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Jon stood frozen, staring at the door in front of him. There had been many like it since he was a child, many times when horror had gripped him as he thought he had caught sight of Mr. Spiders door. But it was always just a door. Similar perhaps, but nothing supernatural, no threads creeping from underneath. Here however, in a residential side street in Italy miles and years away from when he last saw it, was the exact same door that haunted his dreams.
Jon thought it was strange he was so certain. Nothing looked amiss, yet he felt his heart race, palms sweat, and skin go cold as he knew.
The sounds of the street at the end of alley grew faint, and the world seemed to narrow to entrance in front of him.
He should leave. Run.
A louder voice yells that he has to know, has to see what he couldn't all those years ago. Besides, he could already feel himself moving forward, drawn in and arm rising. His mind races but the lines of it all feel like they start to blur. 'Was he making a fist?' he wonders, alarm distant in his mind. The worry is cast aside, it doesn't matter, he was finally going to know. He was going to see what took his childhood bully. A sudden burst of lucidity brings fear. 'Oh god' he thought, 'he was going to die.' His mind rages against the instinct to flee. No! It doesn't matter as long as he can Know. And he finally will. All he has to do is knock, after all, it's only polite.
A hand grabs his wrist and pulls Jon both literally and mentally away from the door. Thoroughly surprised, Jon barely catches his balance, partially thanks to the hand that's still gripping his wrist.
"What the hell are you doing?! He shouts on reflex, vaguely hoping he sounds more composed than he feels.
The hand releases him and Jon looks up to finally get a look at the stranger who stopped him. Combat boots, black jeans, some sort of band shirt layered with a….black and white Hawaiian shirt? Stranger still, was his long black hair, roots beginning to show, strands getting caught in numerous piercings, and seemingly to finish this look, tattoos of stylized eyes at every joint. The man raises a brow, and rolls his eyes.
"Saving your life. Here I am, just trying to enjoy a much needed vacation, but I keep finding myself saving helpless idiots. You're welcome by the way." He says with a tired voice underlined with some kind of humor Jon couldn't see.
"Excuse me? I am not-" Jon cuts himself off from the instinctive argument. He processes the last few moments. The door was back, and he had almost knocked. And this man seemed to know something about it. His pride could come later, answers now.
"Why do you say that? What makes you think I was anything other than perhaps a slightly confused tourist about to knock on a door, maybe about to meet a friend?" Jon asks, almost accusingly of this man who, in all fairness, probably did save his life.
“Is that so? My bad then, go ahead and knock.” he says with a smug smirk. When Jon makes no move toward the door the man nods his head “Yeah, thought not. You know as well as I do, that there’s something off about that door, and knocking is the last thing you should do.”
Jon doesn’t try and stop his frustrated sigh.
“Yes but how do you know that? Have you read the book as well?” Jon asks.
The man’s eyes narrow, “What book? Do you have a Leitner?”
“So you do know about it! I had a book as a child, ‘A Guest for Mr. Spider’ it led me to that exact door. Well...I-I suppose not that door specifically, it was in Bournemouth, but it was that door.” Jon says pointing an accusatory finger in the door’s direction.
“Lucky. Escaped the Spider twice. Well, if you don’t have the book anymore, and you’ve been warned not to go in the door, I guess my work here is done. Back to my normal holiday for normal people,” he says, and turns to leave.
Jon’s heart begins to race again. That hadn’t answered any of his questions! If anything, he had even more now. He sucks in a breath, to try and focus himself. He’s been known to make...rash decisions every now and then, and doesn’t want to regret grabbing this goth man by the shoulders and shaking some answers out of him.
Should he even push? Shouldn’t it be enough to know that he wasn’t crazy, or mistaken as a child, and that here and now he was safe from the spider once more? He knows that yes, it should be enough. But it’s not.
Jon feels almost nauseous at the idea of never knowing, of just letting this person who clearly has answers leave . It feels like the ground falling out from under him, a void that should be filled at any cost. Not knowing is not an option. He’ll do anything to know, even if he eventually regrets it. Jon startles at these feelings and thoughts, a side of him he finds frightening, but inevitable.
“W-Wait!” Jon calls, trotting the small distance that the man had gone. “Please I...I have to know what this is, what the books are, I just-I just have to,” he begs.
The man stops and looks back at Jon. A look of surprise being replaced quickly with annoyance, only to settle on contemplative indecision. He pinches the bridge of his nose, and lets out a frustrated groan.
