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Penny swept the last of the glitter into the dustpan and straightened up, trying not to groan at the sharp pain in her lower back. Her GP had been very sympathetic when she finally managed to snag an appointment, but the fact was that sciatica felt like a syndrome only old women developed after a long life of being able to stand up properly. Penny, being barely thirty-five, was a little put out about it all.
Over in the book corner, Jon was frowning in concentration at his latest arrangement of the picture book stash. It was a losing battle he’d been fighting for a few weeks, trying to keep a level of accessibility for the kids alongside presentability for when any member of SLT popped in for a quick observation. The cushions, at least, were fairly easy to restore to order; Jon was sitting on a purple flower Penny had bought in the Toys R Us closing-down sale.
“How’s the Julia Donaldson stockpile faring?” She called as she slumped into the desk chair. A stack of completed reports teetered dangerously beside the desktop tower.
Jon laughed. “I think we’re set for a decade,” he said, holding up five copies of The Highway Rat in various states of disrepair. “I’ll put these in the book hospital.”
The book hospital was a newly implemented box which they were now using to store any books which were in serious danger of falling to bits. It was probably twenty books deep at that point, but Jon seemed determined to get it all cleared by the time his placement ended the following week.
He’d muttered something about transferable skills the first time he painstakingly sellotaped the cover back onto an ancient copy of The Elephant and the Bad Baby. They didn’t have the budget to replace books and wouldn’t unless something extremely unlikely happened — the Education Minister getting visited by three ghosts or something — so Penny very much appreciated the thought.
“What sort of stuff were you preserving at your old job anyway?” She asked idly. She had a vague idea that Jon had been something fairly important in archiving before binning it off to teach, but beyond that he hadn’t shared much.
Jon hunched his shoulders slightly and pushed his glasses to the top of his head. The chain rattled a bit with the motion. “Mostly crumbling paperwork from the interwar period.”
“Didn’t you work for the Ghostbusters? Surely the paperwork was at least a little bit haunted.”
Jon smiled faintly. It didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I couldn’t possibly comment.”
Penny fought the urge to roll her eyes. She liked Jon, but trying to gossip with him was like getting blood from a stone.
She turned to the computer and started closing all of the various software she’d ended up needing that day. The system was ancient enough that trying to close more than one program at once could result in a burning smell and a BSOD, which was the last thing she wanted on a Friday afternoon. As Textease powered down, she glanced over her shoulder to see Jon standing in front of the cupboard door, a blank expression on his face. The Highway Rats slipped to the floor, pages scattering into a hopeless mess.
“Jon, are you alright?” She knew he had a bit of a past based on the simple fact that anyone with that collection of scars would have to, but she didn’t know what had happened and Jon was clearly not comfortable with sharing anything about it. Gossip was one thing. Trauma was quite another.
As it was she was sort of worried he was having a flashback or something, which was definitely out of her wellbeing playbook of making tea and giving comforting pats on the back.
Jon glanced back at her. His mouth was drawn into a taut line. “Penny, what colour is the cupboard door?”
That… wasn’t what Penny had expected him to say. “Blue,” she said. “Obviously.”
“Right,” he said. He nodded at the door. Penny frowned at a stabbing pain behind her eye. “And what colour is this door?”
Penny looked at the door. There was something odd about it — she rubbed at her forehead and squinted. It felt a bit like staring at the sun.
“It’s yellow.” She frowned. “Jon, what have you been doing to my classroom?”
“I wish this had been me,” said Jon, quietly. “But I’m afraid it’s someone considerably more dangerous.”
Back when he’d first started in her class she’d taken tales of her new student home to her partner. When Harry had asked her if she found him at all frightening — with the scars, and the slightly hypnotic stare — and she’d honestly told them no. Now, however, the slouchy cardigan and corduroys seemed to contain someone she barely knew, with a piercing stare and a thread of panic in his voice. A stranger in her friend’s clothing.
The yellow door beckoned. She closed her eyes, hard, until she saw stars instead of the handle.
“That’s good,” Jon murmured, suddenly much closer to her ear. “Whatever comes out — don’t let even an inch of you cross the threshold.”
