Hurtled forward with surprising strength for the lithe man, Erik struggled to catch himself before he could topple headlong all the way to the landing, twisting his ankle and nearly getting whiplash he turned back to the door so quickly. It was no good, he realized as he pushed his weight against it, twisting at the unmoving handle, rattling the heavy wood in its frame.

"Darwin, what the fuck do you think you're doing?! Let me out of here!" he growled, throat tight, making his words sound slightly more hysterical than threatening. Darwin, apparently, was not cowed.

"I'm not sure what you did last night to pull one over on him so well," Darwin said back through the thick wood, slow calm voice carrying easily over the sound of the rattling door-knob. "And I'm not sure what kind of mechanism you used to set off the hot spots today, but the gig is up."

"What the fuck are you talking about?" he balked, bracing his foot on the step and slamming himself forward. The door didn't budge. His heart was racing now, breath burning in his lungs as it sunk in that, somehow, Darwin was stronger than him, was actually capable of keeping him locked down here. "Charles! Charles you asshole get down here!"

"Hush now, don't you think you've dragged him into this enough?"

"Fuck, fuck," Erik hissed, struggling, trying to force his mind to come up with something, anything, to talk his way out of this, to convince Darwin to let him the fuck out. There was nothing there, nothing but a white cold blanket of growing terror.

Struggling to at least dispel the blinding darkness if he could dispel this whole scenario, he fumbled to turn on the light- couldn't help crying out as the bulb exploded behind him. Get me out of here, get me out of here. Get out, get out, get out.

"Darwin, I didn't do anything. I didn't do anything! Darwin, please let me out. Darwin, open the fucking door!" he managed to yell past the knot in his throat, kicking the door viciously.

He stopped immediately as he heard, far down in the darkness behind him the sound of a rusty door shrieking on its hinges.

"You're going to tell Charles what you did," Darwin was saying to him, but his voice seemed a long way off, reaching him at the bottom of a deep, dark well. He turned slowly, watching the blackness of the stairwell with not a pinpoint of light to see by. "And then you're going to leave. Miss Frost can send us a new journalist if she wants to, hopefully one with a better moral compass than yours."

"Darwin," he whispered, door sticking his cold sweat back against his skin as he pressed backwards, against the door, struggling to press through the door—out, out. Below him a board creaked, and there was the low, soft shuffle of a body moving up the stairs towards him. "Darwin, let me out. God, oh god, let me out. Charles, Charles, Charles-"

"What's going on down here? Where's Erik?" Somewhere, he supposed, Erik recognized Charles voice, it's tenor and tone, but here, in the dark, he couldn't seem to respond to it.

"Charles. Please, god, someone, get me out of here, out of here."

His chest seemed paralyzed, he couldn't draw breath, he was drawing breath, huge gulps of breath, but it didn't seem to be getting to him. Like a mouse in the eyes of a snake, his only idea was to keep still, keep silent—let it not see him, let it not find him, let it not get him.

"What the fuck, Darwin! Get him out of there!"

The door rattled in its frame against his shoulders, the knob jounced in his hand, but all there was was him in this pitch-black stairwell and the scruff of footsteps coming closer.

"It's stuck," Darwin growled, and although Erik's eyes were dry, were trying too hard to see to allow them to tear up, he felt as if he were crying.

Down in the depths of the stairwell, Erik heard a low, sinister chuckle. And then gravelly, dark growling. Not like an animal, but like a human being, snarling and growling like a vicious dog, and that somehow made it worse. The growls grew closer, playful and dangerous, the snapping of teeth. Something glinted in the dark, something closer than Erik had expected.

He turned, falling against the door, banging, rattling, screaming, and the growling grew in his ears until it was a roar, until his ears ached, until he could feel the vibrations in his bones.

"Get him out!" Charles was screaming, and someone was yelling for a crowbar, for a screwdriver, for anything.

There was a bright spark of light and smell of burning flesh and a sharp, hot pain between Erik's shoulder blades, muting him and paralyzing him with agony—and it felt as if that spark burned him up inside, burned a hole right through him, and on the other side, at the depth of its burn, something welled up in his chest like an explosion or a scream and he couldn't breathe past it.

The door opened and he collapsed through. But the blackness remained, and he fell into an unconsciousness like a well.

He stared down at his shoes, at the hard wood floorboards beneath his shoes. It was quiet here, and he could hear his own breathing, slow and reassuring, his own heartbeat in his ears, gentle, lapping, like water on a dock.

