8.1
“What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord,
Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff
That beetles o'er his base into the sea,
And there assume some other horrible form,
Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason
And draw you into madness? think of it:
The very place puts toys of desperation,
Without more motive, into every brain
That looks so many fathoms to the sea
And hears it roar beneath.”
- Horatio, Hamlet
The Jones house feels somehow bigger than Austin remembers it. Maybe it’s from not seeing it for so long, or maybe it’s from living in a cramped apartment with two other humans and five ghosts, but having more than enough room to breathe is almost unnerving. Austin tries not to think too hard about it - he feels jetlagged, even though he drove to Havenwood, and only about twelve hours a day before stopping to rest. Hell, he didn’t even do any of the driving himself. But his mind is scrambled, a combination of anxiety over Jacob and the strange, disjointed feeling of being back in a town he didn’t think he’d see again this soon.
Austin carefully unlaces his boots and leaves them next to the door. It’s warm in Havenwood - not as warm as it was in Antlers, but August humidity is still thick in the air. Hopefully some of his clothes are still up in his old room, and not in storage. He didn’t exactly have time to pack for this trip, and even if he had, Hall and Oates and Jenny were already peeling out of the neighborhood as soon as he’d stepped out of the car.
Nothing’s changed, Austin thinks to himself, climbing the stairs to the second floor landing. His room is the closest to the stairwell, unlocked, and nearly untouched from the day he left. He and Jacob had only settled in to the Jones house once Jacob had turned eighteen, once they’d stopped living with the Hart family, but Austin’s room looks like he’s lived in it all his life. It somehow feels more his than the bedroom he shares with Otter - the band posters tacked lopsidedly on the walls, the closet overflowing with clothes he’d missed, then forgotten.
Being back here feels like being in a dream. Austin touches the door frame to ground himself, remind himself that he really is here, in Havenwood, and crosses the room to his closet. He picks out clothes almost at random, not allowing himself to think about what will fit and what won’t. He wants to visit Jacob, and soon, but first he has to wash off all the sweat and get his head on straight.
Austin strips down, laying his clean clothes out on the bed and ducking out into the hall to grab a towel from the linen closet. The biggest bathroom in the house is diagonally across from his bedroom. It’s fitted with both a large bathtub and a glass-enclosed shower - Austin picks the shower, standing just outside the door as he twists it on, waiting for the water to get hot before he steps in.
There’s a sudden, muffled, slamming noise that he initially thinks is the pipes, before realizing that it’s the sound of a door being shut. Austin tenses, holding his towel tight around his waist. No one else should be here. Jacob’s still in the hospital, and Auggie’s out on a mission - well, as far as I know. Even if he’s not, he lives in the guest house. Did I lock the front door when I came in?
He can’t tell if the steady, throbbing sound in his ears is the sound of someone climbing the stairs to the second floor, or the sound of his own heartbeat. Austin swallows, his mouth suddenly dry.
“Hello?” he calls.
No one answers. Austin inches towards the door, scanning the bathroom countertop for anything even remotely useful as a weapon. It’s slim pickings. He settles for a hairbrush with a handle that looks relatively sharp, holding it like a stake in his hand.
“Hello?” he asks again, standing against the wall just slightly to the left of the door. It should give him the jump on anyone who opens it, let him get an attack in before they realize where he’s lying in wait.
“Austin?” a voice, vaguely recognizable, asks from the hallway. “Is that you?”
Austin hesitates, his grip on the hairbrush loosening. “Cillian?”
“Yes,” the voice affirms. “I came to see if you were home yet - are you in the shower? I can come back…”
Austin relaxes, realizing his jaw has been clenched painfully tight in anticipation. He slides the hairbrush back onto the counter, lets his towel fall onto the floor, and steps quickly into the shower. Probably best not to let Cillian know he could have mistakenly lost an eye to a hairbrush handle.
“Yeah, I’m in here,” Austin says, raising his voice to be heard over the shower. He feels instantly more relaxed with the hot water raining down on his skin, plastering his hair down to his scalp. “You can come in if you want.”
