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Time spins backwards.
There’s fog in the Archives, and a voice from Head Archivist’s office, and a lukewarm cup of tea, abandoned on his desk - and a knife in his chest, and fog, fog covering every surface of the room, of the tower, of the world, a knife in his chest and lips on his lips, and a hand that once stroked his hair gently, holding the knife, but is there really a hand on the knife, was there ever anyone else there to begin with? There’s fog, in the Archives. It is pressing from every corner and it would cry at the sight of its love, if it could feel to begin with.
A voice from the Head Archivist’s office. Somehow it is important, that this voice can be heard, but one cannot know to whom it is important. It is his voice, a voice… a voice that it would surely recognise, if it was in the room to hear it in the first place. A voice of a person he loves. Who was he, he, who loved the voice? There’s no-one here, in the fog.
There was a man, at some point in time, a man who loved a monster. And before then, there was a man who loved a man, and maybe it never stopped being true. When does a man become a monster, anyway? When do you realise that the one you love has changed so drastically? Do you realise at all?
They walked the broken world together, the monster and the man, the monster and you, hand in what used to be a hand, but was, is now, a mess of eyes and dark matter. Or maybe it is still a hand, a scarred hand of the man you love? Yes, you can see it again, and you wonder, how could you have ever doubted your loved one’s humanity? His, its, thousands eyes stare back at you, but you can only see the two that always used to be there. The dark matter between them shifts into a smile.
I spy, with my little eye, literally everything.
Why was that important? You- who are you again? There’s nothing here but the fog.
Outside, in the world that may be real, two people are talking. It’s not important. Nothing’s important here, in the fog. But it stays, and it listens.
“What’s his deal with bossman anyway? I swear, he would thank the man if he spit this tea back at him.” A man’s voice, exasperated, the fog would whisper, if it knew anything about emotions.
“Didn’t you see the way he looks at him? It’s a cruush.” A woman’s voice sing-songs, and it is not a voice the fog can recognise, it can’t remember the woman speaking, not anymore, only the thing that took her, but there is no doubt in his mind that it’s her and he opens his mouth to call out to her, to do anything, he- wait. He? Who’s he? There’s no-one here, but the fog.
In the outside world, the man looks up from his desk, grinning wildly.
“Speak of the devil! Do tell us all about your crush on the bossman-“ the sentence cuts off, before the thing that the fog felt itself becoming is named.
“How weird. I could have sworn I saw Martin here a second ago.” Martin. Such a nice name. It’s a shame things that do not exist cannot have names.
“You need to get your eyes checked out, Stoker. Martin’s still on sick leave, remember?”
In the empty space between them, the fog sings its quiet, lonely song.
You were right about one thing - the line between man and monster is so thin, that when your love first breaches it, you cry out in relief, because who cares if his eyes never used to be green before, or that way he tilts his head that shouldn’t really be possible, when he’s alive and maybe not breathing, but walking, and talking and watching. You see a man you love. Everyone else sees a being that they have foretold to be an Archivist. A Watcher, its eyes, thousands upon thousands of eyes filling every inch of its body. The man you love rescues you from- what did he rescue you from again? You? You lose shape again. The line between man and monster is thin, but you are not a man anymore. It doesn’t matter now, does it? You don’t exist in this world.
There is a woman, running through an empty field, running, running, running. Panic pulsing in her veins, the quiet terror and the knowledge that if she dies here, her body will never be found. The fog surrounds her and it can sense her confusion, and her pain, and she doesn’t understand what is happening, why is she so alone? why does it bother her, it never used to bother her before? And the fog surprises itself by aching, aching for a time when it was loved, the same as this woman, running through the fields is aching for her lost love. And in that moment of weakness, it hears a voice, a voice that once sung its tune, before he discovered warmth of friendship and kindness and love.
Turn left.
And the woman is hit by the feeling of oh, I’m not alone, and she listens to the voice of what was once Evan Lucas. The fog is quiet, but somewhere within it awakes a longing for the man, the monster, the one who kept him grounded and made him feel loved. Him? What was his name again? Did it ever have a name? The thought disappears as the woman finds her way out of its grasp. Why bother loving when it brings you so much pain?
Sunshine in his hair, a hand in his hand, a soft kiss on the cheek, a little laugh at a joke that only two people in the world can understand. A cow in the highlands, a shared bed, a nighttime confession. Kind looks from across the room, perfectly prepared tea, a blanket that he finds himself covered with after falling asleep on his desk. A poem, a song, a dance in the kitchen, while they were waiting for the water to boil.
A long walk, under the watching gaze of the merciless sky. A shiver running through his body when more and more monsters fall beneath their feet. A cup of tea filled with spiders, a presence in his mind that is well known but not his, an argument, a promise. An old house and what is found underneath. A tower. A scream. A god. A kiss. A knife. And then, there is a spider, and there are doors, and then- then, there’s just fog.
