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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
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"Did you just stall or park up?"   Matt asked, the accusation edging his tone.   Trees stood, in forbidding watchfulness, on either side of the narrow road. The night cloistered around them, no longer lit by the Camaro's headlamps.

Mello hesitated, unsure himself. "I meant to park."    They were in a lay-by, almost at the trackway to the manor, but adjacent, high up the slope, from the stepping stones and the weir.    Woodland lay between and the chasm with the stream was just ahead. Mello injected confidence into his voice.   "I parked."    Decisively, he opened the car's door, catching it at the last, so that it didn't scrape against the verge.    Mello felt Matt's stare boring into him, but he kept on moving, closing and locking the door behind him. Mello jogged around to the rear of the Camaro and stood in contemplative silence.    His skin prickled.   The hairs were up on the back of his neck and he had no idea why.   He quickly scanned the surrounding woodland, then turned slowly, to afford it a more thorough visual inspection.   Matt joined him at the boot of the car.    "Maybe you should wait at the chalet, guapo.   That was my original plan anyway."

"Yeah." Matt surveyed him grimly.   "Fuck that."   He took the car keys from Mello and opened up the boot.   The couple took out their bags and stared at the metal cases.    "We can drive up for that."

"Let's take them." Mello countered, though his plan involved a steep trek through the woodland, in the hope of seeing the missing tunnel entrance.    Matt looked sideways at him.   Mello sighed.    "You still want to lead on this case?"

Matt shrugged.   "My plan is your plan.   See the cavern and then blow shit up."

Mello bit his lip.   "Not quite my plan, but close enough.   If it's necessary."   He grabbed his case and turned, irritably, "We'll see how we go."    He waited for Matt to shut the boot, then climbed over the metal traffic barrier, that lined the verge here.   His feet found wood chipped mud and the other debris of the forest floor.    There were no birds, he noted.   No animal calls out there in the night.   It was all in stark contrast to earlier on, when the landscape had seemed alive with their warning hoots and howls.   Mello half-slid, half stepped down a couple of feet to a safer perch.   Matt followed him over the edge.    "Look out for the tunnel's entrance.   It has to be here somewhere."

"Possibly."   Matt concurred.   "But it doesn't really matter either way.   We have plenty of ways in."

Mello nodded, reaching out to steady his downward slide on a tree trunk.   "It would be good for a sense of completeness."

"Let's complete before we start worrying about the sense of it."   Matt muttered, nearly falling over.    "Why the fuck didn't we take the river route?"

Mello didn't reply, but led the way, slipping and sliding down to within sight of the stream.    Across it, they could just make out the craggy rise of the land, upon which the manor house was built.    The collapsed face of the old mine entrance was distinct. It gaped like a scar amidst the lighter hue of the rocks around it.    Mello peered around, certain that he should also be able to see the ambulance, but too much foliage was in his way.    He breathed, "We should help them."   Then shook his head.   "Tell someone that they're here."

"Who?"   Matt lit a cigarette. The brief flare of his lighter was blinding to their burgeoning night vision.

Mello tutted, casting him a weary look.   "The ambulance crew."   He pressed on, balancing his bag and case against the inertia of their downward journey.    Matt was slower, so Mello paused for a moment at the bank of the stream.    He felt his husband arrive, so quietly conceded.   "It's further up than I thought.   Maybe we should have come down from the top of the other bank."

"What?"   Matt called, much higher up the slope than he should have been.    Mello whipped around, startled, to see.    Matt paused, clinging to a tree.   He warily asked, "What's up?"

Mello blinked.   "I thought you were right behind me.   You weren't."   His whole body recalled the sensation of someone standing there; the sound of their arrival and the touch of their physicality, just inches behind him.   It was gone now.   It had been fleeting, but someone had stood there.   Mello knew it with every instinct in his body.    "Throw down your bag, if you're struggling, but hurry the fuck up."

