Chapter 27
There’s an odd pressure inside Harry’s chest as the group treks deeper and deeper into the overgrown cave, following the trail a small brook carves out. It crawls against and claws at the containment of his ribcage, and yet there’s no pain as similar pressure spreads into the rest of his body. It’s more a reassuring weight, like a weighted blanket coating his whole body or an unexpected metaphysical return of the muscle that had atrophied away during his burial. Regardless of the source, there’s an energy that thrums with the mass, easing the ache of decayed muscle and the constant pain of his joints. A similar high to the moments after he first dosed himself with the drug that keeps him in this state of undeath, the fraction of a second after the pain and panic of the change disappeared and before his mind was flooded with a newly intensified version of his already crushing paranoia.
He shivers at the memory. It’s a bright little ideal to cling to, the idea that a reset of his moral compass would heal whatever it was that had broken in his head to make him see his father in his reflection, but the idea feels like nothing but a deluded fantasy. It would merely be pinning his broken mind on his own cruelty and pinning his cruelty on his broken mind, a nonsensical cycle that would only exist to grant him the ability to ignore his own agency. He had been cruel, hallucinations or no hallucinations, cruel and bitter and angry like his father.
His eyes catch on the water for a brief moment. Despite his mask, he swears he catches a glimpse of his father.
He shakes himself. He became worse than his father in his cruelty. At least Norman had never loved anyone enough to hurt them.
He hears a whisper, the words too slurred and distant to make out, at about the same moment that his shoe slips on a wet sliver of stone. His body crashes into Peter’s, nearly sending them both into the mud. His head swivels as he pulls both himself and Peter upward, trying to find the source. Sounds like—
“Woah!” Peter is chuckling when Harry’s hands pull them both upward, beginning to rock on his heels as he lets his hand linger on Harry’s. “Slipped?”
“Mhm.” Harry pulls his attention back to Peter, wishing it was his face he was looking at in the place of that mask. “Do you feel okay about all this?” He lowers his voice.
“Do I feel okay…?” He echoes. Harry waves one gloved hand at Wade, an action that manages to extract an answer from Peter. “Oh. No, he probably would have made my sense go off if something was wrong.” He says with an uncomfortable sense of finality.
Harry can’t find the words to convey his suspicions in a manner that even dances at the same ball at rationality. “Something feels off with him. Shouldn’t we be careful when dealing with things this weird?”
Peter’s body seems to jerk, his movements snappy as a sort of stiff shudder washes over him. His chuckle sounds odd, the tone of it making goosebumps form mountains up his back. “My sense would pick it up if something was wrong. Don’t worry so much.” He squeezes Harry’s hand too tightly.
He tries not to bristle, breathing deeply in his clouded chest. Perhaps he is just being paranoid. His distaste for the third man had started before he’d been spoken to by any flowers. No. Even if it would be stupid of him to place trust in an entity that belonged to a group that he’d been sold to like a farm animal, it’s just as foolish to blindly trust the judgment of a man he doesn’t know and who just so happens to live in an area he freely admitted was touched by the very entities he’d been promised to. He just can’t understand why Peter wouldn’t be vigilant, why he’s so relaxed and… twitchy.
He shuts his mouth and grimaces.
It’s then when an odd rumbling fills the cave, vibrations shaking Harry’s whole body from beneath their collective feet
“Oh, don’t worry about that. Probably just a tunneler. They’re really only hostile if provoked or if they sense something arcane.” He hears from Wade.
At that moment, the ground bursts beneath Harry’s feet, rock and soil opening in a pattern remarkably similar to a bullet’s exit wound. Within he can see only what looks like a void of rows and rows of teeth, rippling black gums connecting them. The rows close around his right leg, dozens of hooked fangs digging into the muscle of his shin. Before he can so much as think, he’s being pulled downwards, the light of the cave disappearing rapidly as he’s surrounded by the suffocating and familiar presence of soil. His body freezes against his will as displaced dirt spills around him.