The room was bright here, painted white, with broad, tall windows letting in the light. There wasn't any furniture in the room, but Erik liked that, he liked how simple his room was, how it kept the clutter at bay. It might be a lonely room but it was his room, it was his life, and the only thing he thought it could use was a chess set and a blue-eyed man to use it with. Well, he wouldn't say no to a bed, either.

Just as he was scoping out a good place for a candy jar or a condom caddy, there was a shuddering of the floorboards, a scraping of metal on wood. Obligingly, confusedly, like bumping into someone one hadn't even known was there, he shifted his foot back, away from the shudder. But it followed him, the grating insistency of it, tickling the underside of his foot through the sole of his shoe. He jumped back, breathing fitfully now, and saw motion between the sliver-thin gaps of the wood.

Someone was under the floor. And they were dragging a knife under his heels.

The smell of smoke flooded his nostrils. From the corner of his eye he saw the shadow of a man, and before he could turn his head it had disappeared into a puff of smoke and a dark, growling chuckle, and the whole room erupted into flame.

Shouting with surprise, with fear, fighting his way through fire and acrid smoke like burning corpses, Erik struggled for the windows but there were no windows, only smoke, heavy and greasy like walls in a slaughterhouse. Under him the burning floorboards buckled and heaved, and something, using the weakness of half-burnt wood, broke its way out.

"I don't know why!" someone was hissing quietly. "It was right there and—god—I didn't think this was going to happen! I thought he was faking it!"

"Does it look like he's fucking faking it?!" Charles growled back, voice high-pitched with rage and Erik had never heard him like that before. "You should be ashamed of yourself! How could you play around with a house like this! I have never seen you bee so despicably irresponsible, Mr. Munoz!"

"Charles, please!"

"Don't talk to me—I'm too angry, don't say another word to me."

"I think he's awake," said a low, shy voice, and after a short scuffle there were cool hands caressing his brow, pushing his hair back, touching his cheek.

"God—he's burning up. Erik?" Charles whispered. "Erik are you all right? Erik please, please say something."

With more strain than he was used to, Erik managed to open his eyes, struggling to place himself.

He was on his back, on something soft but structured. Couch. There was a pillow under his head. He recognized the light fixture on the ceiling and the knickknacks on the mantle and the lace doilies on the coffee table. He was still in the goddamned house.

Charles was kneeling beside him, eyes huge and terrified. Sean was rocking himself on the other side of the coffee table, sheet-white and shaking. Hank was sitting on a footstool, watching quietly as if he were going to take notes. Darwin stood chewing his manicured nails in the doorway.

"I'm going to be sick," he realized aloud, and in a dizzying flurry of motion and movement that made him feel even sicker, they got him to the bathroom.

Charles shut the door behind them immediately, slamming it on Darwin's attempts to help, stroking Erik's hair as he retched into the toilet. Nothing came up. All the sickness and smoke and terror were still inside him.

"Here," Charles proffered, rinsing out a little cup that was being used as a vase, tossing the dead flowers in the sink, handing him the tap water. The man's hand was shaking.

Erik was about to take it but then remembered the taste of corpses in his mouth and recoiled, shrinking back against the wall. Something shifted in his chest, like an egg about to hatch, and he wondered if he wasn't actually going to be sick. Charles put the water down with a rapping clank and sat beside him, taking him in his arms and murmuring into his hair, stroking him, holding him very tightly. Erik kept his face buried in the man's throat, and breathed in his own scent on him, tried to breathe past the smoke in his mouth and the ache in his chest.

His brain felt scorched out, nothing leftover but ash and rubble, leaving him hazy and sick. Hot and cold seemed to crash over him in waves, nausea a constant undertow, shaky, mindless: it was like the worst flu of his life, like the verge of fainting, like near-death. I'm dying, he thought to himself, but he was too apathetic with affliction to care about the fact. He'd been burned through, had been left a barren, charred scrap of land. But slowly, very slowly, wildlife seemed to return, so-slow seedlings of thought stirring under the debris, maneuvering their way back to life.

He had no idea how long he'd been sitting there when he slowly seemed to come back to reality, one sense at a time—the feel of Charles solid and guarding against him, the sound of the man murmuring into his hair, the smell of water and the cool dampness of something caressing his brow.

He opened his eyes, realizing they were closed, and Charles pulled back, looking over him anxiously. He obviously saw something he liked, smiling gently, stopping his lathing of his brow with the damp washcloth he'd gotten somewhere, pressing his palm against Erik's damp forehead, smile widening.

"You blighter—you gave me quite a fright. You're not feeling so hot now."

"Was I before?"

