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Opportunity // for John
June 30th, 2021
To say this latest twist Darrow's thrown at them has been challenging for Martin is an understatement. In the first week he'd almost wanted to believe he was imagining it. He'd been afraid to ask if anyone else had noticed, and he wasn't even sure what scared him more — the possibility that there was, in fact, some sort of gradual mass disappearance going on, or the possibility that there wasn't. That it was coming from him. The Lonely seeping back through the cracks between universes, trying to take him back, or to take everyone else.
And when it became abundantly clear that it was no hallucination, and not specific to him, that wasn't exactly a comfort. Nor was the eventual clarity that it was only Darrow's native inhabitants who'd gone. Random disappearance is sort of a given possibility with everyone but the natives; this could be anything from one of the city's arbitrary, temporary whims to a sign of some sort of infrastructural breakdown.
It would be easy, understandable, to panic, to let himself be swallowed up by familiar old fears. And it is with a profound stubbornness that he refuses that outcome. An entire city of people may have vanished, leaving life teetering on the brink of collapse for those relative few who remain, but he does no one any good by fretting over it.
So it is his suggestion that they take advantage, as it were. He and John may have grown comfortable here, but it's times like these that remind them Darrow is still more mystery than not. What investigation they managed in their first few months turned up so little it had quickly begun to feel like there was simply nothing to be found. But perhaps that assumption arrived too easily, perhaps by design. And perhaps, with no one to tell them no, there might be more to find.
Libraries are always quiet, but never to such a profound degree as now: no breathing, no muffled coughs, no hushed conversation, no shifting of weight or shuffling of pages. Darrow's Public Library is just empty, and their footsteps seem like deafening intrusions against it. It makes Martin nervous, adds to the general sense that they're doing something wrong.
No one's here. No one's going to yell at them for poking around behind the desk, searching for hidden rooms in the hope of uncovering some sort of secret information. It feels unlikely, but it's worth a bloody shot, and they need to keep busy. He needs it. He wishes the whole thing didn't feel like such a horror film.
He squeezes John's hand for a bit of comfort as they draw to a halt and he looks around at the utterly abandoned space. "Well," he says, his voice dropping reflexively to a low murmur, "if there was a time to break out the word spooky, I'd say this was it."
To say this latest twist Darrow's thrown at them has been challenging for Martin is an understatement. In the first week he'd almost wanted to believe he was imagining it. He'd been afraid to ask if anyone else had noticed, and he wasn't even sure what scared him more — the possibility that there was, in fact, some sort of gradual mass disappearance going on, or the possibility that there wasn't. That it was coming from him. The Lonely seeping back through the cracks between universes, trying to take him back, or to take everyone else.
And when it became abundantly clear that it was no hallucination, and not specific to him, that wasn't exactly a comfort. Nor was the eventual clarity that it was only Darrow's native inhabitants who'd gone. Random disappearance is sort of a given possibility with everyone but the natives; this could be anything from one of the city's arbitrary, temporary whims to a sign of some sort of infrastructural breakdown.
It would be easy, understandable, to panic, to let himself be swallowed up by familiar old fears. And it is with a profound stubbornness that he refuses that outcome. An entire city of people may have vanished, leaving life teetering on the brink of collapse for those relative few who remain, but he does no one any good by fretting over it.
So it is his suggestion that they take advantage, as it were. He and John may have grown comfortable here, but it's times like these that remind them Darrow is still more mystery than not. What investigation they managed in their first few months turned up so little it had quickly begun to feel like there was simply nothing to be found. But perhaps that assumption arrived too easily, perhaps by design. And perhaps, with no one to tell them no, there might be more to find.
Libraries are always quiet, but never to such a profound degree as now: no breathing, no muffled coughs, no hushed conversation, no shifting of weight or shuffling of pages. Darrow's Public Library is just empty, and their footsteps seem like deafening intrusions against it. It makes Martin nervous, adds to the general sense that they're doing something wrong.
No one's here. No one's going to yell at them for poking around behind the desk, searching for hidden rooms in the hope of uncovering some sort of secret information. It feels unlikely, but it's worth a bloody shot, and they need to keep busy. He needs it. He wishes the whole thing didn't feel like such a horror film.
He squeezes John's hand for a bit of comfort as they draw to a halt and he looks around at the utterly abandoned space. "Well," he says, his voice dropping reflexively to a low murmur, "if there was a time to break out the word spooky, I'd say this was it."