Chapter 14
Harry isn’t even changed before he begins hearing it.
Naughty boy! The voice from the house croons. He nearly slits his throat shaving as he startled backwards, back hitting the edge of his shower hard enough it might bruise. He cursed quietly at the sting. Really, I thought you’d be able to do it. You wanted to do it. Tell me, what stopped you?
Something is in his head again, invading his thoughts and peeling them back in layers to find answers. His body jolts in random directions against his will, like his base instincts are trying to avoid a violation that’s not even physical enough to flee. “Stop!” He finally finds his voice. “Get out, I can just speak, you know!”
The invasion on his thoughts retreats, but he has the impression it might have already found what it wanted, something not even he was acquainted with himself well enough to access.
He speaks! More than three words for the first time too! How exciting, I was beginning to think your father had just refused to teach you to speak to make life more difficult for us.
His father. No point in trusting anything is a coincidence right now. Though really, no point in trusting anything to begin with. He’s having a conversation with a voice in his head, and the last time he listened to demands from one of those he nearly killed somebody.
“What do you mean by ‘us’?” He demands.
Hold on, boy. Did we not agree I’d give answers only if you did something for me. And that horrid little bird lives.
“That’s not fair! You didn’t tell me what it is you wanted me to do.”
You knew what I wanted. Those words are sharp enough—and cold enough—to kill, startling him. Then it suddenly shifts back to that jovial if somewhat mocking and more than somewhat sinister tone. I think I could peel back every layer of your silly little brain and still not understand you. Listening to voices your head made up itself when they start asking you to kill one of the only people you truly loved, but couldn’t stomach the idea of lobbing the head off a dead bird, even after it maims you.
That makes his stomach sink. When he saw his father, that wasn’t anything external, at least according to this. But is that something he could even trust? This could just be another thing his brain made up. Or his subconscious crying for help and trying to tell him everything he’s seen has just been him going crazy, and to lock himself up somewhere or die for real before he starts trying to kill Peter again.
You’re not making me up. It sounds almost offended by that train of thought
“Get out of my head.” He snaps again. “And how can I trust that when the only evidence you exist is inside my head?!”
You want me to prove myself! The audacity of you ants sometimes. Truly impressive stuff. If you’re gonna demand things like that from me, I hope you can grace with me with some idea of what will be proof enough to soothe your fears.
“I don’t care, anything as long as it’s not something that could just be my head.”
So, anything? The voice is a bit too gleeful at the idea.
But Harry doesn’t think twice before he’s spoken, voice soaked through with frustration. “Yes!”
Searing pain erupts along his wrist, so intense his vision goes briefly white as a mouthful of acid rises in his throat, then disappearing just as quickly as it came, leaving his body sweating profusely and trembling like the last remaining leaf on an autumn tree. A pattern of distinct, clean, and perfectly shaped burn scarring has manifested itself on his wrist, like a brand designed to curve perfectly around a wrist. The pattern is familiar, only a moment passing before he recognizes it as the shape on the cover of the book he’d taken from the house, only stamped in repetition like beads on a seared on bracelet.
Don’t get upset at me! You did say anything. But I hope it’s proof enough, you can even show it off if you want another set of eyes. Though I’d reccomend caution there. You never know how someone might react to it.
Harry sits down on the toilet lid, leaning his head against the wall. “What do you want?” He says finally.
I’m deciding to be kind. I have things I need done. You want your answers. And if killing dead things is too much, I’ll adapt. See? I’m being nice. Nicer than the others would be. Is theft easier for you to moralize?
He doesn’t answer the question directly, just feeling sort of numb and tired. “What do you want stolen?”
If it reassures you, I only want something that was taken from me back. The voice supplies before continuing. You’d just need to take it from the hidden occult shrine in which it is currently kept and deliver it to the location I’d determine. I hope you understand why I don’t wish to disclose more without your agreeing to it.
He’s apprehensive at the thought of this being prying at his thoughts again, but he can’t stop them from diverting slightly from the conversation at hand. Whatever it is that’s talking to him, that’s confirmation of occult goings on in the city. If he agreed, it wouldn’t just be because of his own selfish desire to know what’s going on with him. He’d be able to learn more about whatever it is that’s going on beyond him, the occult shit he keeps finding, the liminal stretch of forest he cut his own arm off in, the undead Vulture, and whatever might be causing it. Perhaps his own stubborn continued existence after death might get some context beyond “maybe the serum did it”, if this thing speaking into his head doesn’t give him some context in its promised explanation.
That’s probably just him trying to justify it again.
“If I agree, how much will you tell me?”
