07 – The Archives Hold All Knowledge

Erika didn’t want to look too suspicious as she stalked around the church. Not the easiest thing in the world when it was three in the morning. Anyone was suspicious at this hour. It was some small consolation that there was next to no traffic or pedestrians in the area of the Old St. Patrick’s Church at this time.

That said, Erika wasn’t one for subtlety. That nun was in some way associated with this church. Maybe finding Friar Tuck inside would be an acceptable alternative. If Erika could ask a question or two, she felt it could open the floodgates. Erika walked right up to the front doors of the church, the same ones the nun had walked inside the other day ago, and tried opening it.

Locked.

Which, to be fair, Erika more or less expected.

She tried the next most direct method of gaining entry: Knocking.

A minute. Knock. Two. Another knock.

Nothing.

“Well, fine then,” Erika murmured.

She reached into her jacket pocket. It was empty but…

Another trick. One that was hers alone. Carter had tried and tried but just couldn’t quite understand how she was able to do it.

Erika pictured a bobby pin. One particular pin she could remember sitting at the bottom of her dresser drawer. It wasn’t hard to imagine. Erika had always had a good memory of these kinds of things.

It was perfectly plausible to have placed it into her pocket at one point in time. Nobody knew her pocket was empty. Nobody knew about the pin. Even if they did, they would just assume that she had moved it.

She didn’t know how it worked. It felt like she was lifting it up off the bottom of her dresser, as if she were picking it up with her bare hand. There was a strange sensation of movement, like she somehow maneuvered it around the closed drawer, sliding it between the gaps in… something, through the intervening space, and straight to her pocket.

Thus, Erika pulled out a thin metal bobby pin from her jacket pocket.

There was a slight resistance as she pressed it to the lock. With a look of concentration, the resistance gave way and the bobby pin slid inside as easily as the key that had been made for the lock.

With a twist of her wrist, the bolt slid aside and Erika pushed open the door.

The interior was a wide-open chapel. There was a small bowl near the entrance on a stone pillar and, beyond that, several rows of curved pews. Erika wasn’t sure what the bowl was for. Her family wasn’t religious in the slightest. Rather, her mother had always been somewhat hostile anytime someone knocked on their door with proselytizing on their mind.

To the best of her knowledge, this was the first time she had ever stepped foot inside a church.

Erika wasn’t all that impressed. Perhaps it would look more awe-inspiring with light streaming in through the tall columns of stained glass windows that lined the walls of the chapel. As it was, there were just a few dim lights that only served to keep people from tripping over the pews.

“Hello?” she called out as she stepped further into the chapel.

A slight wind at her back made her whirl around. But there was nothing there. Just the three large doors that exited out to the street. She slowly turned a full circle, eyes searching up in the rafters for any sign of vents that might have caused the breeze.

In doing so, she looked around the place. It was clear that it was empty. Someone could hide between some of the pews but Erika didn’t find it very likely. There was a balcony over the entrance with more pews. Just the same, she figured one of the two doors at the far end of the room would lead her to better clues.

This would have been better done on the night that the nun had met with that man. For all Erika knew, the nun was long gone, never to return.

Nevertheless, she pressed forward.

The platform at the head of the chapel had two doors on opposite sides. The one on the left opened to some kind of storage and preparation room. There was a sink, some kind of altar or podium that could be moved about, and several cupboards. Erika didn’t bother going through them.

The door on the right had an exterior door in a small room, locked from the inside. Peeking out, Erika found it opened the courtyard from earlier in the evening. Of greater interest was the stairwell that led downward. A bright yellow light illuminated the stairs from an open door at the bottom.

Erika purposefully thumped her boots on the stairs as she descended. Not enough to sound like a child throwing a temper tantrum. Just enough to alert anyone down below that someone was headed down the stairs. She wasn’t here to fight or burgle, just to ask some questions.

Another breath of hot air tingled the hairs on her neck, under her long, loose braid that hung down her back. She slammed her elbow backward, expecting to find some creep right behind her.

Her arm passed through nothing but air. Spinning once again, Erika stared at the stairs. No one could have scrambled up them fast enough or quietly enough to have gone unnoticed. She was alone.

Spotting a vent in the corner of the lower landing, Erika glared and shook her head. The twin strands of loose hair hanging down on either side of her head shook back and forth, disturbed lightly by a faint breeze coming from the opening.

She was getting spooked for nothing.

Turning back to the door, she slowly pushed it all the way open.

