❝ no , ❞    𝚂𝙷𝙴 𝚂𝙰𝚈𝚂 𝚂𝙸𝙼𝙿𝙻𝚈 ,  𝚃𝙷𝙴 𝚆𝙾𝚁𝙳 𝙰 𝙳𝚁𝙾𝙿 𝙸𝙽 𝙰 𝙱𝚄𝙲𝙺𝙴𝚃 .    no ,  what ?  she asks from within .  no ,  it’s not strange .  no ,  i don’t dream .  no ,  i don’t sleep .  but she doesn’t qualify it :  no ,  they say together .  something in his voice picks at the comma of the phrase ,  attempting to tug it loose .  she had a sweater once ,  her grandma knit it for her .  she picked it apart with her clever little fingers and her mother had thrown it away and yelled at her .  jon’s voice had clever little fingers ,  too .  did people  yell  at him for picking their sweaters apart ?

      karen looks at the surface of the pond .  it’s muggy tonight .  somewhere ,  a little to the left ,  a frog croaks loud enough to overpower jon’s voice if he’d been talking ,  but he wasn’t now .  he was waiting for  m o r e ,  the fingers attached to his questions plucking at her seams .  it isn’t  overpowering .  maybe it would be for others  who were not like Them ,  maybe if he really tried she wouldn’t be able to stop ,  but she knows she could leave it at  no  if she wanted to .

      but she doesn’t .

     ❝ i don’t think i sleep .  i try to .  there’s a motel a little down the way ,  across the street from the diner ,  and after i have my coffee and my pie and my cigarette i’ll go there .  i rent a room .  they take my name but never charge me ,  we have an agreement ,  you see , ❞    we’ll charge it to your business account ,  the clerk always says ,  and she will smile .   ❝ it feels like  …  a play .  one of the short and sweet ones that have some deep meaning hidden in them , ❞    an off - hand comment ,  an observation she makes just now .  she doesn’t smile as she says it ,  but frowns down at the murky water .  the frog croaks again .    ❝ like a play in college .  no ,  like a play  written  by a college student . ❞

     ❝ anyway , ❞    She regains composure .    ❝ anyway ,  i go to my room and i lay down and i close my eyes but  …  i don’t think i sleep .  so i suppose i don’t dream . ❞  she doesn’t say it with any kind of sadness .  as always ,  she is matter - of - fact .  it is  him  she pities .  to be able to sleep ,  and dream ,  but it’s never your own dreams .  it’s just  …  everyone else in your head .  or the other way around .

     ❝ what did i do ,  in your dream ? ❞    Karen turns herself bodily toward him with one of those smiles ,  thin and threadbare but  hers .  one leg dangles off the dock .  she pulls out her little box of cigarettes ,  her little lighter .   ❝ was it a happy dream ? ❞    she didn’t think it was ,  but wanted it to be .  he looked like he had so few of them .

dreams have a tendency to stick in his mind.      spilled-over honeystraws;      he has a theory that it is to provide leftovers for beholding throughout the day,      shuddering glimpses of old terror sweet on its eldritch tongue.      he considers lying even so,      but he’s never been quite good at those and lately he finds himself worse,      god of secrets loosening all his precious truths.

for a moment,      he finds himself jealous of her.      it would be so much simpler not to sleep.      to close his eyes for a bit and see nothing behind them.      he has tried to fight off the urge enough times      —      his office is,      off-and-on,      hardly more than a graveyard for scattered coffeecups and energy drink cans,      disgusting as both may be.      in university he had once stayed awake for six days,      a nightmare about certain childhood web-beasts sending him spiraling into sleeplessness.      

