Chapter Text
“Dan, the goths are back.”
Dan pretends not to hear Herbert as he dozes in front of the TV. Herbert’s voice is not tight with urgency nor strained with whining yet, so it must mean that the situation is not dire. Dan hates dealing with the goths. It should be Herbert’s responsibility, really, seeing as he was the one who insisted on taking the old undertaker’s house. But the little punks refuse to take Herbert seriously. Perhaps it’s because their platform boots allow for them to tower over Herbert, or because Herbert went on a tirade about their celebration of death being backwards and an insult to modern science. Even if the content of the speech varied, the tone was a dead-ringer for Dan’s aunt when he brought home Talking Heads and Joy Division records. Dan wonders when did he get so old.
“Daa-an,” Herbert whines, suddenly much nearer. “The goths.”
Dan peels open an eyelid reluctantly, only for it to glue back down with sleep. He’s tired. They still haven’t gotten into full-swing of experiments since getting back from Peru. Procuring the equipment in sufficiently untraceable ways takes time. It frustrates Herbert. He’s resorted to poking at the iguanas, trying to get them to breed, an endeavor with which Dan wants even less to do than with stealing corpses. He understands on an intellectual level that the iguanas are not slimy, being reptiles and not amphibians, but his brain keeps on insisting that they are going to be wet and sticky. Besides, their little hands creep him out. Eugh. Anyways, Dan put his foot down on not starting on human subjects until they could get some actual safety precautions -- and no, a gun pilfered off a dead soldier did not count as a safety precaution, Herbert. Still, they’ve been running experiments on the efficacy of their new batch of reagent on dead tissue sampled from animals. The old house has plenty of dead rats to offer. Hands-off work, then, but Dan’s still tired. He got stabbed in the gut not even a full two months ago, for the love of god.
Herbert lays down his perpetually cold hand on Dan’s neck like a cattle prod. Dan jerks up with a grunt. Herbert picked up the habit back in Peru, where the temperature difference was enough to make Dan yowl, yelp, or hiss. Herbert, of course, delighted in such reactions, cackling with the sadistic glee of a schoolboy about to shove a nerd in a locker. Some sort of projected revenge, Dan is sure, just as sure as he is of the fact that Herbert was the one getting stuffed into lockers. Right now, for want of a locker, he balefully thinks about throwing Herbert to the delinquents for a second. Then he realizes that it might actually just raise the stakes for both sides, and reconsiders. It’s truly depressing that a man of almost thirty has about the same devotion to petty obstinacy as freshmen fresh off their parents’ leash.
“Fuck, I’m going, I’m going,” he mumbles, wiping off the stray drool off his face. He throws a sweater over his quote-unquote lounge clothes, because the September chill of New England bites even harsher after Peru’s swelter. Before he goes, he throws out a look towards the cemetery from the kitchen window.
Indeed, there they are. The same group as always. The goths, Dan, said by Herbert with the same annoyance as his annoyance at the maggots that encroached on their subjects. Dan looks at the dour little committee of college students, all with teased up hair and drapey fabrics, and instead thinks about the bats in the attic of 666 Darkmore lane. They stopped coming after he nailed a couple of their carcasses to the house’s facade; maybe letting Herbert fire off a shot at the trespassers isn’t that bad of an idea, after all. He clings onto his hippocratic oath with bloody fingernails. Annoying people still deserve to live. He’s not sure if he’s applying the sentiment more to the kids or Herbert.
He takes a leisurely stroll through their small backyard into the cemetery proper, the light of his flashlight bouncing off the pale headstones. He knows the real estate agent was real, ha, sick of them by the end, and not particularly friendly to two guys in their late twenties that wanted to cosign on a property in the first place, but he thinks not warning them about the infestation was a real bastard move.
“Hey, you guys can’t be here,” he says, hoping to pack as much authority into his tone as he can. He knows he’s far too rumpled with his hair far too shaggy to reach the status of the neighborhood guy who yells at kids to get off his lawn, but these are hardly kids. There’s only three of them today, sitting on the dried out grass by the marble bench in front of the Avery tomb, each holding a cigarette. They’ve got a creepy little altar set up on the bench itself, if you can call a box of red wine and some chips an altar. Dan is feeling cranky, so an altar it is, just a shitty one. To add insult to injury.
“It’s public land,” one of the goths sneers. She’s the runt of the litter, but has her hair teased up significantly more and even dyed jet-black, as if to make up for her stature. Dan pinches his nose and tries not to think of who the kid reminds him of.
