#timoth | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

late-to-the-magnus-archives · 1 year ago

Text

Corrupted, Chapter Two: Devil in the Details - a Malevolent x TMA crossover

Tim opened a book he shouldn't have.

When he wakes, he is no longer alone.

AO3

--------------

Tim wakes in the dark.

It’s not the first time he’s woken in the dark. The first, he was fifteen, indulging in illegal alcohol to deal with his father’s premature death, and he’d come to in a sort of… culvert. It was dark, and echoey, and scary, but he’d found his way back out.

That’s a weird thing to recall right now, but his mind feels weird—memories sifted, out of place, like somebody took the books of his brain and dumped them all on the floor.

Well, it’s dark here, wherever he is.

There’s carpet under him. He feels it with his fingers, half sits up, and groans. His head feels heavy. “Ugh,” he says, and pulls out his phone.

The screen isn’t working.

Great. He must have broken it when he fell. So much for the military grade protection promised with this case.

At least the carpet means he’s not outside someplace, so he probably wasn’t robbed. It probably wasn’t a stroke, or something medical. Where the hell was this, anyway? He starts feeling around himself, trying to locate a wall, furniture, maybe a lamp.

Hello, friend.

Okay, so that’s… a big voice, and totally unfamiliar. Tim goes very still. “Hello?”

Take it easy. You’ve had an accident, but you’re going to be okay.

“Shit,” says Tim. “Shit. Hey, do you have a light? I can’t see anything.”

Yes, I know.

“What? What do you mean, you know?”

What’s your name, friend?

Such a voice. Resonant. Deep. One in a million deep. It’s sexy, if he’s honest—crazy smooth, and probably sounded great with an ear to its owners’ chest.

Shame its owner is being so fucking weird. “Come on, man. I need a light.”

In time. Friend, tell me your name.

Funny thing about that voice, though. Tim knows he can’t be hearing it right.

At first, he thought he’d just misheard. Then, he’d thought he was dazed. He must have head trauma, because the voice is not in front of him, or behind, or to the side. It’s not looming above. It’s not piping in from a speaker tucked into some corner. This voice—

Tim shakes his head, smacks the side of it. “What? I’m… wait.”

It’s all right. You can give me your name when you feel safer. Now, I’m going to need you to stand up very slowly. There’s a table right in front of you that you can use to get your balance.

This voice isn’t in his ears. It’s between them.

Tim starts breathing too fast.

There’s a book in front of you, where you dropped it on the table. I need you to open it for me.

“Wait. Wait, you…” This table. This carpet. Tim knows where he is. He fucking grew up here—but his parents’ house could never get this dark. “Wait, what’s happening?” he says, panic rising.

Take it easy, friend. I need you to pick up the book.

“Where are you?” Tim demands. “Where the fuck are you, because I can’t…” He reaches up over the small table to the wall, because he knows what this old wallpaper feels like, and yes, it’s there, and if he reaches higher, he can find the nail where one of the packed paintings was hung, and yes, it’s there, and—

This house cannot get this dark.

Friend, says the voice, just a pinch less patient.

This voice is in his head , he has gone fucking blind, and also fucking crazy.

Tim takes out his phone. “Hey, Siri,” he says.

“Mm-hm?” Siri says, because his phone is not broken—he just can’t see it.

I need police, he thinks. An ambulance.

A priest.

Tim starts laughing unsteadily and sinks back down to the floor.

There is a sigh in his head. Friend. I’m not going to hurt you.

“Sure! I’m just blind, and hearing voices! It’s great! This is all great.”

I need you to pick up the book. Do you remember opening it? The book is what put us both in this situation.

“Us both. In this situation. What, are you hearing voices, too?” Tim laughs again.

Well, friend... maybe I should be more clear. I’m trapped in your body. And I do mean trapped. This is not what was supposed to happen. I need to see the book and verify what occurred.

Like the voice was diagnosing a noise in an engine.

“Verify what occurred. Why? What was supposed to happen?”

Not this.

“Well, bad news for you, buddy, because if you are in this body, it’s fucking broken. I can’t see.”

I can.

Finally, that creepy little I know catches up to him, and Tim goes very still. “You’re using my eyes?”

In a sense.

“What kind of cheesy sci-fi bullshit is this? You stole my fucking eyes?”

Not precisely. I seem to have landed in them. You did use them to look at the book, after all.

“Glad you find this funny!” Tim snaps, because he damn well knows this voice finds it funny, and that is the worst, most inhuman, most weirdly cruel response to a situation of this kind that he can imagine—and it is a response that completely lacks surprise. Tim gasps. “You knew this would happen.”

Not for this to happen, no.