Matt didn't respond, but picked his way down to Mello's side.    They could see the ambulance now. Its blackened, burned out shell straddling the stream.   Its front end was crushed into a charred tree.    It had never touched the water.   The stench of it hung heavily in the air.   The wreckage was far enough away for the scene, behind the shattered windscreen, to be a mere suggestion of immobile shapes.   Their own imaginations supplied the cremated corpses sprawled within.    Mello stared at it.   Matt exhaled smoke.    "Leave it, Mell.   Hal already said that there were no survivors."

"I know." Mello frowned.   He had been with her at the time.   He turned his attention to the rockfall, part way up the gorge, before them.    He asked, with sudden impatience, "Would you be able to climb up there?"   Matt nodded and began his first leap across the stream, using fallen boulders to keep his feet dry.   "We could go down to the river.    We know that there's another entrance there."

Matt stopped.   "Yeah.   Leading into a flooded tunnel.   Meet you in there, if you're going that way."

Mello sighed and took off, like a gazelle, across the stream, finding his own rocks to step upon.    They met at the foot of the bedrock, peering up at the exposed roots of trees and the flora forced through cracks in the crags.   "It's hardly going to be scaling the north face of the Eiger, but it could be...."

"There's a path."   Matt pointed.    He lifted up his bag above his head, then used a handful of weeds to propel himself upwards.   He stood straight, smirking down at Mello.    Matt took the cigarette from his mouth.   "Yep.    I can see the rest of it now.   It goes almost to the entrance, then ends in rocks."

Mello looked back, along the stream.    Now that he knew that the path was there, he could see it, though it was overgrown and almost invisible beneath the vegetation.    "Well spotted, guapo."   Mello smiled.   He leapt up, beside his husband.   "How much can you actually fucking see through those goggles?"

Matt wrinkled up his nose.   "Enough."

"Evidently."   Mello smiled, only slightly annoyed with himself for not having seen the pathway first.    It cut through the rock, camouflaged from the ground by outcrops.   It had merely seemed like a crack from down there.    "Shall we?"   He signalled for Matt to move on, then watched him take his first crunching steps through the narrow trail.    Nature was trying to reclaim it.   Mello wasn't sure how long it had been since any creature had last walked up here, but unless it was soon cleared, very few would ever be able to do so again.    Matt slid on a pile of shale.   Mello's hand, laden with the case, rose to break his potential fall.   It was only ever a gesture and didn't connect.   Matt steadied himself with another step.   "Careful."    Mello felt, rather than saw, Matt's withering glance. Pre-warned, Mello jumped over the uneven surface and landed right behind his husband.   The blockage was just ahead.   "This is Fenian's path, isn't it?   First day, he abseiled down and found a path covered in a rockfall."

"Erm, yes."   Matt confirmed.   "Do you think that the ambulance crew died instantly?"

Mello sucked in a breath.   "By which you mean, what was the timing here?   If, when Fenian peeped out of that tunnel and saw it, he had climbed out and run down this path, could he have pulled them from the wreckage before it blew?    And if so, would they have been alive or dead right now?"    Mello shook his head.   "We might never know, even if we pick his testament apart, because his vision was half in Galway at the time."   He surveyed the boulders before them. They rose, as if in a gigantic cairn, covering the gap that they knew was behind.    It was difficult to see where Fenian had even looked out.   "Time for the torch."

Matt took it from his pocket and switched it on.   Nothing happened.   "Arse."   He set about winding it up, until Mello took it off him and wound it faster.    Matt lit another cigarette and waited.     The light, when it eventually shone, was dim and hardly worth the effort of producing it.    "This makes no fucking sense."

Mello's lips were pursed.   His glance betrayed his irritation.   "We haven't solved the case, Mail.   It's still sapping the damn energy."    He glared at Matt's cigarette.   "Well, most of it.   Even the fucking ghosts know not to mess with your lighter."   Mello dropped his case at Matt's feet and draped his bag over Matt's shoulder.   "Wait there."    He took off over the rocks, finding and testing hand and foot-holds.    He moved across with surprising speed that took him almost to the top.    "It's not as bad as it looks."   He yelled back.   "And I can see where Fenian nearly got out."   Mello inched across, secured his perch, then shone the torch inside.   He reeled back almost instantly, his body pressed against the rock.   "Shit!"

