A single knock was all it took to get Martha's attention, and before Victor even had the chance to hesitate the door was swung open, as if she knew to expect him. The woman was not happy, he could tell by her stark expression, though she didn't say a word until the both of them were settled down inside of their respective chairs. Victor made sure the door was closed, for he was finding it difficult even to express his concerns to Martha, much less to the whole of the history department.
"I haven't seen you in a while." Martha began, sitting forward on her desk and tapping her fingers disappointedly against a very large calendar that sat as a placemat underneath her workspace.
"The way we left off made me think I wasn't allowed back." Victor admitted nervously. The woman nodded, though the blank look in her eyes made it clear that she couldn't quite remember the last time. That only confirmed Victor's suspicions of a third party being involved, taking over poor Martha's words and body in order to recapture complete control.
"Well, what news then? Surely you have something worth my time?" the woman presumed.
"I do...well actually I have an overwhelming amount." Victor admitted. "Starting with the identity of the shadow, the man we've both seen now."
"I don't want to know his name, Victor. I don't want to humanize him any more than I already have! He's a nightmare, a demon...he doesn't need anything more than that!" Martha exclaimed.
"I've seen his face, I know his name. He came to me again, this time in body not in shadow. He spoke to me...might as well introduced himself. And I found him in a photograph, the group picture they took outside of the house!" Victor exclaimed.
"He was in the house before it shut down?" Martha clarified, looking surprised. Victor held back his smile, though he was filled with an overwhelming urge. Finally, he knew more than did the expert.
"Yes. Can I show you?" Victor wondered. The woman sighed heavily, her eyes closing for a moment as she weighted the costs and benefits of getting more involved. Surely she didn't want to delve back into this world, this madness. Though curiosity was a beast, perhaps more untamable than was the force they were trying to deal with.
"Show me, yes." She agreed. Victor smiled, unearthing the group photograph from where he had kept it in his coat pocket, the one closest to his chest. He laid it out on the table, upside down so that Martha could see more clearly. She leaned forward along the desk, rearranging her glasses onto the brim of her nose so as to better see each one of their faces.
"He's here, Sherlock." Victor began, pointing towards the curly haired boy that he was beginning to know so well. Martha's face grew grim, though she nodded in agreement.
"Yes, that looks correct. Sherlock, you say? That's what he calls himself?" she presumed. Victor nodded quietly, staring down at what the boy forced as a smile. Nothing about him looked pleasant, and the more he concentrated the more convinced he was of Sherlock's grim part in all of this tragedy. Whatever had happened at Sigma Eta must have been coordinated by his hand.
"And this boy, the one sitting on the stairs. He's one of the boys from the luau picture, the one that was hand delivered by the shadow the first time it visited me. I think his name is John. He came to me in a dream, just last night. He was begging for my help." Victor explained quietly. John looked much more pleasant, with a genuine smile and a look of good intention. He was sitting on the step beside his friends, unaware of the evil that lurked just above. They all looked happy, so carefree, with that teenaged invincibility! And how near they were to certain death, how clueless! Victor wished he could stretch out his hand into this photograph and pluck them all back into the real world, back where they could be safe and under his protection. Then again, whatever was haunting them in their world was certainly leaking through into Victor's, and the safety in this life may be just as compromised as theirs had been so many years ago. Perhaps they felt the same pity for him, all the way from where they sat in the sixties. Perhaps they saw where his fate would lead.
"I don't recognize him." Martha admitted, taking one last look at the boys before falling back into her chair with a look of concern upon her face. Victor remained quiet, not wanting to disturb her thoughts.
"Professor, I find it a bit repetitive to be repeating myself, but this is dangerous business. Even more dangerous now that he's contacting you." Martha warned.
"I know, but I'm not alone. Professor Musgrave has shown interest, and together we've been working out the details." Victor admitted. This time it was even more difficult to hide his smile, so much so that he felt the corners of his lips rising without his consent. Martha remained quiet, though Victor was sure that she was especially good at reading people. Whatever Victor was attempting to hide, well it couldn't stay hidden forever.
