Chapter 18
The only relief that entering that theater provides MJ is shelter from the brisk winds of New York autumn. Though the interior of the front of house is far warmer than the outside streets, goosebumps begin to rise on her skin, more intense than they had in that odd house Gwen had wanted to break into.
But MJ is surrounded by recently painted walls in a lively and decidedly modern shade of yellow completely devoid of the chipping the outside of the building had her expecting. The carpet is short and black, entirely free of stains and sheared so short to the ground it looks more like sandpaper than carpet.
It must be recently renovated. It feels so… lifeless, untouched, like her feet are the first to blemish this carpet.
“Miss Watson!”
She feels like her spirit is going to leap from her body with the way she jolts, about to jump out of her skin and flee this eerie building. Quentin Beck has as good as appeared behind her, a sudden presence in previously unoccupied space, a perfect smile plastered on his face to match the uncomfortably perfect room.
She shakes his outstretched hand for a brief moment, skin prickling inexplicably at the feeling of contact with him. Something is wrong here. She’s been friends with Peter long enough to know. But when that thought arises, so does an old anger.
Mary Jane has never discussed these pieces of herself with Peter, not even during their relationship. Even now, only a couple months shy of a year into her most stable relationship, the only one she’s not yet felt the urge to crush like a soda can just to feel the control that came with knowing it was her hands doing the destroying, she’s not been able to bring herself to discuss it with Gwen. But in her own mind she can admit that every time she’s been helpless and used as bait, every time she’s been unable to help herself, a piece of her has stayed there.
There’s still a piece of her that’s having the skin on her fingers scraped away by the cable of a trolley, mind filled with thoughts of how failure, her hands slipping for a moment, means feeling her bones shatter against the steel roof of the trolley below her before meeting her end in the frozen water of the Hudson. That part of her is one who won’t ever stop speaking in frightened wails of how it only takes one moment where Peter doesn’t come quick enough for her to die, or little moment in which her life isn’t worth the cost anymore.
There’s still a piece of her that’s being pulled away from the coffee shop she’d met Peter in, the sharp ridges of the arm slicing into her waist and only cutting deeper when she tries to fight back. She’d ended up getting 32 stitches only weeks before her wedding, leaving scars she’s not sure Peter even noticed. And though her rational mind would never so much as consider demanding Peter to reveal himself for her, that part of her is ever insistent he could have done something if he’d truly wanted to, that if she’d been more important than Spider-Man he would have acted. That part had been particularly mocking when they dated, eager to remind her that she can’t be shocked he doesn’t prioritize her when it doesn’t matter when he hadn’t done so when it did.
The one she minds the least is the part of her mind that’s still hanging onto tendrils of black goo hundreds of feet in the air. The solid weight of the cinder block in her hand, crunching as it hit the back of the horrible black lump of vaguely humanoid goo had felt good. It felt like power. That was the only moment in years where she’d been in danger and had any fragment of power, any fragment of control or agency. It had stuck with her. That part is always eager to feel more in control. Its her who’s urging MJ to not run for the hills away from this unreasonably creepy role. She's the sole mutual connection of the cities favorite superpowered bug men, if this situation is as off as it feels, she’s getting targeted anyways. Learning what she can now, investigating for herself, gaining what upper hand she can, that’s power. That’s what that MJ wants.
There’s a fourth. One who’s still got her closest friends' hands wrapped around her neck and hasn’t let go of it. One who saw Harry’s eyes cold and devoid of feeling and distant and had thought for a few confused moments that whatever it is that took root like an ugly vindictive weed in his mind had made him beyond saving, that whatever it was that was wrong with him meant he’d be easier snuffed out like every villain mysteriously did than continue living. That part of herself had been gleeful in the back of her head when she’d seen the burn scars that ate into his face. It felt like catharsis. She hasn't forgiven MJ for letting her quarrel with him go. MJ hasn’t forgiven her for thinking for brief moments that whatever Harry had or has going on in his head meant he deserved to die.
She shakes the thought out of her head, steeling herself to follow Quentin. Even now, it’s best to stay on her toes.
Along the shore the cloud waves break,
The twin suns sink behind the lake,
The shadows lengthen
In Carcosa.
