Cataloguing the Unseen

"Don't put that on my desk," Sam said, his voice a low, dangerous monotone. He didn't look up from the pottery sherd he was meticulously brushing. "I just organised my desk. It is a sanctuary of academic order. It is not a repository for your grave-robbed tat."

"It's not tat," Davey protested, his voice full of the breezy cheerfulness that Sam found both infuriating and, on rare occasions, strangely endearing. "And I prefer the term 'unconventional field acquisition'. Look at it! The carvings are pre-dynastic, I'm almost certain. And it does this weird... humming thing."

Sam finally looked up. The shard of obsidian sat innocently next to his perfectly aligned stack of reference books. It was jagged, clearly broken off a larger object, and etched with spiraling patterns that seemed to shift if you looked at them too long. And Davey was right. It was humming. A low thrum that vibrated through the cheap particleboard of the desk and up into Sam's elbows. It set his teeth on edge.

"Where did you get it?" Sam asked, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Davey had the grace to look slightly shifty. "A fellow... enthusiast. From a site the department doesn't know about. Up near the old quarry."

"So, stolen. From an unsanctioned dig. Fantastic." Sam stood up and grabbed a pair of latex gloves from a box on his shelf. "We are taking this directly to Professor Connors. We are filling out an Acquisition Anomaly form. We are doing this by the book."

"You and your books," Davey scoffed, leaning back in his chair, all lanky limbs and reckless energy. His fiery red hair was a disaster, as usual. "Where's your sense of adventure, Sammy? Sometimes you have to get your hands dirty."

"My hands are perfectly clean, thank you, encased in protective latex." Sam carefully picked up the shard. It was cold. Colder than it should have been, a deep, cellular cold that seemed to leech the warmth from his fingertips even through the glove. The humming intensified, and for a second, the spirals on its surface seemed to writhe. He dropped it back on the desk with a clatter.

A book on Mesopotamian funerary rites flew off the top shelf behind Davey and landed on the floor with a loud smack.

Davey jumped. "Bloody hell!"

Sam stared at the book, then at the shard, then at Davey. "Did you see that?"

"Bit hard to miss," Davey said, a slow grin spreading across his face. "See? It's exciting!"

"It's concerning!" Sam shot back. "Objects do not spontaneously launch themselves from shelves, Davey. That is a fundamental principle of physics."

"Maybe it's a very localized seismic event?" Davey offered, unhelpfully.

"Or maybe your cursed rock has decided to redecorate." Sam strode to the door. "I'm getting Connors." He twisted the old brass knob. Nothing happened. He twisted it again, harder. The door was solid, unmoving. "It's stuck."

"Jiggle it," Davey said, not moving from his chair. "It's an old building."

Sam jiggled. He rattled. He threw his shoulder against the heavy oak. It didn't budge. It felt less stuck and more... sealed. A cold knot of genuine fear tightened in his stomach. He looked back at the desk. The shard was definitely glowing more brightly now, casting long, distorted shadows across the small, cluttered office.

Things in the Corners

"Okay, this is officially weird," Davey admitted, finally getting to his feet. He joined Sam at the door, giving it a solid shove that accomplished nothing.

"'Weird' is the word you're going with?" Sam's voice was tight with panic. "I'm leaning towards 'supernaturally alarming'."

The lights flickered once, twice, then died, plunging the office into the gloomy twilight of a late afternoon. The only light source now was the sickly, pulsing glow from the obsidian shard on Sam's desk.

"Right," Davey said, his voice losing some of its earlier bravado. "Okay. Maybe... maybe it doesn't like being in here."

A scraping sound came from the corner of the room, where the articulated skeleton 'Barnaby' stood. Both of them froze, turning slowly to peer into the gloom. In the pulsating light from the shard, it was impossible to tell if the skeleton had moved.

"That was just the building settling," Sam said, though he didn't believe it for a second.

"Sure," Davey whispered back. They were standing shoulder-to-shoulder now, a silent truce declared in the face of the encroaching strangeness. Sam was acutely aware of Davey's warmth beside him, a stark contrast to the chilling atmosphere of the room.

Another sound. A soft, wet tapping from the inside of their little specimen fridge. Tap. Tap. Tap.

"What do you have in the fridge?" Davey asked, his voice barely a breath.

"Tissue samples. A piece of bog man from that dig in Ireland last year. Nothing that should be... tapping." Sam was backing away from the fridge, towards the relative safety of his own desk. He bumped into Davey, who grabbed his arm to steady him.

Davey's grip was firm, grounding. "Okay, new plan," Davey said, his eyes, wide in the dark, fixed on the glowing shard. "Maybe it's like a battery. It's powering all this... weirdness. What happens if we... I don't know, cover it up?"

It was the most ridiculous, unscientific thing Sam had ever heard. It was also the only plan they had. "With what?"

Davey glanced around the shadowy room. His eyes landed on the heavy, lead-lined box they used for transporting radioactive isotopes for carbon dating. "That."

It took them a moment to work up the courage to approach the desk. The humming was louder now, a dissonant chord that made their skulls ache. The air was thick and cold. Sam could see his own breath misting in front of him.

"Together?" Davey murmured.

Sam just nodded, his throat too dry for words.

They moved in unison, grabbing the lead-lined box. As they lifted it over the desk, the shard flared with a brilliant, blinding light. The scraping from the corner became a harsh screech of bone on wood, and the tapping from the fridge grew frantic, hammering against the metal door.

They slammed the box down over the shard.

And everything stopped.

The light, the noise, the humming—all of it vanished. They were left in absolute darkness and a silence so profound it rang in their ears. They stood frozen, chests heaving, Davey's hand still gripping Sam's arm.

Sam could feel the frantic beat of Davey's pulse through his sleeve, or maybe it was his own. He wasn't sure where he ended and Davey began. In the suffocating dark, all he knew was the solid presence of the man beside him.

"Did... did that work?" Sam whispered into the void.

A shaky laugh came from Davey. "I have no bloody idea." He didn't let go of Sam's arm. If anything, his grip tightened. "Sam?"

"Yeah?"

"I think I might have made a terrible mistake."

Despite the lingering terror, a hysterical bubble of laughter escaped Sam's lips. "You *think*? Davey, you brought a Neolithic poltergeist home from work."

"Seems that way," Davey admitted. After a beat, he added, "Are you okay?"

The simple question cut through the last of Sam's panic. He was cold, terrified, and trapped in a dark room with a cursed object and the most infuriating man he'd ever met. But Davey was asking if he was okay. He leaned into Davey's side, a small, involuntary movement. "No," he said, honestly. "Not really."

Davey shifted, turning slightly, and an arm wrapped around Sam's shoulders, pulling him closer. It wasn't a calculated move; it was pure instinct, a reaction to the darkness and the fear. Sam didn't resist. He let himself be held, resting his head against Davey's shoulder, a gesture of surrender he would never have allowed himself in the light of day. They just stood there, breathing together in the absolute black.