The room beyond was some kind of archive, as expected based on what the friar had said. A massive hall, likely as long as the chapel above, though lacking the high ceiling. Shelves of files and boxes lined the walls. The shelves didn’t even have space to walk between them. Large wheels on the ends of the shelves allowed them to be rolled out and accessed, as one was toward the center of the room.

“Hello?” Erika tried again as she stepped into the room despite not seeing anyone. The lights were on, which made her think someone was home, but it would be hard to miss someone unless they were hiding in the narrow gap between the tops of the shelves and the ceiling of the room.

She still walked through the archives, noting the labels on the ends of each of the retractable filing cabinets. Some made sense. Especially those closest to the door. Church Records 1901-1950, 1951-2000 and so on. Historical Sermons. Mass Attendance 1951-2000.

Then there were the odd ones. Block Occupancy N Chicago. Mundane Gang Membership 2006-2010. Mundane Criminal Activity 2016-2020. Chicago Mayor Brower History 1988-. Purple Pig Restaurant Menu and Recipes 2009-. Finnis Elementary School Attendance and Grade Records 1901-1968. Stoplight Patterns E Lake St to Roosevelt Rd.

Each seemed more bizarre than the last. The shelves cataloged everything and yet in seemingly random categorizations. And the archives just kept going. Erika felt like she had walked twice as far as she had through the chapel above and it still looked like there was another chapel’s worth of filing cabinets left. Turning back to the door that opened to this room, the door was tiny with how far away it was. Like she had walked far, far more than she had.

In looking back, Erika’s eyes drifted almost on their own toward one cabinet in particular. It was like some movement had caught her attention despite nothing in the room having moved. Despite being so far away from the cabinet, once she focused on it, she found herself at the cabinet in a mere three steps.

The same thing that Carter did with time except applied to space. Erika wondered if Carter could do something similar. After all, time and space were supposedly inexorably linked. At least so said her science teachers.

That was a good thing. This place wasn’t normal. She was almost giddy. Her whole life, it had just been her and Carter. Now this? This place was something related to the Walker family—or rather, what the Walker family could do.

Because of that familiarity, Erika didn’t have much problem shrugging off the oddity. Carter would have loved to see it. She doubted she would have been able to drag him away while he looked around the room, rather than the archives. Or else he would have unraveled how it was done in seconds. Erika didn’t bother trying, she was more interested in the information on the shelves.

Clients of The Church 2000-.

Clients seemed like an odd thing for a church to have. Patrons, members, clergy, maybe even staff. But clients? The word, even though she didn’t know much about religion, just felt wrong.

Reaching out, she spun the brass knob on the wheel, pulling the cabinet out from its slot in the wall. Each shelf inside had a date and it only took a moment to find *October 2025. There were only two documents in October. The first, when she pulled it out and flipped open the front cover, listed the date as the first of October. She closed it without looking through it and pulled the second, thinner folder from the shelf.

October 7th, 2025. Meeting unaffiliated independent The Fixer regarding possible (unconfirmed) mummy threat. Meeting notes added to The Fixer’s file.

Erika flipped the paper, looking for anything else, but the thin file contained only the one page. No actual notes or information. Everything must have been in this Fixer file.

Snapping the folder closed, she replaced it on the shelf and looked around the archives once again, narrowing her eyes. Just as last time, she found her attention drawn to one particular shelf. It was a strange sensation. Like she wasn’t in full control of her actions even though she could look away at will. The room was already strange enough with its size and the time it took to walk across. Perhaps there was something else present to help people locate information they needed?

Deciding not to question it as long as it was helpful, Erika stalked over to the new shelf.

Unaffiliated 1601-.

Unaffiliated was what that file had said. But… unaffiliated what? And if the numbers were years, as the numbers on the other cabinets seemed to be, then this collection went back four hundred years. Older than the United States. Older than the City of Chicago or the Old St. Patrick’s Church.

The shelf was further broken up into binders of varying thickness. Again, each had a label. Erika’s eyes roamed over the array. Collection: Abberant-Selkie. Collection: Abberant-Mothman. Collection: Abberant-Tsuchigumo. Collection: Abberant-Siren. Collection: Artificial-Constructed. Collection: Artificial-Spontaneous. Collection: Genius. Independent: The Mortician—which had three separate volumes. Independent: The Barista. Independent: The Fixer.

