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The Eye handed her some knowledge, as the door of Pinhole Books opened.
Psychologists called the phenomenon learned helplessness . An animal subjected to stressors from which they could not escape, would eventually give up trying to escape altogether. A state of learned helplessness was characterized by resignation and passivity when faced with further stressors, disbelief in one’s ability to control one’s environment, and a combination of heightened stress levels and under-reactivity to painful events .
Even without The Eye’s input, the look on Eric Delano’s son’s face showed all of that clear enough. He had given up, resigned to the rest of his life haunted by a sadistic, unhinged ghost with control issues and a vendetta against him. She cataloged her observations of him. Black hair in need of touching up, eye liner, a multitude of piercings, like a mundane rebellious adolescent playing at their mother’s idea of satanism. Under that layer, fatigue and stress were written across his face--shadows under his eyes, the faint beginnings of a beard. If he were anything like Eric, that would mean at least a week without shaving. ( He left his room as little as possible while Mary was manifested, though that hardly kept him from her notice.) The tension apparent in his shoulders was almost enough to give her a headache. On the hand holding the door half open, she could see an eye carefully tattooed on each knuckle. Foolish boy, after all his father had done to escape The Eye, he had thrown himself to it. Mary must have been furious. (He got the tattoos done while she was faded. When she manifested again, she clawed at his healing skin with all the power of Terminus she could channel to destroy them. The tattoos took far longer to heal than ordinary, but the Eye’s hold on him won out.)
(The tattoo artist was found dead in his shop.)
He eyed her warily.
“Do you have an appointment?” His voice was monotone and unfriendly.
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Then she won’t see you.” He started to close the door on her, and she caught it, stepping into the gap.
Alarm was in his eyes instantly. He let go of the door and sprang back toward the stairs, pulling a bottle of hairspray and a lighter out of the pockets of his leather jacket, aimed at her with practiced precision. How resourceful of him. Good to see he was not so passive about external threats as he was toward his mother.
“I’m not here to see Mary, Gerard. I’m here to see you. And I have no interest in hurting you.” (She’d had no interest in hurting Michael or Jan, either. She’d just been interested in what their pain could do for the world).
He didn’t look like he felt any safer, but he wasn’t retreating back to the shop, and he didn’t call for help from his mother. Gertrude doubted Mary would protect him if he was in danger. She could feel him reaching out with The Eye, trying to learn what kind of threat she was. But she was far stronger than him, and the wards she set against Elias were just as effective against the boy.
“I know how to help you with your mother.” As she said that, Mary’s voice floated out from the shop like a gunshot, and Gerard jerked as though shot.
“ Gerard . Who is it?”
She could see the lighter tremble in his hands at his mother’s voice, in a way that Gertrude herself, a perceived attacker, hadn’t caused. He looked up the stairs and back toward Gertrude. Leave himself alone with an unknown avatar, or risk the attention of his mother?
“ Gerard!”
“No one, mum. They needed directions. I sent them off.”
“Good. Come back up and help me.” Her voice was mild, but Gertrude knew how much cruelty it hid, and how quickly her moods could turn. Gerard knew it too, all too well. His hands dropped back to his sides with the makeshift weapons, shoulders slumped in resignation even as he looked back to Gertrude with something like a plea raw on his face. A rat returning to his maze; a beaten, snarling dog slinking back to his master.
“Bring me the book when she is fading.”
(He had tried, once, to burn her, or thought about trying. He got as far as kneeling in front of the book in her study, open to her pages, with a lighter in one hand. And then he was taken by a panic attack at the thought of setting his mother alight, overwhelmed by guilt and his own pathetic attachment to her. He had never so much as let himself consider it since then).
Gerard stared at her.
“GERARD.” There was no fighting the command in her voice, and he turned back up the stairs.
“The Archives of the Mangus Institute, Gerard. You can be free of her.”
He glanced back at her one more time, and vanished back inside Pinhole Books.
She could hear snatches of argument from her seat on a park bench below Pinhole Books. The boy was louder than his mother; power didn’t need to shout.
(The first time after his release that Gerard got into a row with Mary, Fourteen different people called the police to report that Morden’s most notorious murderer was killing somebody else. Four police cars and a firearms unit responded, and were more than happy to drag him back to the station while the flat was searched for his victim. Mary and the book were nowhere to be found, so they were forced to release him after a sleepless night interrogated by a Hunt-touched cop who could smell the lie on him when he claimed he had been alone that night.)
A defensive, nonchalant , “Sorry, couldn’t hear you from the stairs,” and then a frustrated “I said I’m sorry!” and then the facade of indifference beginning to crack. “I’m sor--no one, I swear-- jesus --mum-- mum ” Gertrude could feel the fear rolling in waves from the shop. The Eye lapped at it like a kitten with milk.
(Mary was angered by her son’s impertinence and his pleading in equal measure. She suspected him of lying to her, and would not let him rest until he gave an answer that satisfied her or she faded)
(Mary did not believe herself beholden to The End even now, but she was. Gerard’s fear of her was more than sufficient. The End’s existential terror seeped into his bones as he waited for her to appear, and sapped his future like a cancer while she demanded he sacrifice his every living moment, the rest of his life, to her cause.)
Gertrude hoped he would bring her the book. There were better causes to die for.