The cast for this thing is small. Namely, herself, Quentin, and a third woman whose name has already slipped her mind. Angelica, maybe? The other two seem far more familiar with each other than MJ is with either, which makes things all the more unsettling.
She sits to the side of the stage where the other woman sings, a somber mournful song halfway between a dirge and an odd lullaby. She and Quentin have been troubleshooting it as MJ read through the play for the first time.
Strange is the night where black stars rise,
And strange moons circle through the skies,
But stranger still is
Lost Carcosa.
Even the play itself is odd. Not strange enough to be a red flag of any obvious plan unto itself, but strange enough to have her asking questions. Her character isn’t being kidnapped or murdered which puts her mind off the anxiety inducing idea of her costars attempting to subject her to nonconsensual method acting, but her character is, well, absorbing the immortal souls of half her kingdoms people and becoming trapped in an immortal state on an alien world, which is still rather unexpected.
But in the realm of things that actually do harken to something going on here is Quentin’s insistence she not take scripts home at the end of the day. She’s unsure how the man expects her to learn her damn lines, but that’s just a cherry on the sketchy theatrical production sundae.
And that’s not even getting into how much control Quentin has over the production. Every little decision, run by him. Every bit of costuming, every movement she makes, every bit of set design, every last detail needs to be seen by him. She’d be concerned he was taking too much into himself if it wasn’t all so creepy.
Songs that the Hyades shall sing,
Where flap the tatters of the King,
Must die unheard in
Dim Carcosa.
She wants to think she’s overly paranoid. That at most she’s been dragged into some elaborate scam. But something in her refuses to accept it.
MJ gently sets her script onto the bench she sits on, uncrossing her legs and straightening her skirt as she stands. If anyone asks, she’ll just say she got lost trying to find the bathroom. Quentin doesn’t look over at her when she creaks open the door.
Song of my soul, my voice is dead,
Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed
Shall dry and die in
Lost Carcosa.
The eerie singing fades with the shutting of the door. She inhales, her chest feeling less tense with the silence, and begins trekking toward the back of the building where the tour had provided the location of Quentin’s office. Her heels click rather loudly against the flooring, a noise that only serves to heighten her anxiety. Quentin is over in the theater itself. There’s no way he could possibly hear her. The reminders aren’t serving to soothe her anxieties very well, but she doesn’t know if anything could.
It's only a small comfort that the office sits at the end of a one way hallway. Less likely she’ll be seen, but on the other hand it’s far harder to make a run for it if someone does catch her. Why would they even construct it in such an odd nook to begin with?
Paranoid. She’s paranoid. She reminds herself of that until she’s gained enough courage to try the handle.
Is she being unreasonable? Overly anxious? Is there nothing here worth her nosiness? It's not even locked, surely it would be if he was truly hiding something.
Regardless, she shoves the door open.
Puppets. Little wooden mannequin puppets sitting on shelves long every damn wall. It feels like hundreds of them. No, fuck that. She’s not stupid. Nobody in New York is having a hobby that goddamn creepy and then getting her of all goddamn people involved in something with a script that goddamn weird and a theater that feels like a goddamn horror game. There’s something. She knows it.
She quietly shuts the door and steps further in, heart beginning to pound just at the feeling of being surrounded by all these humanoid chunks off wood. It feels like she’s being stared at from all angles; the heat of eyes not like the now familiar curious gaze of an audience, instead far more comparable to the cold judging eyes of casting directors at any audition. Just hundreds of them, staring at her like a machine that could dance and sing rather than a person. It feels like they’re all going to leap from the wall and rip her skin off.
She steps deeper into the room, taking a further look around, noting to herself the only book on the heavily occupied shelves and the odd symbol on its cover. Several tables in the room have cardboard boxes stacked upon them, labeled as costumes, but a more thorough investigation confirms the label accurately. That leaves his desk, then.
A small click emanates from the object as she approaches, making her freeze. Did she set something off? It seems inevitable that she's been caught, but after more than a minute frozen in place, nothing happens. She takes the smallest step towards the desk, exhaling.
The drawers along the legs of the desk all slide open with ease, but nothing within catches her eye. Files of random paperwork, stacks of fliers, office supplies. Nothing of note.
