Chapter Text
Jonathan Sims had never known his father.
Sure, he'd met the man. He knew what he looked like, (light brown hair and fair skin, in contrast to him and his mother, who were both black haired with brown skin) he knew his name, (Elias Richard Bouchard, his name wasn't passed down to Jon because his mother wanted him to have her own name if Elias wasn't going to be around to raise him) but he didn't really know him. He didn't know who his father's friends were, what his favorite food was, his favorite movie, nothing. Aside from his name and face, the only thing he really knew was that Elias worked at a place called the Magnus Institute.
He knew this because one day Elias came over to tell his grandmother about it, to which she had responded with incredulity, "You work at... what is it they do there? Investigating ghosts? Please, Elias, get an actual job."
Elias had explained to Jon's grandmother that they didn't investigate ghosts, they were "dedicated to the archival and investigation of paranormal events" (which, to be fair, did sometimes involve ghosts). Elias finally won Jon's grandmother over by telling her the pay was quite good, and she begrudgingly sighed. When she left, she turned to Jon and said, "When you grow up, don't work in a place like that. It'll ruin your life."
And that was the most Jon thought of this mysterious Magnus Institute for quite a while. His father worked there, and that was that.
Until one day, when his grandmother bought him a picture book titled A Guest For Mr. Spider.
Jon was a difficult child, according to his grandmother, but he was quite calm when reading, so she bought him books from any charity shop she could find and hoped that would be enough to keep him company. Jon enjoyed most of the books his grandmother bought him.
But A Guest For Mr. Spider was different. On the inside of a book was a plaque, reading "From the Library of Jurgen Leitner". The book was disturbing, to say the least. It involved the titular character, Mr. Spider, seemingly eating a bunch of flies who had knocked on his door and brought him various gifts. But that wasn't what made Jon so unnerved. The penultimate page depicted a wooden door, presumably Mr. Spider's own, covered in red and brown (likely the blood of Mr. Spider's various victims). The page had a cutaway panel to open to the final page, reading "Mr. Spider wants another guest for dinner. It is polite to knock."
Jon was compelled to knock on that door, until a boy who had bullied him all his life, a boy named Thomas, a few years older than him, snatched it from his hands.
"You're still reading this kiddy stuff, Jonny?" he said with a sneer.
Jon looked around him, as though he had been snapped out of a trance. He could have sworn he was on the porch, but he seemed to have walked across the street to the park.
"Give it back!" Jon said, trying his best to be authoritative. It wasn't easy, given he was rather short, even for an eight-year-old boy.
"Nah, I don't think so," Thomas said, looking at the cover, "A Guest For Mr. Spider?"
Thomas became uncharacteristically quiet, opening the book and beginning to read it, before wandering away, his eyes still on the pages of the book. Jon followed him, but was for some reason unable to run, feeling an odd compulsion to remain at walking pace behind Thomas. As they walked further and further away from the park, Jon looked around and noticed something odd: there was not a single car or person around. Not even any cars parked on the sides of the street, which was an oddity for the neighborhood Jon lived in. They walked for what seemed like hours, and very well might have been since eventually, the sun went down. Jon did not see a single person or car the entire time.
Thomas kept reading, and eventually they arrived at a house with a For Sale sign in front of it. The house was old and decrepit; it seemed like no one had lived there for a very long time.
Thomas walked up, and put the book against the house's door, before flipping to the penultimate page, and knocking one, two, three, four times. The door of the house opened, and two long, black, thin appendages with coarse hair emerged and pulled Thomas inside before slamming the door.
Jon ran up to the house, noticing that the book was still on the porch of the house. He opened the door, despite being terrified that whatever had taken Thomas would take him too, but it didn't. The door opened to an old, empty, rotting house.
Jon didn't remember everything after that, only being found by a police officer who asked if he was Jonathan Sims, who told him his grandmother had reported him missing. The officer drove him back home, where his grandmother had scolded him for running off. Jon didn't absorb much of it, still terrified by what he had seen.
He buried the book under a large pile of all the books he had read in his room, hoping that he would never see it again. He tried to convince himself that he had made it all up, that it was some bizarre nightmare his mind had invented when he saw missing posters for Thomas the next day to explain his sudden disappearance. Deep down, he knew it wasn't true, but eventually everything that had happened faded from his mind.
It wasn't until two years later, when his father came by, that the memory of A Guest For Mr. Spider suddenly reemerged.
In those two years, Elias had seemingly been promoted to the head of the Magnus Institute, and had apparently cleaned up his act. He wore nicer clothes, spoke more clearly and formally, although he still didn't come by very often. Oddly enough, Elias' eyes were a vibrant green, even though Jon could've sworn the last time he saw him that they were the same brown as his own.
But when Elias came by, Jon remembered that the Magnus Institute had something or other to do with events such as these. So, the morning after, he snuck out of the house with some money he had saved up and bought a bus ticket that would take him to the center of London, to the Magnus Institute.
Jonah Magnus had just settled into his desk for the day, when suddenly his vision was drawn to the image of a young boy with brown skin, black hair and a green sweater riding a bus, with a backpack containing a map and a book. He recognized the child; he was Jonathan Sims, the son of Elias Bouchard, the man whose body he currently possessed. He's coming to make a statement, Jonah realized, before pinching his forehead.
He walked downstairs and opened the door to Gertrude's office, hoping to tell her to turn away any children that might come by, before remembering that today was her day off. Why am I even so worried about this? If the child gives a statement, it will feed the Eye. This is my job. Must be because I'm still getting used to Elias' body. He walked to the ground floor, and waited a few minutes before seeing Jon entering the building, backpack in hand.
"Jon?" Elias asked, pretending as though he hadn't known he'd been on his way for nearly twenty minutes, "Whatever are you doing here? Your grandmother must be worried sick about you."
"Hello, Elias," Jon responded. (Elias made careful note of the fact that Jon called him "Elias" and not "Father" or something equivalent) "Something happened and... I thought you might want to know about it."
”Alright, then. Normally, we'd have you give your statement to Gertrude, our Archivist, but she's out for the day, so come along."
Elias took Jon up the stairs to his office and pulled out a tape recorder, set it on the table, and began his usual introduction.
"Statement of Jonathan Sims regarding..."
"This book right here. A Guest For Mr. Spider." The young child in front of Elias took a storybook out of his bag and placed it on the desk.
"Regarding a book called 'A Guest For Mr. Spider'. Statement recorded directly from subject, twenty-seventh of July, 1997, by Elias Bouchard, head of the Magnus Institute. Statement begins."
Jon felt the statement pour from his mouth, almost involuntarily. He was dimly aware of what he was saying, using the prose of a practiced novelist. He explained everything without ever tripping over his words or pausing to remember. As soon as the statement was done, Jon felt like he had suddenly regained control of his mouth, and Elias said, "Thank you, Jon. You can go now."
Jon stood up from the chair and took his backpack with him. He reached to take the book as well, but Elias stopped him and said, "No. We need to keep the book. For research purposes." Jon nodded, and left without it. As soon as Jon shut the door, Elias turned on the recorder and started speaking, "Another Leitner. And this one is surely of the Web. Why would it target Jon, I wonder? Did it know he would come here? I can't imagine another reason but surely that can't be it. As powerful as it is, it can't predict the future. If he was being influenced, why would the Web wait so long just to get him here? In any case, there's little follow-up to be done here. Even if we could find this house mentioned in the statement, it would be empty, per Jon's account. Once Gertrude gets back, I might ask her to send out one of her researchers to find the house and investigate, but as of right now, there's nothing to be done. End recording."
Elias shut off the tape recorder.