Chapter Text
Michael Shelley is not supposed to be here. Actually, if he’s honest, he never feels like he belongs where he is. He’s developed a nasty habit of mentally abandoning London in 2014 in favor of his own memories of 1910s Scarborough at any chance he gets. However, more urgently, Michael, the one who is twenty-two years old and studying social work, is not supposed to be in the third-floor hallways of St. Francis retirement facility, London. He is not supposed to be tracing the brown floral carpet around corner after corner looking for the 62 nd apartment, but rather in his office, printing out customer satisfaction surveys to put out on the receptionist's desk for the residents' families to inevitably ignore.
It's not like he doesn't understand the business side of things and why all the data and statistics and bookkeeping are important because he does, he really does—it's just that he can't ever quite bring himself to feel like it's as important as the face-to-face piece of his job. Talking to the residents is what really makes the difference, he thinks, after being around them long enough, you don’t really need to survey to know what they do and don’t like about the facility; most of them aren’t exactly shy.
This is especially true of Mary Keay, the resident who Michael was not supposed to be visiting right now. He's met his fair share of say… lovable curmudgeons in the six months he’s spent on staff as a social worker at the care home, but out of all of them, Mary is without a doubt the grouchiest. She always has something not so nice to say: very much more arsenic than old lace, that woman. Except for this past week, Mary had gone quiet and cloistered herself in her room. Michael and the rest of the staff had honestly thought it wasn’t possible for her to become more withdrawn than she was, but then she also opted to take every meal in her room. Sure, it’s not like she was usually doing much socializing at mealtimes anyway, save for maybe making a few snide remarks about her peers to the teenaged dining room waiters, but she’d at least come down!
Hence why he’s taken on the headache of navigating the residential floors’ halls. There are nearly no landmarks to go off when trying to navigate, so the place is practically a maze despite the layout being relatively simple. Or maybe it was Michael that was relatively simple. The idea was not unheard of; He’s he’s even reached a point in life that when Mary took to calling him “the ditzy one” when distinguishing him from the other workers, his laugh wasn’t completely forced. In any case, attempting to recognize the autumnal wall hangings outside of each room to figure out if he was nearing his destination was an errand only a fool would take on. Nobody’s even said anything about the fact we haven’t seen her face for seven days! I’m perfectly within my rights to be worried! At this point, If I don’t check in on her, who will? He never wants to imply the staff isn’t good at their jobs, they are, especially considering how understaffed they are! It’s a hard job too, lord knows he could never do what the nurse and his assistants do. Perhaps that should be a given considering the distinct feeling he’s got now that the floor plans on the wall are mocking him. Still, the work does need to get done. Sure, maybe I also have the smallest soft spot for Mary, Michael finally admits to himself. Probably because she rarely gets any visits from family, He thinks . It has absolutely nothing to do with the silverware-scraping-the-plate-of-his-brain feeling he gets seeing most of the people who attend to her treating her like she’s daft even though she’s clearly very sharp, that’s for sure.
When Michael finally arrives at Mary Keay’s door, he almost walks completely past it. The door is yellowed for some reason. That’s strange , Michael thinks. He looks at it and a knot forms in his stomach; stupid considering how benign this is. Still, he can’t let it go. Doesn’t wood yellowing require sunlight? This hallway is, despite the décor’s best efforts, a cinderblock; no windows. The door isn’t splintered either. It doesn’t look damaged at all. As a matter of fact, it almost looks like a plastic toy fresh from its package. The door’s yellow is a bright primary one, not the biliary sun grime that usually signals damaged wood. Speaking of bile; Michael thinks he feels some coming for his throat now. Get a grip. It’s just so…glaring. Like a neon sign, it’s almost deliberately trying to call attention to itself. Sure, it’s innocuous, but that only made it more uncanny. It’s just a door—so why do anything with it to begin with? The change is so random, and obviously against Mary’s taste.
Michael lifts a cautious fist to knock, half expecting his hand to phase through it entirely; It does not. It’s a wood door, like it’s always been, and Michael just has the nerves of a kennel stray, like he always has.
Except, when he knocks, tentative, the door drifts open a crack. Had it not been latched? Michael’s creeping dread becomes a bolting one. Had something happened?
Newly called to action, Michael pushes the door out of his way and enters the room, breathing hard and hardly registering the spiderweb he breaks in the doorframe on the way.