"Then repeat the same warnings onto him." Martha suggested. "This is a dangerous game, one that has promised to repeat itself more than once."
"Professor Musgrave did offer me information, something I was entirely unaware of. He mentioned that there were girls living in the house, after it had first shut its doors? First years, who were haunted?" Victor clarified, sitting forward as he tucked away the photograph back into its secure pocket. Martha nodded grimly, as if she had been aware of that peculiar housing system as well.
"They went mad, Victor." She muttered quietly, obviously not feeling like easing him into the concept of their despair.
"Mad? I thought they just moved out?" he clarified, remembering back to what was Musgrave's happy ending to the strange story. They had been relocated, or dropped out entirely! He mentioned nothing about madness.
"I interviewed one, during my own investigations. She had landed herself in the local penitentiary, for ravings and suicidal thoughts. She claimed he was still around, in her dreams, and her thoughts. She claimed he was speaking to her constantly, in the back of her head, as persistent as her own internal mind." Martha admitted.
"That's just one." Victor pointed out, sure that there was always one outlier in a bunch.
"I investigated; they all shared the same fate. Madness, suicide, penitentiaries. Each and every one!" Martha slammed her fist onto the table, as if this was drawing closer to a personal battle than one of professional curiosity. "He's a madman, Victor, a madman!"
"Will we share the same fate as them?" Victor clarified, allowing his voice to drop into that comfortable level of concern.
"That depends." Martha admitted. "On how long you plan to live with him." 

Victor wondered for a long while whether or not he should allow Musgrave into this investigation or drop him now. He sat in his office chair, drawing the blinds shut so that his eyes could not wander to where they so often wanted to go, and kept the door locked. He went over everything in his head, each and every specter he had seen, each and every threat that came upon him. The more he learned of these happenings the more he realized that he was being subjected to them, not just with Sherlock but with the rest of his twisted gang. The girls, the girls in white! Well they must have been the maddened inmates of the house, their innocent souls trapped within the framework and their wasted bodies wandering onto land themselves in strait jackets. The more Victor pondered those particular girls the more he remembered, until at last he realized that he had shared an office with one of them, spoke with one. The very first experience he ever had was shared with that girl named Midge, her name still so fresh in his mind! The girl who had vanished from his office, leaving her scribbled notebook behind. And what of the doppelganger, the Professor who shared his face? If, by chance, all of these lost souls belonged once to Sigma Eta, then how was another version of him trapped in the loop? Unless that was just a reflection, mirroring backwards not forward, a version of his present self that was being whipped along through the strange tides of time. Did this mean he was already connected, whether he liked it or not? Or did it mean that he was destined to get involved, despite his best interest? And Musgrave...poor Musgrave. Was he to be subjected to the same endless fate, should he choose to investigate this matter further? Was that something Victor could allow and still upkeep his strong moral standing? It felt as though the house had already consumed him, though Musgrave could still escape the jaws. He was not yet obsessed, he had a strong will. As far as Victor was concerned that man was more interested in spending time together than he was any silly investigation, and perhaps it was that preoccupation that was saving his soul thus far. As far as Victor knew, Musgrave had not yet been visited. He could avoid it, if he chose to do so. Victor sighed heavily, grabbing one his fine ruled notebooks and deciding to draw a picture of what he could contemplate thus far, the pieces of the puzzle that were yet to be connected with any tangible holds. At the top he wrote out the name in big bold letters, Sigma Eta, as if to signify that the house was the predominating vessel. Perhaps it was not the source of the madness, though it was the home to the tragedies that were occurring. And thus he began, making a list on the top, bottom, and middle of the page. Each corresponded to a time frame, and each to a certain crowd. He began at the top, with the