“There’s a really nice cafe a block from here. You buy, and I’ll let you ask your questions, but you only have ‘til I’m finished before I’m done playing spooky teacher.” he declares suddenly and with a firmness that suggests no sway on the matter.
“I, uh, of course. Thank you...ah?” Jon says.
“Gerard.” He turns, and continues to walk to the end of the secluded alley street, not even bothering to check if Jon is following.
“So, what do you want to know?” Gerard says between bites. Jon’s grateful he’s not terribly tight on cash, because Gerard had ordered enough for three people. Originally, he thought it would at least mean he had plenty of time to ask questions, but the casually fast pace Gerard set was making him second guess that.
“What is that door? And the monster behind it?” Jon asks, almost feverish with impatience.
“Dunno.” Gerard shrugs and says with a mouthful of bread.
“What?!” Jon yells before remembering himself, and glances around at the nearby tables giving him looks.
“Alright, calm down. I don’t know everything about every monster. The door likely acts as a sort of portal to, what I’m guessing based off what you said earlier, a massive spider which will whisk you away, never to be seen again. Or some such awful fate,” he explains with a shrug.
Jon eyes him suspiciously. “Fine. You mentioned Leitner, that was the stamp on the inside of the book I had. Do you know him? How many books are there, and are they all like mine?”
Gerard lets out a dry and cruel laugh. “If I knew Leitner, it wouldn’t make any difference to you, because I'd have killed the bastard by now. But no, he died with his precious library. As for how many, it’s hard to say. Before the library burned, hundreds. And those were just the ones he found and marked. And no, not all evil books of fear are kids books about a spider. All of them do something different, and all of them do something that’s some degree of terrible”
“So there are possibly hundreds of books out there that all do something supernaturally awful to those who read them. Wonderful. But what are they exactly? Where do they come from? How do they work?” he asks.
“That, I actually don’t know much about,” admits Gerard. “Some of them seem to have been around for centuries. They vary wildly and more often than not...destroy those who seek to use them.” His eyes grow distant at that thought before coming back to himself. “What they are...you could look at them as tools to generate fear, as inanimate versions of the monsters out there who stalk our world.”
There’s something to that last part Jon thinks. He had let something that relates to a bigger mystery slip. Jon just wasn't sure how it fit or what it meant. So far Gerard’s answers haven’t given him as much as he had hoped. But, perhaps he was focusing too much on what he already knows, or could guess.
“Monsters and the books, both as tools to generate fear...I feel like I’m missing a bigger picture here. What is trying to create fear? The monsters? And why? Is that why they kill and traumatize us?”
Gerard stares at Jon, takes a few massive gulps from his coffee, and sighs.
“You’re too curious for your own damn good, you know that? Reminds me of...well a lot of people including me. Surprised the eye hasn’t marked you yet. Tell you what, I can see given half the chance you will probably never stop asking me questions, and you seem incapable of letting this go, you know, like a sane person. So, I’m going to give you the short version of what you could call ‘the bigger picture’ and you can do with it what you will. Most likely, you’ll just not believe me or try, and reason it away, but at least it won’t be my problem. Good enough?”
Jon sucks in a breath. Finally. “Yes.”
About a half hour, the rest of the food, and some odd looks from other patrons later, Jon sits there brow furrowed, and mouth slightly open.
“Christ I need a cigarette.” he says before patting himself down and swearing at his lack of any.
Gerard snorts lightly, and retrieves a pack from his pocket, tapping one out and holding it out to Jon.
“Thanks.” he murmurs sincerely.
They share a moment of contemplative silence as Gerard grabs his own cigarette and hands Jon a lighter. A heavy zippo, old, one of the stylized eyes scratched into the metal with a steady hand and on the top, a worn monogram simply reading 'E.D.'
Jon leans back in his chair and looks up at the sky, noticing a fair amount of time has passed.
"I have...a lot more questions." He sighs, and then jumps as Gerard thumps the table with a hand and starts laughing.
