Spectra Files 03 Cthulhu Blues

by Douglas Wynne

  “You better not be trying to get me to play ball,” she said, and followed him to the hallway. At the sight of her coming, Django turned right, away from the stairs, and perched at the half open door to Brooks’ bedroom, where he resumed growling.

  Something about that wedge of darkness and the silence beyond it made Becca’s stomach squirm. She had the impression that Brooks was not a heavy sleeper, that the sounds of the agitated dog—unfamiliar sounds in his house—should have woken him by now.

  She walked to the door, the floorboards creaking softly through the carpet beneath her feet, and pushed it open.

  The first thing she saw was the alarm clock display, glowing on the bedside table: 3:13. Next, in the faint spill of green light, she noticed the drawer of the bedside table hanging open. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she drew a sharp breath at the sight of Brooks’ silhouette, sitting upright at the edge of the bed.

  Fear and embarrassment flooded her simultaneously and she took a step backward. “Sorry, I… Sorry we woke you.” She threaded her fingers into Django’s thick fur, taking him by the scruff and leading him toward the door. But a split second after averting her gaze from the gradually detailed silhouette, her brain made sense of the last thing she’d seen—and her heart froze in her chest.

  He was holding a gun in his mouth.

  “Brooks?” The name came out as a whisper. The nightlight in the hall failed to reach his eyes with its faint yellow rays, so she couldn’t tell if they were open or closed. Was he asleep? She held her index finger up where Django could see it and told him to stay.

  Brooks remained motionless at the edge of the bed, the barrel of his service weapon poised in his mouth, jaw slack, hand steady, as Becca approached, slow and silent, taking in the details with mounting horror. His eyes were closed, his respiration slow and deep. The gun must have come from the drawer of the nightstand.

  Her heart beat harder, faster, with each slow step.

  You were supposed to wake sleepwalkers before they could hurt themselves. But if she startled him, he might squeeze the trigger.

  Her mouth had gone dry. She parted her lips to say his name again and the crackle they made was loud in her ears.

  “Brooks,” she whispered.

  He gave no indication that he’d heard her.

  Was the gun loaded? She had no idea how to eject the magazine, and even if she did, it wouldn’t ensure there wasn’t a round in the chamber, would it? For the first time since the confrontation at the Wade House, she wished she’d learned something about firearms. She’d been stupid enough to think she was done rubbing elbows with cultists and special agents.

  Django growled like the power hum of a poorly grounded machine.

  Becca squatted in front of Brooks, afraid that kneeling would make it hard to adapt to whatever might happen when she woke him. She dragged her sweaty hand down her T-shirt, then reached for the gun. Her fingers curled around the cold metal.

  Slowly, she pulled the weapon out of his mouth, a string of saliva stretching from his lip to the sight blade. As soon as it was free, she started tilting it away from his face, bending his wrist inward toward his arm, but his fingers tightened on the grip, resisting her.

  The alarm clock went off, and with it, the gun.

  Django yelped. Dust flurried down from the bullet hole in the ceiling. Brooks jerked awake and tugged the gun away from Becca, his eyes wide and white in the gloom as she fell backward onto the floor. He loomed over her, swaying on his feet, blinking. His bare chest heaved, his breath rasping in his nostrils. Then he turned the gun over in his hand and stared at it, eyes wide and white in the darkness.

  “What happened?” he said, turning his wild stare on her.

  Django placed himself between them, his hackles up, posturing at Brooks, but not yet committed to barking at him.

  “You were asleep,” Becca said. She stroked Django’s fur down, got to her feet, and found the snooze bar on the beeping alarm clock.

  In the silence that followed, she watched Brooks’ rigid body slowly relax. He ejected the magazine from the gun and set both pieces down on top of his dresser.

  Becca waited until the weapon was out of his hand. Then, as he turned back to her, she embraced him fiercely, all of the fear and potential grief flooding out of her in a string of words whispered into the hollow of his shoulder: “Holy shit, Jason, you almost just shot yourself in front of me. Fuck.”

