Chapter Text
Sturmdunkel
The entity was aware of pain, and of dark.
For a moment he was jolted through with a terror that the ritual had failed: that he had been cast back into that abominable place, that he was now cursed to drift once more on charnel tides, without even the winking out of dead stars to mark the passage of lifetimes.
Then he moved his head, and a low groan of ache and confusion eked out of his mouth.
His mouth – no, it had worked! This pain and this dark were of a different quality, he could discern that now.
Reaching out through the rest of his new body, the entity coalesced an awareness of this form, rubbing his palms into– the carpet. (Rough, scratchy.) He reached back, feeling his chest expand, and propped his weight up on his elbows.
His arms shook, unsteady like a newborn thing.
Bit of an embarrassing excuse for a body, so far. Still, if he could get the hang of it, and it would help him move through this world unsuspected, then it would have to be suitable until– until he figured out what else to do.
He wasn't sure if his eyes were open or not. He couldn't see anything.
Wh-what's happening, whimpered an equally tremulous voice in his head. Why can't I–
"Jesus," the entity said, shoulders buckling, and landed with a hard thud back on the floor.
I can't feel my body, the voice continued.
"I know." The entity made his painstaking way back to a sitting position.
Who are you?
"There will be plenty of time for that later," he eluded.
Presumably, plenty of time to find out for himself.
He reached around him on the floor, hands brushing only carpet, blinking deliberately.
"The question is, who are you?"
Despite no longer being burdened with lungs, the voice made a commendable effort at hyperventilating. I can't remember, it finally said.
That was interesting, if a touch inconvenient. It would be harder to create his own mask from scratch than to lift it wholesale from someone else, but he couldn't deny the idea had its appeal. A blank slate, with the potential to become anybody. Still, perhaps it would come back to the human as well.
The voice was still whimpering, trembling through stifled whines and half-formed questions as though he couldn't decide which was more important.
The entity sighed, smoothing his voice into a low, gentle tone. "Calm down, friend. Take a deep breath."
I– I can't, he repeated. I can't breathe, I can't remember who I am or where I am–
"It's alright." The entity supposed he did the breathing, now. He took a couple exaggerated breaths himself, acutely feeling his chest rise and fall. The air, while not particularly fresh, felt cool and sweet and filled him with the sensation of life.
"There. Better."
It did not seem to make the human feel any better.
I don't feel better–
"Can you see, friend?" he interrupted. "Maybe there are some clues as to where we are."
Right. That did seem to pull him together a bit. I can see– we're in an office, on the floor, there's a desk next to us and there's sunlight. There's a door open into a corridor–
"Is there anything written on the door?"
Arthur Lester and Peter Yang. Private Investigators. Is that– me?
"One of them, presumably. That's a good start, we can figure out the rest later. When you fell, you dropped a book. Do you see it?"
When I fell….? Yes, there's one a couple feet in front.
The entity crawled forward on his hands and knees, reaching until his fingers brushed against a leather spine, propped open face down. He snatched it up with a sound of triumph.
What, what is it?
"A book," he bit, feeling out a wall to his other side and bracing against it as he made another attempt at standing. Balancing on two legs felt awfully unsteady, especially considering he would have to use one of them for walking at any given time. Still, plenty of humans managed it. Just a brief adjustment period.
"Do you have a desk?"
Yes, there's one just ahead of you.
Focusing on propelling his mass forward and catching it with an outstretched foot, the entity strode confidently forward and collided hard with his hip against a solid corner.
"Jesus fucking–" he snarled, nearly dropping the book again. "Why didn't you say–"
You didn't ask, Arthur-or-Peter retorted.
"I didn't think– fine. Let's just." He drew in a deep breath. "This book contains the answer to what happened to us," he explained as if to a child. "Let's take a look at it."
The front cover was embossed with some sort of symbol. The entity ran its fingers along its curves and points, but nothing came to him. No particular feeling, no visions, no memories.
Well. A sort of… wet darkness. But that may have been just the residual dread of That Place still shedding off him like drops of black water.
He opened the book against the surface of the desk, slowly paging through it.
His unwitting passenger said nothing.
"Well? What does it say?"
I can't… The human's voice sounded distant. I can't read this. It's–
The entity huffed in exasperation and snapped the book shut. Of course.
"When you opened this book, it bound us together: I don't know how it came to you specifically, or why a piece of you remained afterward."
Wait wait, hold on, 'why a piece of me remained' – you orchestrated this? You mean to take my entire body?
"Not exactly. That is to say, I will, once I get the answers I need. But I didn't create this book; through it, I was imprisoned in a terrible world beyond this one, trapped for an uncountable span of lifetimes."
And when I opened it–
"You released me into this world, yes."
What are you?
That was an excellent question.