The scene he’s is confronted with on the other side is not one he ever thought he'd need the words describe: Mary is there, but she’s sprawled out on the floor like a lazily discarded book. As if that book was open to a hastily dog-eared page, a jaggedly carved flap of skin hangs over half her face. Michael is overcome with a wave of disgust, bitter confirmation of his previous fear. His eyes also begin to sting as he’s hit with a wave of grief. Every inch of Mrs. Keay’s visible skin appears to have ink drying on it, though the scrawling that covers her isn’t in any language Michael understands. One of the facilities’ washcloths is stuffed in Mary's mouth, and her head is almost completely shaved. When tang of blood mixed acetone finally catches up with Micheal’s shock to confirm that it is, in fact, Mary Keay's corpse in the flesh in front of him and not some cruel mirage, he feels how he always anxiously imagines it would feel for an airplane mirror to shatter next him mid-flight. He stumbles forward, face scrunched, and fists clenched to fight the feeling of being completely and utterly unbound. He manages to prop himself up against the bathroom entrance and slide with his back against the doorframe down onto the floor, only to lean forward and cover the missing tufts of Mary's grey hair in the wastebasket with puke. Out of instinct, his shaking hand pulls the chain to summon assistance, though it doesn’t take long sitting and listening to his heart pound in his ears for him to realize neither nurse nor CNA would be able to do anything more in the face of Mary’s flayed corpse than become traumatized. Shit, I should go back outside the door, say something to someone, do anything to keep whoever it was that responded from having to see this.
Michael fishes his phone out of his pocket and calls the police. That’s a step in the right direction to be sure, but unfortunately it is not enough to prevent some poor CNA from arriving on the scene and letting out the pinched yelp that finally brings Michael out of his momentary freeze and back onto his feet.
"H-Hello. Sorry,” is all he can say to alert her to his stilted, clammy presence. He wipes his mouth. " I-I was here to, ah, to, to check on Mrs. Keay. I found her...” as he trailed off, both pairs of eyes trailed over to where the late Mrs. Keay was laying, to both their immediate regret. “Could you get Ms. Robinson? Please?” There was a slight hesitation from her—oh, right! "I've, um, already dialed the police. So, they're, ah, th-they’ll be on their way."
Yes, that was what she had been looking for: the trepidation in her features instantly soothed as she nodded and turned to quickly make her way downstairs to the director's office.
Then, far too suddenly, there was nothing left for Michael to do but exit Mary’s room, shutting the door quietly, as if she was somehow still asleep and dreaming on the other side. He then sat himself down on the closest piece of furniture he could find: The forest green brocade couch in the common area, tired coworkers be damned.
Despite the horror sapping the energy it took for him to feel anything at all, after a moment of sitting down he found it in himself to be lightened a bit. Eventually, he registered the feeling of weight off of his chest as an absurd, reflexive relief that he didn't have to be the one to have to figure out how to tell Ms. Robinson that one of her clients had likely just been murdered. The realization that his fear of disappointing his boss prevailed even when lives were at stake startled a giggle out of him, which, fed by adrenaline, mounted into a fit that only escalated every time Michael became aware of just how loony he must look.
+++
Gerard Keay feels like a fucking loon. It’s completely unfair considering he looks the part considerably less than usual. His attorney hadn’t even needed to tell him to drop the makeup and piercings for this court date—the looks he’d gotten from the defense team and psychologist he had to consult with had been enough. Look, it’s easy to be all ‘fuck what anyone else thinks, I do what I want,’ when you work alone in remote locations and the only people you ever encounter are straight out of hammer house. He tells himself, it’s not as I’m pretending to be someone else. I’ve just…got cleaned up a bit. And you know what? He cleans up pretty well if he does say so himself; he’s got on a nice, black tie and a clean button down and dress pants, and a leather jacket that he had draped over his arm rather than his shoulders because the courthouse is stuffy as hell. He even touched up his roots! The whole look was very Vanian, if you asked him. Still very cool. Still me. If nothing else, the ink’s not going anywhere, and he’d made the eye tattoos adorning each of his joints virtually impossible to hide in a fit of teenage rebellion. Worth every second of the pain. Worth the money as well.
He feels less stiff once they are let into the actual courtroom, surprising as it is. The whole building is imposing, they do that on purpose he knows, but once he’s out of the austere marble accented hallways, the feeling that he is about to break something very fragile stops nagging at his subconscious. Plus, now he doesn’t have to mill about surrounded by people he doesn’t know and has nothing to say to;he can just find his seat and sit there.
In the privacy of his own mind, Gerard is embarrassed at how much credence he gives U.K law, something that he’d think would become relatively flimsy in the face of supernatural dread powers. And yet, here he is, admittedly quite nervous at the prospect of doing time for perjury. It’s far more worry than he’d ever expend over lying in any other circumstance.
