Torchwood: Fanfic: Monkey business

[m_findlow]

Title: Monkey business
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack, Ianto
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,977 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for m_findlow's prompt "any, any, the clapping monkey toy really creeps him/her out " at fic_promptly
Summary: Jack inherits an unwanted object

The SUV crunched along the gravel driveway, kicking out of its way the tall grass and weeds that had largely taken over. Not too many cars had come down here for a long while.

'Who did you say used to own this place?' Ianto enquired.

'Someone I knew from a long, long time ago. I thought she must have died years ago.'

'Another old flame?' he joked.

'Not this time. Never could impress her. She was a real stickler.'

Ianto grinned. 'I like her already.'

'Annie Wiltshire. We met in the forties after the war. She was a tough cookie even then.'

Out of the long grass, the house finally came into view. Tucked away in a remote part of the borderlands, just north of Cheshire, it might was well have been on another planet. It was by no means a mansion, but it was far larger and more impressive than either of them had imagined. It stood tall and wispy, as if the faintest breeze might knock it over, yet imposing enough to suggest that the elements had tried their best against it and failed.

They got out of the car and walked up the path leading to the front porch, which bent over the front of the house like a gnarled old woman over a walking cane. Their shoes creaked and groaned underfoot, the rotting timbers threatening to give way at any moment.

'I know she was a tough old bird, but the house had seen better days.'

'I just checked her medical records,' Ianto replied, consulting his PDA. 'It seems she was in palliative care for over a year after a stroke. I imagine the house hasn't been touched since.'

'Given the state of it, I don't think we'll be holidaying here in the near future.'

The heavy iron keys clinked in his hand from the yellowed envelope which the lawyer had given him. He slid it into the lock and turned the heavy key, pushed open the door and gestured to Ianto.

'Age before beauty,' he said, receiving a rolling of eyes for his troubles.

It was the smell that assaulted his senses immediately on entering the house. Furniture polish. It pervaded the whole space even though it was generally lacking in anything requiring it. Ianto remembered having a great aunt or some such relation whose house had smelled just the same. It was an old wives trick to wipe some on the radiator and let the heat burn it off, leaving the scent to waft through the rooms, for when it was too cold outside to open the windows and let the fresh air in. He normally liked the scent of cleanliness but this just reminded him of old people.

'Vintage,' he commented. It was the polite way of saying it smelled old. The thick layer of dust covering everything didn't bear thinking about. It was like stepping into one of his nightmares.

'I still can't believe she left me her house.'

'Not just her house but all her chattels too. She didn't have family?'

'Not that I know of. Orphaned during the great War. Never married as far as I know.'

'Not even you?'

'Like I said, never could impress her. We had a mutual respect.'

'She never worked for Torchwood?'

'Consulted, but never really part of the gang. She was a historian, specialising in the occult. Came in handy more than once.'

'And she didn't leave you any explanation as to why you're the sole beneficiary of her estate?'

'Nada. I can only assume she's collected some things over the years that are best left in safe hands.'

The majority of their wanderings about the house revealed nothing out of the ordinary, just a bunch of dusty old furniture and a lot of well worn books, ranging in everything from medieval history, to space exploration, to witchcraft and Renaissance art. Not to mention volumes and volumes of religious tomes in various languages, some of which appeared to date back hundreds of years, and looked like they'd been handwritten by monks.

'Some of these books must be worth a small fortune,' Ianto observed, carefully turning the delicate pages.

'I wouldn't be surprised.'

Their search finally lead them down into the basement, although it was more like a cellar.

'Jackpot,' Jack declared.

'Oh, that's just, spooky.'

The whole room was cluttered with ghoulish paraphernalia. It was like the haunted house at the theme park, or the set of a horror film. The walls were covered with images of satanic beings, strange runes and maps that bore no reference to any known geography.

'I don't even know where to begin,' Jack stated, flummoxed by the sheer volume of stuff.

'Some of it might be alien but how can you tell?'

'I don't think we can,' Jack admitted. 'Not easily, anyway.'

Ianto sucked in a breath and let it out, placing hands on hips.

'Looks like we're just going to have to box it all up and process it back at the hub.'

'I think you're right.'

It took them hours, and several trips back and forth, loading up the SUV with box after box of eclectic, and sometimes gruesome objects. They occasionally stopped to admire or comment on various objects.

'Here's something you don't see everyday, although I suppose I could say that about most of this stuff,' Ianto added.

He held up a toy monkey. It looked old. It was dressed in red and white striped pants and a yellow top. In each hand it held a cymbal, and at the back it had a large turnkey. Ianto gently wound it and sat it on the desk, watching as it moved its arms, clapping the cymbals together, and grinned madly.

Jack gave the toy a distrustful look. 'I don't like it.'

'It's a toy.'

'It's creeping me out.'

'A room full of wicca and death masks and shrunken heads, and you're worried about a toy monkey?'

'Look at it! You don't think it's creepy?'