(      perhaps it’s wrong to envy karen her lack of dreams.      this friendship,      if that is what it is,      is founded on      ...      some lost aspect of each of their humanities.      some monstrousness gained in the absence.      it must be awful of him to covet something human she has lost.      )

his legs hang off the pier,      tips of his shoes just grazing the water beneath.      rippling.      the ripples are,      perhaps,      not quite what they would be in a normal place;      he cannot seem to make much impact here,      and that must be for the best.      this is her domain.      it would be an intrusion if he changed it more than the bare minimum;      he takes slices of pie at the diner but the selfsame slices have always reappeared on his next visit,      he kicks his feet lightly into the pond but the ripples go naught but a few centimeters before petering out.      

he does not ask her for a cigarette,      but pulls one of his own from his coatpocket,      holds it out to be lit,      please.      he does not answer the question of happiness.

‘      you were here.      ’            not as in the lake or the dock but the road,      the here above the here,      everpresent,      unchanging.            ‘      or      —      we both were.      we were      ...      walking,      silently,      towards the horizon that refuses to come any closer,      and      ...      at a certain point,      you turned to me and said goodbye,      jon,      and i      ...      i couldn’t quite remember if that was meant to be me.      if i was jon.      ’

it is selfish of him to tell her about her own life like this,      through the lens of a nightmare all his own.      he continues anyway.            ‘      i walked a while longer,      and the next time i turned to you,      you weren’t there.      i couldn’t recall if you had ever truly been there.      if you’d      ...      existed at all,      or if i’d always just been there alone,      and there was nothing left to do but walk so i      ...      well,      i did.      i kept walking,      and then      ...      i suppose i woke up.      ’

AN  FOND  GRIN  STICKS TO  THE  CORNER OF  HIS  MOUTH  at  jon’s  heavy,  disgruntled sigh,  the  touch  of  drama  informing  tim  he  is  putting his  friend  through something  very  laborious and  inconvenient  and oh  how  awful  of  him,  but  has  jon  ever  refused tim’s  hand  before? the  holes  burrowed into  their  skin,  the  fresh  memory  of  cries  echoing off  the  walls  of  the  tunnels,  it  hasn’t  changed this.  it  hasn’t.

jon  isn’t  technically  wrong that  the  habit  isn’t  freshly formed,  but  it’s  festering  like  an  open  wound.  he  sees  it  in  the  violet  shades curved  beneath  dark  hues,  the  redness  touching the  whites  of  his  eyes.  it  wouldn’t surprise  tim  to  find  that  jon  is  burying  himself in  work  as  a  distraction, moving  constantly  so  he  doesn’t have  to  find  out  what  will  creep  up  on  him  when  he  stands still.    tim  understands the  impulse  at  least  and  went  quite  a  few  nights  sleepless  to  avoid  what  awaited  when  he  closed his  eyes.  or  maybe  it  just  feels  like  he’s  fighting  back  when  he  isn’t  doing  nothing,  and  tim  understand that  too,  but  it  isn’t  healthy  working himself  to  collapse, nor  is  it  sustainable.  tim  is  worried.  it’s  a  jarring situation  to  walk  into  on  his  first  few  days  back,  and  worse,  he  isn’t  sure  if  it’s  something  he’s  equipped  to  fix  just  by  leaning on  his  charm  and  likability like  he  always does.  

conscious  of  jon’s  damaged leg,  he  keeps  an  arm  instinctively  hovering behind  him  as  he  steps  out  from  behind  his  desk.    

“  oh  come  on, jon.  you  know  it  isn’t  normal  to  stay  cooped up  down  here  all  the  time.  it’s  not  good  for  your  head—  I’m just  trying  to  help.  and  for  the  record,  I  do  appreciate that  I  didn’t have  to  get  any  more  creative  than  asking  nicely.  duly  noted  that  that  might not  work  every  time,  though I’m  not  convinced personally,  people  have  a  hard  time  saying no  to  me.  ”  tim  certainly  has  a  way  of  batting his  lashes  and  getting  what  he  wants, and  jon  knows  that—  wouldn’t be  half  as  good  at  his  job  if  he  didn’t  have  that  convenient ability.  or  perhaps with  jon  it’s  less  his  charisma  and  more  that  he’s  comfortable  enough with  him  that  he  literally won’t  take  no  for  an  answer.  it  wouldn’t  been  easy  enough (  at  the  cost  of  maybe  reopening a  wound  or  two  )  to  climb  up  on  his  desk  and  simply  block  him  from  doing  anything productive  until  he  threw  his  hands  up  and  gave  in.

the  question though  remains  why jon  isn’t  going  home….  if  there’s  something tim  can  do  about  it,  maybe?  if  it’s  being  alone,  well,  he  could  fix  that.

tim  holds  the  door  for  jon  as  they  approach  the  staircase,  letting a  sigh  unfurl from  his  lips  at  the  sight  of  the  steps  he  had  not  missed even  before  his  body  was  so  badly  damaged.  

