Chapter 13
Turns out, the activity of the night is crime. Or, as both Gwen and MJ are insistent on referring to it, urban exploring. Harry thinks, considering the whole abandoned building and lock picking, this is just a new word for a recreational B&E.
(Upon pointing it out to MJ, she quietly reminds him he was fine with it less than a year ago when the crime was murder. Which is fair, he supposes.)
After some tedious lockpocking involving hitting the lock really hard with a rock until it fell off, Gwen adds to the chipping of the paint on the door by unjamming it with a rough kick.
“Been looking forward to this one!” She chirps, striding in without a care in the world, MJ following suit. He suppresses a shiver as he steps in, feeling cold spread through his body in rootlike patterns. There’s a distinct breath on the back of his neck, sending a shock of cold down his spine. The air shifts past him, displaced as if someone has moved past him.
There’s something wrong here.
That’s enough to pull him in further and displace any thoughts of making up an excuse to leave from his mind. “What’s this place supposed to be?”
“Just a condemned house. Been empty for decades, I think since the 60’s?. The fun part is that a couple of decades ago, they found this guy who’d been using it for weird occult shit dead in one of the rooms. Like, his head was missing and the floorboards around his body were scorched except for the outline of his body and a bunch of weird ass symbols. It became this whole thing with the satanic panic around the time.” She explains, pausing briefly to grin and take a quick photo of a spraypainted dick with very hairy balls on one wall. “But apparently you can still see the burnt floor if you find the room.”
He does his best to keep his tone casual. “Which room?”
“It’s supposed to be the parlor, I think.” She looks around, and examining the room they are currently in. “And everyone online said that was supposed to be right off the entryway.”
MJ gestures to the opposite side of the room. “One of those two then?”
Gwen pauses. “Yeah I just…” she motions to the dick graffiti. “It was important, MJ!”
MJ nods in agreement. “Very important.”
All the same, the three head in the opposite direction. And as if they’re in a video game, one door is locked and the other isn’t, with the unlocked room being what appeared to be once an office. It’s mostly empty, with the exception of a desk made of stained dark wood and a cobweb covered bookshelf with few actual books remaining on its shelves.
At the sight of the room being very much not the parlor, Gwen groans and turns, presumably to execute her never-failed strategy of hitting locks with something really hard until they stopped working.
With the wisdom of someone who’s probably witnessed this series of events many times before, MJ turns to Harry and says, “The keys going to be in the desk.” He nods slowly, hesitantly stepping towards the bookshelf to look at the few remaining tomes, jumping a little when he hears MJ laugh slightly. “I was telling you so you could find it.”
“But you already know where it is.” He feels like he’s missing something as he goes back to untangling books from cobwebs. They’re mostly a combination of self help books and finance books, a quick glance at the first couple pages implying they’re probably left behind from the inhabitants of the sixties. But there’s a thinner book, sitting on the highest shelf, almost invisible behind the thick layer of cobwebs, that just a glance at has him suspecting might have been missed by anyone in here to investigate the death Gwen had mentioned. The cover is pitch black, emblazoned with no words, but only an odd geometric symbol he doesn’t recognize. But a quick flip through confirms his suspicions.
There is very much something wrong here.
He leaves the room alongside MJ, who twirls a ring with a small key on it on one finger. The key is passed off to Gwen, and…
And god, if Harry had thought this place felt wrong before, this room is the source of that feeling. There’s no windows, the corners and edges of the unlit room almost look like they’re consumed by a physical shadow, a thick cloudlike, smoky sort of darkness that seems to consume any inch of the room that’s not actively being lit by the flashlight. Bookshelves along the walls are far more a home for spiders than literature, so thick are the layers of cobwebs. Several shattered bottles sit on the counter, dark stains on the wood surrounding them. It feels inexplicably colder, the rootlike branches of freezing cold digging deeper and deeper into his body. And for the briefest moment, he could swear on his life that there’s breathing against his neck.
But the other two are unbothered, fine. If they feel the slightest bit of this, they barely express it, and with the eagerness Gwen charges into the room, he can’t help but suspect they don’t feel this at all.