"What I am matters less at the moment than how this book came into your possession. If you can't decipher it, we'll have to find someone who can. If only I could see it–"
He traced the embossed edges of the symbol on the front cover once again, intently focused, trying to paint its outlines onto the darkness of his vision. It made no more sense to him this time; he just couldn't remember.
The human was pontificating.
Whatever you are, however you've done this, I'm still here. I still have my eyes, and I still have my mind, and if you think it's going to be that easy to get rid of me you've got another thing coming.
Bold words for a bare fragment of a person. On that he had a point, though: he was stuck with the human until he figured out how to suppress the rest of him. It would be easiest to make nice until then.
"Either way, this book is our best way forward. You're a detective: let's see where this lead takes us."
I don't know anything about the book or who sent it to me. I barely remember opening it.
"That hardly sounds like an investigator. Can't imagine you'd solve many cases like that."
What do you want from me, you've taken my body and now–
"Use your eyes, then," the entity growled. "What else do you see?"
The human huffed out a petulant sigh. There's a window, with curtains drawn but some daylight is streaming through. There's an upright piano against one one of the walls, and a wardrobe. There are some papers on the desk, looks like: letters, some receipts, some file folders. 'McFarland,' one of them is labeled. Some torn brown paper, stamped 'J.D. Ackerman, Rare Books.' There's a…
The way the human's voice trailed off told the entity what he had finally noticed.
Oh, my God.
"Now," he began–
There's a body, God, it looks like a body on the floor–
"Shut up and tell me where the door is. We need to close it before anybody else sees."
After a bit more stammering and a bit more cajoling, the entity finally managed to get some basic direction out of his eyes. Running his hand across the wall (and bumping into a side table on the way), he found the door and shut it with a satisfying snap.
"There. That's the easy part done."
What do you mean, 'the easy part,' we should call the police!
The entity laughed. "I have no intention of being put away because of your mistake."
My–?
The human had mentioned a wardrobe earlier. If he could just get to it, it might be the best option to hide the body until he found a more permanent way to dispose of it.
"Don't you remember?" he asked, continuing his exploratory path along the wall. "I don't blame you, of course, it was an honest accident. The desperate last act of a man losing control of himself. Your partner just had the bad luck of standing in the way."
There was a loud, discordant clang and a sharp pain in his hip.
God, Parker, the human sobbed.
Arthur, then.
Arthur clearly wasn't in a fit state to be of any use, so the entity patiently let him blubber and panic while he continued his work. The wardrobe was along the next wall and felt mostly empty, so he did his best to affix its position in his dark mental map as he shuffled out across the floor, slowly probing with his foot until he made contact with dead flesh.
His patience began to wear thin as soon as he stooped to hook it under the shoulders and drag it backwards. Then the blubbering turned into screaming and swearing.
God, but it was heavy. It surprised him: were all humans this heavy? He could barely get his arms under the broad shoulders, let alone get enough leverage bracing his feet to drag it backwards.
"Christ," he said.
That surprised him, too. He couldn't remember exactly, but it didn't seem like something he would have said, before. Before whatever had happened to him. But it fell out of his mouth as naturally as the grunts of effort as he dragged the body inch by inch across the carpet.
The human was still shouting. It made it difficult to focus as the entity backed his heel into the wooden frame of the open wardrobe. As onerous as dragging had been, it was still another matter to lift the incriminating lump of dead weight over the lip of the wardrobe.
"Shut the fuck up," he snapped, patience exhausted. "Do you want us both locked away for good, or do you want to find out what's happened to us?"
That's my fucking partner, you piece of shit–
The entity stooped and twisted the body at the knees, shouldering it the rest of the way into the wardrobe.
– You're not going to dump him in the closet like some fucking piece of garbage–
"Listen to me," he snarled. Pushing the body into the wardrobe with his foot, he could just get his shoulder around the door to snap it shut. "I have your body, now. I am going to whatever I damn well please, and you are just my fucking passenger until I can figure out how to take your eyes as well."
Fucking hell I am–
"This is a temporary solution, obviously. But we can't well have your victim rotting out on the floor while we look for answers, can we?"
I don't–
There was a firm, loud knock at the door.
"Fuck off," the entity called.
"Mr. Lester?"
It was a male voice: rough, with a different accent than Arthur's.
"Everything alright in there?" it continued.
"Do you know that voice?" the entity hissed.
Arthur remained pointedly silent.
"Fine, be that way."
In a louder voice, he called across the room, "I said piss off, I'm busy."
Another knock rattled the door
"Mr. Lester," the stranger called again, significantly less tentatively. "I heard shouting, sounded like an argument."
"That's none of your fucking–"
The entity heard the scrape and click of the doorknob turning and bolted toward the sound, bouncing hard off the edge of what was presumably the desk and throwing himself against the doorframe.
The door was open by a gap of just a couple inches by the time he got to it, and no amount of pushing snapped it closed.
"You and your partner having a fight or somethin'?" The man's voice became by turns harder and more suspicious. He had to get rid of him before he insisted on snooping around in the office.