"And you were murmuring to yourself. Nothing I could catch, but it was certainly eerie. I was beginning to think I should call the hospital, or maybe a priest."

"No luck; I'm Jewish. You'd have to call my rabbi."

Charles didn't succumb to his attempt at chit-chat, striking certainly where his real interest lay. "Erik, what did you mean? What did you mean when you said the door was open?"

"What?" he asked, and his voice came out groggy, and he realized they must have been there for a very long time because his legs were completely asleep, his mind at least half so. He pulled away, stretching them out and groaning in pain. Charles clambered up beside him, helping to pull him to his feet. It didn't work, and he had to sit down on the closed toilet, stretching them slowly in front of them before he would be able to stand.

"When you came out. Right before you…you passed out. You said, 'The door is open'."

Erik frowned, shrugged. He didn't remember that. Didn't want to remember any of it.

"I guess because you guys had finally opened the goddamn door."

Charles joined him in frowning, but Erik didn't like the look of it. "Why? What other door would I have been talking about?"

"I don't know. I thought maybe you meant the metal door."

The blood froze in his veins, but he still managed to gasp, "Is that door open?"

"No, not at all," Charles said quickly, rubbing his back as he saw the strain it had put on him. Erik hissed and jerked back at the sudden pain that flared up between his shoulder blades, unthinkingly trying to remember what had happened. He succeeded, unfortunately.

"He touched me. He touched me," he gasped, struggling for breath, as it all came rushing back, struggling with his buttons as he jumped up tearing at his clothes.

"Erik!" Charles cried, grasping his hands and stilling their palsy.

"He touched me, Charles. He set me on fire."

The man stared up at him, worry evident, but he simply asked, "Where?" and helped Erik with his shirt, pulling it up and over his shoulders.

Shaking on weak, tingling legs, Erik held his shirt in place, staring down at his chest, probing it anxiously, afraid he'd find the thing that had been put there, not put there but let free there, expanding and taking over. Nothing moved against his hand. Why had he expected something to?

Charles' own hand brushed over his shoulders, back and forth, starting high and going lower.

Erik gasped when they hit the mark on his spine.

"There?" Charles asked, and Erik's face ignited with horrified, shameful horror. Because if Charles had to ask then that meant there was nothing there. Nothing real.

What had happened to him? What was happening to him? Was he going mad?

He pulled his shirt back down, ignoring Charles' cries and pulling away from his grasping hands.

"Erik!" the man balked. "I've got to take photographs for evidence!"

"Why?" he growled. "You looked—there's nothing there!"

"Not to the naked eye," Charles argued. "But we've got blacklight, infrared…"

Erik just crossed his arms and pushed himself back against the wall, the spot aching against his clothes, tugging like a line through him, like a burn through to the center of his heart.

"I don't care. I don't care about your fucking evidence. I want to go home."

"Now, Erik," Charles huffed, taking him and sitting him down like an unruly child. "Let's not be hasty."

"I'm not being fucking hasty!" he growled up at the other man. "I can't do this, okay. I thought last night was a fluke, but today—and Darwin—and…I just can't, okay?"

Charles held him close, pressing him against his chest, and he realized he was hyperventilating, pressed his brow against Charles' ribs as he tried to breathe.

"Erik, what did happen last night?" the man asked as soon as he caught his breath. He went to pull away but Charles didn't let him, dropping to his knees and holding his shoulders.

"Erik…" he said. "I know you've been through a lot. I know it's hard to process. Don't take all the burden on yourself. This is my job, Erik. Whatever it is, I've dealt with it before. Please, let me help you."

Charles sat on his heels, watching him, begging him, his hands warm through his shirt, his mouth bitten red, his borrowed hoodie off-center and over-large.

"I can't. Not here. I can't," he whispered, and his mouth felt shivery and ungainly, like holding a cowardly sword. He'd hear him. If he told, he'd hear him and he'd come back for him—he'd burn him, he'd burn him again.

Something about his terror must have bled through, because Charles didn't browbeat him.

"It's okay," the man assured, rubbing comforting patters on his knees. "We don't have to talk about it now…I should get it on tape, anyway. My God Erik, but did you have any idea this place was such a hotbed of activity?"

"Of course not," he huffed. "If I'd known I never would have come here."

"And compared to yesterday…hardly a hiccup all day…"

"Can you please stop looking so excited over these so-called 'hiccups'?"

"Well I'm sorry, I don't mean to downplay the very frightening things that have been happening to you… but it is exciting, scientifically speaking. I mean, if you had to go through any of this madness, at least your doing it is furthering the data of a very under-represented realm of science."

