Adult-FanFiction.org : Anime

Annals of Fear II	By : DeathNoteFangirl Category: Death Note > Yaoi-Male/Male > Mello/Matt Views: 5803 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note and I do not make any money from these writings

Chapter List
- 9
- 10
- 11
The computer hub door opened, there was Deontic was installed in front of a monitor. "Erm." Matt said, contriving to imbue that single sound with enough rebuke to register his disapproval, as he hurried protectively across the room. Upon the gigantic monitor was a grid of sixteen individual camera views, each morphing into another after a few seconds. On the smaller screen before Deontic was a blueprint of the house and its grounds. Two red dots moved together across the yard. "Oh?"

Deontic took her glasses off, breathed on them to mist the lenses, then cleaned them on the hem of her cashmere cardigan. "You designed these to be watched, if anyone was up there. Fenian and Kiana took their tracking devices. You didn't." She replaced her glasses.

"True." Matt commented.

"So in your absence, I picked the lock and let myself in. It was obvious which screen I should be watching." She stared fixedly at it. Though a pad full of figures on her lap proved that she had not been so fastidious before now. "And I saw the last few cameras come on line."

"Right."

Deontic rolled her shoulders. "Are you alright, Matt?"

"Yep." He shuffled around the deck, checking his configurations and the transmission of data, for each of the monitors there. As he circled Deontic, he added. "I can take over now."

"Where's Mello?" Deontic watched him gesture vaguely towards the empty kitchenette. She hazarded a guess, "Gone up to the hall?" He nodded. She glanced at the white, plastic carrier bag that he had put down on the floor, when he had first walked in. "For cutlery, so you can eat your curry." She stated and he nodded. Deontic looked pleased with her deduction work. She watched him check the last of the monitors, then stand back. "It looks like a great system. I can't believe that you designed and built this in two months."

"Thanks." Matt looked at her like he couldn't work out why she was still there. His whole stance and lack of conversation radiated 'go away'.

Deontic made a show of standing, tucking her pad into her handbag and brushing down her pristine cardigan and skirt. "Matt, it might be something or nothing, but I overheard something strange." He glanced at the huge monitor. "Not from the house. Century was making a crack about it being Hallowe'en tomorrow and us having a," her nose wrinkled with distaste, "witch here. He was talking about dancing naked on the beach." She could see that she was losing Matt's interest. "He mentioned something about Kiana having a strand of Mello's hair."

Matt was standing in front of the desktop, scrolling through a list on the screen. Above his head, the camera views changed accordingly. He was testing that every one of them was on-line. "Oh?" He managed, eventually.

"He was laughing about it, because I don't think that Century believes in," she gestured impotently, "indigenous superstitions. But I thought you should know."

Matt nodded. "Ok." A few seconds went by. "Thanks."

"You're welcome." Deontic moved across to the door. "Matt, I realise that I've now shifted back into the miasmac ranks of The Others; but, for the record, I enjoyed, well, perhaps enjoyed is the wrong word given the circumstances, but, honoured! Honoured is better. I was honoured to have been included in your conversation back when we were," she winced, pained by her lack of eloquence, "back then during that horrible night."

Matt scrolled through the final sequence, then left it alone to run through normally. "Yeah. I'm like a rare, magical creature." He smirked and lit a cigarette.

Deontic blinked, startled, "Pardon me?"

"Message received and understood." Matt shifted to watch the red dots moving up the mountain slope. "I'd appreciate you not mentioning it to Mello."

"Yes." Deontic smiled. She found herself holding her breath. "Yes, of course." She waited, surveying him curiously to see if he would say anything else. But he didn't. He took off his gilet and draped it over the back of the chair, after fishing a PSP out of its pocket. He didn't sit down, but stood in front of the small screen, his head bent over the game. "Bye Matt." He didn't reply, so she walked away, feeling too awkward to stay.

As soon as she'd gone, Matt put down his PSP and took out his laptop instead. He could hear boots thumping up the stairs, but he jacked in and logged on anyway. Mello burst in with two plates and a trio of cutlery for them both. "At least it's not quite so windy today." Mello commented, snatching up the take-away bag from the floor and conveying it to the kitchenette. "I'm half tempted to go for a jog up the track later on. Just to see where it goes. It looks like it might follow the coastline." He busied himself serving up their food from the containers within.

Matt leaned against the desk at an awkward angle. He had to lower himself to the small of his back, before it wasn't agony to press against the edge. His laptop lay on the desk beside him, the screen facing away from Mello. He was searching 'witchcraft + hair'. He scrolled through four pages of links mostly offering him spells to make his hair beautiful; though there were a couple about witch bottles, which caught his eye. There was another telling him that the European witch-hunters of the 17th century believed that red hair was a sign of witchcraft.

Mello was still talking, "Or we could explore the beach. If you were up for it. Such as it is. I haven't actually seen any sand, but it might be nice to wander down to that lighthouse and take in the sea." He caught Matt's eye. "Or not." He finished filling their plates. "On account of it being a bit windy and raining, and you're hurting all over." He carried the plates across. "Everything working ok?"