“Do you believe him?” The man (Tim, something in the fog that used to be a person provides) asks.
“I do believe that something has happened to him. He wouldn’t have just disappeared for two weeks otherwise. And there is the matter of the worms - and the messages that we received from his phone.” The woman responds, “But I think they both are making it a much bigger deal than it should be. How much trouble can a few worms cause?”
“-well, Sash,” (Sasha, it’s Sasha!) “he was trapped in his flat for two weeks, because of… as you put it, a few worms. Maybe they’re onto something?”
“Still, have you seen Martin lately? He won’t even step out of the Archives! I’m worried for him… and Jon doesn’t see a problem with him just living here!” There is a reply, but it gets lost in the sudden realisation.
Jon. His name was Jon. At once, everything comes crashing down again. There is a face now, that he can see, when he thinks of the tower, and the eyes, and the knife, and the person who he had put the knife in is named now, and his name is Jon. Jon, the name of the man he loved, loves. Jon, the man, the monster, the Antichrist, his anchor-
Yes, his anchor. There was a way for him, once upon a time, out of this endless fog, a way for him to be a him, a way for him to feel. And that way was through Jon.
I see you, says a person, who has to be him, for who else could that be? I see you, says Martin, because that’s his name. I see you, he says, and begins his dreadful way back to existence. I see you, and I love you, and I need you- oh.
He needs Jon and Jon is not there anymore. Strapped of his anchor, how can he pretend to be a human being? How can it pretend? What almost, almost became a man, slipped back into the endless nothingness of The Lonely. Yes, it is alone. Loneliness comes so easily these days.
There is a ship, and a man. He feeds the fog, with his own isolation, and, every once in a while, with isolation of others. It favours him, it covers him when needed, it allows him entry to its very self. And yet, something inside it hates the man, hates everything he is. It is not logical, it shouldn’t ever take place. There is no room for emotions, inside the fog, and the fog itself should not feel. It is not the way of The Forsaken One. And yet, the fog hates.
The dark matter between your fingers squeezes your hand tighter. You smile to the memory of your lover’s face. You are one of the very few who can see a man behind the layers of eyes and shadows. One of the very few who can hurt him. The only one that can kill him. It’s ironic, that you can only kill a god, because you believe in his humanity. You laugh, ignoring the phone that rings and rings and rings.
The end of the world started just as any normal day would. There weren’t any signs, any premonitions. The cows looked the same as usual, and you took way too many pictures. You chatted with an old seller at the market, laughing at a joke you cannot remember. What you do remember is that, that day, was the very first time you called him your boyfriend in public. Both such an easy, and such a difficult thing to say.
My boyfriend and I are thinking about getting a cat.
The seller’s cat has given birth earlier that week and you had been hoping she’d let you take one of the kittens once it was old enough to be separated from its mother. He was ecstatic, once he’s heard the news - he’s always been a cat person. You have always found it easier to communicate with dogs, but you are very willing to adopt a cat instead, if that gets him to smile.
There is a finger, and a ring on it. You realise, with an unsettling delay that it is your ring, and your finger. You try to move it, just to make sure, and you are surprised to find it obeying your command. You hadn’t used to have fingers. You hadn’t used to have a body at all. But now you do, and memories flood back, as if you’re the vacuum of space itself, and underpressure sucks all of them in.
The ring was given to you, by someone who loves you dearly. And isn’t that a wonderful thing, to be loved? A feeling, and maybe that someone is long gone, but the ring remains, a material thing, to always remember that you were not alone, and that it is not unending, this miserable, lonely state. It’s hard to remember, even on the best of days, and so, most of the time you spend in quiet non-existence. You are alone now, you feel it so painfully, so profoundly, that the fog is the relief you find yourself craving. There used to be him, but he is gone now, and all that is left of him is the ring, and the feeling of blood on your fingers.
In many ways, you’ve always been alone. You felt it, when you sat in your flat for two weeks, completely and utterly forgotten, the only ones to keep you company being worms, slithering silvery things, singing in your ears, crawling up your legs, and her, she who knocked, unrelenting, on your door. You’ve never bothered to tell anyone that the sound of knocking sent your mind into panic mode, and Jon only figured it our after you first gave yourself to your god and there was little of you left that cared anymore.
It is a blissful state to be in your god’s world. In your world. It is quiet, in a way it never used to be. People have commented on how much more sure of yourself you have become. It’s amusing, how easily uncaring can be mistaken for confidence. You, he, it, lose all that you, it used to be, before the fog. The old man at its shoulder preens and it feels that it should be happy to please him. Or maybe it should hate him. The fog pries away from his careful, cold hands and the man looks shocked for a second, before falling back into nothingness. If natural phenomenons could feel, the fog would feel a tiniest flicker of satisfaction.