"Yeah well, join the club I guess. I'm done with my food, and I already told you more than I was originally planning to. Besides you'll either be fine, or figure out the rest. I mean, I don't have a lot to compare to since I've known this stuff my whole life, but you seem to be handling it pretty well. Most people either freak out, or straight up don't believe any of it." He says lazily
Jon huffs an annoyed breath, but decides not to push it. Gerard had done everything he promised, and then some. He wasn't sure what he was going to do to get more information though. It hadn't been anything like an obsession, but he'd spent much of his life trying to find answers and not turning up much of anything concrete. It doesn't help that most anything one can find on the supernatural is either made up, or a delusion conjured from some sort of unfortunate misfiring in someone's brain.
Jon supposed that could be the case here, but he can sense it isn't. The door was real, and Gerard clearly knew about it as well as the Leitner books, which were the one concrete lead Jon had found in all these years. And as much as the idea of nebulous entities made of fear that exist alongside our reality and graze on our fear sounds crazy, it makes at least as much sense as anything else.
A cough from across the table snaps Jon out of his thoughts, and he sees Gerard stand, tall and a bit gangly, but confident and isolated. Jon stands as well, not reaching the same height and after the conversation they just had, certainly not meeting the assured confidence.
"Well it's been fun, but I'm gonna go. Thanks for the food. You're welcome again, for saving your life. Don't do anything I wouldn't do." Gerard says, and gives an easy going but sarcastic salute.
"Wait! Ah, I-I mean, before you go," Jon says nervously, "Can I have..or, would you be willing to give me your number? Perhaps, we could do this again?"
Gerard looks at him with surprise. Jon can see a small smirk form before Gerard starts putting up an obvious barrier, trying to detach himself. His face clearly showing the thought process of someone trying to find a reason not to do something, but doesn't want to be hurtful. Jon didn't want to hear whatever answer he was going to give. He was willing to jump through hoops if he could get more information, and honestly? Fear monster revelations aside, he had enjoyed himself. He wasn't great at connecting to people and didn't have much patience for frivolous talk and stupidity. Jon hadn't felt annoyed or the need to try and change himself so as not to offend for the whole conversation. He tries to imagine going back to life in the tiny apartment he had rented near the university, about what it will feel like to have this new information and no one to talk with about it, spending the rest of his semester abroad already having isolated himself from his peers, now even farther removed with this knowledge's weight.
"O-or even just to talk! I haven't met a lot of people with genuine experience in the supernatural, and… it- it might be nice to just be able to talk with someone who understands" he adds, swallowing his pride which would normally tell him not to be so vulnerable to someone he barely even knows.
Gerard's face softens a bit and he rolls his eyes before smiling. "Guess I can't shake you. It's what I get for not minding my own business and deciding not letting some nerd get eaten by a giant spider."
Jon is fairly certain he's being teased in good humor, more so when Gerard pulls out his phone. He hands it over to Jon, new contact entry already pulled up. "You better not spam me, otherwise I will block you." He says cheerfully.
Jon takes the phone, it's a bit beaten up, and a few cracks have been patched with tape. The camera lens has a piece of duct tape over it. He puts his full name in with his number and hands it back. After a moment his phone buzzes, and he sees a new message from an unknown number. Jon goes to save it, and pauses.
“How should I spell Gerard?” he inquires, not wanting to embarrass himself.
“Gerry,” he says softly, “Keay.”
Jon smiles, and enters the name.
“Thanks...ah, you know, for saving my life, and everything else. I owe you a cigarette.” Jon tries awkwardly. Much like starting conversations, he has never been good at smoothly ending them.
Gerry shrugs and slides his hands in his pockets. “What can I say, I’m a big damn hero. Try not to stumble your way into any more monster nests. Maybe I’ll hit you up on that smoke some time.” he says with a nod of dismissal and this time, Jon watches him leave.
Overall, a strange day. Jon decides to return to his apartment to write down everything he discovered while it was still fresh, and record some thoughts while he was at it. He had more or less stopped expecting to have another interaction with anything genuinely supernatural again.
Obviously that wasn’t the case, but eldritch fear gods or not, knowing what was behind his life shaping encounter left him feeling like he has a more solid footing. A foundation that should he choose to pursue further knowledge, he could build upon. And perhaps more exciting than that, Jon admits to himself, is the idea that he can share this information with someone, and maybe even be friends. He can also admit that it probably says something sad about his life, that the potential to have a friend is as exciting as finding out answers to a life long question, but he decides not to dwell too long on that.
He wonders if he should tell Georgie. She was always encouraging him to be more social and make friends. He's not sure how thrilled she'll be that the connection was made via near death supernatural occurrence, but beggars can't be choosers.