However, perched beneath the top of the desk itself is a drawer that does have a visible lock. When she tries the cool brass handle, she finds it left unlocked, something that makes itself apparent as an error the moment she slides it open, anxiety growing with the low but noticeable noise of the drawer smoothly sliding out.
A rush of vindication momentarily overpowers the anxiety, but finds itself swept away in a tidal wave of alarm. As nice as it is for her instincts to be proven right, the display before her posits this man as a bit different to the chemically or technologically created horrors that Peter is probably far more familiar with. Around the edges of the drawer sit a full skeleton of a mouse, several vials of a rather recognizable red substance, each vial labeled with a letter: M, S, and finally O. Below that, a much larger jar contains something that glows a faint gold light and bounces constantly against the walls and lid of its containment, as if ever trying to escape its prison, almost comparable to a particularly angry firefly caught by a child. A strand of tape on the lid labels it as ‘emergency use ONLY’ in bold black sharpie letters.
But the majority of the space is occupied by a piece of yellowed paper, frayed at the edges, with a rather thick layer of still liquid black ink spread across it, never less than an inch from the edges. Within the pool, colors suddenly form in strands like the lines of a pen from inky blackness, painting an image in perpetually sifting pen strokes.
Within the image created by the pool, she can see Peter Parker sleeping soundly in his tiny, rickety cot in a perfect one-to-one of his apartment, the illusion of the exact weave of his ragged blankets created by the brief, repeated pen strokes that compose the view. The image is captured from a point just outside his window, just barely out of sight if he were to open his eyes, and shifts constantly, the shadows of leaves that still cling to trees shifting periodically in the wind, the light in his room flickering, a still open textbook’s pages flipping occasionally from the breeze coming through his open window. The creep she’s working for is watching him.
And you found out, part of her subconscious murmurs proudly. You took control of your situation for once and found something. Something useful. You’re no longer helpless.
She feels an unexpected surge of satisfaction with herself, enough to subdue the anxiety. Terrifying, but she’s not letting herself be left helpless for someone else to rescue. She's got the inklings of a plan in her mind, she knows the threat against her. Who could have guessed that simply knowing the perils she might be facing rather than being dragged into it as a bartering chip or a piece of blackmail against someone else might fill her with so much confidence?
She slides the drawer shut and slinks out of the office as quietly as she can muster, suddenly feeling a prior unfelt vigor towards learning those lines. There’s a sudden context towards the hesitance against allowing her to take the script away from the theater, but that’s fine. Memorization is at the core of her job.
Is this sort of confidence and power what keeps her friends coming back to the heroism thing when they’ve had so many opportunities to leave? Is this control what makes the frequent loss worth it? Or is this feeling what draws the people that someone like Peter faces to become what they are?
She’s far enough from the office to avoid questions when she does spot Quentin’s brisk walk towards her from one hall. “Miss Watson!” He greets her again, the tone he uses every time he says the phrase beginning to feel like she’s hearing a recording. “I was wondering where you’d wandered off to in this maze of a building. You see, you have to watch out for the dragon down the third hall. Many a tech has gotten lost and been devoured by it.” He says in an imitation of somberness, then laughing.
Never let it be said she’s not an actor. Placing all the MJ-feelings to the side, she smiles, playing the character of the oblivious damsel she’s been forcefully cast as a few too many times. “Didn’t see a dragon. I did nearly lose my life to the ghosts haunting the women’s bathroom, though. I got a bit disoriented trying to escape them.”
“A more frightful enemy than the dragon, I must say.” He shakes his head. “I was hoping to steal you, table read through some lines to help familiarize you. And, well, ask you something somewhat embarrassing to need to ask.”
“What’s up?” The words feel uncomfortably casual on her tongue, but they disguise the immediate suspicion.
“Well…” He draws out the word, stalling slightly. “I’m sure you know this is a charity event, all proceeds going to an arts center in the city I have a particular affection for. It’s a production I put on regularly, so I have a decent enough pool of regular contributors. But that being said, there still is work to do when it comes to advertising. That's probably a somewhat unnecessary preamble, but all the same…” He clears his throat, shoes scraping against the floor slightly. “I couldn’t help but notice—after we casted you—“ he seems all too eager to make that clarification. “—that you are, well… noticeably close with one of the cities wealthier inhabitants. Do you think—?”