A pause. Contemplation on the other end of this connection. All that I know.
Steeling himself in preparation for something to go horribly wrong immediately, he exhales. “Fine. I’ll do it.”
It’s almost more unnerving when nothing changes.
Excellent. I’m glad we could come to an agreement. The voice sounds very pleased, almost trying to restrain it. Do you recall where yourself and your… partner encountered that wretched bird?
He does. He figures the thing that’s speaking to him knows that.
Turning the corner to the north, a building more than a century old has been converted into a quaint little bookstore. The voice is mocking. It’s a front. There’s a cellar around the back. Within that, there’s an old safe. Get it open, and you can crawl through into the shrine itself. When you locate where they store what they steal, it will be marked with my sigil.
“On my own from there, huh.” He whispers, more to himself than the voice.
Don’t be seen. The voice orders. You’ll be told where to bring it only when you have it. I don’t want you getting any clever little ideas.
From there, his head is silent. Looking out his window, the sky is turning the shades of purple that signal the dawn. Exhaustion settles in suddenly. Perhaps he should rest before he sets out for this.
Harry is effectively forced to piece together equipment from the remains of what Peter stole, which isn’t all that much. The complete pieces of his new choice in costume are useful, but it’s incomplete, similar to his arsenal. He’s going out to scope an occult shrine traveling lighter than he did for normal patrols and his entire midriff is exposed from the half finished outfit, a choice he immediately decides he hates when he looks down and sees a couple dozen holes scarred into his hip from the fucking bugs and a good six inches of autopsy scars.
It’ll have to do.
He makes his way to the specified area as quickly and discreetly as he can. Occult shrine aside, he doesn’t really know when and where Peter might be; he’d rather be a bit better equipped and prepared before Peter finds out he still plans to continue the Mantis thing, regardless of his thoughts on the matter.
The location confuses him initially. He stands in the shadows between two buildings, scanning the road for the bookstore he was told to seek, but only finding a majority of residential buildings dotted with a corner deli, a thrift store, and a dental clinic. But nothing that looks like a bookstore. He scans for a second time, going from building to building, then blinks.
He looks over the street once again, trying to find the faintest hint of a lead.
Many of the businesses in this area are built with apartments on the upper floors. But a brick building across the street is just being dismissed, looked over, as purely residential before he can even look at it clearly. Trying again, it’s like some force shifts his eyes from the building on its left to the building on its right without really processing its existence. Wrenching his eyes in its specific direction feels like pointing the negative ends of two magnets towards each other, but he takes note of large, display windows exposing an interior full of books before his eyes drift away despite his effort.
He approaches the unnaturally ordinary building, following an alleyway behind it. It’s clearly a rather old building, plaques on nearby buildings providing information on their ages and history and what big names of the past frequented establishments that haven’t occupied those spaces for years. The building somehow manages to have enough space behind it for a small garden that appears to be mostly surviving on sun lamps, vegetable plants and pumpkin vines spilling out of garden boxes doing their absolute best to keep eyes off of the cellar built into the back of the building that’s insistent on remaining unseen.
Upon shoving clumps of tangled pumpkin vines off and moving the occasional unripe gourd, a lock glints around the handles to the cellar door. He’d expected this. Relying on a single google search’s worth of information, he takes a knee and begins to attempt to work the lock open with a makeshift lockpick. The little sequences of stiffness and movement from the pick are a good sign if he recalls correctly. Hell, he’s pretty sure he’s almost got it in the exact moment his lockpick snaps, jamming a piece of metal so deeply into the mechanisms he probably couldn’t unlock it even if he found the key.
Perhaps he should attempt the methodology of the experts in his life. He hits the lock with a nearby rock, which doesn’t so much unlock it as make the shackle completely fall off of the rest of the lock.
He never should have questioned Gwen’s genius.
Once he drops into the dank, moldy-smelling cellar itself, it’s easy to spot the safe. The cellar itself is filled with paper boxes that smell of dust lining one wall like a barricade and a couple file cabinets standing like guards over the much smaller safe. To his shock, the moment his feet touch the floor, the knobs on the safe twist independently, creaking with age, before the door opens. He wants to believe that whoever made this just gave it really shitty security, but it’s him. There’s been too many coincidences.
Answers, he reminds himself, and crawls through the rusted metal tunnel. The opening comes out to a circular room, lined wall to wall with bookshelves organized in a sort of spiral pattern with varying heights, the shortest in the center tapering up to the ones as high as the ceiling. The passage within the safe comes out to a small platform with a staircase on one end, the platform higher than the nearest wall of the bookshelf spiral. Looking down, he can make out a small group of people diagonal from where the stairs end.