"Yeah." Matt closed his laptop's lid and took his plate. At the bottom of the fourth page of links, he had just read, 'Aleister Crowley, the influential twentieth-century proponent of witchcraft, secretly disposed of his own cut hair so that his foes couldn't use it in ...' "All running smoothly." He stood up straight, stepping away from the desk to eat. "And no. I have no desire to go walking across a grubby beach, in the wind and the rain, but I'm quite happy to hang out in here while you do that." He smiled at his husband, who cast him an anxious look back. "No, honestly. Go for your life. I'm good."

Mello tore off a piece of chapati and pinched it into his chicken balti. "I might. Later on." He ate the captured meat and pepper. "Mail, do you think it's fair that I keep on getting attacked for the things I did as a child?"

"No."

"It keeps on happening. Like I'm the worst thing that happened in these people's lives." He considered it. "Well good! Because that means that they didn't have to experience half the shit that we did."

Matt spooned curry into his mouth, keeping one eye on the dots on his screen. Fenian and Kiana were quite far up the mountain now. If they went much further, he might have to extend his map. "They have mediocre lives."

"Huh?"

"Hence they keep harking back to the only excitement they ever had." Matt smiled. "Growing up with you."

Mello grinned. "Maybe." But Matt could tell that he was pleased. "Hey, talking about Wammy's House, is it any of these lot here holding up your constitution?"

Matt shook his head. It had taken the best part of the last year to arrive at a document, which everyone agreed to in principle. Persuading them to commit to it as a signatory was a different matter, but that was Hal's problem, not his. He changed the subject, "What do you make of this witchcraft malarkey?" At Mello's questioning stare, Matt shrugged. "Kiana's one, isn't she? Just enough room out there on the green for a stake."

Mello smirked. "No-one expects the Spanish Inquisition." Across the room, Matt grinned. "Do you mean me personally or me as a Catholic or...?"

"Those things are divisible?"

"Of course. I'm perfectly capable of evaluating theological precepts from an academic viewpoint, devoid of personal bias." Mello waited to be contradicted. When it didn't come, he was forced to debate the issue with himself. "Unless you take the position, as modern scholars frequently do, that it's impossible to approach any subject with true objectivity, as one's cultural background, learned and personal experience will always affect one's perception of the source material."

Matt scraped the last of the balti from his plate, ate it, then discarded the crockery on the desk behind him. He looked back at Mello. "True story."

"But I'm not sure that I agree with that. If you're aiming for true objectivity, then you will consult all source material, not just make selects based upon your personal bias. Then a real academic is going to examine that material from all angles and endeavour to identify the pros and cons in all of them. It's a scattergun approach, but it does...." Mello watched Matt pick up his PSP. "I think that witchcraft is a perfectly valid nature based belief system." There was a smile over the game. "Yes, I did get the hint that I was boring you." Mello winked to take the sting out of his comment. "It's full of completely deluded people, of course, but each to their own."

"So you don't believe they can do magic or summon demons and shit?"

Mello shook his head, "Of course not." He had run out of chapatis, so resorted to using a fork for the rest of his balti. "But that depends upon how you're defining magic."

"Thinking of Kira?"

"Thinking of a lot of things. Thinking that I've had to expand my belief system several times to incorporate the evidence of my own eyes." Mello speared a chilli and ate it. A moment later, he was blowing and smacking his lips, searching for a glass to pour some water. He returned from the kitchenette sipping it. "That was hot."

Matt glanced up over his PSP. "I'd have thought that you'd believe in all that shit. Curses and stuff."

Mello grinned at him. "You reckon Kiana is going to curse us, if we're not careful?"

"Nope." Matt replied, carefully. "Because I don't believe you can be actually cursed." He pondered it. "I believe that you can believe that you're cursed. Life's full of good luck and bad luck, in equal measure, but if you think you're cursed, you just pick out the bad luck and attribute it to the curse. Stuff like that." He watched Mello's face, looking for clues as to his husband's innermost beliefs on the subject. "But if I refuse to believe I've been cursed, she can stick as many pins as she likes in her Voodoo doll. I'll be fine."

Mello tutted. "Voodoo is a totally different thing. You're mixing up your Pagan cults."

"Very objective."

"Huh?"

Matt grinned. "You used the prejudicative 'cult', which sounds sinister, like something that someone made up to make a shitload of money; and will probably end in everyone killing themselves, after leaving all their worldly possessions to some charlatan guru or something."

Mello rolled his eyes. "Cult just means 'knowledge'. Occult means 'secret knowledge'. From the Latin, cultus. Same root as the word 'cultivate'. Don't put words into my mouth, baby."

"Ok. But as a practitioner of the Catholic cult," Matt grinned as Mello stared at him, "do you not think that you might hesitate to say Pagan religions?"