“It is very much not,” he grits out. That, he knows for sure. Herbert checked it first thing after purchase. Of course, with the cemetery being unused for nearly a century, it can’t serve as a source of subjects. But a cemetery provided already prepared tombs, rather than having to dig out six feet of dirt all by themselves. Well, mostly by Dan. That’s why he didn’t raise much fuss about the house, despite the dubious structural integrity of the attic and piled up belongings of the previous owner. “It’s part of the house, a historical interest feature. The last person was buried here in 1918, and has no living relatives.”
“We are scholars!” Another of the goths exclaims. He must be the most dramatic one of the group. He even has a velvet cape, seemingly made out of a curtain. Dan tries not to let his contempt show. “We appreciate the past, sample it like fine wine, raise history from its grave, call forth its ghosts! Knowledge is not only found in dusty old tomes! Surely, dear sire, you must relate, if the historical features appealed to you so. Please consider how it--”
“Yeah, yeah, okay,” Dan says, raising his hands placatingly, mostly to cut the drivel short. He gets enough of that sort of talk from Herbert. Defying God, turning over a new chapter long gathering dust ever since the time of Pliny the Elder, proving everyone wrong. Jesus. Dan just wants people to live. “I get all that. But it’s still my house. I don’t want you guys creeping around here, looking into my windows at all hours of the day and god knows what else.”
The group does have the decency to shift a little bit with embarrassment, chains and silks and leather jingling and squeaking and hush-ing alongside them. Finally, the last one -- the one that Dan has come to know as the ringleader of the group -- speaks:
“We really are a historical society, at the local university. The plot was going to waste before, so we’d come by, clean a grave or two. It’s all above board. I’m the supervisor, here,” she pats her trench coat pockets to retrieve a wallet, and from there, produces a laminated ID.
Dan deflates as he looks it over. Jane Feldmann, a junior at the history college of MiskatonicU. President of the historical monument preservation society. It even has the official seal. He sighs, and jams a hand into his hair.
“Come on, Arkham has tons of other dusty, half-condemned places you can drink. Unless Mistkatonic’s undergone a significant overhaul since I was a student, they won’t give a rat’s ass where you are.” He hands back the ID and frees his hand from his hair to wave around vaguely. “I know they’ve raised the drinking age, but that means that it’s even worse for you to be here. It’s my and Herbert’s asses on the line, too, if you get caught.”
“Fuck, the old guy even has an old guy name,” the runt snickers, but is quieted by Jane with a widening of the eyes. Dan feels mildly offended. He’s only found one gray hair so far, so considering his choice of career and research interests with all they entail, he’s aging pretty well.
“We’re both twenty-eight, actually,” Herbert says, materializing out of thin air over Dan’s shoulder. The college kids all startle, and, alright, okay, Dan might be beginning to see the appeal of it. It is pretty funny when it’s not done to him. “Hardly old.”
He then turns to Dan, who closes his eyes to not roll them. Not that Herbert would be put-off by it, but they’re supposed to be a united front. They can’t let the kids divide and conquer.
“Why are you fraternizing with the enemy? I specifically told you to scare them away.”
“No, you just said Dan, the goths are back,” Dan counters, because he’s getting snippy. Fuck a united front. He packs all of his frustration into a shrug so violent that his hands slap against his sweatpants. “I’m trying. I’m not especially intimidating.”
“You’re tall,” Herbert scoffs. He pats Dan’s shoulder and gives his bicep a squeeze. Dan considers braining him with the flashlight. “And you’re strong. You could probably wring their necks.”
“Wow, good to know you keep me around for my body,” Dan snaps. God. Like he hasn’t helped with the reagent any, like he’s just good for hauling cadavers around. It was his idea to add a weak solution of morphine as a mild tranquilizer. Then the last part of Herbert’s statement catches up to him. He thwacks Herbert’s clavicle with the flashlight. “I’m not going to kill undergrads, Herbert.”
“They don’t know that,” Herbert says, sourly, as he rubs out the supposed injury. “Well, I suppose, they didn’t, until you told them.”
Dan raises his eyes skyward. Darkness answers him, the stars faint and unblinking, seemingly as tired as he is. He wants to get back on the couch, and sleep for fourteen hours until his next shift starts. He looks at the college kids again. They seem frozen somewhere between fear and fascination, an expression that seems to be default around Herbert.