Hence why Gerard lets his mind wander elsewhere. Eventually, the alleged killer takes the stand, and the podium becomes far less intimidating with the way he sort of envelops it, tall but hunched as if he were a plant growing up against an enclosed space. Christ, Gerard’s honestly wondering if it was even worth all the effort to testify in this guy’s favor, and he knows with almost total certainty he didn’t do anything. Largely, though, Gerard is simply not paying attention. Maybe once in a while his consciousness will resurface only to be quickly distracted by stray thoughts. For example: should he be feeling something, having any reaction at all, to hearing the details of his own mother’s death dissected in such detail? It’s not like the gruesomeness of the of it all was some huge shock to him. He’d known she wanted the book of the dead. He’d just hoped— -
He hoped? Christ, what for? That she wouldn’t leave him alone with an insane mess to clean up? That she’d stay alive ? No, he’d hoped leaving her in a care home would stop her from completing the ritual successfully. He’d hoped when shit inevitably hit the fan, he’d be spared from seeing some of the gory details. And he had, so good. That by itself was good.
Because hope for anything else would be stupid, he’d be right fucking stupid to hope he could be free of her voice, even for just a month. If it wasn’t over the phone, or bouncing off the walls of their apartment, or the bookshop, it’d still be in the back of his thick lump of lead. He should’ve known. After, all, it’s not like globetrotting had ever done anything for him on that front either; physical distance was never going to let him breathe. Had he really thought this attempt at separation would be different?
Is it dumber to think the impossible might happen or to know it won’t and hope for it anyway?
Blessedly, the time comes for Gerard’s testimonial before he has a chance to examine that line of thinking any farther. From one hot seat to another, literally.
“Yes, my mum’s crazy,’’ he says, at one point. Not technically a lie. Oh, wait a minute. “Sorry—was. My mum was crazy.”
“Could you elaborate on what you mean when you mean by crazy?”
“Well, she was very demented, for one thing. But even before she went senile, all the cultist shit—medieval medicines and rituals and the like—she believed in all of it. Wholeheartedly. Had no regard for her health, either, when it all got sketch.”
Was that too on the nose? Every face in front of him seemed blank enough…save the defendant. Huh. He couldn’t imagine what it was like for that poor sod to have found Mary’s failed attempt at become the book of the dead, sensitive as he seemed. He seemed around the same age as Gerard too, maybe a bit younger, though he’s dressed like he grew up in the sixties with his long, curly blonde hair and multiple instances of paisley. Now that he was off the podium away from the court’s scrutiny, his expression has hardened into a sure frown that only gets deeper as Gerard continues to slander his mum’s mental capacity. Oh well, at this point, if he's fucking this up it’s his attorney’s mess to clean up.
Still, when all is said and done, he can’t help but feel partially responsible, as much as he resents it. He’d done the right thing, after all; kept his mum from aiding in the torment of countless people! He knows this poor nurse or whoever (he’s pretty sure he heard the name Michael?) didn’t know that, though, and that he wouldn’t have had to see Mary’s corpse if he hadn’t indirectly put her in his path. He knew full well she was going to pull some shit like that when he had her admitted and decided to do it anyway, that anything standing between him and the apartment to himself was collateral. By the end of the closing statements he resolves that the least he could do was say a polite hello in the face of abject terror. That is, if he’s let off the hook. Honestly, Gerard does not think the odds look good, there are not a lot of explanations he could think of for the crime scene that was discovered that made any damn sense outside of the context of The End and its rituals. Despite that, the deliberation turns out to be unexpectedly quick, though, and to Gerard’s relief, the poor bloke is acquitted.
Gerard gives the crowd a moment to fan out, savoring the process of finally standing up and stretching his legs before attempting to cross the room and approach him. At first, it feels easier than he’d expect; the dude seemed nice—like the kind of dude who wouldn’t stare at him fully dressed up on the sidewalk. Doesn’t hurt that he was quite handsome as well. Not that he would honest to god try to flirt with someone post-murder-trial. Or at all, ever. But, still, he’s not immune to the siren call of the only visibly queer person his age in a public setting, sue him.
“Hi. Michael, was it?” No response. Had he misheard his name earlier? “Thank you for looking after my mum. Can’t imagine how much patience it takes to do your job.” That was a normal thing for a grieving son to say to a nurse right? Or someone nurse-adjacent? It’s now dawning on him that he doesn’t actually know what it is that Michael does. Michael pulls one of those tight-lipped smiles that’s nearly indistinguishable from a grimace. Gerard feels the creep of a certain familiar dread from his younger years, before the pursuit of his mother’s whims started leading him into actual peril so often any sensitization he had to social anxieties was, for the most part, obliterated.
“Thank you,” Michael replied stiffly.
Gerard had supposed the declaration of the not guilty verdict would eliminate any perception that he may harbor animosity towards the defendant, but on second consideration, it makes sense that even with the trial ended, being approached by a man whose mother you’d mere moments ago been suspected of killing may be intimidating, and that clearing the air is maybe necessary.