The entity drew himself up to Arthur Lester's full height and squared his shoulders. His glower would likely had been more effective if he had been sure of the interloper's eyeline, but he could make a best guess based on the sound of his voice.
"I don't know who you think you are–" he growled.
"Mr. Lester," the stranger interrupted, slightly taken aback. "It's Ed. The building supervisor. You know me. What's going on here?"
Fuck. He might have keys to the office, then.
"-- But I am currently occupied with urgent business that cannot be interrupted."
"I heard banging noises," Ed continued, clearly also reaching the end of his patience. "You moving furniture in there?" He spoke deliberately as if trying to hand him an out – but if the entity placated him, he might try to 'help' or come back to dig around later. No, he had to get rid of him.
"Listen to me, Ed. You have no idea of the import of what you're sticking your grubby nose into – it would be better for everyone if you just left it alone carried on about your stupid, insignificant life."
Ed said nothing, but he also didn't take his foot out of the door.
"Now get the fuck out of my way, or the next time I catch your rancid scent skulking around my office I'll ensure that no one ever finds the entirety of your useless corpse."
There was a long pause, a deep intake of breath.
"Now you listen, Mr. Lester. Nobody talks to me like that. It's clear you're not feeling yourself – frankly I don't give a shit. But the next time I see you, if you haven't gotten this shit sorted out, you're going to have a big problem."
The barrier holding the door open was removed, and the door snapped closed in its absence. The entity listened from the other side as firm footsteps faded down the hall.
That was stupid of you, Arthur said.
"I had to get rid of him."
Eddie's a reasonable man, you easily could have talked him out.
"I did. Now, we can get back to the matter at hand. You mentioned that on your desk there was brown paper stamped with a name. Ackerman. Is that what the book came in?"
It seems plausible. I remember that the book came in the morning post… I remember that it didn't have a title. I remember Peter shouting, I remember reaching out to him–
"Focus, we have more important things to worry about."
More important? My partner is dead.
"And we'll take care of it. We just–"
How? Are you planning to just leave his body hidden in here until somebody finds it? Then what?
"I haven't figured that out yet," the entity snarled. "If you would just let me–"
Let you! I have only my eyes now. If you want to use my body to – I don't know, chase after this cursed book, it seems there's precious little I can do to stop you.
"Now you're getting it. Now, we need to find this Ackerman if we're going to–"
But I certainly don't have to help you.
" Help me?" The entity laughed, low and cruel. "I assure you, your continued existence is merely a fortunate accident. Your 'help' isn't needed."
You'll have no trouble getting to Ackerman's on your own, then, I'm sure.
The entity's lip curled. He was regretting this partial embodiment more and more by the second.
Still, he had the bookseller's name – one could do a lot with just a name. And besides, surely there were plenty of humans who got by in this world just fine without seeing. He would just have to do without.
He had a name, he needed an address. Somebody should be able to give him an address. A telephone operator, or a library.
He wasn't quite sure how either of those worked, but – but the thought had come to him, all the same. Hopefully the rest would as well.
"Do you have a telephone?"
The silence that followed somehow had an arch quality.
"Fine," he scoffed. He stepped cautiously forward, arms outstretched at hip level, until he reached the desk. Arthur hadn't mentioned a phone earlier – and he didn't feel one either.
To the street it was, then. The bustle of people and traffic was faintly audible in the office; the entity felt a thrill at going out and being surrounded by so much life after ages of desolation.
You're just walking out? Arthur piped up. So much for his silent passenger. Do you have an address? Do you even have any money?
"I'll get us there. You just keep an eye out for Ed."
It was a slow, painstaking process, leaving the office. At the end of the hallway he found a door that opened into a stairwell. There were railings on either side, and his steps echoed up and down.
Down seemed like as good a choice as any. He gripped the railing and cautiously made his way. It was difficult and treacherous, but he was making progress. He was moving.
And what are you even looking for?
"Answers."
To what questions?
"If we find out why I'm bound to you, then I can become unbound."
The hallway on this floor led to an opening, perhaps a small vestibule of sorts. The outside sounds were clearer here, and he pushed forward to a larger doorway.
And then what?
He opened the doors and the city washed over him.
It was deafening: a grinding, whirring, barking, shouting wave of machinery and voices . The heat and the smell of a thousand, many thousands, of living bodies struck his face like a desert wind. The dust, the coal, the exhaust. A churning entity made up of countless warm, breathing humans and all the things they've created. It was beautiful, and overwhelming.
You– are you alright?
"Now what?" he breathed, drowned out in his own ears by the living roar.
There was an impatient sigh in his head.
There's a taxi coming up. Take a few steps forward – watch the curb – and wave it down.
The entity cautiously eased forward, as though he would be swept up into a whirlwind of noise and heat if his foot lifted off the pavement, and raised his arm high.