The latter binder, titled The Fixer, was the one mentioned in the client book. It was thick. One of the thicker books, not counting the ones for The Mortician. Flipping open the front cover, she found a few hundred pages. Thankfully, the first gave something of a summary.

The Fixer. Outsider-class being. Threat rating: Seven. Stability rating: Eight.

Aliases: Van Vaughn (1701 Aug. – Unknown). Prudence Piper (1757 Nov. – Unknown). Mister Dice (1759 – Current). Sin Ansink (1836 Jan. – 1902 Dec.). Fakhry (1848 Dec. – 1907 Jan.).

The list went on and on. There were at least thirty names. Some of their dates overlapped with others. But her eyes jumped to the very final name on the list.

Leah Walker (2025 Sept. – Current).

Erika stared for a long moment, just reading and rereading that name over and over again.

Leah Walker, an alias of this… Fixer. Outsider-class being. Neither meant anything to Erika. The date was just last month. Erika could probably fill in a more precise date with what she knew. But this… This was confirmation more than anything. Something had stepped into her mother’s shoes. How that happened remained to be seen.

Hoping for clues in the more recent pages of the binder, perhaps of that client meeting, Erika started flipping to the end.

A hand, covered in tiny mirrored octagons, appeared on the open page of the binder. Erika let out a yelp, dropping the book as she jumped back. She bumped into the shelf behind her, pressing up against it even as she watched the book simply hover in mid-air.

Another mirror-covered hand appeared underneath the book, revealing what was keeping it aloft. More octagonal mirrors flipped over, revealing their mirrored side, as they worked their way up the arm. They revealed a skeletally thin arm attached to a gaunt, humanoid body. It was only humanoid in that it had two arms and two legs. It stood tall in the archives, hunched over with its spine in an arch. The octagonal mirrors tessellated, a pattern that made Erika’s head throb as the creature finished revealing itself.

It bent in stiff, machine-like movements, turning away from Erika to carefully replace the binder on the shelf. All along its back, rows and rows of thin, human arm-length green rods jutted out, glowing faintly. It evoked the image of cartoon nuclear fuel rods, each contained in glass capsules.

With the book placed on the shelf, it spun the wheel with one arm, wheeling the cabinet back into the closed position. At the same time, it turned, bending its head up and over its back to stare at Erika. Its eyes, tiny television screens displaying pure static, were at the bottom of its face. A burst of steam escaped from somewhere along its extended neck and, with it, its head spun around until its eyes were upright. As soon as it stopped moving, more steam erupted from the creature.

Odd spatial distortions were something Erika could shrug off without batting an eye.

Giant skeletal mirror robots releasing bursts of steam from their joints?

Erika screamed even as she tried to flee.

A mirror-covered arm appeared in front of her, slamming into one of the cabinets. Another hand gripped the front of Erika’s jacket, pinning her against the shelves as the face with its static eyes lowered down to her level.

She needed something. Something to hit it with and break loose.

The first thing that popped into her mind was a baseball bat. She could picture it perfectly. The aluminum metal, the tape wrapped around the grip, the little blue swirl logo on the end. Leah—the real Leah—had bought it for Carter back before she really internalized that Carter wasn’t the kind of boy to go out hitting balls with sticks.

It was too long. Not plausible. She had been warned against doing anything that wasn’t plausible for someone to accomplish through mundane means.

The mirror creature closed the gap between their heads. The static eyes bored into Erika.

She tried to think of something else. Anything that represented a weapon. Nothing jumped to mind and, in a panic, she forced the bat. This creature wasn’t plausible. Who cared about a bat in her pocket?

Hand diving into her pocket, she pulled out the entirety of the aluminum bat. In the same motion, she brought it up, smacking it against the underside of the arm that pinned her against the wall.

Fragments of mirror flew into the air as the arm hung limp and broken. Wires joining the two halves kept it from falling completely, leaving it dangling between her and the creature. The robotic creature didn’t make a single noise of pain or shock, but its head turned to examine its broken arm with a small hiss of steam.

That was enough for Erika. She ducked underneath the other arm and sprinted, clutching the bat in both hands.

The odd spatial nature of the archives didn’t impede her path to the door. If anything, it helped. Once she focused on it, she reached the door in a mere three steps. She climbed up the stairs three at a time and shoved open the door leading to the courtyard just to get out of that church all the faster.

The courtyard was the same grass lot the little gathering had taken place in earlier, nestled between the church and a few other religious buildings in the area. The gate was closed but Erika swung the bat, shattering iron with all the subtlety of a battering ram.