The weight of earth is crushing in its familiarity, spilling into his mask. He opens his mouth to gasp for air and finds his mouth filled with soil. In a fit of desperation, he claws at the tunnel around him, his movement useless as dirt falls through his fingers and heaps onto his body and as sharp stones shred his skin. A familiar, dread filled terror sinks into his bones at the familiar feeling of buria, a fact he’d become well acquainted with during his time in that casket that won’t leave his mind now: the fact that he’d been alone. Nobody had been coming to save him.
His mind flashes with images and old feelings he’d rather forget, of being trapped in that cursed box for so long, of the suffocating feeling of dirt around him when he dug himself up. There’s no hope that can keep him moving like it did in that moment. No matter how desperate his movements, they’re too weak in comparison to the force that drags him downward. There's nothing he can do stop himself from being buried again, and that terrifies him. How deep is he now? This has all happened so quickly. The reality of his undeath feels all the more unsettling at the speed of his descent. How long would it take to claw his way up from however deep he’s pulled before he frees himself.
His lungs feel like they’re in a vice. He doesn’t know if he’s strong enough to do that again.
The tug he feels on his back is the greatest relief of his life. The teeth dig through his shin as he’s pulled free from their grip, dirt and stone scraping his body as he’s removed from the tunnel. Light begins to leak through his soil clogged mask in the same moment that he feels arms loop under his shoulders and pull him free.
Harry can hear Peter’s voice in his ringing ears, but it sounds distant. He can’t open his mouth without feeling the dirt filling his mask suffocate him. He needs to get it off. His fingers scratch desperately at the back of his mask until he finds the edge and rips it off, calm washing over him when he spits out the dirt and feels clear air and the warmth of light hit his skin.
He blinks his vision to clarity, relaxing despite himself at the presence of Peter leaning over him and brushing dirt from his hair. “Fuck.” He spits, anger boiling in his stomach at the lingering dread. “Fuck!” He steps up onto histrembling, weak legs, stumbling for a moment, scraping his nails along the texture of the the leather of his armor and plants his feet into the earth firmly, earth that still rumbles beneath him. His teeth grind together as he draws his sword, the bubbling of acid calming him when he draws it across his skin.
His gaze is pulled up by movement as that strange, annoying man, Wade, approaches him, his eye narrowed at his face. “What do you want?” He snaps.
Wade doesn’t stop his approach. “This is a bit awkward.” He mutters before his arm winds back and drives his fist into Harry’s jaw.
The glow of a computer screen is the only light illuminating MJ’s apartment, save for the dim shine of New York outside her window. The device hums as it slowly loads up the browser, a sound overwhelmed by the hollow thud of ceramic as she taps her fingers against the computer, a slow moving outlet for the itching, suffocating, irritating heat that seems to fill her entire body. A small notepad sits beside her, terms she can’t even pronounce from her searches in the hidden room covering the page.
The screen grows even more brightly with the presence of the pure white search screen, causing her to exhale and bring both her hands to the keyboards.
New York Occult
She waits the frustrating seconds for the search to load. Even more frustrating are the results, a few small forums of people asking where to find Wicca stores in the city and a single archived newspaper article from the 70’s documenting paganism that the journalist mislabels as Satanism.
It’s the third page before the finds anything interesting. Yet another forum post, but the wording of the previewed blurb beneath the hyperlink catches her eyes.
this place has been overrun by hippies into that mother earth plant “magic”, but if theres any1 else who still practices real deal magic on here, me and my buddies found an entry into…
Her mouse shoots across the desk with a scrape in her eagerness to click. But her hope is immediately drowned when a pop up window clouds her view of the post.
This content is protected.
To view, please enter the password.
She groans in irritation. In a feeble attempt at gaining something from the only worthwhile result she’s found, she types in a handful of the words she has on her notebook to no avail. The screen remains locked to her.
