Hi, friends. Thanks for your kind words on the last chapter; we will return to the idea of Seven Deadly Sins, but first, we have some old business to take care of. Just to be on the safe side, this may be triggering for those who struggle with anxiety or PTSD. I am also not a therapist or psychiatrist, though the methods in this chapter are based on real techniques for dealing with phobias and trauma, so don't try this at home. Be well.
The theological seminary's library was pretty deserted on a Friday evening, with only a few men in dark colors and women in long skirts drifting around.
Abbie had been counting on that.
"I do miss university," Crane said, trotting beside her. "Whether as a student or a professor, I loved it with all my heart. Granted, Oxford is slightly grander than this Nyack College of yours, but the core principle is the same: gathering together the brightest youths in pursuit of knowledge."
"More like pursuit of a job that pays more than seven-fifty an hour," Abbie said. "Not too many go to college because they love it. Nobody can afford to."
"Must you utterly disillusion me on every aspect of modern life?" he asked, exasperated.
"That's pretty much my job." She drew to a stop in front of an elevator. "The codices are in the basement."
Crane did not break his stride. "Have a bit more vigor, Miss Mills—there must be a staircase nearby."
"There is. But we aren't gonna take it." She leaned forward and pressed the down button.
Crane finally stopped, his head tilted to the side like a curious Cocker spaniel. "And why not?"
"Why not take the elevator?" she countered evenly.
"Because it is the height of indolence and sloth to use a giant dumbwaiter to travel a distance of a single floor. And you wonder why most of your fellow citizens lumber about like overfed Jersey cattle!"
The doors to the elevator dinged open. Abbie lay her hand against the cool metal, keeping it from closing. "You done?"
"Yes. But I am still not getting into that box," he said, a tremor in his voice. Red splotches appeared on his throat and peeped out from his open collar.
Abbie was playing with fire and she knew it. She wouldn't have pressed him like this, not if there was any other way. But he refused to see the police shrink ("That bespectacled idiot once asked me if I were Scottish. No one that daft deserves to know my innermost thoughts, thank you very much"), and his anxiety or PTSD or whatever was getting dangerous for the both of them.
It wasn't just how he froze up when he was in a too-tight, too-small, or too-underground space, though that was bad enough. He was always walking the knife's edge of a panic attack, and Abbie had to split her attention between making sure he was okay and that the Bad Thing du Jour was not murdering them. But it was little stuff, too. The way he jumped a mile whenever something startled him. The way he'd told her, after too many cups of rum, that he couldn't even stand the close quarters of his shower any more, but was giving himself baths in the sink like a hooker.
So Abbie had done her homework. She'd talked to the shrink about a hypothetical friend ("definitely not me, sir!") who may have PTSD. She'd read every book in the library and a hundred articles on the Internet. Now, she just had to see if she'd learned enough.
"What are you afraid might happen if you go into that box?" Abbie asked quietly. God, even the way she talked to him was tough: too gentle and he'd lash out, too aggressive and he'd shut down. She was the wrong person for this job.
"Is that why you lured me here? Under false pretenses? To test me, to see if I could do this?" He stormed away a few steps, then whirled back toward her, lip curled in a sneer. "I expect better from you, Lieutenant."
"Nobody lied to you," Abbie said. "The codices are here. And they are in the basement. If you want to walk away and take the stairs, I'm not gonna stop you."
Crane's eyes were round; his feet danced like a spooked horse. Shit. This was just what she did not want to do: trigger a public panic attack. She wanted to say something—anything—to make him feel better. But she didn't. She stood in the doorway of the elevator and waited.
His fingers twitched like he was playing an invisible piano. Every now and then his lips moved, like he was arguing with himself. His eyes were glued to the open elevator doors.
"Talk to me," Abbie urged. "Tell me what's going on."
"What is it that you want me to say? That I am afraid of something so prosaic as a small room? That I no longer can even bear the weight of my own bedclothes, but sleep curled like an animal? That sometimes I feel as if my heart has been replaced with some small rodent that skitters and scurries according to its own rhythm? Is that what you wish to hear?" he cried, only about two notches away from yelling at her. In a library. Awesome. That wouldn't attract attention.
He wasn't pissed at her, she reminded herself. He was angry because as it turns out, Ichabod Crane's just another dude. Not a superhero, not immune to human emotions like fear. "It's a start," Abbie said. "You can't do this alone, Crane-"
"Sorry to interrupt, but are you using the elevator?" a student worker asked timidly. She pointed to her book cart. "I need to get these shelved before closing."
"All yours," Abbie said, stepping out of the way. The doors snickered closed behind the confused girl.
When Abbie looked at Crane, he had backed himself into a corner across from the elevator and slid to the ground, his long knees drawn up to his chest.
Abbie wanted to kick her own ass. She'd fucked up. Plain and simple. She'd tried to help, expose him to his fear in a safe way, and instead, she'd hurt him. God fucking dammit. But what had she really expected would happen? People didn't come to her for help with their feelings, and this was why.