  She felt him stiffen again, and then deflate, giving in and stroking her hair. When she’d caught her breath, she broke away from him and beat her fist against his chest. “You keep a fucking loaded gun in your bedside table?”

  “I’m an agent, Becca. Enemies don’t make appointments. And it’s not like I’m gonna find your dog playing with it.”

  She sat on the bed heavily, and raked her fingers through her hair. “Jesus, Brooks…” She caught her breath. “I always figured if one of us was gonna eat a gun, it would be me.”

  He sat down beside her and glanced at the clock. “I’m supposed to be watching over you this time of night. What woke you?”

  “Django. He saved your life.”

  Brooks regarded the dog. It wasn’t the first time he’d puzzled over the animal’s keen sensitivity. He leaned forward and patted him on the flank and was rewarded with tail wagging and a tongue all over his chin.

  “Now I really need to rinse my mouth. Nothing like the taste of gun oil and dog breath.”

  Becca laughed, but it came out more as a shuddering sigh.

  “Sorry I scared you,” Brooks said.

  “Well…I don’t think you can take responsibility for it. What were you dreaming?”

  He opened his mouth and she could tell he was going to lie, tell her he couldn’t remember. But he stopped himself and said, “Not now.”

  She studied his eyes, then nodded.

  “Anyway, the timing can’t be a coincidence,” Brooks said.

  “Right before the alarm.”

  “Yeah. Maybe…instead of transmitting the same dream at the same time, something decided to come for me early because I’ve been skipping out on it.”

  “You think something didn’t want you watching over me tonight?”

  He grimaced. “The shot would have woken you if the dog didn’t. I think it might just want me out of the picture. I’m not as important or useful as you are.”

  Becca stared at the numbers on the clock: 3:25. “What use am I?” she asked.

  “You have the voice now.”

  * * *

  They watched each other sleep in shifts. The gun remained unloaded and stowed in a kitchen drawer downstairs, away from the ammunition. Becca did the second watch before dawn and left Django in the bedroom with Brooks for the last part of it while she ransacked the fridge and found enough eggs, cheese, milk, and cherry tomatoes to make a couple of omelets for breakfast. They were overdue for a shopping trip, but there was enough not-too-stale bread for them to share three pieces of toast. The eggs were past the sell by date, but she dropped each in a glass of water, and none of them floated, a trick her grandmother had taught her. Catherine Philips was a fine cook when she wasn’t studying anthropology and the dark arts.

  The food was cooked and waiting under a pot lid to keep it warm when Brooks descended the stairs dressed for work with Django at his heels, sniffing the air. The dog sat for Becca and salivated with his head cocked until she gave him a piece of cheese.

  “Smells good,” Brooks said, retrieving a mug with the SPECTRA logo on it from the cupboard and pouring a cup of black coffee. He peeked at the omelets through the glass lid. “I didn’t think you ate eggs.”

  “I’m vegetarian, not vegan. I do dairy, too.”

  “How about fish? You eat that? I need to do some shopping.”

  “If you loan me your car and point me in the right direction, I’ll shop. It’s the least I can do. But no fish. Our adventures turned me off to it.”

  Brooks grimaced. “Fair enough.”

&nb
sp; Becca shoveled the food onto a pair of plates, turned to toss the spatula into the sink, and jumped back, dropping it with a clatter.

  Brooks caught her by the shoulders. “What the…”

  “Big hairy spider.” Becca stared into the stainless steel basin, her hand on her chest. Brooks reached into the sink and plucked the spider up by one leg, then set it on his palm where it skittered over his hand as he rotated it, moving to the sliding glass door. Becca gave him a wide berth. He shook the spider out onto the grass, and turned to her with an amused smirk. “Really? After everything you’ve seen, you’re scared of spiders?”

  “No… That was a big one. Caught me by surprise.”

  Brooks carried the plates to the table.