sixties/seventies range that the boys were suspected to live through. There he wrote the names Sherlock and John, along with fraternity boys and tragic end? Since their end was not yet known, perhaps by anyone still living, he had to make do with some empty space. Below them he wrote the nineties range, where the girls were supposedly living before they had been removed. He wrote the name Midge, along with the description of white dresses. He didn't know much more about the girls, though he made sure to add that they were all locked away in mental institutions, that or dead by their own hands. It was a tragic fate, one that Victor had to take a moment to mourn for. The last one he wrote was for the present day, with his own name and Martha's at the bottom. He dared not include Musgrave's name, for he wasn't entirely sure if the man would be willing to be included in this mess. Once the parameters were drawn Victor then proceeded to draw lines, connecting each one with the time frames that they supposedly overlapped. With a long pencil mark he drew Sherlock's line connecting him both with the boy that had driven the girls out of the house and the ghost Victor had since been haunted by. All three time frames, as if he was jumping realities with the goal of tormenting as many souls as he could manage. From the sixties he also spanned John down towards his time period, deciding that an appearance in a dream was one enough to be counted. John was trying to make contact, even if he wasn't powerful enough to manifest in the real world. It counted, surely. Then he drew a line from Midge and the white dresses down towards his own time frame, for they had been known to hop throughout the campus in their own free will. He was unsure if they were present in the sixties, even if they hadn't even been born then. All he knew of ghostly lore said that ghosts couldn't begin to haunt until they were dead, though Victor was beginning to wonder if ghost stories fell short on explaining his current predicament. And lastly he drew his own line, stretching up from his time frame and into the nothingness that surrounded the time frames. To be honest he was unsure where his doppelganger was from, though the outfit was too appalling to be of modern times. It was a blank space, ready to be filled in when the puzzle allowed it. Though now Victor was stuck with a bunch of lines, a bunch of names, and no clarity. What he figured was that it was an interlocking web, something less of a linear progression but more of a circular flow. To visualize it he imagined a washing machine, with souls getting thrown inside and tumbled around into the different time lines to suit their purposes. Was he trapped already, in this endless loop? Had he offered up himself so easily to the powers of the house, or was this already out of his hands, out of his control? A knock on the door alerted him back into the present, and on impulse Victor shoved the paper into his pocket, trying to keep it close in case it proved to be more valuable than he had first imagined.
"Come in!" he called, trying to busy himself with common enough tasks. Well it was a silly decision, but he opened up the stapler and pretended to be busy examining its load of staples. A stupid pastime, but it would work well enough. Thankfully the door was opened by a friendly face, and Victor allowed himself a sigh of relief.
"Hello Musgrave, you came just in time to slap me out of my mental gymnastics." Victor admitted, throwing the stapler down onto the desk and giving a small smile of defeat. Musgrave shut the door behind him, taking a seat in the chair across from the desk and looking quite concerned as he examined each detail of Victor's worn and tired face.
"Have you been sleeping much, Victor?" he wondered apprehensively, folding his hands on his knee and watching through his small glasses. Victor gave a sarcastic smile, as if to try to withhold as much truth from Musgrave as possible. He wanted to maintain the perception of strength, even if his own was withering away by the minute.
"Well, here and there. It's gotten a bit more difficult." Victor admitted. He still hadn't discussed his dream to Musgrave; in fact he hadn't been able to discuss the details with anyone too thoroughly. Even thinking about what he had seen made his stomach turn, and he was hesitant to even call such images back into his head.
"You haven't been seeing...him, lately?" Musgrave asked in concern, undoubtedly remembering Victor's little fit the last time he had tried to sleep.
"Thankfully, no. He's been staying away, which I appreciate." Victor assured.