“  what  is  it  about  going  home  that’s  so  abhorrent  all  of  a  sudden?  ”

tim is charming.      tim is charming and smiling and oh - so - helpful and jon has found it increasingly difficult to trust that truth lies behind any of that as of late:      doubt burrows through the same scabbing-over wreckage that the worms had left,      and it is festering,      is infecting,      is getting worse by the day.      

(      he does not yet know enough of the entities to know that corruption is not simply insects and mold but rotting love,      a hollowing-out of feelings that may once have stood firm.      )

for now his doubt is sidelined by his exhaustion.      he weighs his hatred of being so vulnerable in front of anyone,      even tim,      against the pain in his injured leg      (      only made worse by how long he has been sitting      —      when did his desk become so impossible to leave?      )      and decides,      hesitantly,      that tim will not judge him for picking up the cheap hospital-issued cane leaning against the bookshelf and using it.      wincing his way up the stairs with a whiteknuckled grip on the handrail would be far more embarrassing,      after all.

he nods along at tim’s needling,      only processes about half of it      —      bites back a remark about his impossibility to deny being rooted more in levels of annoyance than in tim’s charm.      tim doesn’t deserve it,      even if it is half-true.      jon is not quite kind,      but the effort it would take to speak outweighs everything else.

until,      of course,      tim asks a question.      jon freezes in the stair doorway for a moment      —      the number of reasons are overwhelming,      and surely,      surely,      tim must feel them as well.

‘      isn’t that obvious?      ’            he begins the trek up the stairs as he speaks,      slow-going as it is.      has the institute always had this many stairs?      have they always been so steep?      it is simpler to live in his office if for the sole reason of not having to go up and down these damned stairs multiple times a day      —

but that isn’t the whole reason.      of course it isn’t.      it couldn’t be anything as simple as that.      it’s the crawling feeling that wakes him gasping with the bone-deep need to check every inch of skin for worms,      solved with a dozen-pack of the most battery-acid-esque energy drinks the convenience store on the corner stocks.      it’s his desk angled with his back to the most solid wall in the room.      it’s the fact that he knows the archives’ weaknesses,      knows the patched-wall where the worms had first burst forth and the trapdoor to the tunnels.      he doesn’t have the same defenses at his flat.      it is empty and bare,      the sparsest furniture befitting someone who was never truly home much to begin with      —      but where once he saw the convenience of a soft place to sleep,      now he sees too much space that may be filled with things that burrow.      whatever weak facsimile of home had once been his flat,      all he sees now is a vast,      empty space,      in which he cannot work and cannot sleep and can hardly even breathe.

‘      it’s      ...      tim,      there’s so much we don’t know.      i still think the vast majority of statements we collect are,      to put it nicely,      absolute bullshit,      but      —      the ones that aren’t,      i need to know what’s in them,      i need to      —      to catalogue them,      to know how to protect myself      —      and all of you      —      from what’s in them,      i      —      ’            this is not the question tim had asked.      jon is deeply aware of that.            ‘      i would rather stay here at all hours,      even knowing that this place is      ...      is wrong,      somehow,      than go somewhere i don’t know how to defend.      i’ve found i don’t much like being at my flat anymore,      if i ever did.      home doesn’t have anything useful.      once,      i would have found a place to sleep useful enough,      but      ...      ’            

