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The door on the side of this building doesn't match the wall that it's attached to.
That's not really something that Gerry's particularly concerned about, given the myriad of other things on his mind, but it's a detail that doesn't escape his notice. Gertrude's on a business trip, Mother's sending him on another wild goose chase, Michael isn't returning his calls, and the bright yellow door doesn't match the run-down brick wall.
Gertrude- Ms. Robinson to her face- is an understandable one. She takes many business trips, for varying reasons, ranging from "getting another Leitner before anybody else does" to "stopping another apocalypse, do keep up" to "ostensibly doing something for the Pu Songling establishment while visiting Beijing." These past few weeks, she's been off in Russia or Siberia- are they one in the same? Is Siberia in Russia? Gerry doesn't know, he hasn't taken geography classes and it's never been pertinent information- for something undisclosed. She goes many places for many reasons, there's no reason to think it at all strange, just a matter of inconvenience. If Gerry can't give the excuse that the Archivist needs him for one reason or another, he's less able to spend a few hours out of the shop without consequence.
Speaking of spending time out of the shop, at least he gets to be out of Mother's reach for a few days while he stays in York, looking for some Leitner that's supposedly resembling a cotton candy machine manual. All he really knows about the Leitner is don't read it- a given- and people who have read it seem drunk, which isn't all that immediately indistinguishable from actually being drunk. The cotton candy machine itself is lost or nonexistent, but even if it were real, Gerry wouldn't be looking for it and wouldn't be taking it back with him if he found it. That's not something that Mother would be interested in, and not something that the Institute would owe them a favor for.
With regards to the Institute, Gerry isn't fond of it at all, really- not as an establishment, not what it represents, and certainly not the weirdly conniving way that its Head seems so keen behaving all the time. The only real positives are the excuses it provides him, not often, but often enough, and one singular employee there that he's actually fond of. Michael Shelley is an acquaintance, with whom he'd even hazard to say he's bordering the lines of friendship, though not to the degree that Gerry's entirely certain whether his naivete is born of obliviousness or some sort of deliberate sheltering going on within the Archives. Information is their greatest asset, after all, and withholding it is a tactic enjoyed by many a worshipper of the Beholding, for... strange and unknown reasons. Gerry's never been privy to those kinds of schemes from the outside.
Michael Shelley is not the kind of person to be so quiet for such a long time. Gerry's learned that fairly quickly over the course of their odd acquaintanceship, when there would hardly be a day that went by without at least a few text messages exchanged between them. Is that normal for people who aren't even friends yet, or is he overthinking this? Did he cross a line somewhere? He's never really gotten to this point before with anybody else, so he doesn't know how to proceed from here. All that he can do is send a text, maybe leave a voicemail every once in a while to check in, and wait. He can't go to the Institute in person- again, he's in York, and if Mother caught him back in London before finding anything conclusive about the damned Leitner, she'd have his head- so all that he can do for now is distract himself by paying attention to the stupid details of everything.
Hence, the door. It's a bright, garish yellow, almost designed to attract attention, sat on the side of the stout brick building he doesn't know the purpose of, and yet Gerry hasn't noticed it before today. He's quite sure that he's passed by this building before today, since it's on the quickest route between his hotel and the cheapest coffeeshop in the immediate area, but this is definitely the first time he's seeing the door. There's no way it could've gotten there by any sort of normal means, and no way that it just didn't register, so it has to be the product of something much more immediately dangerous than a Leitner.
Furtively, he glances up and down the street, looking to see if anybody else seems to notice the odd door- nobody so much as glances at it, their eyes sliding over it like it isn't even there. Does he approach? He should, just in case it disappears, though he's obviously not going to enter it. He quickly starts trying to run through what doors are associated with, and nothing in particular seems to come to mind, nothing from Smirke's Fourteen uses it as any kind of specific symbol and no monster directly uses it in its hunting or as a part of itself. Gerry's going in blind here, which isn't something he's very fond of at all, but something that he can do if he must.
Hopefully, this is something that's either somewhat sentient or else easily destroyed. The sentient ones can be reasoned with, and he's got a box of matches on him all the time.
He crosses the street, careful not to seem too restless, wary of catching unwanted eyes- after all, he doesn't know for sure that he's the only one who can see the door, nor is he sure that the monster itself is even in the same vicinity as the door, and not something similar to the Anglerfish, where there is bait and there is the thing itself, almost entirely in separate places. He ducks into the alleyway- it's rather wide for an alleyway, but there's a good pile of cigarette butts piled near one of the other doors, so he'll call it an alleyway as he pleases- and looks closer.
The color of the door nearly burns his eyes, but oddly, the moment he thinks that, the bright yellow turns just a little less bright, as though it's adjusting itself on his account. The doorknob is a beautiful brass, polished perfectly, and the door itself looks almost freshly painted. Gerry gets the odd sense that this is for him, nobody else, and not in the usual sense- not in the way that a monster puts on airs to lure in a victim, any victim, but in the sense that it is all for Gerry himself. He's absurdly reminded of the concept of a man putting on his best clothes for a date, and he dismisses the ridiculous concept almost as quickly.