"Good to hear. He scares me, everything about him." Musgrave admitted, digging his feet into the carpet as if he had become strained just thinking about facing off again with Sherlock Holmes. Victor nodded, deciding that he best disclose at least some of his nighttime vision to Musgrave. He figured that keeping it all to himself would be harmful, as if trying to maintain an explosion within a small area. Though before he proceeded, he needed to be sure to get the terms and conditions set around Musgrave's involvement. He didn't want to be liable, legally or not, for whatever happened to the two of them down the road. Who knows what horror Sherlock had set in place, still yet to come, or already happened?
"Musgrave, I feel like I should let you out now, if you would like to go." Victor said at last, leaning forward in his chair so as to emphasize the importance of his words. "The more I look into this the more I realize there are lasting effects, and delving too deep into Sigma Eta can leave you with wounds that cannot be healed. In some cases, wounds that only get worse."
"Bold of you to assume I'll let you go on without me." Musgrave chuckled. "Like it or not, Victor, I'm perfectly invested. Perhaps not as obsessively as you, but as intrigued. It's my campus too, you know."
"Of course, of course." Victor agreed, allowing a smile to fall into place. That had been the answer he had been hoping for on a selfish level, though morally he had rather hoped to see Musgrave back off. No need to waste both of their lives on a puzzle that may never be solved.
"Well then, now that that's settled, what are you hiding from me?" Musgrave wondered, narrowing his eyes in almost necessary suspicion.
"What makes you think I'm hiding anything?" Victor asked nervously, wondering whether Musgrave had gained the ability to read minds sometime since their last meeting.
"The fact that you still haven't explained those bags under your eyes. If you're not seeing him, then what are you seeing? Or are you just afraid?" Musgrave wondered. Victor gave a small smile, hesitant now to allow those images back into his head. As far as he was concerned, what he had seen last night was a ghostly version of real events, a depiction of John's horror story from his relations with their ever present demon.
"I had a dream last night, a nightmare I suppose. It was twisted, cold, disturbing...I couldn't fall back to sleep afterwards, afraid that the dark might be hiding something more menacing." Victor admitted. "I was alone in a dark hallway, a hallway that belonged to Sigma Eta though I don't know where. As I walked the ground splintered, and I could feel the hall behind me sliding away, breaking off. I went into a bedroom, and in it there were screams. And Sherlock was there, naked with his back exposed, so thin and spiny that I could see each bone as it moved under his skin." Victor shuttered, pausing and closing his eyes as his fingers clutched at the arms of his chair. He could hardly continue, he could hardly allow his voice to go on. It was almost painful to formulate such descriptions, to allow his tongue to force the words out into the open air.
"Victor, you don't have to go on." Musgrave warned, sensing his discomfort. Victor shook his head, trying to pull himself back into the safety of his own office. There was nothing to be afraid of, dreams were just dreams.
"There was a boy, a boy struggling underneath him. I think they were...well, making love, well it might have started that way. Though something had gone wrong, Sherlock had lost control, he had gone mad, seizing and twisting and yelling. And then suddenly he stopped, as if frozen in time, and the other boy crawled out from the blankets, towards me. His hands touched upon the bedpost, they were covered in blood, as if there was an open wound somewhere on his body. And he called for my help; he used my name, as if he knew me. And somehow I knew him, I identified him. His name was John." Victor stopped there, for his dream had ended abruptly with that name.
"Do you think he lived in the house?" Musgrave wondered.
"I know he did." Victor agreed, producing the photograph of the boys on the stairs once more and setting it on the desk before them. Musgrave leaned over to observe it, following Victor's finger as he pointed at the culprit.
"John!" Musgrave exclaimed, slapping his hands against the desk and rising to his feet quite suddenly. "Yes, I knew it, Victor, I knew it!" the man exclaimed, shaking his fists in the air in his own little triumph.
"What did you know?" Victor asked nervously, wondering what dots could possibly be connected between this old face and his appropriate name.
"He's the boy from the luau picture, the shorter boy that I recognized! I knew I had seen him somewhere, I knew I knew his name! It's John, I know him." Musgrave announced. "One way or another, he's back at Stoke Moran."