@behld​

THIS  MAN  ISN’T  HUMAN.  but  then  again–is  sam,  really?  all  that  thick,  viscous  demon  blood  flooding  through  his  veins,  the  mark  of  the  devil  burned  into  the  underside  of  his  throat  beneath  his  skin  (minemineminemine,  a  very  special  child,  better  than  mothers  milk,  you’re  my  favorite),  head  full  of  poppy  and  dreams  that  dissolved  into  twisted,  nightmarish  predictions  of  the  future,  of  someones  future–did  he  have  the  right  to  judge?  thats  where  things  started  to  get  muddy.  if  dean  were  here,  he’d  slap  him  in  the  back  and  tell  him  that  they  were  all  monster…  except  him.  but  sam  saw  his  wary  eyes.  

he  practically  blinds  jon  with  his  flashlight,  and  the  gleam  of  the  flood  reveals  sam’s  carrying  a  packed-and-loaded  shotgun–the  right  way,  too.  trained.   ‘  step  back.  who  are  you?  ‘

jon has to blink against the sunbright beam of the flashlight      —      he’s not sure it’s dark enough to justify that,      though perhaps that’s less to do with the moonlight and more to do with the silvershine of jon’s eyes and the way his vision has miraculously improved since taking the position of archivist.      he takes a moment scowling in the direction of the flashlight before he notices the more pressing matter,      the gun aimed at him,      and jumps backwards.      ah.      fuck.

@behld​

this violence can’t last. @ tim !

All that can be seen in the dark corner of the Archives is Tim’s eyes. He’s curled , arms wrapped around his knees , trying to slow his ragged breathing. Only a few minutes ago he had been walking back from lunch with Jon when he had felt an URGE. It was the Hunt , he knew. Maybe it sensed something from the Stranger nearby. Maybe it was just fucking with him. It felt like it was just fucking with him because he had found nothing and had nowhere to expend the energy his accidental patron had given him.

It gave him life when he would have certainly died but that didn’t mean everything about it was good. Like the violence that overwhelmed him to the point where he had hidden himself away until the feelings had passed.

Of course Jon had followed him. Tim didn’t want him to but… as he sits , focused on his friend’s face , knowing he COULD NOT hurt him. The urge to Hunt fades after a few minutes. He feels dizzy and exhausted , and he reaches ( carefully ) towards the archivist for help standing.

❝ This shit SUCKS , Jon. ❞ He considers him for a moment. ❝ Do you ever feel… overwhelmed by… your stuff ? Like , do you ever feel like you HAVE to do whatever it tells you to do ? ❞

jon doesn’t know if they’re far enough removed from all the distance that had sprung up between them for him to be someone tim trusts.      he’s not sure how much time is needed      —      does the miracle that is their mutual survival of the unknowing undo all the hurt;      has some understanding of the way jon had acted for all those months sprung up with tim’s newfound affiliation to the hunt?            should he follow tim into the stacks of the archives,      knowing the potential danger?

well,      the last question was never truly a question at all.      of course jon had followed tim.      jon needed to know.      it’s less the eye and more a care he hadn’t been sure he could still feel to such a degree:      he is aching to make sure his friend      (      are they friends again?      would tim fight against jon referring to him as such,      even in the secret sanctity of his own mind?      )      is alright.

jon takes tim’s hand,      helps him up.      he is,      at least,      still trusted enough to do that.

‘      yes,      ’            jon says,      too much honesty in the syllable.      he thinks of the times the hunger for knowledge has become literal enough to make him nearly faint;      he thinks of the supermarket cleaner last week and his vast-tinged spiraling warehouse,      the story collected      —      taken,      stolen from the man’s voicebox      —      in a beholding-starved haze.      (      he wonders,      if he told tim about that,      if he would be deemed monstrous enough to hunt,      and keeps his mouth shut.      )            

          ‘ how many of them do you have? ‘ the girl doesn’t look up from her drawing that shows a skinny silhouette of a vaguely human figure, it’s head keeling over from the sheer weight of the amount of multi-colored eyes surrounding it. it wasn’t done yet. not enough eyes. she didn’t know how many would be enough, for every time she drew one, it seemed more had joined in to watch her. she wasn’t scared of them. people had always ended up looking over her shoulder while she was drawing.