It’s hard to move. Not like the first time he felt this, but still hard, like his body has realized he should be going into rigor mortis months too late.
“Here’s the bitch!” He drags himself after Gwen’s enthusiastic voice. As promised, the wooden boards of the flooring are visibly scorched in a 7 or 8 foot diameter in the center of the room, with the exception of the shape of a headless body collapsed in the center of it leaving a pristine area of flawless, unburnt boards. Approaching further, there are smaller patterns of unburnt flooring too, the same symbol he found on that book being a path of untouched wood in the same vague area this man’s head should be.
But his attention is quickly pulled away from that symbol. In the center of the unburnt shape of this man’s torso, it’s like someone took a pyrography pen to the flooring to etch in some tiny, barely noticeable letters. Or, as he finds when he steps closer, numbers.
12/13/85
His stomach drops. “MJ, do you see that?”
She turns away from Gwen, who’s become enamored with a rat skeleton just outside the radius of the burns. “See what?”
He overcomes every instinct he has that’s screaming at him to not fucking touch the burnt area and puts one foot over it to point at the writing. “If you went and did this to fuck with me just tell me. Won’t be mad.” His least favorite part of his mind whispers that it’s awfully bold for him to expect she’d believe that promise.
She goes a little pale when she sees it. “Oh.”
Worse than the confirmation that it’s real is the wordless confirmation it was already here.
“Weird coincidence!” She tries to suggest with some positivity forced into her voice.
He wishes. “…Yeah.” Coincidence. Like the snake, the deer, the cloaked man, the fish person. Coincidence. He feels sick.
He steps out of the scorched wood. Strange that it all affects him this much. Feels like someone who’s just wrong in a place that’s just wrong should cancel out. Like he should stop feeling so wrong here.
MJ hands him her flashlight before she’s pulled away by Gwen; the blonde asks MJ to help her take photos of herself and various areas in the old house. Desperate to get out of the room and given a tool for doing so, he approaches a doorway beside a small circle of dusty chairs, opening it to a hallway.
The walls are covered in peeling tan paint, the darkness of the wood beneath making it look like the chipping paint unleashes a void, but the floor is an odd pattern of stone tiling. It looks like a series of larger slabs with smaller, usually circular pieces placed into them, or maybe cut. The most common shape being smaller, oval shapes of about two or two in a half inches by a little over one inch, placed at random rotations, often accented by pieces of about 9 inches long, curved but somewhat rectangular, with the widest point being closer to the top than the bottom. The smaller pieces are often set into the larger near the wider end. Like a foot.
Despite the lack of consistency and arguably nonsensical placement, he can’t help but think it looks familiar.
He pulls one of his pointe shoes from his bag, pressing the tip to one of the smaller pieces. Exact same size, exact same shape.
That is the point at which Harry decides he hates this. Because this place knows him. It knows him, it knows what he’ll recognize, it knows what he brought with him, it knows his birthday , and he doesn’t know how or why him .
And after a few minutes of looking at it, he recognizes it completely. The only major role he’d been able to get at his tiny dance studio before Norman had made him quit. Because, for some fucking reason, this place knows him. But, when he pushes the thoughts of this place out of his mind, he can’t help but find it oh so fitting that he’d been allowed to dance as the black swan, the pawn of an uncaring father who’d attempted to gain affection under the visage of someone more worthy of that affection and harmed many to appease a father who’d never be satisfied.
Perhaps predestination is reality. He can’t imagine he’d be pulled so so many places and events that seem to just be waiting for him if it wasn’t. Hell, he doesn’t believe that damn spider wouldn’t have just coincidentally bitten someone who’d never dreamed of using to hurt others if it wasn’t. If fate didn’t pick and choose it’s favorites, who it wanted as it’s heroes, villains, damsels, mentors, and tragic martyrs, that spider would have fallen onto someone who wouldn’t care enough to use the webs for anything more than turning their bedroom light off at night without leaving the bed. It seems too perfect that the pieces fell into place as they had.
His brooding is interrupting by a ringing that has him scrambling for a phone he doesn’t have on him.