Mello looked as though he might argue the point, but instead he nodded towards the small screen. "They're coming back down the mountain. He's going to argue for his fairy path theory."

"Way to side-step the question, Mello."

Mello put down his plate. He picked up his water to sip, then put that down too. He leaned forward in the chair with a chocolate bar, nibbling a corner before responding. "Yes, I believe that Kiana is a witch. No, I don't know yet what strand of witchcraft that is. If it's what it usually is, ie modern Wicca, then they're not allowed to curse people, as their central tenet is 'do what thou wilt an it harm none'. Then no, again, because it's full of hippy types, worshipping the Earth as a deity, vis-a-vis there's no actual deity behind it, therefore no real power." He considered it. "Maybe some psychological manipulation. If it's old time witchcraft, then there is a power behind it." He paused.

"You're going to say the Devil, aren't you?"

Mello sat back in his chair and sucked on his chocolate. "Or shinigamis."

"Is that witchcraft though?"

"Possibly not."

"Why don't you just say the Devil then?"

Mello let the chocolate melt in his mouth. "Because we'll get into a debate about my religion and I don't want to." He stared at Matt. "And not because I couldn't defend it, but because it always ends up annoying you." He shrugged. "So yes, maybe they can do things that look like magic. Maybe. And curses too." He raised a hand. "With the proviso that you've already highlighted, which just boils down to psychological games again." He took a deep breath. "Voodoo dolls are associated with Voodoo, an entirely different Afro-Caribbean religion. Yes, I am capable of applying the word 'religion' to practices other than my own." He smirked and Matt smiled back. "There is an equivalent to Voodoo dolls in European witchcraft though; and that's poppets. Which purportedly works in the same way. Did I miss anything?"

"Nope." Matt smiled. "It's been quite an education."

"So where has all this come from?" Mello fixed him with his most penetrating stare. "Something you noticed while we were talking to her at the house?"

"No. Just making conversation." Matt glanced through all of his monitors. "And learning that my husband believes that he can be cursed by devil-worshipping witches." He noticed Mello open his mouth to speak, then fall silent. "It's ok, angel. Nothing I hadn't suspected given the rest of your beliefs. We'll agree to disagree." He could feel Mello's unease filling the space around them. "What's up?"

Mello bit off a strip of chocolate. "Nothing. Other than this being a case in point as to why I avoid conversations like this with you. The conclusion is always the same. You secretly think I'm self-deluded and impressionable; while I secretly think you're narrow-minded and obstinate."

"You think that?"

"You've had the truth of Death Notes, shinigamis, ghosts, fucking killer music and other things proved to you. You've accepted them into your rigid world view, but refused to contemplate that there could be more."

Matt considered it and nodded, "Fair comment." He watched the signals from his tracking devices approach the back of the stableblock. "So can we call Fenian and tell him to remove the witch bottle, now we're all set to watch proceedings from a safe distance?"

Mello snorted. "We'd best show willing and let the others have a say in the matter first."

"Oh?"

"Tempting though, isn't it?"

Matt smirked, waiting for the order to come. But Mello just stretched and said, "Baby, mind if I go and have a chat with Hal?" Matt shook his head and picked up his PSP. Mello gathered their dirty crockery and dropped them into the kitchenette sink for later. "I won't be long." Mello paused to grab a kiss. "You'll be alright?"

"Yeah, go on." Matt smiled reassurance.

"I'll just be across the way. Lock the door if you want. If you don't want anyone else coming in." Mello let a hand glide down Matt's back. "Te amo, guapo."

"Volim te."

Mello smiled and left the room. Matt played on his PSP, still standing in the same position, though he'd turned slightly in order to see through the window. From the corner of his vision, he saw Mello cross the green and knock on Hal's door. A moment later, he saw the door opened and Mello disappeared inside. Now Matt moved, lowering his PSP to the desk beside him, while he pushed up his laptop's lid. The same display awaited him and he selected the link at the foot of the page.

'Hair derives its existence from within the body; it grows with an apparent life of its own; it can be separated from the body; and it is relatively difficult to destroy. Thanks to these aspects of its natural history, hair came to be considered inextricably linked with the life force itself. These attributes in turn led to a role in magic.' Matt read, then his gaze skipped to the sentence which had been snipped as the search engine synopsis. 'Aleister Crowley, the influential twentieth-century proponent of witchcraft, secretly disposed of his own cut hair so that his foes couldn't use it in spells against him.' He skim-read the rest, but he already had the essence now.

Matt returned to the search listings and continued for a few more pages. He did find more that were relevant, but nothing that added to the sum of his knowledge. He lit a cigarette, watching the dots on his screen moving faster than before away from the manor house. Fenian and Kiana were driving, he deduced, possibly back to the chalets. It wasn't that Matt believed that Kiana could curse Mello through a strand of his hair; it was that Mello would undoubtedly believe she could. He exhaled smoke, staring at the monitor, then softly spoke, "I accept your challenge."
- 9
- 10
- 11
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Annals of Fear II