           she picked up a silvery gray crayon, drawing what seemed to be like rays of light around it’s form. ‘ the eyes. there are too many. ‘

@behld​ / maggie short starter call.​

he can’t quite help looking over her shoulder at the drawing,      and his immediate reaction is an almost childish aversion      —      i don’t like it,      as if that means much of anything.      it is a portrait of him.      that much is clear,      though it is not as he appears before her and not as he appears anywhere but in the eye’s secondhand nightmares.

it is      ...      unsettling,      to say the least,      that a child should be able to see that.      the eyes waiting just beneath his skin.      his own monstrousness.

@behld​ :   i didn’t tell you this before ,  but you were in my dream last night .

     𝚂𝙷𝙴 𝙲𝙰𝙽'𝚃 𝚁𝙴𝙼𝙴𝙼𝙱𝙴𝚁 𝙷𝙴𝚁 𝙻𝙰𝚂𝚃 𝙳𝚁𝙴𝙰𝙼 .    oh ,  She remembers what dreams  are  and knows she certainly must have had them at one point .  she is sure there were dreams where she stood in front of a classroom ,  naked and trembling ,  laughter burrowing into her skin like slow bullets .  or maybe one where she is  f a l l i n g  off some precipice ,  endlessly ,  and when she is about to hit the ground she wakes with wet palms in tangled sheets .  everyone has these dreams ,  so it stands to reason she must have had them once ,  too .  when she was once like everyone .  now She is  …  like him ,  maybe .  Him ?  he wouldn’t like that ,  the capital .

     She doesn’t  envy  him his dreams ,  not really .  what does She have to dream about that doesn’t already take up her days  ( nights ) ?  She knows  -  not like he Knows ,  but still she knows  -  what they would be :  winding roads and neon lights and signs to tell her that  HELL IS REAL  and vending machines and gravel and  … 

     these are not things she wants to dream about .  it’s one thing to be  Lost ,  another to be  Lost  in your own head .

     ❝ was i ?  i don’t remember being there , ❞    She is almost playful .  it’s easy to be different ,  with jon .  not so much Her ,  but  her .  it’s easy to sit in the diner and think that perhaps this time she will eat the key lime pie or to sit outside and share a cigarette or just  smile .  karen smiles .    ❝ are you sure it was  your  dream ? ❞

it is      ...      odd.      to dream about someone without it being a shared terror.      none of his dreams are without the everwatching eye overhead,      these days      —      there is no reprieve,      even in the ones he is sure are purely fictional,      for the eye drinks down his fear as eagerly as it does those who have given their statements in the hopes of some release only to find themselves taken deeper and deeper into beholding’s clutches.      the eye is a parasite,      feeding off of secondhand fear      —      and so,      he supposes      (      though it makes him shudder somewhere deep inside      ),      is he.

but of course she wouldn’t do something as simple      (      as human?      )      as dream.      she doesn’t remember being there,      so of course it was not hers.

she hasn’t given him a statement to dream about,      anyways.      not in as many words;      she has told him things,      and tape recorders have appeared,      but nothing the eye could feast on.      he has not said the words:      statement of karen ferris,      the tour guide,      recorded direct from subject.      statement begins.      no one lost on this road has given him one,      either,      though he is sure if he dug far enough into the archives he could find a few.      it feels like an invasion of privacy,      somehow.      and so it was his dream alone:      they had wandered along the road,      and he had stayed,      become like her,      capital-letter lost.      it had been almost nice,      even as some distant part of him had been aware it was a nightmare.

‘      is it strange to say that your not remembering it is precisely what makes me sure it was my dream?      ’            christ,      he thinks anyone not as embedded in the ephemera of the supernatural as them would have an impossible time comprehending their conversation.            ‘      i      ...      i don’t have many of my own anymore.      just      ...      other people’s secondhand nightmares.      i wasn’t quite sure if maybe,      it was your dream as well.      but there’s that answered.      ’