“Mine.” MJ calls. She steps into a corner to answer it, making Harry’s stomach twist at the idea of someone being consumed by those thick shadows. The call remains brief, the ginger cursing as she hangs up.
Gwen looks up from the burnt circle. “What’s wrong?”
MJ is keeping her voice hushed, sounding a little embarrassed, perhaps guilty, then turning to Harry slightly. “Some of my more… successful cast members have been…” She shuffles, like she feels guilty for the words she’s about to say. “They’re paying a lot of attention to me and helping me out, which I know sounds really bad. But one just called and said they talked to someone about an role I could fit well, but the actual auditions are technically closed. I’d need to go like… right now?” She seems to grind her teeth a little. “I don’t want to run off, but it could be really big for me. Like, career-changing. And even if I didn’t get it the connections are good.” Despite Gwen’s own nodding and his quiet assessment that yeah, that’s a very reasonable reason to leave, she sounds like she’s trying to justify it. Perhaps to herself.
Gwen stands quickly. “Then what the hell are you doing here? Go!”
“Are you sure? I don’t want to—“
She lets out a light hearted scoff. “MJ, I’d be a terrible girlfriend if I asked you to give up on something like that for this. Get out of here! Kill it for me and me and him will make sure we don’t kill ourselves in here.”
He nods when she glances toward him. Gwen’s words are impassioned enough for the both of them.
MJ seems immediately relieved. “Thank you. I don’t want to dismiss this, I know this is important to—“
Gwen cuts her off. “More important than your career? If I ever ask you to give up something like that over my hobby, leave me. I'm serious.” She gives MJ a quick kiss, then gently pushes her towards the door. “Now go! And break a leg!”
“As long as you don’t break yours!” MJ jogs for the door.
“Promise!”
Once the door shuts, Gwen sighs a little, moving towards Harry. “Swear to god, every time I actually want to help her or even listen to her about acting she treats it like I’m a saint. You have any clue who’s fault that is? I think I need to punch them.”
The guilt that causes him is deserved. Quietly, he wonders how many plays or musicals he’s missed being either dead or agoraphobic. He makes a note to check what she’s in right now later. “Men.” He tries to supply helpfully.
She raises an eyebrow. “Better not include you.”
“I’m working on it.” He’s grateful that response is enough to spare him getting punched. Though he’d probably deserve it. Especially over MJ.
Gwen is staring at him. “Have we met before?”
“I mean. Maybe.” He points at her. “Police Chief.” Then himself. “Oscorp. So we’ve probably met.”
“Probably.” She doesn’t seem completely persuaded, but she looks down the hall. “What horrible design trend resulted in that floor?”
“It looks like—“ He cuts himself off slightly as he realizes how slightly insane that sentence would sound, but something about Gwen’s expression feels like the cost is sunk and he has to say it. “Odile. The black swan. The foot patterns of her variation.”
She’s suddenly squinting at him. “You recognize that?”
“Yeah.” He looks awkwardly at the pointe shoe he’s still just holding, no reasonable explanation of why he even brought it to begin with.
“You used to do ballet?”
He nods, looking at the shoe to avoid looking at her.
But, startling him, she sounds suddenly excited. “Did you used to dance at Kaleidoscope Dance Studios?”
It only clicks for him then. “Oh my god.”
“It is you! God, I wondered why you quit so suddenly for years.”
He finds himself laughing. “Dad wasn’t big on the idea of it his son doing it. I can’t believe I didn’t put that together. God, I must be dumb.”
She pokes one of the tiles with her foot, watching it sink momentarily. “You should dance it.”
He shakes his head. “It’s been years. I don’t know if I even remember it.”
“Don’t you want to try? Come on, this is some video game puzzle bullshit. Don’t you want to see what will happen?”
Despite his hesitance, how distant that part of his life feels, he figures there’s probably a reason he grabbed the pointe shoes. Might as well try it.
Perhaps muscle memory is stronger than he gives it credit for. He has no conscious memory of these movements, but the back of his head knows how to move. And even if god knows his movements are incredibly messy, they get the job done. Though his ankles do ache from lack of practice and the bugs who’d made their homes in his legs do not seem happy with him. You all better not be eating any ligaments.