  Becca followed and took a seat. “Thanks for not killing it.”

  “No reason to kill something just for being ugly,” Brooks said. He took a bite of his omelet and chased it with coffee.

  “This is good.”

  She smiled. “Really?”

  “Yeah. I’m amazed you could find anything edible in that fridge, never mind make a hot meal out of it.”

  “I figure you might need the energy before the day is done.” Becca had decided while cooking that she wouldn’t bring up what had happened last night. Brooks was not the sort to be at all comfortable with losing control. Still, she felt the need to address the larger problem, and couldn’t wait until he finished eating to do it.

  Brooks looked at her over the rim of his coffee cup, scrutinizing her like a suspect.

  “I want to search those archives for the symphony.”

  “I can’t just take you into work with me and set you loose in a restricted area.”

  “I know.”

  “I mean, we still haven’t decided if we’re even going to ask for help about your voice. If they find out it’s changed and catch you trying to smuggle that score out… You said you know. So what are you asking me to do?”

  “I want to break in after hours.”

  “Becca.” It was the tone he used when Django was sniffing around the trash.

  “I’m a good climber. Can you leave a window unlocked?”

  Brooks sighed. “I should have left you in the loony bin.”

  Becca shot him a warning look.

  He scoffed. “It’s a federal building with cameras all over it. It’s home to a senator, the DEA, and Homeland Security. Not to mention our little black ops agency. You don’t just leave a window open. Most of them don’t open at all.”

  “Did you look into whether or not it’s even there?”

  “It’s not that simple. Guys I used to be able to count on for discretion don’t work there anymore. A lot of heads rolled when the new director came in. I’m lucky I still have a job. I guess I locked horns with Northrup enough times that I’m not considered a loyalist.”

  “What about him? Did you get in touch like we talked about?”

  “I haven’t located him yet. I know he’s in some kind of hospice, but I don’t have contact info. The old phone numbers don’t work anymore, and I’ve heard that he was estranged from his ex-wife and kids, so I’m not sure if I’ll be able to reach him through family. There’s a secretary looking into it for me. Our group sent him a card that I remember signing, but I don’t know if that was at a previous facility. Anyway, she’s gonna try to dig it up, but I don’t know how much time we have.”

  “Hospice never means much time.”

  Brooks gazed into his empty coffee cup and Becca had the feeling he was avoiding her eyes.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Don’t nothing me, Brooks.”

  “Look, I don’t know if it’s cancer—and let’s not forget that he smoked like a chimney—but…the Wade House wasn’t exactly OSHA Kosher.”

  “You think he got it from exposure to the black snow. You think we’ll get it, too.”

  “I don’t know anything, so I’m not gonna worry until I have to. It’s just that we were the only two on the exploration team to make it out alive. In the command hut Northrup had nowhere near as much exposure as we did, but everybody on site must have had some. Who knows, maybe what’s happening to you is from exposure to the house. It would be sort of a double dose for you after Boston.”

  “So Northrup maybe has cancer, and I have the voice, and you’re wondering what you’re going to get?”

  He shrugged.

  “This is why we need to talk to him. But looking for the symphony can’t wait. If it’s in the hands of a cultist…if the dreams we’re having are being transmitted by someone or something that could make me sing the melody from that score…then I’d be better off with a gun in my mouth.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “I want to see it burn, Brooks. Then maybe I’ll sleep better.”

  * * *

  Brooks took Becca to work with him after all and marched her right through the front door with a visitor’s pass. She sensed him stealing glances at her as they approached the building across the Government Center plaza, watching her size up the John F. Kennedy Federal Building as if for the first time. As if it were one of the abandoned subway stations or asylums she used to photograph with her Urbex buddies. But the complex on Sudbury and Congress was a beast of another order of magnitude. Two monolithic high-rise towers connected by a glass atrium to a four-story building, all of it dressed in unadorned reinforced concrete, gray anodized aluminum, and glass.