Down below, Matt's mouth was dry.   He breathed an inaudible, "What?"

"Nothing." Mello spoke tightly, though its fittingness as a response was coincidental.   He hadn't heard his husband's question. Neither could he shake the certainty that something unseen had been staring right back at him, only inches from his face.   He still felt the danger, coursing as adrenaline in his veins.   His reason told him to look again, but his body was already starting the clamber down the rocks.    He stopped just a few feet from Matt to say, "We can get in."

Matt's eyes were wide, watching his husband.   Something had spooked the Slav, so much so that he didn't even want to mention it. Matt swallowed.   "So," he began casually, "what just happened?"

"Same shit, different hole."   Mello returned, briskly, holding out his hand for the case.   "Come on."

"Are we rushing because you're trying to protect me or because, if we don't, you'll lose the courage to get in there?"

Mello's eyes narrowed.   His fright had waned enough for him to start to believe that he had imagined it.   Just as he must have imagined the figure behind him by the stream.    "This place fucks with your senses.   We know that, Mail.    Case please."   He took it, as it was handed over, then grabbed the bag that followed.    "But I don't scare that easily.   Let's go."

"Are you telling me, yourself or the ghosts?"   Matt was watching Mello take chocolate from his bag and devour two strips of it, in three swift bites.   Matt's mouth formed the word, 'infrasound', but he didn't precisely articulate it.      Instead, he climbed over a boulder and began his own precarious ascent, soon joined by Mello.   The going was slower than Mello's scouting foray, but only because they were hampered by their bags.   Matt reached the narrow gap first, as Mello had been unable to get past him.   "I'll go in, then you..."

"No." Mello snapped, moving angrily across him, crushing Matt into the rocks behind.   Mello nearly slipped, as an untested foot hold gave way, in a shower of stones, each rebounding into the stream below.   Matt let go of a crag to grab a handful of Mello's red coat, but the Slav had already stepped to safety.   "I'm fine."   He assured his husband, with annoyance sharp in his expression and tone.   "Let's just get in there."

Matt blew out his cheeks and held onto the rocks.   "Calm down and slow down please.    Who are you pissed off at?   Yourself for getting freaked?"

Mello glowered, but carefully pulled himself upwards.   He was at the gap now and he pushed his case through it, his arms following, to ease himself through.    Nothing and no-one grabbed him.   Mello hated himself for the suspicion that they might.   His bag caught and trapped him, until Matt pushed it onto his back.   Mello slithered through, into a musty smell and darkness, refusing now to countenance that something was watching, quietened in the shadows.    There was no sheer drop.   The boulders continued.   Once clear of the entrance, Mello simply twisted around and felt himself on a solid, albeit uncomfortable, surface.   "Pass your stuff through, Mail."    Mello called, not turning to survey the tunnel.   "I'm right here."

The reply was Matt's case filling the gap and blocking out what little light Mello had.   He took it and rested it on a boulder, next to his own case.   Matt's bag came next, before Mello had to move to allow the Spaniard to squeeze through.   Mello took both bags and cases with him, slipping on his backside, in controlled movements, until he felt the brickwork floor beneath his boots.   Matt's breathing had quickened, but his tone held no disturbance, "How far down?"

"Four or five feet, that's all."    Mello waited, grasping the last vestige of distraction, in Matt's descent, so that he didn't linger on the unsettling atmosphere in that place.   "All good?"   Mello asked, as Matt's boot hit his own.    He felt for Matt's shoulder and placed a bag there, releasing it, as Matt took its weight.   "Grab your case.   I'm going to try the torch again."

Matt sniffed.   "I can't even see my case."