He crouches, fingertips tracing the frigid surface of the unburnished bronze landing, shine worn off by hundreds, maybe thousands of footsteps. Takes a breath. Why is his chest so tight?
He’s momentarily stunned by the ease with which he can propel his body so far. So long out of commission has seemingly had him forgetting what the serum did to him aside from potentially keeping him in the purgatory of undeath, overshooting the jump enough he soars right over the bookcase he’d intended to land on and begins to fall down the other side. He tries to keep his composure, but panic seizes his throat at the familiar sensation, not even processing the consequences of his body shattering on impact with the ground would include being found. Maybe if he was lucky, being broken that much would kill him, and he’d not have to deal with any consequences of the type of people who’d come to a place like this being the ones scraping his body off the floor for whatever purposes they may have with it.
Concentration is gone. His mind is reeling now, hands scrabbling uselessly at the shelves in front of him until by some miracle his useless pawing at air catches him by one hand on a shelf. The board creaks in distress as the sudden weight, developing a bend so deep around his hands that it threatens to split in half. He grabs another shelf with his left hand, distributing the weight more evenly and then making the choice to look down. Has he been seen?
His body freezes when he does. The landing had been high. Higher than this. But he’d not been dangling off it. It’s dizzying, so high and with so few sources of light it looks like he hands over a canyon made of books, darkness below waiting eagerly to swallow him on a fall. His head snaps away, unable to look longer as air catches uncomfortably in his chest. Even looking back upward, the sight is drilled into his eyes.
He forces a shaking hand to release its vice grip on the now very much splintering wood, beginning a slow, shaky climb. His stomach twists with every slight slip of his hands, with every slight creak of wood as he ascends, but slowly, slowly unties itself as he approaches the top. Despite the seeming lack of light below, a small lamp is screwed on along every couple feet of the top, flickering pleasantly like the beam from a lighthouse for his ascent to follow. A couple mere feet from the top he grips it to hoist himself onto the smooth, dust covered surface, pulling himself enough he could almost remove his free hand from it’s shelf to grip the opposite edge, and–
With a hollow crack, the lamp snaps off the bookshelf, sending his body lurching suddenly downwards, hanging on to a single shelf by one hand as he watches the glow of the lamp grow smaller, smaller, and eventually vanish into the shadows below.
His entire body is shaking.
There’s no real issue pulling himself onto the top after that, but he’s rattled. He rolls his body onto the cool wood and flattens himself on his back, waiting for his body to stop shaking.
Get over it. If you don’t overpower your weakness, you remain weak.
He can’t tell if that thought sounds like himself or his father, but he pulls himself to his feet regardless, examining his surroundings. The circular room opens to a larger hall filled with dozens of people. It looks more like a college lecture than any sort of religious sermon, rows of desks filling the room, individuals of all ages hunched over taking notes. A massive blackboard sits in the center of the room, diagrams of concepts he can’t make any sense of scrawled on the board. Seems like something relating to physics? Maybe Astronomy? But it all looks more scientific than religious. Maybe he’s just missing something.
As he steps closer, he begins to overhear the lecture. Definitely something science-y, but the jargon involved is absolutely beyond him. He can now clearly see the large wooden desk in the center of the front of the room, behind which a familiar figure stands.
It’s the cloaked man who’d lead him home as a child, who’d spoken to him in his memories.
Not even the layers of cloaks are different. The figure is identical to the one he’s seen, speaking slowly and formally to the congregated people, raising his arms to gesture but his robes never shifting in such a manner where his hands could be seen, the front of his cloak draped over a face in such a manner where he shouldn’t be able to see, but he shouldn’t be able to speak to Harry in his memories either.
He slowly climbs down from the shelf, doing his best to keep to the shadows as he approaches the entryway to the hall, peering around the ornately carved archway into the room, finding it the best lit space in the building, luminous chandeliers flickering every few feet.
The cloaked man is giving a lecture on some sort of extremely advanced physics. As far as Harry can tell, not… evil, fucked up, how to use Newton’s laws to summon satan physics, like he might be ignorantly suspecting from what he was told was a hidden occult shrine. The attendees of this lecture aren’t dressed in dark robes. Most are dressed in everyday casual clothing, the occasional person wearing something a bit more akin to formalwear. It seems more like an all ages college lecture being conducted by someone who’s going as unfolded laundry for Halloween than anything he was told to expect. Though, mind you, science has never been Harry’s strong suit; half the words the man is speaking are completely foreign to him, with only the faintest recognition of words Peter muttered to himself while studying in their old apartment.
