Yikes! How about she does not go near those at all!

That seems like a good plan! (There’s also quite a few cobwebs that have been similarly cleared, but this is probably more expected.)

Yeah, cobwebs are normal, piles of dead worms are Yikes.

She means to ask somebody about them, but ends up forgetting because it is so much easier to just Not Think About The Dead Worms.

Meanwhile:

"Jon. I told you not to come find me."

"I know you did, but it's--"

"Important, yeah. It's always important. Been taking any statements recently?"

Sigh. "No. And--thank you. You--" Deep breath. "You did the right thing."

"Yeah, well, somebody's got to. What do you want."

"There was--a girl, at Hilltop Road. Not Annabelle. She's from a different universe, like--like that one statement we got right before the Unknowing, Anya Villette, the one you found for me. Her name's April. She doesn't legally exist, she didn't even have any clothes, we've been giving her a place to stay but--"

"...But the Magnus Institute isn't exactly prime real estate. And what do you expect me to do about this?"

Sigh. "...Do you think you could figure out a way to get her some money without either trapping her here or bringing her to the attention of Peter Lukas. Write it off as an expense or something. ...Please."

"...I can do my best. I should... go now."

"Yeah. Yeah, okay."

And when Jon looks back, Martin is gone.

The next day: "Hey. April. Can you help me with something?"

"Sure, what's up?"

"Daisy passed out again yesterday. I don't think she's hurt, I caught her, but it'd make me feel better to have someone keeping an eye on her. Melanie's got a bad leg, Jon's as likely to pass out too as he is to help, and I can't be hovering around her all day, so. That leaves you. If she falls, catch her head, head injury is the most dangerous part of falling. --Might want to keep an eye on Jon too if he's around. Get me if she's acting weird or if anyone falls and you can't wake them up. Don't trust them if they say they feel fine, they're both liars about that."

"Got it. What, uh, is Daisy's problem, anyway, I get the sense it's not the same as Jon's...? Maybe none of my business, I guess. Except I don't know what kind of acting weird to look for."

"She's-- violent. Or she can be. Hasn't been, since the coffin, and that was two months ago. But that's not what I meant. Acting weird as in concussion symptoms. Memory problems, confusion, sensitivity to light, fatigue, nausea. That sort of thing. --Has anyone given you Smirke's list of fears?"

"Nnnno. No, they haven't."

"...Right. Of course they haven't.

There was this old British architect, 19th century, Robert Smirke, and he came up with a way to categorize the fear entities that affect our world. He came up with fourteen: the Eye, the Dark, the Stranger, the Spiral, the Lonely, the Slaughter, the Buried, the Vast, the Corruption, the Desolation, the Web, the End, the Hunt, and the Flesh.

Jon, Elias, the Institute--that's the Eye, the Beholding, the Ceaseless Watcher. It's the fear of being watched, being seen, being exposed. Flip side, it's the fear of learning things you shouldn't.

The Dark, pretty self-explanatory. Their cult is the People's Church of the Divine Host.

The Stranger is--you know the uncanny valley effect? Yeah, that's the Stranger. Mannequins, creepy dolls, that sort of thing. They tried to do an apocalypse ritual last year and we stopped them. Tim died, Jon and Daisy sort of died, I'm the only one that actually made it out.

The Spiral's the fear of going crazy, that either you're wrong about everything or everyone else is. Lies, fractals, mazes, hallucinations. An aspect of it lives in the tunnels, calls itself Helen. If you see a yellow door, don't go in it. Melanie likes it but I don't trust it.

The Lonely is, well, fear of being alone. That's Peter Lukas. He's grooming Martin, 's why you haven't seen either of them.

Melanie used to be Slaughter--that's violence, anger, warfare--after she got shot. We had to take the bullet out of her while she was asleep but the anesthetic wasn't enough, she woke up almost as soon as we got it out. She's fine now.

The Buried is claustrophobia and suffocation. Called the Buried because the central example's being buried alive. That's what happened to Daisy, she was in the coffin for--god. Eight months, before Jon went in and got her out.

The Vast is heights, depths, agoraphobia... opposite of the Buried, pretty much.

The Corruption is bugs, disease, parasitism... gross stuff, stuff that makes you feel like you need a shower.

The Desolation is uncaring destruction, caused by people or not. Fire, pain, that sort of deal. They've got a cult, too, the Lightless Flame.

I think we already mentioned the Web? Mind control, manipulation, for some reason also spiders. The house you came out of is a stronghold of the Web.

The End's pretty basic, fear of death.

The Hunt and the Flesh are weird 'cause they're formed from animal fears and not human fears--the Hunt is the fear of wild animals being hunted as prey, the Flesh is from animals being factory farmed. It's the newest fear. Daisy was part of the Hunt, back when we were police together. I'll write it all down for you later if you want."

"Are the piles of worm corpses in the tunnels related to... uh, the bug one I guess? Also... how... does somebody survive eight months in a coffin? Well, magic, presumably."

"Yeah, the worms attacked the Institute a few years back. It's why Jon's got those scars all over, Martin had to dig them out of him with a corkscrew. They're all dead now though, got it pretty thoroughly checked by exterminators with a super strict NDA, so." Shrug. "And, yeah, magic. But that's why she has trouble walking, she may not have needed food or water but her muscles still atrophied while she was in there. She's actually doing way better now, believe it or not. Well. In some ways, at least."

"Okay, noted. Wow, do you guys ever catch a break? I guess nobody's nearly died since I got here, which is cool."

“Not really. Give it a couple months, I’m sure you’ll get plenty of chances to experience mortal peril with the rest of us.”