"It's at my feet."   Mello began winding the little torch.    Its mechanical whirring echoed through the chambers.    "And see if you can find one of those bottles of water.    I'm parched."    As he wound, his eyes were becoming accustomed to the light.   He could almost make out the shape of Matt, sitting on a boulder, unzipping the bag.    Two passageways, dog-legging out at right angles from their position, were starting to come into view.    Their brickwork construction became even clearer, when Matt flicked on his lighter and used its glow to find a water bottle in his bag.    Shadows danced upon the immediate walls.   Mello peered into them, yet saw nothing.

"Water."   Matt said, quietly.    "Mell, water."

Mello glanced down, avoiding looking directly into the flame, to preserve his night vision.    "Gracias."    He stopped winding and took the bottle.   Half of its contents were gulped down, in one long draft, until his body was sated and his mouth felt less dry.   He could hear Matt drinking too.   Mello took his chocolate bar from his pocket, taking a bite, to savour on his tongue, before resuming his winding.    "Fenian did this without a torch and he went further than we're planning to visit now."

"Mmm," said Matt, in the darkness, "and we have a wind up torch."

"Just thinking that it might be better without."

"Think again."   Matt sparked up a cigarette and sat sucking on it.   "Do you want me to wind it?"

Mello peered into the gloom.   He had been expecting more drama.   After all, Fenian had made this sound like Grand Central Station for spirits; and their research had led Mello to conclude that it was the source of whatever was happening in that house.    There was nothing, except that omnipresent sense of being observed and a certain expectancy in the atmosphere.   In short, nothing that couldn't be rationalised as his own imagination and anxiety.    "What are you thinking, Mail?"

There was a pause.   "I know why we didn't park at the manor.   It's because you are worried that those two men are still there and/or the police."   Matt hurried on, as Mello made to speak.   "But what I can't work out is why we've stopped now, when you were so impatient outside, that you nearly zeroed yourself trying to get in here."

Mello stiffened.   He stopped winding. "You think I'm afraid?"   His chocolate wrapper was torn and the foil ripped back.   "Let's get moving then."

"Torch."

"Here."   Mello held it out and Matt took it.   "How blind are you in here?"

"Very. It's dark."   Matt switched on the torch and its weak light illuminated the junction before them.    It made the gaping blackness beyond feel more predatory, like something could emerge at any moment, or worse still, remain there waiting for them to pass it by.    "Which way?"

Mello nodded towards the left-hand tunnel.   Matt shone his torch into that direction.   They saw the different hues on the small, hand-fired bricks, creating a patchwork of earthy colours across the ceiling and walls.   Then the torch-light dimmed further and died.    "I'm really looking forward to hearing the scientific explanation, Mail."

Matt just sucked in the last of his cigarette and stubbed the embers underfoot.    He rose, picking up his bag and case, then stopped.   "Dodgy fucking mechanics?"   It was a question and that fact brought Mello to his side.    He took his hand and held it. "Let's just get this over with."   They started walking up the passageway, with Matt's boots clicking on the stone.

"Mail, stick together please."   Mello commanded, urgently, bending to grasp his case.   He was still several paces behind.

Matt froze.   The heat plunged from his shocked body.   His head span, dizzy with stars and the stuttering shallowness of his gasp. His knees felt weak, as he stumbled backwards, into the wall.   In the pitch darkness, his hand was still held, while Mello's resounding footsteps caught him up.   Matt pulled back. There was an instant of momentary resistance, before his hand was free. "Fucking shit!"

It was undoubtedly Mello beside him now.   Matt could make out the Slav's silhouette against the murky traces of moonlight, seeping in from the gap behind.    He could smell chocolate and musk.   He could hear Mello's arrested breath on his neck.   "Guapo?"

"I thought you were holding my hand.   You were way behind me, but I thought you were right here, holding my hand."   Matt's words gushed out.    "Fucking shit! That felt real!"