“Oh, that’s cool as shit.” He hears Gwen whisper as she slides a section of the wall to the side.
She holds it open as she enters the revealed room, the wall automatically sliding shut behind her.
He’s standing to follow when something invisible sides the switch of the flashlight MJ gave him to off.
That’s better. The words are spoken into his mind, like a thought spoken in a voice that does not normally speak in his brain.
He looks around rapidly for any threat, but the voice laughs. You won’t find anything physical as my presence, boy. If it reassures you, I intend you no harm, nor your companion.
Confusion wracks his mind, with fear on its right hand. What is happening? And why does it keep happening to him?
The voice seems amused by his distress. You best get used to it. I am not the only one. I’m just lucky to be the first. A pause. Unless…
It feels like a pair of hands have reached into his skull and begun peeling away layers of it, casting them aside until the fingers finds what they want, and then they pull at it, tug at it until his mind goes white with pain, legs collapsing beneath him.
Oh. I’m not the first. Foolish to not try and stake their claim when they had the chance.
“Their claim?”
There’s a pause, then a chuckle. Oh, you are curious about that. The hands are prodding at his mind again, less painfully this time. Perhaps this will be easier than I thought. You want to know why this keeps happening? All these strange coincidences you attract. Do you want to know why?
He’s silent. He does, but admitting that feels—
You do. I can tell you. I can tell you why all these things keep happening. I just want you to do something simple for me. So simple. In fact, it sort of seems like you already want to do it.
“I don’t under—“
The voice curses quietly. They know I’m here. There’s a knife on a table just beyond that door. You’ll know what to do. And then I’ll tell you ev—
The voice cuts off suddenly, his flashlight flicking back on. Walking stiffly, he enters the room.
This room appears inhabited. The table beside the door has a chair pulled up to it, the knife in question being one embedded in a hand baked loaf of semi fresh bread. A small cot sits beside the table, covered in stained and torned blankets. The majority of the room is occupied by several large metal tables, covered in makeshift tools and rusted lab equipment. Despite the rust, the room looks recently used, scraps of a sandwich that lacks mold sitting on a plate beside the tools, like the occupant is only using rusty equipment because they utilize old, perhaps thrown out items that could be taken without drawing attention. Vials of blood sit in a test tube holder, illegible notes on scraps of paper beneath it. Gwen stands beside these tables, an expression of complete horror on her face. He follows her gaze.
The Vulture is laying on the floor in the furthest corner, wings tied shut with sturdy rope and a length of rope connecting a goddamn dog collar on it’s neck to the wall, the amount of the rope even being enough it could probably walk around if it so chose, perhaps even enough for it to make it to the side of the cot. It gnaws on a large cow bone, seemingly unaware of their presence, or at least unconcerned with it. One of its upper arms is bandaged, like whoever has it here, whoever it was that was seemingly taking its blood finds a reason to treat it with care.
“What the hell is that thing?”
He can’t bring himself to feign the shock of someone who’s not as familiar with it as he is. Instead, his hand tightens around the knife. So that’s what the voice wanted. It wants this thing dead.
“Harry, Harry look at it. It’s made of people .”
All he can muster out is, “Yeah.”
It doesn’t care that they’re there. It’s just contentedly chewing on its bone, the bodies, the lives of several people reduced to an abomination that’s happy to be treated like a particularly aggressive dog.
Gwen makes a noise of discomfort, shaking her head and backing away. “How can it even exist? It’s… it’s dead people. It shouldn’t be able to move. It should be rotting. But it’s… it’s… someone made dead people into an animal.”
That shouldn’t feel like nails against his unbeating heart. It’s a fair assessment, after all. If he didn’t know for a fact that his body would refuse to die no matter what he did… he doesn’t know what he’d do.
He steps forward, gripping the knife. They are both unnatural, both monsters. He is only lucky to be the one existing with an appearance that disguises it. Existing like this is painful. Like he can feel just how unnatural his existence is. Even if it doesn’t seem to retain much intelligence, it must feel those same things. And is it not fair penance to take the guilt of killing it onto himself?
Gwen looks at him, breath uneasy. “I can’t—I’m gonna—“ She shakes her head, darting past him.