She cuts him off. “I’ll talk to Harry.” It’s likely she already needs to.
He exhales, a look of what she can almost bring herself to believe is genuine appreciation on his face. “Thank you. I appreciate it more than you could know. Before we even knew you two were familiar with each other, he seemed like the sort of person who’d be a wonderful audience member for a production like this.”
“No need to justify to me.” She gives the sort of smile that would make a photographer taking promotional shots giddy. “I was actually thinking of asking him anyway.”
His face lights up. “Excellent! I cannot thank you enough.” He turns, beckoning for her to follow. “Now, about the table read…”
The moment the theater is out of sight, her phone is out of her pocket. She finds Peter’s contact and brings the phone to her ear, half expecting to receive Ursula telling her that Peter’s out.
That’s not what happens. She doesn’t hear Ursula at all, actually.
Her phone, despite the fact that she knows he has no mobile phone, despite the fact that even if he magically could afford one, she called the number of his apartments, has connected to Peter himself without explanation.
“Hey MJ, not a good time!” Police sirens blare, the sound of air rushing past the receiver muffling each word.
“Peter? How the hell are you answering—“
Something cracks loudly on his end, making him curse quietly. “I’ll call you back later. Someone’s—“ He hangs up on her.
Not a good time. Bullshit.
Quentin is spying on Peter and now someone is impersonating him. That’s a bit larger in scale than she’d expected.
She opens her text messages, hoping that whatever is going on her hasn’t taken the other line of defense she has.
Coming over
Harry responds immediately.
Yes.
Come meet my son.
If this man stole a child—
She is sent a photo of a black, three headed snake, the photo being taken over Harry’s shoulder as the reptile suns itself on his back, both just lying beneath a window.
That ends up being exactly where she finds him. On his stomach, beneath a window in the manor, weird little three headed snake sunning itself in the last beams of sunset, shifting to look at her.
“Are you alive?” She says down to a Harry who seems to haven’t moved a muscle since he lowered his hand after texting her.
“No.” He responds, but draws himself up to his knees all the same, moving deliberately slowly to allow the snake time to crawl up around his shoulders. He stares at the snake for a few seconds, who stares at her in what she feels compelled to think of as curiosity, before turning to her.
“When did you get the snake?” She asks.
He raises a slow hand towards the reptile to let it coil around, then raising it towards her. “Couple days ago.” He responds. “Let him sniff, then pet him. He’s nice.”
It’s the middle head that does the sniffing, but she feels it’s only fair to pet all three. “ Why did you get the snake?”
“He’s a good judge of character.” He states. “When I was buried, it was all just… dark and cold and I couldn’t ever move. And the bugs .” His voice is sort of flat, the laugh that follows forced and hollow. “Sort of broke me mentally.” He looks like there’s something that he intends to follow that sentence, eyes flicking to the side and lips shifting, but he decides against it. “So now sometimes things don’t really feel real. Like I’m dreaming. Like… when I’m painting, I sort of have to break the thing I’m painting down into the shapes that make it and the ways lines come and the ways everything connects. And you sort of have to block out where the shadows and highlights go and what places have which tones to make things come together cohesively. It was like I started doing that, but constantly. Like I couldn’t stop it. And things stopped meaning anything. But he helps, cause he’s real and I can feel it. He responds to me and moves and has his own little personality. So it helps to have him when things stop meaning anything.” He smiles at the animal. “Grounding, I guess. And it helps that he’s also good at being able to tell when things actually aren’t real.”
That feels like being punched in the gut. She’s been denying roles away from New York because she knew he’d need someone more stable than Peter around after he’d effectively endured six months of solitary confinement in a tiny box. The effects of that sort of isolation are well documented, and he’d borne it on the hardest difficulty.
Further resentment builds towards the piece of her who still hates him, who feels a perverse joy at knowing that happened to him. She’d set aside time just to make sure someone could be there for him, to make sure that he would have someone he could trust when things were rough. And she knows full well what the source was when she’d tell herself she could go visit later, that she had no reason to think he wasn’t alright, the source when she’d find ways to busy herself so she wouldn’t feel so bad for going weeks without seeing him in person at times.