Mello's arms enveloped him, with the case clattering into the brick wall, before Matt moved into the embrace.    Both sets of hearts thundered, felt by each other, in the possessive proximity.    Matt bowed his head, burying his face into Mello's shoulder and letting the fright fade away.   Mello kissed his ear.    When he eventually spoke, it wasn't quite with the defiant swagger that he had intended.   "Well whatever it was can fuck off.   You're mine."   Mello swallowed, hard.   "Body and soul, mine."

Matt broke away, fear switching to anger.   "Let's just get this fucking over with."   He reached towards his pocket, to extract his cigarettes, but Mello took his hand instead and gripped it tightly.

"I'm holding your hand now."

"Yes." Matt expelled his breath in one long stream.   His shoulders sank, but he was no less on edge.   "Bastards."

"You couldn't have imagined it?"

"No, Mello," Matt snarled, "I couldn't."

"Ok."   Mello sharply retorted.   "I believe you."   They walked on, away from the draft of fresh air and into an ever deepening tang of stagnation.      They knew that it was water.   They could also understand why Fenian had thought it a rotting corpse.   The stench was overpowering, as the passageway began to open up ahead of them.   It left a bitter taste on the tongue, which Mello immediately masked with chocolate from the bar in the hand, which also grasped the case.    Its metal side tapped softly against the zip of Mello's coat, causing Matt to skip a breath.

"What was that?"

"I'm eating chocolate."   Mello glanced at him.   "You really can't see a bloody thing, can you?"

Matt hesitated, but shook his head.   "No."   They stepped out into the subterranean chamber and stopped.    "Can you?"

"Not much."   An exploratory foot knocked against something, which skittered across the stone floor.    Mello commented, lightly, "Bones."

"Or skulls.   Fenian said that there were skulls too."   Matt dipped his mouth beneath the level of his gilet's collar, to shield himself from the smell.    "How many are you going to pick up for your collection in our library?"

Mello snorted, recognising Matt's attempt at levity.   "Just a couple.   Souvenirs of my vacation in Wales."   Neither laughed. "Shall we do it, Mail?"

Matt's hand eased its way free of Mello's and he crouched down.   His bag, swinging from his shoulder, crunched ominously something underneath.    He ignored it, listening only to the sound of Mello devouring chocolate, in the hope that it would cover the pitter-patter of rodent feet.   There had to be rats down here.   Matt had known that before he came.   He half wished that they would hurry up and appear, because the undercurrent of phobic anticipation was worse.   He took his lighter from his pocket and flicked it into wavering flame.    It illuminated the old bones and skulls on the ground nearby, but cast only a grainy, dull light onto the chamber around them.

"Bigger than I thought."   Mello stated, quietly, like speaking too loudly might alert the dead.   They already knew.   Both men had felt the attentiveness in the atmosphere from the second they'd crossed the threshold.    Matt searched in his bag.   "Fire and gas. They seem ok with them."

Matt had been reaching for his can of lighter fuel, but he switched to the flare. "It didn't help with the candles upstairs."   He touched the wick to his lighter, which was already growing too hot even through his gloves.    He wasn't concerned.   He had a pack of twenty more in his bag.    By degrees, the wick took and he handed it up to Mello, taking another for himself.    Mello held his flare high and, as the burning reached the wax, the flame settled and grew.   Like a curtain rising, the chamber came into focus through the gloom and Mello emitted a gasping 'heh'.    "What?"   Matt looked up and saw the wall above the altar.   "Oh."

A thick sliver of chocolate hung from Mello's mouth.   "Do we think that the band came down here?"   He asked.   The symbol etched there was the same as that on Deuterofobia's album cover.    It had circled the globe, on the internet, but Mello had never seen it before in all of his religious studies.   "It is the same, isn't it?"

"Yes."   Matt lit a cigarette from his own flare's fledgling flame, then stayed crouching, surveying the symbol.   "Any idea what the fuck it is yet?"

"No."   Mello replied, truthfully.   "Is your 'phone still working to photograph it?"    He left his case by Matt and wandered further into the chamber, picking his way through the scattered fragments of skeletal remains.    His light illuminated the stack of skulls, positioned on crumbling shelves along one wall.   "It was either a massacre or else Century was right.   They raided a cemetery."