He shouldn’t forget that reaction, he tells himself. This Vulture and him are the same. A more outwardly acceptable monster is still a monster. Just look at his father. The indirect disgust still hurts. The reminder hurts.
He briefly, impulsively, considers cutting this thing free to see if he’d finally die if something like him killed him, or if he was torn to so many pieces that his body couldn’t figure out how to rebuild itself. The peace would be nice. Immediately, he scolds himself. If he was meant to find peace, he would have died when he was supposed to. He is here. He should do what good he can to attempt to redeem himself in the eyes of whatever god is out there and wait until he’s lucky enough something finally terminates his existence.
The voice promised answers. Assuming that wasn’t just his brain getting creative , answers could mean explaining where this thing came from and how to stop it. Which would help people. But that’s disingenuous. It promised answers about him. Not about anything else. But would that promise change the fact that… that he wants to do the good he can do until he finally does for real? It’s a monster. Killing those is like, the archetypal hero thing.
He takes a step closer, raising the knife. Trying not to think about the last time he raised a blade on something that couldn’t fight back.
Peter didn’t want to hurt it. Peter wanted to save it. Peter is far more noble than he is. But what would qualify as saving it? The bodies it was made from were likely already dead, souls passed on. How would it be saved? He stares at the creature, feeling the scuttling of something crawling over his heart. Does something deserve to be saved simply by virtue of being alive?
It’s completely unbothered by his footsteps as he moves closer, basically standing directly over it. He catches metal tags on the dog collar. The collar hadn’t been there before, much less tags. The implication someone cares enough about this thing for tags is beyond him. But he can’t deny it’s current docile state, like a familiar environment, food, and gentleness are enough to calm it. It’s unconcerned with him, licking scraps of meat off the bone. He could do it. He could kill it. He doesn’t think it would have time to resist. But should he, if it’s harmless?
It sits beneath him, fed, docile, with enough room to walk it could sleep beside the other occupant of this rooms bed.
He came here with friends. No resentment for them in his mind, no bitterness, just a quiet if nervous appreciation that MJ cared enough to try and involve him in her and her partner’s life.
But it’s absurd. It showed it can hurt people. It showed it was willing to. It tore his jaw off—
—a memory flashes through his thoughts, his hands around MJ’s throat with a string of threats on his lips—
— It attacked Peter, could have hurt him bad if he didn’t draw its attention away—
— he pulled Peter off his moped, he threw him against buildings, he took joy in watching him bleed from the marks of his blades against his chest, he threw the bombs, and he took joy in it. He wanted Peter to hurt as badly as he was—
— It could hurt more people if it hadn’t been stuck here by someone. After all, would the occupant of this room care if they found it dead? Or would they be relieved, were they just caring for it to keep it docile?
Are they afraid of you? They treat you like an animal. They flinch. Treat you like they need to coddle you. Must be afraid of you. He should have left you to bleed out on the pavement when it ripped your jaw off.
He’s standing over something harmless to him, something bound and unable to escape, with a knife in his hand. God, he’s going to be sick.
Do it. He tells himself. You’d deserve it if it was you.
He’s never actually killed before. Even with how much he tried to hurt, with how much he did, he’s never killed anyone. As a kid he felt guilty for stepping on bugs. Perhaps he’s weaker than he thought if the idea of killing this thing makes him feel sick.
Do it. You’re trying to be better now. Do it. It’s easy. It’ll save people. Save people it’ll otherwise inevitably hurt.
He kneels over it, preparing to brace one hand against its neck when he cuts its head off. It doesn’t… it doesn’t know it’s in danger. It’s just… it can’t even defend itself. He swallows the bile in his throat, slowly placing one hand against its neck to brace against when he beheads it. It still doesn’t react much, just a making a quiet little sound and raising it’s head slightly, as if there’s something it’s grown to expect when touched in this manner. He slides his hand down it’s neck, and it makes a contented noise and lowers its head. He tightens his grip on the knife, raising it, shutting his eyes so he doesn’t have to see it.
And throws the knife against the floor, turning just in time to avoid throwing up onto the bird.