Penny considered this advice for a moment. “Jon,” she said, eyes still screwed shut. “Is this door about to try and eat me?”
In a bout of uncharacteristic cruelty, Jon didn’t reply. Instead they both took a step back at a sudden shriek—the handle was beginning to turn.
“I just want you to know that I hate this,” said Penny. The end of her rope was coming ever more rapidly into view. “And that I don’t understand anything that’s going on.”
“That’s sort of the idea, I think,” said Jon. He sounded almost rueful, beneath the fear. “Understanding it would make it less terrifying.”
The hinges creaked. Penny opened her eyes just a sliver and found herself unable to blink. Something stood in the doorway, impossible geometry crammed into the rough outline of a woman.
Hysterically, Penny started to name the shapes under her breath. “Pentagon, nonagon, triangle,” she whispered, eyes beginning to burn. “Trapezium, rhombus.”
The face was a problem. It kept shifting and twisting, a spirograph of features and freckles. Every few seconds a normal face would emerge, like a ray of sun from behind a cloud, before being instantly distorted and swallowed once more by the enveloping chaos.
Each face was different. Penny’s head felt like it was about to explode.
“Square, circle, heptagon,” she continued, voice both louder and higher pitched.
Before she could really start to spiral, though, a figure stepped in front of her. It took a long moment for Penny to remember Jon’s name, or that he existed at all. She clamped her eyes shut again and felt tears prickling at the corners.
“Helen,” said Jon. His voice was cold and hard. Penny hadn’t thought Jon could sound that angry. “It’s rude to barge in somewhere uninvited.”
“Oh, but Archivist,” said the monster. Penny resisted the urge to check where its mouth was. “I just wanted to drop in and check on my favourite little failure.”
Jon sucked in a sharp breath at the mention of an archivist. It had definitely had the aura of a proper noun, Penny thought, but she had no idea what the significance was.
The light behind her eyelids increased in intensity. Against her will, her eyelids fluttered open.
Jon looked across at her. The cluster of scars on his neck looked almost fresh in the unnatural light.
Somewhere deep down inside, she felt a swell of righteous fury.
“I don’t know what you are or what the fuck you’re doing in my classroom,” she growled. “But if you don’t close that fucking door and leave this place this instant you’ll regret it.”
“Oh, Jon,” said the monster in the doorway. It curled a set of corkscrew claws in her direction, beckoning. “I like this one! Reminds me a little of your dear little friend. The one Michael liked so very much.”
Jon snarled, eyes flashing. “You heard her. Leave.”
“Or what? I’m afraid the could-have-been-king isn’t your most terrifying look, Jon. Aren’t you going to ask me anything?” The thing smiled with more teeth than Penny had ever seen in one place, the mouth spiralling in on itself and down that endless throat…
She startled at the feeling of fingers closing around her palm. “Stop that,” Jon snapped, still focused on the monster. Helen. “The Archive is gone but the Beholding still has its hooks in me. I’m sure I could ask it a favour.”
Penny had no idea what he was talking about, but he sounded like he was lying. It was the insistent tone, she decided. The feeling that the real truth was carved somewhere deep.
“The Ceaseless Watcher does play favourites,” said Helen, mocking. “You were its precious little puppet, weren’t you? Or was that all just the spiders that crawl beneath your skin?”
Jon’s hand tightened around Penny’s. She squeezed back, the rest of her body frozen with fear. The scar tissue that curled around his wrist was smooth beneath her fingers. They almost seemed to match, she thought, and then immediately filed the thought away for a later date. One where she wasn’t convinced she was about to be eviscerated.
“The Mother of Puppets never got quite that far with me,” he replied, after a long moment. “She has plans of her own, I gather. Plans which require me, alive, and far away from any of you.”
Helen blinked its hundred — dozen — several eyes at that. “Well, why didn’t you say that from the beginning,” she trilled, suddenly upbeat and almost at ease. Her face flickered again, for longer, a pleasant and pretty dark skinned woman coalescing from a scrawl of vertices. She smiled, and winked. “Annabelle and I have an… understanding.”