In its flat, when the worms were singing their songs of hive and of belonging, it remembers longing to be part of something as welcoming as they were. To be lost between the bodies of countless others, wriggling and squirming and climbing. To join their sacred song, and to no longer be afraid and alone and forgotten. No-one is lost in the hive, and it would give everything to find its way again.
In the end, even the worms leave, and it is free, and out of its flat, never to return. No-one has bothered to check on it during all the time it was gone. No friends, no family that cares enough to check in when there’s been radio silence for two weeks. A body lies in the kitchen, already starting to rot, filled with holes. It will be another week, before a neighbour complains about the smell.
“Have you seen Martin in today?” Tim asks, and the fog stills. No-one cared enough to check, and yet, here is someone asking, wanting to know what is going on with poor, absent Martin.
“Oh, he’s not coming today. He’s texted Jon, he says he’s sick with something.” Sasha replies.
“And how did bossman take it? Not tearing any heads off today?” Jonjonjon how did Jon take it?
“You know him… muttered something about this being a relief and went back to recording whatever statement he’s working on right now.” Oh, right. The only person to ever truly care about Martin, that moved heaven and hell to rescue him, thinks him to be a disgrace. In the quiet corner of the Archives, a presence that almost made itself corporeal, slips back into emptiness. It is not noticed, not cared for, by anyone.
Martin slams the jar filled with worms into his boss’ desk, but he is not the same Martin that has disappeared two weeks ago, those two weeks that have felt like an eternity. Jon doesn’t notice, because he never did care enough to get to know him, but the young, naive Martin is dead, and what comes back in his stead is a ghost. Jon will not realise this until he’s listened to his recordings again and found that his partner’s voice is overshadowed with static.
The fog might not quite remember what it’s like, to behave like a human, and it adds a layer of loneliness on its own. The others attribute the weird behaviour to the fact that their colleague has been held hostage for two weeks, but it sees that they are hesitant to believe him. Except Jon, who takes the matter very seriously. The fog remembers that it’s been confused by it, the first time around, but now it knows of the Mark left on the Archivist’s body, a children’s book with a curious bookplate, a door that should have never been opened, a tiny string pulling the older child’s hand. However hard he tries to sell his act, Jon is not a sceptic. No version of him has ever been, no matter how many eyed.
It stays in the Archives, if it can even stay anywhere at all. At night, when everyone should have gone home, that what took the shape of Martin during the day, slips away into nothingness again. The body has been found, but no-one has bothered to notify the Institute of their employee’s untimely demise. But someone does notice. A woman with marks of the Hunt in her eyes and teeth and fists is the one to be called in, after the elderly housekeeper finds what was left of her tenant’s body. It would have been passed into the hands of a Sectioned officer, if it weren’t for the holes that covered Blackwood’s corpse. So, the officer investigates, and what she finds out, is less than reassuring. A monster has taken Blackwood’s place. It has drilled holes into him, taken his identity, his life, and left him in his flat to rot. And she will make sure it pays. She’s been itching for the thrill of the chase.
There is a knife at its throat, and Jon is standing before it, with his eyes wide open. He does not know what to think, what to do. The police officer is threatening Martin, of all people, with a knife, and claims that this is not Blackwood. He was found dead in his flat two months ago. Whatever has killed him, took over his life in his stead, and Jon is reminded of statement 0070107, Amy Patel’s statement. Of the Not-Graham and how the creature has replaced the original Graham completely. Has this happened to his employee? How could he have not noticed?
Jon, you have to trust me. It’s me, Martin. Please, believe me.
Its words come out just a little to flat, and it does not flinch at the feeling of steel on its throat like Martin would have. It does not have enough humanity left to care about such unimportant matters.
But, somehow, it works. The officer is not convinced, but her partner is, and it is enough for both Jon and Martin to leave the woods unscathed.
Later, when Jane Prentiss attacks, and both of them find themselves stuck in the Document Storage, Jon will finally find it in himself to ask:
“Martin, you didn’t die here, did you?”
And the fog will just laugh, an empty, pathetic sound. The question was meant to be a joke, an icebreaker. It isn’t anymore, when Jon finds himself alone, surrounded by fog that twists what may or may not be a mouth into one last smile.
There’s fog in the Archives, and a voice from Head Archivist’s office, and a lukewarm cup of tea, abandoned on his desk - and a knife in his chest, and fog, fog covering every surface of the room, of the tower, of the world, a knife in his chest and lips on his lips, and a hand that once stroked his hair gently, holding the knife, but is there really a hand on the knife, was there ever anyone else there to begin with? There’s fog, in the Archives. It is pressing from every corner and it would cry at the sight of its love, if it could feel to begin with.
Time spins backwards.