore the hook in his gut dragging him forwards, urging his fingers to wrap around the handle, his wrist turning without thought.
The voices in his head are howling now, his ears ringing.
Gerry opens the door.
-
Michael is still screaming when the door falls shut.
His bones are tearing through skin, he’s
Breaking, he’s
Shattering, he’s
Screaming, he is the weightless fury of something being unmade,
And he is empty, empty, empty
Michael is nothing,
His blood is staining the carpet of the Spirals hallways, he thinks
That maybe
He’s always been bleeding,
New bones form under
Pale frostbitten skin, he is
Falling he is pain falling he is hatred falling he is fear
Fear
Fear
Fear fear fear fear fear
He is thrumming electricity through water
Killing and killing and stripping away what he used to be,
And he is filled with an agonizing
Ecstasy
As his
What
Becomes a
Who
Once. More.
He
Thinks
He
Might
Be dying.
Helen lets go of him, turning back to The Archivist, and he
RUNS.
There is a door.
He is screaming.
The door is closed.
Michael is screaming.
The door opens.
Michael is screaming as he tumbles through, blood staining his teeth as he lands in front of a pair of muddy combat boots, screams as the Spiral leeches from his body, drags in a sobbing breath as he looks up, and—
“Gerry."
The world goes dark.