Penny felt sick.
Leave, leave, leave, leave, she thought, each one more desperate than the last. She hadn’t liked this monster when it was terrifying her. She liked it even less when it was pretending to be reasonable.
“Do give Martin my best,” said Helen. The door began to scream closed, the hinges multiplying a hundred-fold as it inched towards the frame. “And tell Daisy to mind her claws next time. It was a dreadful mess when she’d finished with me.”
Jon’s jaw tightened. He didn’t say anything, just watched silently until the handle clicked home.
Penny blinked. In the space between one breath and the next, the door vanished.
“I think blue is my favourite colour now,” she announced, putting one hand on the returned door of the resource cupboard. “This exact shade.”
She kept her gaze on the exact spot where George had slammed a toy dinosaur into the wood, leaving a significant dent, and took several deep breaths. It didn’t really help.
Jon didn’t say anything. She could hear him taking a few deep breaths of his own.
“Fuck,” she said, eventually. “Fuck.” It didn’t feel as satisfying as it usually did.
“Mmmm,” Jon hummed. He took her by the elbow and, firmly, guided her down into a chair. Her legs felt like jelly.
Penny stared at her knees for a while. A light touch to her elbow made her flinch, full-bodied — Jon winced.
“Sorry,” he said quietly. “I, um. Made some tea.” He offered her the mug in his left hand. It was her favourite, one Harry bought her at the National Gallery on their first anniversary. She accepted it with a nod.
“Thanks,” she muttered. She took a sip. The heat was very soothing, even if Jon had put in a little more sugar than she usually liked.
Jon took a sip from his own mug and sat down heavily on the table.
They sat silently for a few more minutes. Eventually, Penny set her mug down and turned to face her student.
“Jon,” she said, trying for calm and probably missing it by several miles. “I would really like to know what the fuck just happened.”
To his credit, Jon didn’t hesitate. Although he did keep his mug clutched tightly in both hands, index fingers covering Cookie Monster’s eyes. “That was a visit from the Distortion. Formerly an estate agent known as Helen Richardson, now… that.”
Penny opened her mouth to interrupt just in time for Jon to continue. Apparently her next question was fairly obvious.
“We first met when she was still… human. When I worked at the Institute.” He bit his lip, worrying it between his incisors. “The Distortion is part of the Spiral. A — a manifestation of a certain kind of fear. Of deception, or madness.”
“Makes sense,” she muttered. She rubbed at the bridge of her nose. She hadn’t had a migraine since sixth form, but she had a feeling this whole experience could be about to trigger one. When she blinked she could see shifting polygons burned into her eyelids. “And why exactly has she decided to drop in like you’re old friends?”
“She delights in pretending to care about people, I think,” said Jon. “Or, well, she might actually care about people. Just not in a way which is any good for them. In this case, I imagine she was making sure I’m still…” He trailed off, eyes fixed on a Phase 2 phonics poster.
Still what, Penny wondered.
Jon’s foot tapped quickfire against the leg of the table. “I don’t quite know how to explain this part, I’m afraid.” He smiled wryly. “I’m sure you’ve noticed the scars.”
Penny nodded.
He took a deep breath. “They’re a… catalogue. Of all the fears. My old employer had a plan to end the world, and he used me to do it.”
Penny’s disbelief must have shown on her face. Jon looked down at his mug, glasses still propped atop his head.
“End the world?” Penny asked. That was some doomsday cult shit. She’d known Jon had been treated badly at his old job — anyone with eyes could see that — but she definitely hadn’t expected anything like this. Even excepting the fact that fucking Helen existed.
Jon smiled again. It didn’t reach his eyes. “Mmmm. Each of the fears made their mark, and the Eye worked through me. It was what Helen was checking — whether I was still powerful enough to worry about.” He set his mug down and clenched his scarred hand, examining the burns.
Penny took a moment to process the fact that she actually believed him. “And... are you?”
“No,” he replied. “No, I lost it when the Institute burned. Thank fuck.”