“Get the fuck out,” he sighs, rubbing at his brow. “Please.”
They do, chains jingling and jangling, leaving the wine behind. He immediately seizes it as asshole tax, and points the flashlight back towards the house, not looking if Herbert follows. He hopes that that’s the end of it.
***
Dan is not religious. He was raised religious, but he guesses that you can only see so many people kick the bucket in your life and/or then come back, in some form, before you start hoping that maybe it actually is nothing but a cut of the movie at the end. Not even credits. That particular inner transformation didn’t cause him much grief, so he guesses his convictions were never particularly strong. He’s not sure if Herbert believes in the afterlife. It seems unlikely, given his preoccupation with death. He knows that Herbert believes in God, though. Not in any way that would make him a member of a religion or church. No, Herbert is as likely to get cast out of any consecrated place for scoffing at the priest as your run-of-the-mill atheist. Herbert believes in a capital-G God, but only for the bad things.
Dan’s caught him muttering balefully after a beaker with a freshly brewed batch of reagent shattered seemingly out of nowhere, something like oh, you just can’t have me challenge you, can you? Dan heard him using God, no damn-it to follow, like a curse after noticing he’s missed a blood stain on his favorite shirt during their weekly laundry-bleaching session. Sometimes, Herbert glares up. It’s a bit of a tautology, really, because Herbert has to look up at most people to glare at them, but in this case, the up is vague and undefined enough that Dan would hedge that he’s glaring at the big man in the sky. It’s either that or Herbert needs new glasses.
So Herbert thinks that God exists and hates him personally. Naturally, Herbert hates Him back. Normally, Dan would find the notion funny -- he’s only withheld any teasing on the matter since it would undoubtedly trigger a rant. But in the week since the last confrontation with the goths, he seemed to be running into them constantly. Maybe Herbert has the right idea, after all, and Dan got on God’s shitlist by association.
When he gets off his night shift at the ER, the short-and-puffed up one is manning the register at the gas station he stops at. It’s six a.m., and he’s trying not to wince at the gray dawn sunlight even while wearing sunglasses, so it’s actually pretty easy to avoid her glare. She does card him for the six pack of beer he picks up, which feels especially rude and petty after the old guy comments. She even makes him take off the sunglasses, and hums and haws at the ID, eyes flitting between the plastic and his face. Maybe Dan does hiss a little as he puts them back on. Perhaps Herbert’s pettiness is getting to him.
Once he finishes sleeping off the night shift, he makes his way through two of the beers and walks to the only bookstore open past dark. Herbert’s been whining about the TV bothering him again, so Dan’s been hoping to pick up something to pass time while adjusting to the night shifts. Arkham often strikes Dan as stuck in the pre-gas light era with the way business was run, with the exception of the college campus. No, that was all shiny and new and convenient, perfect bait for the young hopeful students, ready to spring the trap of a mountain of debt on them. Said bookstore, of course, is on campus. It perhaps shouldn’t surprise him to run into a couple of college students, then, but he still crouches behind the shelf, clutching a copy of Ender’s Game like a lifeline.
They’re in the line at the coffee shop by the hospital. After contributing a fox to their newly-arrived chest freezer full of roadkill and the now-exterminated house rats, he’s upped his caffeine intake. Herbert might have been delighted at the prospect of a fresh, non-poisoned sample, but Dan did not like having to collect the little guy from under his car. So coffee it was, but the hospital cafeteria has not improved in the few months he’d spent in Peru -- hence the coffee shop. He pretends not to notice the club leader, Jane, waving at him in line. He also pretends not to notice her caddy of cleaning supplies. There’s no sign of the kids by the time he makes it back to the house, so he assumes the club has found a new place to loiter around.
He continues to pretend not to notice them in the liquor aisle at the only late-open grocery store, and at the chemist’s when he’s picking up cleaning supplies with Herbert. Herbert provides them no such courtesy, glaring the whole time he’s supposed to be using his chemistry expertise to decide what kind of bleach will be best for getting blood out of clothes. Dan smacks him with the box of latex gloves on the shoulder until he finally drops the preferred bottle into the basket with a sigh and moves on. He sees them lurking around the gate one evening as he’s reheating a can of Spaghetti-Os before another grueling night shift, so he eats his miserable dinner/breakfast on the porch, bowl in hand, trying not to shiver. They leave before he’s done, so at least that’s that.
But of course, they come back. Like a rash.