He shakes his head slightly, focusing on his task. He’s here to steal something, not try and figure out the purpose or ideals of the sort of people who’d go to lectures in an occult shrine. Answers. Answers.
He scans the room for any sort of sign for what to look for. The only thing he can identify is a variety of shelves behind the cloaked man’s desk and a set of double doors to the right of the shelves. But he might need to wait until this place clears out a bi—
“No need to watch in secret, friend. All are free to come and learn. Come in, there are plenty of seats open.” The cloaked man says, voice upbeat and unexpectedly affectionate. Harry takes a rapid glance around the back of the room, hopeful someone is listening in other than him, but finds it upsettingly empty. He straightens up, unsure of how to respond to this, and finds himself choosing to awkwardly shuffle towards the nearest empty chair in the back row.
He is being stared at. He was beginning to think whatever entity is being honored here wasn’t evil, but the fact that whatever it is has chosen to recreate high school is absolutely evidence sealing the idea that it definitely is. But putting that aside, it’s also oddly reassuring. These are actual people. Behaving like actual people, staring curiously at the strangely dressed man who just waltzed into their class late with all these odd scars and was addressed with familiarity by their strange teacher. With his better view over the room, he sees a college age girl show her friend beside her something on her phone that makes them laugh, an elderly woman close to the front with her husbands coat over her shoulders and his arm around her back, and a blonde woman decorating her notes filled with jargon beyond Harry with highlight calligraphy and little flowers for bullet points. It’s all human, very much so.
“I hope you’re free to catch up after I wrap up.” The cloaked man says. “It’s been too long.”
He just nods. Despite the distance between him and the front of the room, the figure seems to see it and gets back to his lecture. Every word of his mouth is completely beyond Harry, so he keeps up his people watching rather than paying any real attention to his words.
People. Just people. Their individuality, maintained in a manner most cults would not be a fan of, made so obvious in vast varieties of clothing styles and different organizations of notes and the college age boys in the third row wearing t-shirts for an anime Peter might have mentioned in high school, the middle aged man with a large beard wearing a Steelers jersey—dangerous choice in New York—and the elderly woman sitting in front of a girl with a gothic style and signing for her. He doesn’t really know what to make of all, how to make sense of any of this.
He must have come in at the tail end of the lecture. The hall empties after around twenty minutes, him remaining in his seat as the cloaked figure watches his… students, perhaps, leave the room in a flood, quiet chatter filling the room between the ones who seem more familiar with each other.
“Bring a chair up, Harry.” The words startle him slightly. Has he been jumpy lately? Or has he always been this way?
The man in the cloak is still a fair few inches taller than him, looking down at him and tilting his head. Silence fills the room for a few moments before the figure speaks. “Tea?”
He just blinks, shuffling. “No. Don’t really need… I’m dead.”
He nods. “Tea is rarely ever for need. Most of what you call food has been altered to put joy in the experience. But I will respect your wishes.” He gestures again. “Sit.” Harry hadn’t pulled a chair over, but there’s one behind him now. Hesitantly, he sits. The cloaked man does the same. “Nyarlathotep has spoken to you.” It’s not a question.
He feels almost like he’s not inside his body, sensations feeling sort of fuzzy and distant. Before he can question who or what Nyarlathotep is, the figure speaks again. “The voice you have heard. Who means to make deals with you.”
“I wasn’t given a name.” He feels compelled to say. “What… who is that?”
“An outer god. A shapeshifter.”
“What?” Is all he can manage to utter. There’s a moment of confusion, a brief moment, and then his mind and body just feel numb. Like the past months have just placed too big of a strain on his ability to feel, and now he just needs to reset.
The cloaked man’s movements are slow as he folds his arms. “A variety of god. Ruled by Azathoth and often in the business of maintaining its sleep. Most are not actively malicious towards humanity. They do not care. I cannot say the same of him. He has taken a liking to you. Perhaps his affection is the only thing that has stopped outer gods who see your species’s existence as inconsequential from snuffing it out, but it is not a kind sort of affection. He is the only one of us unsealed and able to exist fully in reality, but he is one who finds joy in cruelty, destruction, and finds immense value in deception.” It’s not stated as an attempt to persuade him to break his deal. It’s stated as fact.
Regardless, he finds himself questioning it. “Why should I trust you rather than him?”
“At this moment in time, there isn’t one,” Despite being terribly unconvincing, the voice is calm. “but there will be by the time the sun has risen.” The figure rises, motioning for him to stay in place, entering whatever space exists behind double doors, returning carrying a black box constructed of leather and likely something sturdier underneath, the sigil he’d seen on the book painted onto the top. “He asked for this.”