She’d read about the Institute fire, of course. Once Jon had mentioned the name, she’d spent an evening googling and ended up deep into a few conspiracy threads out of morbid curiosity. Back then, the idea that something supernatural caused the fire had been the kind of loony shit she expected from the internet.
Now, though. Now, she was pretty sure the theories hadn’t gone far enough.
“But you said you could ask a favour? Isn’t that a bit like having the powers still?”
“That was a lie.” Jon sighed. “Helen’s good with lies. Truth, less so. If I told her I was powerless she might think I was trying to get out of something.”
“Oh,” said Penny. That didn’t make sense, but she had a feeling that a lot of what was being said to her shouldn’t.
“Is that what Archivist meant? You were some kind of supervillain?”
Jon snorted. “Sorry, it’s not funny. No, it was my job title. And then it became me. An archive of terrible things, snuffed out in half an hour by lighter fluid and one very pissed off employee.”
She had a sudden thought. “Did you — did you set fire to your office?”
Jon looked at her for a long moment, then burst out laughing.
“It’s a legitimate question!” She hit him lightly on the arm, suddenly feeling much less like her whole body was about to shatter into pieces. “I need to know if my partner teacher committed arson.”
The laughter was infectious, though. By the time Jon had calmed down a bit, she was struggling to hide her own giggles.
“I couldn’t have done it anyway,” he said, at length. “The Eye would’ve stopped me. It did stop me. I had to hand the lighter to a friend.”
Penny glanced at the clock. It was only quarter past four. “And what happened when it all burned? Did it… kill the Eye?”
“No.” This was said with such defeated finality that it made Penny want to cry.
“Oh,” she said. She was starting to feel like a scratched record.
Jon shook his head. “The fears can’t be killed. Everyone’s afraid of something. But the fire burned out the connection I had to the Eye, and now I’m… about as human as I was before I joined the institute.”
That was more reassuring to hear than it should’ve been.
“Good to know,” said Penny. She glanced down at her hands. They’d stopped trembling. “Um. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with this information.”
Jon put a hand on her elbow. She looked back up, meeting his eyes.
“You can tell someone,” he said. “Don’t keep it inside. It’ll twist up on itself and fester.” He paused. “Maybe make things slightly metaphorical, if you don’t think it’s safe to be completely honest. But even a little prevarication is better than nothing.”
Penny imagined telling Harry that a monster had turned up in her classroom and apparently threatened her life. Much as she loved them, she had a feeling the required background information would be a bit much to swallow.
“I don’t know if I have someone to tell,” she said quietly. “Not all of it.”
“Well,” said Jon. He looked much more like himself, suddenly, his shoulders slightly curved forwards and his glasses sliding towards his forehead. “You can talk to me, of course. And Martin. You could, um, come for dinner, or a cup of tea, or something.”
Of course Martin would know, Penny thought. She’d forgotten that he and Jon met at the institute, working in the same office.
She didn’t like to think what else must have happened to them. She wasn’t conceited enough to imagine that Jon had shared everything.
“That would be nice,” said Penny. She glanced around the classroom. It was about as tidy as it would get. The books were put away, and the mobilo was in the box.
The cupboard door was still blue. She nodded to herself, then turned to Jon. “Come on. Let’s get going.”
“Alright,” said Jon. He stood up, pulling his cardigan tight around his stomach. “Um.”
Penny looked at him, head to toe. He was taller than her, just by a hair, and his plait was falling to wisps.
"I should. I mean, I think it would be safer if we walked together. At least for this evening." Jon's tone was insistent. Penny felt a swoop of gratitude in her chest.
Before she could think too much about it, she put an arm around his shoulders and pulled him into a hug. “Thanks,” she mumbled into his shoulder. “For defending me.”
“You’re welcome,” said Jon. He returned the hug, apparently unsure where to rest his hands.
“Don’t tell anyone I said this,” she whispered, as they broke apart. “But you’re my favourite student.”
“Your secret is safe with me,” he replied. He smiled, a private, small one, and went to hold the door. Penny tapped on the resource cupboard once more, listened to the reassuring echo, then followed.
She’d deal with the book hospital in the morning.