A few fruitless searches on how to bypass forum password protections later, she gives up and returns to step one.
The King In Yellow
Her results are frustratingly consumed by news articles documenting the event that she, Peter, and Harry had been so intricately involved with. Nausea arises at the sight of the lengthy list of people in New York’s upper crust who’d mysteriously lost their lives that night, the haunting feeling of her hand in those deaths almost making her abandon this particular rabbit hole entirely. Instead, perhaps out of some guilty yet masochistic urge, her finger continues to flick against the wheel of the mouse, pulling her through the list of names and the brutal descriptions of the article until she’s reached the sparse comments.
Rrick32
Who else found this bc of lost media?
The comment has a hearty string of six attached, all from relatively ordinary usernames complaining that a lost media play from centuries ago got found by some crackpot, others declaring that whatever play that was conducted that night was probably a fake anyways.
She hums to herself, backing out of the page and altering the settings of the search to filter out any posted after the incident and its hefty death toll.
A rather official looking site catches her eye.
The King In Yellow: 17th Century France’s Insanity Provoking Lost Play.
This article, it turns out, is far more in the vein of what she was looking for.
The article describes a play first documented around the 1630’s in France, in the height of theater’s popularity in the country. The author of the play was never documented, and only one production of the play was ever documented: a production rumored to result in the deaths or insanity of everyone in its audience.
Further rumors report that the man in charge of the production was on the run for months before he reportedly found his way to a powerful nobleman who pardoned him for any crimes he could be prosecuted with. The article describes reports that the king had been swayed the side of the performer after the performer displayed to him undeniable magical abilities that he credited to his god: Hastur. The king abandoned his Christian faith in favor of the odd, new god and many of the other nobility in France appeared to follow suit. Copies of this play spread around France as a piece of worship material for this god, with some saying that to read beyond the first act you needed to truly have his favor, else it would drive you insane.
The journalist proceeds to describe how most folklorists and historians dismiss this odd, sparsely reported series of events as fictitious, as neither copies of this play, convincing documentation, or a convincing origin or spread of this “Hastur” exist, though some conspiracy theories about small occult circles among the wealthy and among those in the arts that still worship this illusive god are present.
Eager at the new lead, she clicks onto the profile of this journalist, finding several more intriguing articles, documenting the journalist exploring several occult circles. A shadowy shapeshifter that seems to only pop up in major cities and follows on the coattails of many destructive crimes often attributed to satanism, the inexplicable pagan beliefs of several towns in the Midwest revolving around a seemingly benevolent goat goddess, and reports surrounding many Ivy League or similarly prestigious universities involving a cloaked god of knowledge who favored neither traditional good nor evil, instead seeming to be strictly only fair.
Her eyes flick from screen to paper as she rapidly takes notes on the strange, eldritch seeming gods with no truly traceable origins. Once her hand aches around the pen in her grasp, she looks up to notice a sole anonymous comment thread on the final article.
This reminds me of this weird store I found when I was visiting New York. I’m wiccan so when I passed it I was interested in seeing if there’d be anything I don’t have but need and the whole store had these bizarre idols and knives and jewelry and shit and this old lady behind the counter basically chased me out when she found out I wasn’t into whatever batshit stuff she was into. Weird as hell.
A sole comment replies to it.
Are you talking about Clarity in Forest Hills?
The name immediately enters her search bar.
The page of the establishment has no photos, only a name, address, and a set of low reviews that she takes the chance to scroll through.
Two Stars
I came in to see if they had any tourmaline and the place was creepy asf. Felt like a bad horror movie concept of witchcraft. If you’re a real wiccan or pagan go anywhere else. If you’re an edgy “satanist” you’ll be thrilled.
One Star
The owner is nuts.
One Star
This is why witches have a bad rap.
One Star
Exodus 20:3-5. Come to Christ and be saved!