“He did,” He admits. His thoughts feel like swimming through molasses.
“He cannot reach you in the domain of another. He cannot hear this.” The figure explains. “Let him believe whatever you wish about what occurred here. Bring this where he wishes. The path you take from there is a choice for you alone. If you defy him, return here. You will need the protection until you have been prepared to face his anger.”
“Can you tell me what’s going on with me then?” Desperation laces the edges of his words, cut off at the end by an uncomfortable laugh. “Things keep happening to me. I don’t know why. I’m scared it’ll start hurting people. That I’ll start hurting people. Again.”
“I know.” His tone is unchanging. “I know more than he. It is a reality that I know most things. But he is one more desperate than me. More dangerous to you. And he has great influence over the one who did this to you. The path you choose from here will define much.” He looks down at the box in his hands only to have his chin raised by the figure. “Go. No purpose in delaying.”
He stands outside the cellar before he knows it, feeling sort of blank inside.
Finally. Took you long enough. Do you have it?
He wishes the sight of the box made him feel something. He wishes anything made him feel something. “I do.”
The voice. Nyarlathotep. He sounds pleased. Good. I was beginning to grow impatient. Now listen closely, I don’t plan to repeat myself…
It’s pitch black, trees stretching over him like they’re ready to pounce upon Harry with one wrong step. Half decayed leaves crunch beneath his boots, harmonizing with the tune of cicadas and the occasional owl. The box’s weight is on his back, hidden in an old backpack that conceals the burden from everyone but himself.
He’s just over an hour outside of city limits. Nobody knows he’s here. As on his own as he could get; Peter won’t think to look out here if something happens.
He hoists his body over several boulders, slick with rain, mud clinging to his clothes and boots. The rough rock scraps unpleasantly against his exposed midriff, irritating the still misaligned and poorly healed skin of the autopsy scar. He steadies himself on the highest stone, digging his feet into divots in stone created by many previous hikers, taking a rather useless breath to reassure himself.
The ruins of a mansion lie over the hill, the center relatively intact and standing high, but the parts of the building to either side collapsed, caved in, lucky to have one wall standing. Crumbling. Clinging on to the illusion of stability. His eyes catch on distant flickers of orange and yellow to the right of the structure, contained within the more crumbled side of the mansion. He steels himself, gripping the strap of the backpack like a lifebuoy. Clinging to some sense of control over his situation, he does his best to remain hidden and silent on his way over, an effort perhaps useless when dealing with a god that can just invade his mind, but it feels more like his choices here can be informed this way. The grass between him and the flickering lights makes this effort more efficient, the dewy material silencing his footsteps far more effectively than crisp leaves.
When he makes his way closer, he moves quickly between trees and eventually heaps of rubble or half collapsed pillars of stone to remain hidden. It goes far more quickly than he would like, dread permeating his being as he finds himself with only a half collapsed wall between him and his destination. He finds a spot where the bottom off the wall remains upright with rubble obscuring it from internal view and hoists himself into the spot, peering through a crack in stone.
The thin crack only shows him a fire, crackling joyfully, with a long, disproportionate pure black humanoid figure behind it, composed of something misty and dark, back turned to him. It speaks with the same voice that the thing called Nyarlathotep spoke with into his head.
“You speak awfully boldly for someone who soon becomes useless to me.” Nyarlathotep sighs mockingly. “It may take a genius to create something that can do his own work better than him, but it takes wisdom to know the flaws in creating your own obsolescence.”
A far too familiar voice snarls. “I am clever enough that I have played your games before and walked away. Do not think I won’t do it again.” Harry’s stomach drops. He shifts, trying to catch a glimpse of the second individual through the crack in the stone. Please don’t be…
“And you crawled back to me twenty years later.” A cold reminder from the shadowy figure, turning to face his companion, exposing no facial features other than the transparent shape of eyes. “You cannot walk away the same you did before. You lost your bartering chip.”
“He will only listen to me.” The pit in Harry’s stomach grows. He’s beginning to feel rather nauseous. “He goes to whatever one I stand beside. I know the others would find him as useful as you would. They’d accept me eagerly if you threw away the most useful thing you have.”
“Good luck finding someone who will make deals with a liar and an oathbreaker.” Nyarlathotep is outright dismissive. “He will replace you quite nicely. I recommend you think of another way to be useful before my claim is set in stone.”
“And you will see how useless the boy is without my guidance.” The second speaker stalks forward, the fire illuminating their features and confirming his fears. His father stands, very much alive.