“Are you sure?” Cillian asks.
“Yeah.”
“I don’t want to, ah, overstep boundaries,” Cillian says, sounding slightly closer than before, probably just outside the door. His voice is deeper than Austin remembers it - not entirely unexpected, given that he had only started hormone replacement therapy a year or two before Austin left home. “I can come back later when you’re not -”
“Cillian,” Austin says, “you’ve known me since I was, like, a baby. I’m pretty sure we’re past the point of overstepping boundaries.”
The doorknob of the bathroom audibly jiggles in its socket. Austin watches through the frosted glass of the shower door as the door opens just enough for Cillian to slip inside, then close it again behind him. Even with the low visibility, Cillian looks similar to how Austin remembers him, tall and pale with short, neatly-cropped, coppery red hair. His body language reads extremely anxious, and he turns away from the shower, facing off towards the bathtub.
“How’s Jacob?” Austin asks.
“Good. Conscious.” There’s a note in obvious relief in Cillian’s voice that Austin can empathize with. “He should be cleared to come home in a day or two, though I’m not completely sure that home is the safest place for him to be.”
“What do you mean?”
Cillian makes a strained noise. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather Jacob tell you himself?”
“I don’t really care who I hear the news from.” Austin grabs a bottle of shampoo from the shower rack and starts lathering it into his hair, closing his eyes and massaging his scalp with his fingers. “Did you figure out who stabbed him?”
“We didn’t ‘figure it out’. He made himself known to Jacob. Twice.”
“So why haven’t you caught the bastard already?” Austin asks, ducking back into the stream of water to rinse out his hair.
“We don’t know where he is,” Cillian says. He sounds apologetic - embarrassed, almost.
“And you want my help.”
“Personally, I think you’re a little close to the case, and I didn’t exactly expect you to hitch a ride with a group of mercenaries as soon as you heard Jacob had been stabbed,” Cillian says, spitting out “mercenaries” like it’s a dirty word. “But Jacob wants me to put you on the case.”
Austin pauses. “Because he’s hoping I’ll stay when I’m done?”
“Because he knows you’ll be absolutely insufferable if we don’t let you help,” Cillian says dryly. “Among other reasons.”
“He’s right.” Austin laughs, getting a mouthful of soapy water, and spitting it out. “So, who are we tracking down?”
“Abbott Kilgannon,” Cillian says. The name rings a bell - Austin remembers hearing it mentioned in passing, but can’t recall any specific context. “He was a scientist who worked at the Department for several years, but was fired by your father in 1980. He dropped off the map after that, but Jacob found him teaching science at a college out of state and re-hired him -”
“Why?” Austin blurts out. Hiring a guy who Richard fired back in the day? That sounds beyond ill-advised.
“We were short-handed,” Cillian says sheepishly. “Jacob contacted a lot of former employees about resuming their jobs at the Department. And Abbott used to be the best of the best. Unfortunately, the more unsavory part of his records were sealed by the president who took over after your father’s death, until Jacob came of age to run the Department. Only Jacob can access those records, and, well, he’s hospitalized.”
“So what can I do about that?” Austin asks, reaching for a bottle of body wash. God, if he asks me to take over as acting president -
“Do you still talk to your father?” Cillian asks, a little tentatively, like he’s not sure if he’s broaching a sore subject or not.
“Richard? Sure.” Austin pours a generous amount of body wash into his hands and rubs them together. He hasn’t seen Richard for more than ten minutes at a time since leaving Antlers - it was hard to talk to him in front of Jenny and Hall and Oates without feeling completely crazy. But Richard knows what’s up vis-a-vis Jacob’s stabbing, and no doubt is here in the house somewhere, waiting for Cillian to leave and Austin to get dressed and head out for the hospital.
“Good,” Cillian says. He takes a deep breath, and Austin can see him lean heavily against the counter. “I need you to ask him why he fired Abbott.”