"You think Marie Curie was so lucky to die of radiation poisoning, don't you."

Charles' face lit up red as a Christmas light. "I'm not saying it was the most pleasant way to go, but there's plenty of pain in the world and much of it is a lot less useful than that." Erik got the feeling the man was speaking from experience, and Charles seemed to realize that it certainly sounded that way because he blushed even darker and changed the subject in a stuttering huff. "Well—that—that's enough of that. We should be getting back now, if you're feeling recovered."

"Back?"

"Yes! Well, I mean, there's still a lot of work to do, data to process—I'm going to have an overhaul of that stairwell, and then the cupboard from last night, try to attain as much raw numbers as we can. Get the cameras out, the video recorders, record your interview—there's tons to do."

"Not for me," Erik laughed, breathy with disbelief. "Charles—I told you and I meant it. I'm not going back out there."

"What?" was all Charles could manage at first, with a wide-eyed, uncomprehending stare that made Erik want to laugh again—but he was worried it would turn hysterical and so didn't risk it. "Erik," the man began to argue in earnest in his silence. "Now come along, don't start again. This is bigger than us, Erik. We have to see this thing through. We have to collect all we can while we can!"

"What the fuck are you talking about? Listen—you collect all the fucking data you want; I'll wait at home."

"What are we supposed to collect without you? Erik—the house only responds to you!"

Erik would have been shocked into silence, into terror, but his brain was coming back online with a vengeance and cut the terror off at the pass with pure reason.

"Don't be fucking dumb," he growled. "The house can't only respond to me because the house has been haunted for a hundred fucking years and I just got here yesterday. Who was it responding to for the last fucking century then?"

Charles huffed, obviously impassed there, and hurtled right over the impediment.

"I have no clue who else it may be honed to, but I do know it is honed to you and you're the one we have on hand."

"No, I'm not. Because I'm going the fuck home. I'll tell Emma you fucked me into a coma and I didn't regain consciousness until tomorrow. She'll be pissed but I'll make up an article and she'll recover when she realizes our readership is not that discerning."

"Now, Erik," the man tried sugar instead of vinegar, smiling sweetly, finger-combing his hair. "You needn't be the least bit worried. You won't be alone. I'll be—"

"Right by my side?" Erik growled, catching the man's wrist. "Sorry, Charles—I've heard that one before."

He wished automatically he hadn't said it, hadn't struck the low-blow. The pained half-grunt that escaped the man, like someone had punched him in the gut but he didn't want anyone to know, was one of the worst things he'd experienced that day, and that was certainly saying something.

It shamed and guilted him more than any argument could, all the way to the point where he gave in, weakly and conciliatorily, but wholly nonetheless.

"Hey," he balked. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry okay? I know it's a hassle, babysitting me like this. I know you have your own job to do. I know you can't be joined to my hip all fucking day like an infant. Come on—forget it—let's go, we'll go back, it's okay."

"No," Charles murmured, shaking his head, his face drawn and ashen. It was suddenly that same boy standing before him, the one from the school ID, pale and wary, quailing under the first blow and waiting timorously for the next. His voice was faint and distracted, caught up in his own pain too much to think carefully about his words. "I promised you and I broke that promise. You don't have to tell me I've disappointed you—I know—I know."

Erik cut him off there, before the man's voice broke even more, tugging him close but Charles was stiff and ungainly in his arms. His pale blue eyes were guarded, and filled to the brim with some kind of recognition, as if he saw now the resemblance between Erik and someone, something awful. Who was it his words reminded him of, what darkness, that could daunt him so fully?

"Stop that. Please. You haven't. I'm not disappointed. I've never been less disappointed in another human being. If I'm angry it's at that douchenozzle Darwin."

"Don't," Charles laughed weakly, nudged him, pushing his head against Erik's jaw. He pulled away in the next second, slipping free of Erik's loose grip, fiddling with his hair nervously. "You have to understand. Darwin wasn't trying to be cruel. He had no idea the house would react that way to you. He was only trying—inappropriately, it's true—to be a friend, a good friend to me."

"Is that all he is?" Erik asked slowly. "Just a friend?"

Charles' eyes flashed quickly to his, intense and probing, incredibly cautious.

"Of course." He seemed thoughtful for a moment, and discerning, smiling faintly. Erik could imagine his internal monologue: He's not them. I don't need to remember them, that, whatever it was. It was an accident. He didn't mean it. I don't have to remember. When the man turned back to him his smile was more secure, his strong visage back in place. He held Erik's arm without a falter, drawing him to the door. "Of course."