“I know you didn’t do it. Kill her, I mean. I never thought so.” No response.
Here’s where Gerard’s lack of polite conversation practice unfortunately starts to show as he makes a classic rookie mistake: Impulsively speaking to fill a silence. “Not that anybody’d blame you if you if you had” he quips. This bid was always going to fail, even if he weren’t floundering right now, his sour sense of humor likely would have caught up to him sooner or later anyway. Up until this point, there’s simply not been anyone around to be offput by him. The resounding silence that follows prompts him to look up at Michael’s now horrified face and shit, it’s time to honor that get the fuck out instinct now.
Fuck if he’s not bitter turning away and walking of that courthouse. How dare that dude act like he was the weird one in that situation when Gerard, for once in his goddamn life, put in some effort to acting normal—and succeeded, mind you! He said all the right things. To a point. Can’t a grieving son have some grace for some inappropriately morbid humor? Dumbass. When has there ever been grace for you when there could be grace for Mary?
He'd hoped . Now all he can hope for is a greasy burger before the sun’s down too long. Of course, he’s also forgotten it’s the fifth of November, and there’s a crowd of protesters coalescing nearby he’d rather not have to shove his way through, or deal with traffic getting home. Once he’s past them, though, the autumn air is a huge relief, and he can feel himself loosening up. His dress shoes make a pleasant tap against the stairs and onto the sidewalk as well, one that brings flashes of memories with Eric, Gerard’s father who’d passed when he was around five years old. Of course the fucking murder trial put me into a sentimental mood, Gerard almost scoffs out loud.
Sentimental feels awkward on him, like the itchy, borderline unpleasant Irish wool sweaters that would scratch the side of his face when he hugged his dad. The strangeness of the circumstances surrounding the man’s death put some put some distance between Gerard and the memories though—Eric actually had been murdered, but his son didn’t learn of this until his teen years when Eric’s former place of work was featured on a popular sham supernatural podcast called “What the Ghost?” After that, the true crime community latched on to former employees’ deaths as a topic, and Gerard found, after scouring every forum and listening to any podcast he could, that his father’s death had in fact been classified as an unsolved murder. Many people were insinuating that Mary had been the one to do it too, and, admittedly, he harbored the same petty suspicion against his mother for longer than he’d like to admit. Though he’s grown too far past that to be vindicated now, disappointingly; he knows it’s ridiculous to suspect someone of murder just because they didn’t like him, even if they do their best to always act like some sort of village witch.
Christ, it’s time to turn off memory lane. In a stroke of luck, as he does so spies a red Nando’s sign down on the corner of the side street he was coming up on in that moment. He enters, overdressed, and orders two skewers and an old fashioned. The woman at the counter gives Gerard and judging look to which he responds:
“Fuck off, I’m here from my mum’s funeral,”
This time, the expression of horror he’s caused is embarrassed and apologetic, much to his amusement. He stands around smug for the fifteen minutes it takes for his order to be ready while the space fills considerably. Once he grabs his food and starts to exit, looking down at the walkways outside, he sees they’ve also started to support the beginnings of some crowds. He briefly considers trying to navigate his way home before the crowds get denser, but is quickly persuaded against it when his own hunger decides to make a grindstone of his stomach lining; suddenly, he is very fine with the idea of sitting on the curb in his sit eating takeaway in a crowded public area. He sits himself down and drapes his jacket over his shoulders, now shivering in the autumn cool that had just moments ago been a relief to him.
He thought he’d feel freer once Mary died, thought maybe some of the pressure on him would ease off. His first and only strict teacher was gone now. Why can’t he breathe freely?
Right now, he just feels vaguely shitty. Like how he usually feels after Nando’s. It doesn’t go away once he’s full, and it doesn’t go away after he’s finished his over-priced sickly-sweet cocktail. It doesn’t go away once the festivities really ramp up, and the fireworks firing off have Gerard suppressing flinches.
After a particularly loud boom, Gerard pulls in a wet gasp before he can stop it. For a while he’s able to contain all but a few heavy sniffles, letting the skin around his sternum get flushed red and itchy with the potency of all he’s holding down, though eventually the dam does burst. Later, he will tell himself he was just startled, that, had it not been for the commotion around him, the pressure in his forehead and temples from holding back tears would not have overwhelmed him. For now, though, he is comforted by the familiarity of smoke smell and yelling on the air. Now, the sun is setting, and the harsh light of day has dimmed, and Gerard, in mostly black, feels utterly unwatched. So he brings his hands, still holding his char-smelling napkin, up to cup his face as he finally starts to fully cry. His mother is dead, after all.