“This. Isn’t. Funny,” Tim says, low.

A pause. Friend. In what way have I indicated amusement? And in truth, he hasn’t, in truth, he sounds smooth and calming and warm, so why does Tim know he finds it funny? Why can he tell how this being feels?

Because it’s a fucking demon, thinks Tim, who does not believe in demons, or aliens (though he thinks they’re more probable), but a demon seems more likely to be trapped in a book than an alien would.

A whole series of thoughts land in Tim’s head like an itemized list.

One: Danny had told him not to open it.

Two: Some of Danny’s contacts had looked around Danny’s apartment and not found whatever they wanted. Maybe they were looking for the book.

Three: They’d killed Danny over it, so they probably still want it back.

Four: Now that Tim is possessed, or whatever is going on, it’s likely he’s become of great interest to the cultists, too.

He is even more afraid. “This is really happening, huh?” he whispers, sick to his stomach.

It is. I know it’s a lot, friend, but I am not your enemy. Please pick up the book.

“How were you in a book?” Tim stands again, though his legs are shaking, and feels along the table. “How does that happen to a person?”

Certainly not through any ordinary means. Open it and turn the pages for me.

“Sure. Sure.” Only as Tim opens the book does he realize he’s probably being foolish.

One (because there go the lists again): He doesn’t know what repeatedly opening the book will do.

Two: He can’t imagine any good reason why someone would be put in a book.

Three: He thinks he might be going into shock.

Please turn the pages for me. There we go. Just like that, the voice soothes, and then begins murmuring in a language Tim has never encountered, presumably reading.

Tim can’t stop breathing too fast.

This can’t be happening. It can’t. Things like this don’t happen, so therefore, it can’t.

The voice sighs. Hm. Well, friend, I have good news and bad news for you. Are you ready?

“I n… I need to sit down,” says Tim, and does, right on the floor. He puts his head in his hands. “This is happening?”

Yes.

He tells himself there wasn’t dark eagerness in that voice, in that word. He swallows. “What’s the good news and bad news?”

The good news is, you are not going to die.

“Oh.” Tim is surprised. He doesn’t find relief in that, not like he thinks he should; it’s just a dull echo (I’m all that’s left, you know?) of how he’s felt over the past month, and it isn’t very fun.

The bad news is the book did not do what it was supposed to do; that is why you’re suffering now. That is why you are blind.

“What was it supposed to do?”

We’ll get to that.

And the voice says it patiently, but Tim knows—knows—it is not being patient at all. It’s being cagey.

Maybe it’s not a demon, after all, he thinks with rising hysteria. Maybe it’s the Devil. Don’t believe in that, either, but foxholes, or something… “Who are you, anyway?” he says, just to prove it isn’t Satan.

I think the more important question may be, who are you?

Tim has no idea what to say to that. “I’m not… anybody.” He laughs weakly. “I’m not even employed right now.”

How did you get this book, friend?

“I don’t even know what the book is,” says Tim, avoiding the question. “Or who you are. Or… fuck, what you are.”

Silence.

“Hello?” says Tim.

I’m here. Friend, take a breath. You’re safe.

“Safe! I’m blind!”

I’m not. This isn’t going to be permanent.

“Explain.”

I’d like your name, first.

“Why? Dark deeds?" says Tim, recalling the few DND campaigns he'd enjoyed while dating Oscar, and later Elizabeth. "Does it give you power, getting my name?”

Oh, this being's chuckle is wicked, absolutely wicked, and Tim would have loved to hear it in intimate, other circumstances because it would be thrilling and sexy and great—but hearing it now, blind, trapped, stuck with some cagey-ass voice in his head, it is not sexy. It is not great.

No, friend. It’s polite. We’re about to be very close for what is hopefully a short time, and it seems to me that names will make this… easier.

“Fuck it,” Tim says. “This might as well happen. Tim. All right? I'm Tim. And who the hell are you? Eldritch Barry White?”

The being chuckles, a darkly hedonist sound. You can call me John. The delivery was plain, calm, the way one says a name. The feeling is mocking, and amused, and sort of weirdly bitter.

“That's not your name at all, is it?” says Tim.

There’s a pause. Tim thinks he may have surprised this John. It’s not. It is, however, the one I choose to use, for… personal reasons.

The voice sounds way too entertained, and weirdly enough, this is the moment Tim finally believes he is not imagining what’s happening.

He would not have imagined someone giving him a fake name that stupid and thinking it funny in this situation. Beelzebub, maybe, or something wild like Radagascar.

Tim goes quiet.

Tim, says the voice, too smooth, too innocent: Why do you have this book?

Tell him, or no? Is there a point to lying?