Five Stars
I stumbled into here on a bar crawl and the lady gave me a hangover cure for a fiver. Only hangover cure that’s ever worked. Yeah it’s a little weird but now I can drink on Sundays without worrying!
That’s the point where she stops reading and instead shifts her attention to the hours, her brow furrowing. That can’t be right. There’s no logical way this place is open twenty four hours. Then again, she doesn’t know what weird cures to the need to sleep strange gods like these might be able to provide.
She gathers her purse and opens the door to her apartment, extracting her subway card from her wallet.
The outside of the building is just as creepy as she should have expected. The paint is peeling on the boards of the front, exposing dark, damp wood beneath from the recent rain. The windows are stained by odd smears and dust, but the interior is clearly lit. She steels her nerve and opens the creaky door, shivering at the texture of rust on her fingertips.
The interior is coated in dark green paint and occupied by dark shelves and tables covered in strange books, idols carved from gleaming metal, and a scattering of perfectly cleaned animal bones immediately bear down on her. Through the crowded room, she can see a dark desk, though she can’t see anyone standing behind it or really any other person in the store.
With a frown on her face, she strides past masks in hauntingly exaggerated expressions and a collection of jewelry sealed in glass cases labeled as ‘Cursed—do not touch’ towards the front desk. There’s nobody behind it that had simply been obscured from view, instead the only eye catching thing on the desk being a cat statue carved from smooth stone. The eyes seem to follow her as she approaches, examining the odd little statue.
“Hello.” She finds herself saying. “Is… the owner here?”
The statue stares up at her. Her cheeks heat at the realization of how insane she must be to speak to a stone carving and expect a response. Her mouth opens, considering calling out to see if any staff is present, but she thinks better of it. It’s very late, and the reviews she read give her the impression that perhaps she doesn’t want to meet the owner.
She purses her lips as she steps backward away from the statue, turning back towards the store itself. She steps carefully around the display of objects labeled as cursed, turning her head to attempt to take in the crowded shelves. She leans over a taxidermy rabbit with uncomfortably human eyes, raising a hand towards the thing before she freezes. Eyes are boring into the back of her head, sending a feeling like a bucket of ice down her back. When she turns, the only thing she sees is the statue, its gemstone eyes drilling holes through her.
“Sorry.” She finds herself saying as she withdraws her hand.
A mirror taller than she is occupies one corner, becoming the next thing to draw her attention. The carving of the border is ornate, twisting and coiling around detailed eye carvings that line the perimeter. She jumps when the eyes blink in rapid succession, each metal carving turning to stare at her. The boards creak beneath her feet as she steps in front of the mirror, flinching at her reflection.
The yellow ball gown is back on her body, her hair coiled back into the updo of the night of the disastrous play, not a single strand out of place. Her face is obscured by a white and yellow full face mask that seems to be as good as fused to her face. She lifts her hand to her face, seeing her reflection move with it, and exhales at the feeling of skin beneath her fingertips.
Her hand redirects, reaching for the mirror and pressing her fingertips to what should be smooth glass but ripples like water, allowing her fingers to sink through a layer of a texture like thin jelly and meet the coolness of open air.
MJ yanks her hand back with a gasp, but soon finds her fingers returning to the mirror. The idea of going back home is tempting, but initiative is the reason she came here to begin with. The thought of sitting and taking whatever comes for a fourth time makes her feel sick. This is her chance to be brave for herself, to not need another person to come save the helpless girl trapped in the claws of someone who only wants her to lure out another.
No hesitation. It’s time for some bravery.
She exhales and steps through the mirror in one motion, the surface sticking to her like jelly as she moves through it. Her shoes slip against the smooth floor, nearly sending her stumbling into the space she finds herself in. A craggy stone cave stretches out before her, the ground beneath her polished smooth and lined with gold and intricate granite columns stretching from floor to cave ceiling every few feet. Brave, she reminds herself, as she starts down the tunnel.