"My 'phone is dead."

"Sketch it?" suggested Mello, moving towards the far wall.   "Ah."   He had found Fenian's chalk mark and the debris of rotten wood.   He sought and saw the opening above.   "I estimate that Fenian fell ten to eight feet."   Mello's eyes narrowed.   "9.2ft."   He smirked, because he liked being precise.   His guesses had been proved right, in the past, with an enduring accuracy, which left him feeling very smug.    "Yes, there was once a ladder here."   He glanced back.   Matt was drawing on a pad, with his flare lodged between his boot and the cruck of his arm.   A cigarette dangled from his lips.   Mello turned back, inspecting the infrastructure.   "I can see the bottom of the standing stone.   Poking out from under this overhanging ledge.   So why are you an overhanging ledge, I wonder?"

Matt glanced sharply across.   "Are you talking to me or the ledge?"

"Lots of damp wood here.   Urggh!"   Mello withdrew his hand, as the fragment crumbled, moist beneath his finger.    He wiped his glove on his trousers, before taking the chocolate from his mouth.   "I'm increasingly sure that Fenian called it.    There are two stone slabs set in the wall here and lots of broken wood.   I'm willing to believe that there was a gulley, channeling water beneath this ledge, submerging that tip of the stone."   He stood again.   "The question here, my beloved Mail, is why?"

"Why?"   Matt obligingly asked, looking up to watch Mello.   "And mostly why are you asking questions aloud, like you're fucking Sherlock Holmes or something?   You're normally a lot quieter in your investigations."

Mello was inspecting the traces on the stone floor.   "Definitely some kind of trough.   Quite shallow, but deep enough to hold water to submerge the bottom of the stone.   Thereby, thank you Kiana, neutralising the earth energies emitted by the megalith since time immemorial."

"Or the last 3,000 years."   Matt replied dryly.    "You're really nervous, aren't you, Mell?"

Mello didn't deign to answer him, but cautiously manoeuvred himself through the remains to the altar.   "Oh look! Are you blood stains, perchance?"

"Per-bloody-chance?" Matt asked.   "Is that even still in the English fucking language?"

Mello took a vial and a pen-knife from his pocket and scratched at the stain, until he had enough flakes to forensically test.   "Are you sketching the whole room, because it's taking you forever to do it."

"Yes."

"Good boy."   Mello inspected the stone of the altar itself.   It was deeply eroded, until the decoration upon it was barely discernible. It hadn't always been here.   It had once been exposed to the elements.    Traces of moss had stained parts of it green. "My theory is that you also came from Strata Florida.   Hauled up the river on the same channels that took the lead.    Carried in here and used for..."   His gaze took in the dark stains and the charnel house of human remains.   "Not many bloodstains for all of this.   So let's suppose that Century is right again.   You raided the graveyard and you took the altar.   You used them both for sacrilege?    Could just as easily have been to create your own holy place beneath the house.    Nanteos had monks in the basement, so you wanted them too.    Did you blame the Pagan stone for your misfortunes?    So you dug down to its base and diverted the stream to take out the Earth energies."

"Wouldn't a bowl of water have done that?"

Mello considered it.   "In the short term, yes. But bowls of water have to be renewed or else they stagnate, gather shit and turn into runny earth."   His chocolate settled, static between his lips.   "Ganges.   Running water. Sacred wells, sacred springs, sacred..."   He looked around him.   "And capped the top of the stone with an altar that had been used for Mass. Did he believe in the fairy paths? Blocked those off, in honour of God."

Matt shook his head.   "Works right up until you consider the bloodstains...."

"Blood of Christ."

"... and the trapdoors. He wanted to regulate the water coming in and out."   Matt held onto his flare to shift position.   "Turn the stone on and off like a tap."

Mello stared at the symbol again.    "Yes."

Author's Note: This story is being discussed here: http://mrsjeevas.joharrington.co.uk/forum/viewforum.php?f=11
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Annals of Fear II