She walked toward him carefully, like he was a wounded animal. "Look, I'm s-"
"It is as if there is a war waging inside of me. How irritatingly ironic," Crane said quietly. He wouldn't look at her, kept his eyes trained on the elevator. She took a deep breath and sat beside him. "I know that girl faces no danger in that elevator. I know that if I were to step inside of that contraption, I too would emerge intact. But my body, it doesn't know. It only remembers what it was like, in the..." Crane paused. Cleared his throat. Tried again. "In the..."
"In the coffin," Abbie finished for him. "Both coffins." What were the odds that one guy would get buried alive twice?
"I remember nothing of my first entombment. I do not even know if I was alive or dead or something betwixt the two. When I...revived, as it were, I was afraid, but in the way a child in his mother's womb is afraid. He knows there is somewhere he must go, something he must do. That life awaits him."
The elevator doors opened. The two boys inside quickly unclasped their hands when they saw Abbie and Crane watching, and walked away with hurried glances over their shoulders. The doors closed.
"But when my son locked me in that coffin, it was the first time I truly, truly feared dying. I was always afraid; no man goes smilingly to his own demise. But on the battlefield, or with the poison, my death would have had meaning. Purpose." He shuddered, a subtle ripple down the length of his body. "But with the earth pressing in around me, all I could think of was the terrible danger you were in. How much was left undone." He laughed, but it sounded more like a cough. "More damnable pride speaking, I suppose."
"That one's not pride. It's love. You knew the rest of us were in danger, and your death meant maybe we would die too. I'm gonna give you a pride pass on that one," Abbie said.
"How kind. But as it turned out, my survival meant nothing. You were eminently capable of rescuing yourself, and what had been done to Katrina was already done. Perhaps it would have been better if-"
Abbie smacked his knee. Not hard, just enough to get his attention and startle him out of his pity party. It worked: he looked down at her, shocked. "We do not talk like that. Ever. In no way would that have been better. We took out Headless, together. Couldn't have done that alone. You got to say your goodbyes to Katrina. And we're still gonna save Henry."
"But only if I can conquer my fear." He spit the word out like it tasted rotten.
"I am the last person who should be giving advice on fear," Abbie said. "It's damn near run my life for as long as I can remember. So I know from experience, it sucks. And when you finally do face it, chip away at it, life gets better."
"But it doesn't ever recede completely. Does it?" Crane asked, looking over at her for the first time. His cheeks were flushed and his eyes were bright, like he had a fever.
"Hasn't yet." Moloch was still out there. Jenny was still vulnerable. People might still think she was crazy and lock her up, too. All of it weighed on Abbie's shoulders every single day. But now she was strong enough to keep going in spite of the burden.
Crane raised himself slowly, an inch at a time, until he was standing. Abbie followed his lead. He darted toward the elevator and jabbed the button before he lost his nerve.
The doors opened. Crane hesitated, so Abbie stepped in first. She tried to see it it with his eyes, not as a plain steel box, but as a coffin whose walls might force together and crush her at any time. It was disturbingly easy to picture it, so she stopped. He was her focus now. She held a hand out to him.
After a few more moments of twitching silence, he stepped into the elevator, though he didn't take her hand. That was okay. She punched the first basement floor, and the doors shut.
If this elevator stalled, she was so fucked.
"Tell me about these codices down here. What are they exactly?" she asked. Like she didn't know.
Crane gripped the rail that ran around the outside of the elevator. His shoulders heaved a little too fast, and when he spoke, his voice was a little too high. But he was holding it together. "Calendar. A demon calendar of their high holy days."
"Holy seems like the wrong word there. Maybe high villainy days?" Abbie suggested.
He managed a weak smile at her weak joke and reached out, taking her hand. His was clammy, cold, and trembling ever so slightly, but she clutched it anyway.
The doors opened and he stumbled out, pulling her in his wake. She grinned. "You did it. Reward: demon books. C'mon." She started to walk into the darkened stacks, but he didn't budge.
"No." He poked the elevator call button. The doors sprang open immediately. "Again."
Abbie scanned his face worriedly. "You sure? Might be a good idea to take this slow-"
"The end of the world is coming quickly; it has no respect for 'slow.'" He marched back onto the elevator, arms clenched at his sides.
They rode the elevator up and down, down and up. Sometimes they talked-sometimes about stupid shit, sometimes about how he was feeling, what he was seeing. Sometimes he waved his hand for quiet and they listened to the creak of the elevator cables. Sometimes he ran out the minute the doors opened and stood with his back to her, fists pressed into his eyes. Sometimes he grimly selected the next floor without hesitation. They only stopped when the girl with the book cart told them the library was closing.
Crane looked like a wrung-out dish rag, covered in sweat and trembling in the knees. But he was smiling, and so was she.