"Gerard!"
The familiar voice- close enough to be familiar, not close enough for Gerry to ask him to shorten it- pulls him from his investigative reverie, and he looks over to see Michael, of all people, weaving through a small clump of people on the sidewalk to meander his way over. "What are you doing in York?" He continues, a bright smile on his face. It's almost as bright as the door, Gerry thinks, and he glances back at it to make sure it's still there- it is, sitting there completely still, almost politely waiting for him to finish his conversation.
"Looking for a Leitner. You know how it is when we catch wind of these things." Gerry says neutrally, and Michael nods in understanding. Michael may be somewhat oblivious, but he does know that Leitners and other sorts of artifacts from other sorts of people are dangerous- though the mechanism by which they are dangerous is something that Gerry has no clue with regards to Michael's awareness- and he can at least keep from lying in this little instance. Gerry doesn't particularly like lying to Michael- he's fine lying to everyone else, but for some reason, when it's Michael he always feels a horrible pit of guilt in his stomach for a while after.
"I actually just came up from London, I didn't think I'd find you here- no wonder you weren't at the Institute! I'd been looking for you!" Michael chirps brightly, and all of a sudden Gerry becomes very aware of the fact that the door has slowly been opening this entire time. He can glance inside and see a sparsely decorated hallway, with walls the same color as the door and a dark carpet, accentuated with a long, white rug. There seem to be small pictures hanging at intervals along the way, though Gerry can't quite see what's on them from this distance. He'd have to go inside to get a better view.
The moment he looks back at Michael, he notices that he's clutching his head, just above his eyes, as though he's just been hit by a furious migraine. Michael has never complained of headaches before. Why is he in York, anyway? He came from London, sure- and mentioned that he'd been looking for Gerry, so there must be a problem with one of their phones, which makes Gerry feel a little bit stupid for worrying over the whole ordeal- but why? Not to mention, something seems off about him, too bright and cheerful compared to how he usually behaves, not to mention his appearance- it's just not quite right. It's like somebody took a copy of a copy of a photograph of him, and then turned it into a person.
Maybe it's just Gerry's imagination. He's used to reading into things an excessive amount, after all, and though it's served him well over the course of his life, maybe he's overreacting? Maybe there's nothing wrong at all?
Gerry takes a step back from Michael. This isn't right. He doesn't second-guess himself like this. He knows when things are wrong in the wrong ways, and this whole thing stinks of Spiral. Something is putting those thoughts into his head, and he does not appreciate it.
"I'm sorry," Michael says, almost out of nowhere, "I wanted to calm you down. Didn't realize it would have the opposite effect." He still isn't looking at Gerry in the eye. His hair has gotten longer and curlier in the past few seconds, though Gerry hasn't seen it move. Something, somewhere, has gone very, very wrong.
"... Michael?" Gerry asks, though that's a fairly strong word for it, considering his voice is barely above a whisper. Why, out of everyone, is it Michael? For how long? Has it been like this the whole time? Has he been deceived, given the runaround, played for an idiot all this time? The door, clearly, is responding to Michael, so they are one in the same- why hasn't Gerry seen it before? How long was Michael pretending to be human?
"Yes... and no. Michael, your Michael Shelley, is dead. There's just me now." Michael- Its- voice wavers, at the same volume as Gerry's was, but there's something in it now that wasn't there before, something like an inaudible frequency playing in the background of his speech, not directly observable but definitely making an impact. It is taller than Michael was, though he didn't notice a change in height before. Something is wrong, and only growing worse.
"And what... what are you?" Gerry asks, because this is not a person anymore.
"Dearest," It finally looks up from its hands, finally looks Gerry in the eye, "Don't ask me questions like that. There's nothing to answer, you see, you're only hurting us both. I am a kaleidoscope, I am a monster, I am a melody on the wind, I am nothing at all. They are all true, in a way; I don't know which is the most true. I don't know which is more true for you than for anybody else. I know that he missed you so badly that I missed you too, I know that you are kind, I know that you did not deceive him like the others did." It seems like it's in a great deal of pain. It grows taller, still, its fingers longer and bonier, its hair even more curled. It does not seem like something that became this way on purpose.
"... Who did this to you?" It is both an admission of weakness, of trust, and a statement of alliance. Gerry isn't quite sure on this thing that Michael has become, but it doesn't seem dangerous to him. It doesn't seem quite oriented yet. It called him 'dearest.'
"Someone that you can't afford to lose." It says it with finality, both admitting that it was something that was done to it, rather than the other way around, and that whoever it was, it's someone that Gerry and Michael would have both trusted implicitly. Something like this couldn't have been done by somebody handing off the wrong book- Michael as a concept is entirely different. This was deliberate. This was calculated.
This has Gertrude Robinson's name written all over it.