Blind. Tim is blind. That is honestly so frightening that he can’t fully think past it. “My brother stole it from some cultists. He told me that, anyway. Asked me to hide the book. Then he was murdered.”

Silence for a moment. Ah. I’m sorry for your loss, Tim. This is important information; I wasn’t entirely sure of your innocence, given that instead of releasing me from the book, I seem to be stuck inside you. But I believe you. You mean what you say.

Oh, that feels bad. It feels like some general or judge or ruler, used to proclaiming reality, has decided to call Tim innocent—and if he had not, some unseen axe would have fallen.

“What are you?” says Tim, voice cracking.

Tim, is there a mirror? I’d like to see you.

“You think if we… you… can I get my sight back?”

I don’t see why not, in time.

Tim thinks it’s a lie.

Tim does not care if it’s a lie. He needs it right now, so he walks.

He knows where a mirror is, of course. He knows how many steps to the bathroom in this house he’s lived in most of his life. Knows how to turn on the light he cannot see, and where to stand.

Oh, Tim, says John, warm and rich and genuinely pleased now. You’re a very handsome man.

“Sure,” Tim mutters.

This is good. We can use this.

Tim can’t help blurting. “Why? Did I stumble into Whore of the Rings, or something?”

He’s definitely surprised the being this time, and surprised it into laughing. Just as evil a sound, just as deep, more toe-tingling powerful than that chuckle, but… genuine. That’s clever, Tim. And no. I do not think whoring, per se, will get us out of this. However, humans do respond well to attractiveness—and you are very attractive. We can use this to find out what we need about our situation. To find help.

“Help? How? With who? I’m not going to go to the people who killed my brother. Fuck no, I’m not doing that.”

No, I wouldn’t suggest that. Whatever human nonsense they intended here has been compromised, and you would not be safe. I do not want you to be killed in some mistaken effort to free me. No. We will find another way.

Tim swallows. “Okay, first: human? Like you’re not one. And second, which should probably be first, kill me to free you?”

There are misguided people who would do that, yes.

“Oh, but you’re on my side now, is that it what I’m supposed to believe?”

Simply put, I like you; your death would be a sad and unnecessary end, and I wish to prevent it. So, Tim: is there a wizard in your life?

Is there a—

Tim needs a moment.

The large furniture is already gone from this place, so there is nothing to sit down on beyond the floor. He leaves the bathroom, leans against the wall and slides down, knees to his chest.

At least the being isn’t pretending not to be dangerous.There has to be some security in that. Some reassurance. Tim rubs his face. “Wizard. Are you serious?”

Your brother clearly knew some.

“Well, we… we didn’t run in the same circles.”

It hardly has to be the same. Sorcerers. Worshipers. Something.

Tim laughs. “No. I worked in publishing. I don’t know anybody like that. And maybe Danny did, but he didn’t label his contacts, so fuck if I know who they were.”

A pause.

All right. We’re going to need someone versed in the esoteric, Tim. Since deciding (apparently) not to kill him, John has changed how he says Tim’s name. It’s warm. Mildly affectionate, the way one might talk to a favorite plant.

Tim takes a shaky breath. “I don’t know anybody like that.”

There must be someone.

Tim tries to think. Gods, he wishes Danny were alive. He could ask. Danny would know. Danny would have friends. “I’m thinking,” he says.

Take your time, Tim. It’s all right.

Fuck this voice. Fuck this voice’s owner. Fuck whoever had the book, and then put the voice in it, and then made it so damn easy to undo.

(What had been the intended effect, anyway? Just freeing this thing? Worse? Maybe taking more than his eyes?)

For no reason, eyes makes Tim think of a news item from a few years ago that had everybody laughing. Files had been leaked, and an academic institution found itself raked through the coals for hoarding nonsense.

Supposedly.

He'd paid no attention at the time because it obviously was nonsense. Except now, nothing is obvious, at all.

“There may be someplace we can go,” he says, softly. “I…” His voice cracks. “I’m going to do a search on my phone, but you’ll need to read the results.”

Clever boy. Go on.

It helps, that praise. Which is stupid. It shouldn’t help. But it does. Why?

Well, Tim knows why (he knows his proclivities), but this is not the time to enjoy praise from someone in control because Tim did not give that someone control, and that matters.

Also, that someone is an inhuman monster. So.

Moving right along: “Hey, Siri.”

“Yes, boss?”

“Search 'The Magnus Institute, London.'”

#tma #malevolent #tma fic #malevolent fic #tma crossover #malevolent crossover #tma x malevolent #malevolent x tma #tim stoker #timother stoker #the king in yellow #kiy malevolent #hastur malevolent

12 notes · View notes