  Once inside, she gazed up into the brightly lit space, where an enormous American flag hung in what felt like a cathedral of bureaucracy. Brooks waved her through the metal detector, and pinned the temporary ID to her jacket.

  In the elevator, they were alone again. Brooks thumbed a button and said, “Nobody knows you’ve been staying with me. If anyone recognizes you, I’ll say I called you in to confirm some details of my follow up report on the Wade House operation. Hell, I even still have some unfinished paperwork from the Boston event. But it would be better if no one from SPECTRA sees you here at all.”

  “I’m not exactly in disguise, you know.” She’d presented a fake ID to security and signed the log as Kristin Dearborn.

  “That’s okay. You’re gonna have a long, boring day in a janitor’s closet I know of in a camera blind spot.”

  “Seriously? I can’t hang out in your office?”

  “I’ll bring you a sandwich at lunchtime and let you out at night.”

  “You’re kidding. Django will be less pent up than me. At least Heather is letting him out. What if I have to pee?”

  “There’s a sink.”

  Becca stopped walking and cocked an eyebrow.

  “C’mon, you’ve lived in a hut in the rainforest. You’re good at roughing it, right?”

  “Glad I brought a paperback. Won’t someone notice when I don’t sign out?”

  “We do interrogations here, remember? Guests of SPECTRA check in for days at a time without leaving.”

  * * *

  Brooks opened the door of the janitor’s closet and Becca fell out onto the floor, jolted awake.

  “You nod off against the door?” Brooks asked.

  She blinked. “What time is it?”

  “A little after 10:30. The building’s almost empty. For now, anyway.”

  Becca tried to stand but her leg cramped and she propped herself against the wall, clenching her jaw.

  “Give me a minute,” she said, massaging her calf through her jeans to get the blood flowing. Brooks craned his neck to look around the nearest corner. Finally, Becca put weight on her leg and snatched her bag from the closet.

  “Listen,” Brooks said, “we have a tight window of opportunity. There’s an equipment transfer scheduled for tonight. They’re taking something out of the vault and moving it to a test site. I’m not even supposed to know about it yet, but what it means for us is reduced security. The guards who would normally patrol the archive will be watching the loading dock. We can use that, but we have to get in and out of the vault fast befo
re the moving crew shows up.”

  Becca nodded.

  “Follow me.” Brooks said. “And pull your hood up; hide your hair. I can get us to the fire stairs without too many cameras, but I doubt we can avoid all of them.”

  Every noise they made seemed amplified in the silent halls, their shoes squeaking on the waxed floors, footsteps echoing off the marble walls.

  “How did you know a janitor wouldn’t find me?”

  “The offices down that end are unoccupied. The mop was probably bone dry, right? I don’t think anybody’s been in there for a month. This way. Quick.”

  Brooks ushered Becca across an intersection with a wider corridor, flanking her on the left side to block her from the camera view. Once they’d crossed it, he shouldered through a door, guiding her by the elbow into a cavernous stairwell. He trotted down the steps with a hand on the railing, Becca following behind. At the bottom, he turned and held up a finger. Becca hung back while he peeked through a narrow window in the door before opening it and waving for her to follow.

  “Basement level,” he said. “SPECTRA archives.”

  They had arrived at what looked like a bank vault door secured with an array of steel gears and rods. Brooks positioned himself in front of a retinal scanner and adjusted the angle of the blue illuminated glass hemisphere to his height. Becca heard a faint chime followed by the heavy clank of the vault door unlocking. Brooks swung it open and led her into a dimly lit corridor. Red digits glowed in the gloom: temperature and humidity figures. The soft sound of dehumidifiers sighed from the corners. Becca could make out the shapes of long rows of glass cases, but their contents remained obscured. The dry air felt charged, whether from static electricity or the presence of eldritch objects, she couldn’t say.

  “Are you gonna turn the lights on?” Becca asked.

  “No. Use your headlamp. If you see the lights come on, snuff it and hide.”