He wound it up again and placed it back on the desk. It clapped slowly, as if the gears were slightly stuck with years of collected grime. It did make it look just that little bit more sinister.

'All the toys back then were a little bit,' Jack paused, trying to find the word. Ianto knew what he meant. Fluffy and cuddly weren't good descriptors for toys from the early twentieth century. Even the dolls had serious faces on them, as if they been affronted by someone, and the teddy bears looked far more dangerous than cuddly with their glass eyes and bared teeth. How they'd ever caught on in that state was anybody's guess.

'Are we done with that?' Jack asked, narrowing his eyes at it, clearly keen to have it boxed away.

'Fine,' Ianto said, carefully placing it near the top of the box, so it wouldn't get broken.

Back at the hub, Ianto was busily moving all of the boxes of stuff into one of their spare storage rooms until the team could properly start sorting through it, sifting the alien from the just plain weird.

Jack was returning to his office with a mug of coffee and a handful of biscuits when he caught sight of the gift left on his desk. Ianto entered his office shortly after.

'All done,' he said, referring to the boxes, and wiping his hands clean with a moist towelette.

'You're very amusing.'

'Sir?'

'You've had your fun, now go and take it away,' he said, pointing to the toy sat on his desk.

Ianto furrowed his brow in confusion but said no more. Someone else must have decided to put it there. The others had all taken an interest in peering into the boxes to see what they'd come back with. He grabbed it off the desk, shaking his head slightly as he made yet another trip to put it away. As if he had nothing else to do, he thought glumly.

Jack left the hub shortly after. He and Tosh were meant to be following up on the loose ends of a case that had the unfortunate outcome of involving Detective Kathy Swanson. Tosh was going along as arbiter and general peacekeeper. In the end, it didn't go down particularly well, leaving Jack in a foul mood when he returned. He was even less impressed when he saw what had been left on his desk whilst he'd been gone.

Jack knew Ianto was busy downstairs, feeding their handful of residents. He wasn't about to wait for him to reappear to make his feelings known. Jack activated his comms.

'Ianto! I told you to get rid of this thing.'

'What thing?'

'Don't be cute. I know it was you.'

Jack could hear the vexed sigh on the other end of the line. 'I honestly have no idea what you're talking about.'

Jack growled. 'Fine. I'll get rid of it. Stupid monkey.'

The rest of the afternoon passed by in a blur. After a long evening's work, and dinner out on the road, the pair of them rolled back into the hub late. Jack was strolling through the door of his office when he came to an abrupt stop, Ianto bungling into the back of him, his too tired brain not registering the sudden halt.

'What gives?' Ianto complained.

'That's not funny. I don't even know how you found it, but I'm officially not happy.'

'I'm really not in the mood for your silly guessing games tonight. Can we please just go to bed?'

'Not until you tell me how that got there,' he said, pointing angrily at the toy monkey perched on his desk.

Ianto stared at it curiously. 'I thought I put that away.'

'I thought you put it back for a practical joke.'

'Wasn't me.'

'You didn't take it out of the secure archives?'

He looked at Jack incredulously. 'You put it in the secure archives?'

'I thought it'd be safe in there.'

Ianto ignored the comment for the moment. There'd be time to rag on Jack's obsessive dislike of a child's wind up toy later.

'Okay, so if I didn't move it, and you didn't move it, and the others have been with us all afternoon, then who?'

They both walked over to the desk and stared down at the monkey perched there. Was it just his imagination, or did it look more menacing than before? It began slowly clapping of its own volition and they both jumped back, startled.

'It didn't just do that on its own, did it?' Jack asked worriedly.

'Must have been, uh, stuck, or something,' Ianto replied, not sounding convinced.

As soon as the clapping slowed and ceased altogether, Jack lunged for it, grabbing it with both hands and darting out of his office.

Ianto chased after him as he dashed up flight after flight of stairs, finally bursting thought the tourist information office and out the door.

'What are you doing?' Ianto asked, practically out of breath. He watched as Jack lurched backward and flung the toy as far as he could off the side of the quay and into the chilly waters of the bay.

'It's clearly cursed. Just let it try and come back from that,' he said defiantly.

'And if it does?' Ianto asked, playing devil's advocate.

'Then I'm getting a gun and putting an entire clip into it, and then wrapping it to a stick of dynamite and blowing it to kingdom come.'

Ianto crossed his arms and looked out over the bay, trying not to think about a cursed toy monkey now sitting at the bottom of its sandy depths, slowly clapping out a tune only it knew. He secretly hoped when they woke up tomorrow, that it wouldn't have returned to haunt Jack's office.

'Is this what they mean by blowing your inheritance?'

Comments

[jo02]

This was quite scary and reminded me of an episode of 'Night Gallery' from back in the 1970s - that was very scary too!

[bk_forever]

Those things are creepy at the best of times, but that was just... *shivers* Not the thing to read at this time of night, now I need something fluffy of funny. *sidles away keeping back to the wall*