Erika turned toward her truck, parked roughly where she had been spying on the meeting the other night, only to freeze as the front door of the church opened. She tensed, expecting that mirrored creature again.

A man stepped out. A perfectly ordinary man. He had short gray hair and a matching, bushy mustache. With black slacks, a button-up shirt that wasn’t done up the whole way, and a necktie hanging loose, he looked more like an office worker who had just gotten off an overtime shift.

Erika didn’t relax at the sight of him. The fact that he was coming out of the church and stepping out into the street—putting himself between her and her truck—was enough to make her relieved that she hadn’t rushed through the chapel to get out.

The way he looked at her with flat eyes and heaved a sigh that screamed of an overworked office worker fed up with back-to-back shifts didn’t do a thing to help.

Erika spun her bat around her open palm before gripping it, hoping that looked somewhat intimidating. She pointed the tip at him, arm outstretched. “Keep away,” she said.

Which only made him sigh again. “Really?” he asked, casting his eyes to the stars above as if they would help. Whatever answer he hoped for, he clearly didn’t get. He raised a hand, pointing with all his fingers in a lazy gesture. “Dispel Enchantment.”

Erika tensed again but… nothing happened. That confused the office worker as well. He looked at his hand and then over at the gate before finally settling his eyes on her extended bat.

“Ah. A cursed object. Suspend Curse,” he said, waving a hand again.

And again, nothing happened.

Erika didn’t know what he was thinking. If not for seeing that monster in the archives, she might have thought he was a role-player. Or insane. Was there much of a difference?

As it was, she didn’t want to give him the chance of finding some spell that worked. She dashed toward him, bat at the ready.

“Teleportation,” he said, tone just as bored as before. A sharp crack, like gunfire or the world’s weakest lightning bolt, echoed down the street.

He vanished.

Erika whirled. She had no idea what was going on but still fully expected him to appear directly behind her.

He was behind her but not anywhere near close enough to strike. He stood by the broken gate, picking up a piece of the iron to look at it a little closer.

Erika didn’t stick around. He wasn’t between her and her truck anymore. She made it three steps.

“Spatial Alteration.”

The three steps she took barely carried her away from the sidewalk. Erika broke into a full-on sprint but, if anything, the red pickup just kept getting further and further away.

“You may as well give up.”

The voice sounded much closer than before. Spinning, Erika threw a blind swing that passed through nothing but air.

“The Analyst wishes to interrogate you,” he said, still crouched, examining the remains of the gate. She was barely five steps off the sidewalk.

“Fuck that,” she said, stepping back toward him with the bat raised.

No matter how many steps she took, she didn’t get closer to him. Whatever was keeping her from her car also kept her from attacking the man. He was the one keeping her here. There was some… magic here. She couldn’t think of anything else it could be. Neither she nor Carter had to speak spells to do the unnatural things they did.

Because, they weren’t doing anything unnatural. If the world didn’t want to act the way it did, it wouldn’t let them steal time or break things.

The man groaned, tossing a piece of the gate aside as he stood fully. “You’re making me use more of my spells? The more I use, the less happy I’ll be. You should surrender now.”

Erika narrowed her eyes, looking around, trying to see something of the magical effect in the area. There was nothing physical to swing at. Nothing that she could see, anyway.

She swung the bat again, bringing it down on the asphalt street. The hollow aluminum rang like a bell as a sliver of a crack formed in the road. Erika concentrated, widening that sliver into a small gap. She pushed herself further, going far beyond anything she had ever done before. The gap spread, elongating and widening. It turned to a fissure and then a full crevasse.

Leah would have killed her. Fake Leah might still kill her—assuming that the Fixer thing didn’t drop whatever pretenses it had of being Leah.

At the moment, Erika didn’t care. She watched with some satisfaction as the mustached man threw himself to the side to avoid the gap opening beneath his feet.

He didn’t teleport. Erika wasn’t sure why but she wasn’t about to let up. Picking up a chunk of the broken street at her feet, she flung it. It didn’t reach him, falling far shorter than it had any right to. The moment it touched the ground, Erika broke it once again. The chunk didn’t just land in one spot, it skidded along.

Each impact split. At every point, a crack turned to a gap turned to a fissure. Five widening crevasses in the ground broke apart the street. A full section collapsed entirely and a high-pressure stream of water shot up into the sky, likely from the fire hydrant line.

