Halloween I.F. – “Going Dark” – Day 26

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Fern had come here for the journals, but now that they were here, locked in, feeling like time was getting away from them… they weren’t sure that trying to dig through them would actually be that useful.

For a moment, frustration overwhelmed them, anger at themself: for coming down here, for digging into the past, for coming to this cottage in the first place, for thinking that there was a place on earth they could outrun the real problem: themself.

Couldn’t they have gone to stay with a friend? Leaned more on family instead of passively agreeing to get shipped off for some alone time? And now they really were alone. They pushed everyone away all the time. They’d justified their breakup with Trev by finding perfectly normal little personality quirks intolerable. They wondered if there was anyone they wouldn’t find intolerable; it was a great excuse to hold friends at arms’ length, family at arms’ length. They certainly did the same with their family too, didn’t they? In the beginning of all this, they remembered thinking about how they stayed silent in the face of an inanity their brother said to avoid poisoning their own well, too many years of sharp rejoinder reminding them of how their natural impulses were harmful, harmful. They’d done it here, too, made allies and promptly warded themself against them. Couldn’t trust other people. Couldn’t expect others not to be used against them. Even if it was true

But was it Trev who was the problem? Adrian? Their friends? Their family?

Wherever they went, there they were. Wasn’t that really the issue? That they were stuck forever with themself, unable to separate, always listening to the thoughts in their own head, having to make appointments to literally be taught ways of thinking that were less harmful to themself. They’d tried, over the last few years, made various changes to their body, their presentation, their reactions, their name, their presence, and it had helped. They liked themself better than they had. But, fuck, to be able to just leave it all behind, to abandon their body and be set free, the thought appealed—

Slowly, Fern lifted a hand from the journal they were touching. The thoughts, now riled, didn’t go silent, but despite that, they also thought: this isn’t like me, though.

Aris had said that the sorcerer was waiting for someone to let him be alive again. Fern hadn’t really questioned how that was, but given that it apparently required a sensitive, someone whose minds were a bit more open to this other world…

Was Madoc trying to get into Fern’s head? More to the point, was he trying to get Fern out of it?

A bit more chilled, Fern put a hand back on a journal. Now aware of the intrusive thoughts, Fern was able to tune out their meaning a bit more—still thinking them, but responding to them mentally with Sure, Jan and That sounds tough, buddy, in an attempt to defang them. 

It worked, to a point. 

Fern quickly flipped through the books. Several were in some form of shorthand that they couldn’t read and decided to leave behind, but others were in English, though hard to interpret in cursive with spotty ink. Some pages had diagrams on them. One had to bind a fairy and another to control a demon on the top, which seemed relevant, though Fern would need more time than they felt they had to parse them. Others were unlabelled, but had various magic circles drawn on them in suggestion of some kind, and an image of a grave sketched in. 

Madoc had been an accomplished artist. Maybe he should have gone into that instead of sorcery and revenge.

Fern put the English journals in their backpack, with the one that seemed most relevant to their current needs on top, then picked the flashlight and lantern back up. “Miranda?” they called, to no response. The wood-reinforced earth around them seemed to muffle their words, swallowing it, and Fern suddenly couldn’t shake the image of the whole thing collapsing, crushing them. 

Ugh. Unpleasant. 

They were about to leave, but as they passed the glass jars, they abruptly remembered Aris’s freedom. That’s right, it wasn’t just the journals down here—a few arcane artifacts had been stashed which might contain keys to releasing Aris and Bannick. They were pretty sure those two were the only spirits here other than Miranda—Bannick had been very specific about the number of threats—but they supposed they also didn’t know what Madoc had done elsewhere, either. Any of these jars could be some kind of personal prison to something.

Slow and careful, they passed their light over every jar. None of them felt… right. The plant matter seemed herbal, more like materials jotted in the journals than anything else. Still, some looked like seeds, and they grabbed a jar of these just in case.

They hesitated, also, over the meat jars. There were too many of them to fit in a backpack, and Fern couldn’t identify what they were or why they were moving. Nevertheless, they grabbed one—with a silent apology to the others—in the hopes it might mean something. If it didn’t, they sure didn’t know how they’d dispose of it later.

Backpack feeling notably heavier, they took a deep breath and steadied themself.

Then Fern took the door next to the desk, their flashlight in one hand, the mothy lantern in the other, heading into another packed-dirt corridor. They lost track quickly of the number of twists and turns they took, and could only hope that this was, as it seemed, an actual tunnel in the earth and it was the door that came and vanished, not that the tunnel might branch or change behind them.

Finally, the path split ahead of them. They froze there for a long moment, unsure of what way to go. Each direction looked as good as the next; the left climbed slightly, the right went slightly downward. 

Feeling a bit foolish about it, they closed their eyes, trying to focus on what they could feel—or imagined they felt, at any rate.

To the right… they thought they felt that oppressive fury that was Miranda. 

To the left, there was some kind of energy, tangled and complicated. It felt a little, they thought, like Aris and Bannick both, but …made strange somehow.

Following Miranda meant leaving this behind—Fern wasn’t sure if they’d be able to come back to it easily, or at least, not until after whatever confrontation was to happen. And Fern wasn’t sure if they’d be coming back from a confrontation with Madoc at all.

But not following Miranda meant she’d get further ahead of them. Not necessarily a bad thing, but they wondered what she might do when she got wherever she was going. 

Left, then, or right?

[Comment below with a suggestion for Fern]

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