And of course, that part of her is snarling, screaming that how dare she feel pity for him when she wouldn’t feel that for anyone else who’d done something like that to her.
The conflict must be showing on her face, going off the way he retracts the hand the snake coils around as an uninterpretable expression crosses his face. “Sorry. Shouldn’t put that on you.”
“It’s okay.” She extends a hand to help him up, ignoring the way part of her recoils when his skin touches hers. I want to be there for you. I’m sorry I haven’t been doing that. That’s what she wants to say, but the words can’t escape her throat.
He takes a step backward when he’s on his feet, putting a decent few feet between them. The snake coils around his neck, appearing rather relaxed. “What brought you here?”
Her own thoughts of her failures to be there like he needs makes her stomach twist with guilt at the knowledge she very much had come here because she needed him for something, not for the reasons he probably really needs. “Have I mentioned the new play I’m in?”
“You’re in a new play?” The excitement in his tone doesn’t necessarily sound forced, but it sounds less exhausted, more exhausting. His face doesn’t really change at all.
“Yeah. Not for long, by the looks of things.” His brow does crease slightly at those words, but he doesn’t respond. “Sort of seems like I attract crazies.” Now there’s guilt.
“What happened?”
She pauses for a moment, and then tries to summarize things to the best of her ability. Would she seem overly paranoid if she admitted to digging through Quentin’s things with what would seem to most people like fairly minimal reasons? “I ended up finding some weird things. The guy who was in charge was spying on Peter.”
There’s a brief pause. “Spying how?”
“There was this drawer in his desk where he had this ink covered paper that was showing…” she waves her hands. “…Peter. Like it had the feed of a camera right outside his window.”
“What else?” His tone is lacking in emotion again, but more so in its somberness than in being truly unfeeling.
The question startles her. “I think it was a rat skeleton, blood, and this jar of… it was like a living ball of light that kept trying to escape it’s jar, I guess.”
He turns abruptly, walking several steps before he blinks at the realization she’s not following him. He beckons her after him, leading him into one of the more barren rooms of the now multicolored manor. “I found something weird a couple months ago.” He says quietly.
How is this related? She wants to ask.
He crouches, pushing a piece of the wall inward and begins to crawl through without a word, MJ following behind him, doing her best to hide her confusion.
Stacks of shelves line the walls of the space it opens into, all of which are covered in cobwebs and almost entirely empty. A desk is shoved against the wall, papers piled onto it, allowing the center of the room to be occupied by a circle drawn in chalk, upon which some half burned tipped over candles sit, every part of it covered in a quantity of dried blood that has her gagging just at the sight of it. How is Harry so unflinching?
“Ever since I came back and started doing the whole Mantis thing,” He begins, kneeling down to pick up a blood soaked knife. “I’ve been finding this sort of occult everywhere. It was so easy at first to find it weird that Peter would have big bads that seem so parallel to anything I come across, but this was my dad’s.” He shrugs slightly, unsure of what to say.
“So Quentin’s just that all over again.” She responds, tiptoeing around the room to avoid the dried blood consuming such a massive portion of the floor. “Another instance of this just following y—“
He raises his head.
Dust coats her fingers as she pulls one of the few books on the shelves into her hands. “He has this. This was the only book in his office.” She flips it open, seeing in the corner of her eye the way his fingers twitch anxiously when she does.
The King In Yellow.
“That’s the name of the play.” She says, more to herself than to him, beginning to flip through it, the lines she reads sparking an uncomfortable recognition. “Yeah, this is it.”
She freezes when he peers over her shoulder. “Oh.” He mumbles, then pauses. “I don’t want to ask you to stay involved…”
“No, I’m going to.” She says with unexpected conviction. I want to be the one in control. I want to be the one taking him down, because I need to know that I can. I need to be able to protect myself with either of you.
There’s a bit of discomfort in his stance at that, but he doesn’t protest. “Okay.”
“Can’t be more dangerous than anything Peter’s gotten me involved in.” She tries to joke, but Harry just looks away.
“Speaking of…” He says. “This might be best left without him getting involved.