“Teleport.”

Now, he used his magic to escape. At the same time, Erika felt something change in the air around her.

Taking the chance, Erika turned and sprinted toward her truck. This time, she actually made progress. The office worker could only do one thing at a time? Good to know if true. But she didn’t see him anywhere. She risked a glance over her shoulder, back toward the church. He wasn’t there either.

Erika jumped into her truck and slammed her foot down on the gas pedal the second she started the engine. The pickup didn’t so much peel out as it lurched and lumbered down the street. Nevertheless, she was moving. Actually moving, not just spinning her wheels in place without getting anywhere. Erika didn’t drive with any destination in mind. She just drove to get away from that church.

She had escaped.

Hadn’t she?

No. Not yet.

Erika paused at a red light and pulled out her wallet. She pulled out the fake driver’s license within and then pulled open the glove compartment and withdrew a pair of scissors. Without hesitation, she snipped the ID in two. Then in four. She flung the pieces from her window and drove on. Two lights later, she fetched a small envelope from the glove compartment and rummaged about for a replacement. A new, fresh driver’s license went into her wallet.

There.

Escaped.

Right?

Some small feeling of doubt took hold of the back of her mind. That office worker had been doing things that she would have figured only she or Carter could have done a week ago. He had to announce what he was doing, which gave some disturbing insight.

He could teleport. Move from one location to another instantly. Erika didn’t know his limitations. For all she knew, he was teleporting from rooftop to rooftop, watching her for a later ambush.

Erika’s fingers tightened around the steering wheel.

Then there was that mirror monster. It had been invisible before taking that book from her. Probably. Unless it had just teleported in front of her as well, but Erika didn’t think so. It had taken the book back, revealing itself slowly yet surely. If it went invisible again, it could easily have climbed into the back of her truck without her any the wiser. The pickup didn’t feel like it was any heavier than normal. That… Did that even mean anything?

Erika felt in over her head. Like she had been walking into a swimming pool only to unexpectedly find herself falling into the deep end. Except, it wasn’t a swimming pool. Erika knew how to swim. She had instead stumbled into the deep end of a game to which she didn’t know the rules.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket, nearly giving Erika a heart attack. It was a good thing there was next to no traffic. She had swerved halfway into an oncoming lane.

Slowing, but not stopping, Erika pulled out her phone and checked the screen. She let out a small sigh of relief when it was only Carter wondering if he could go to sleep yet. Like the last time she had staked out this place, she had asked him to keep an eye on Leah and, if his lack of any texting earlier meant anything…

Leah was home. The Fixer. Mister Dice. All those other aliases in that book, assuming it could be trusted. And what of Leah? Leah Walker—the real Leah Walker—had been replaced by that Fixer creature. Some being at least four hundred years old who had worn multiple faces in that time.

For a moment, Erika considered texting Leah, asking for help. Outsider-class being or not, Leah was still a familiar face and, in the two weeks since this being had replaced the real Leah, it hadn’t so much as harmed a hair on her or Carter’s heads.

Fear stayed her hand. Fear of the unknown being, fear of being exposed as having followed that being to its meeting, and a fear of what it might do to Carter if it was exposed. As long as it thought it was safe, it would probably carry on with its Leah act.

She couldn’t go home either. Not if that teleporter or that mirror monster were following her.

Biting her lip, Erika scrolled down in her recent contacts and selected one.

It took two more tries before anyone answered the phone.

“Erika?” Daniel asked, sounding like he had been drooling into his pillow moments before. “What are you… I have school tomorrow?”

“No. It’s Friday, remember? Sorry to wake you. Question: You said your parents were ghost hunters, right?”

Erika could hear the repeated ellipses on the other end of the line as Daniel’s sleepy brain tried to make sense of what she was saying. “It’s three in the morning.”

“I just… Do you know if they have any plans for if they’re being pursued by angry ghosts? Or… other things. How to get away and all that?”

“Are you in trouble?” he asked after another long moment of silence. “Are you high?”

“Former, yes. Latter, I wish.”

“Do you need help?”

Erika bit her lip. She wasn’t the kind of person to ask for help. String people along and drag them into her business, maybe, but not outright ask for it. Yet she found herself nodding her head before she even decided on her answer. “Yes.”

“Ugh. Dad is going to yell at me for waking him up.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s fine. Just… I hope this is good.”

“I wish it was,” Erika mumbled as Daniel put the phone down to go talk to his parents.