And in this place, reality felt thin to begin with.
The walls almost seemed to breathe, and the humid atmosphere of the mill felt heavy with portent. But being here was bringing her no closer to finding a pattern in Maurice’s chicken scratch.
The felt tip of the pen tickled her palm and she looked away from the stain to see that she’d unconsciously been drawing on her hand, forming a doodle of a curved pentagram—like the one Anton DuQuette had shown her the previous day. Last night, she’d tucked his card into the pocket at the back of her notebook for safekeeping. She’d been unwilling to risk sleeping through the witching hour to test the symbol’s efficacy under her pillow without Brooks in the house for backup. Now she plucked the card from the pocket and examined the details. She filled them in on her hand before putting it back.
Django began to growl, low and constant in the back of his throat, his fur rising in a ridge along his spine, his ears pointing backward. He crouched and bared his teeth, the full array of warning signals manifesting in less than three seconds. Becca followed the focus of his glare to the puddle at the end of the corridor.
She stood and dropped the phone into her jacket pocket. Music reached her ears; faraway and drenched in cavernous reverb, a cascade of chiming notes trickling down the steps of an exotic scale. The puddle rippled from its center with each successive note. Becca’s palms went clammy and fear iced down her spine from hairline to tailbone. Django took a step back, growling louder to compete with the volume of the music, dropping into a low crouch from which he could lunge if needed.
Eyes fixed on the water, Becca also took a retreating step, kicking the mop bucket with her heel and breaking the trance she’d drifted into as it clattered away and rolled along the wall. Becca startled, and something—an idea that had until now been teetering at the edge of some high mental shelf—was dislodged and dropped fully formed into her awareness: She saw the cluttered interior of the mop closet from which she’d taken the bucket. The dust-coated Shop Vac. What if Maurice didn’t use a mystic code to choose the hiding place for The Voice of the Void? What if he’d chosen a pun on the Latin title: Vox in Vacuum?
Becca moved toward the closet, her pulse pounding, not daring to look away from the vibrating water. The puddle receded like a tide and slid up the wall, defying gravity. Until now, the chimes had been single notes. Now a chord was struck, and the water parted like a curtain. Becca’s will drained away to the sound of Django pissing on the floor beside her.
A scarlet robed figure emerged from the curtain of water, his steep, dark features those of a Nubian king, blue fire flitting in and out of his dusty hair, eyes shining like emeralds. A stringed instrument hovered in front of him. If it was held on by a strap, Becca couldn’t see it, but that seemed like a minor offense against the laws of physics in light of everything else she’d observed in the past minute. The instrument resembled a guitar or lute with long horns that curled up around the tuning keys. She recognized the man’s face. She had seen it before, at the Christian Science Center reflecting pool in Boston where he had summoned monsters from two feet of water by chanting. This was the Strange Dark One, The Haunter of the Dark in bipedal form, the protean creature Becca’s grandmother had referred to as the Black Pharaoh.
He strummed another chord and the entire corridor shimmered in response. Becca felt the bass frequencies roll through her intestines, while the treble stung her eyes like grains of salt or sand. A sibilant moan issued from the thing’s mouth, and words formed on a gust of fetid wind: “Sssing with me, Rebecca.”
Becca whimpered and shook her head. She raised one hand to fend the creature off while digging in her bag for the dagger with the other.
The pharaoh’s features morphed into those of a black panther, hissing in rage and pain. Django took heart and barked a flurry of threats.
Becca, now holding the dagger in her right hand, realized the reaction had been provoked by her left. She turned it inward and saw the sweat-smudged black glyph she had distractedly inked on her skin.
She had not summoned this entity with her voice. Could she banish it with a mere symbol? If the membrane here was thin enough to be malleable, could she wield some control as well?
Becca raised her boot and stamped her foot where the puddle had been before it climbed the wall. As she did so, she thrust her hand forward, palm out, all of the muscle memory required to break wood at the dojo snapping into focus and reinforcing the projection of her will toward the dread minstrel. An invisible shockwave coursed down her arm, and a string broke on the guitar. It whipped through the air like a living limb, writhing and lashing out to sting her face, leaving a trail of phosphorescence in its wake.
The pharaoh retreated into the folds of dirty water and Becca caught a glimpse of other denizens of that realm gathering at the hem of his robe: black fur, horns, and clicking mandibles. A wave of musk flooded her sinuses, making her gag and retch. She forced herself to step forward, holding her hand out as a ward in front of her.
The parted water slapped together and splashed to the floor, spraying her clothes and face.
Becca turned on her heel and yanked the closet door open. She dragged the vacuum out by the handle, sending clattering mops and brooms to the hallway floor, then crouched and fumbled with the latches, her fingers trembling with adrenaline and anticipation. When the lid came off, her heart sank at the sight of dust, dirt, and a tangled ball of textile thread clogging the half-full drum. She thrust her hand into the mess, rooting around in desperation until she felt it: something too bulky to have passed through the vacuum hose. She pulled it out and wiped it off—a Ziploc freezer bag containing a tattered, leather-bound book.
“Django. Let’s go.”
The dog looked up from sniffing at the filthy puddle on the floor. His fur still standing on end in anticipation of a fight, he eagerly trotted after her, up the stairs and out of the building.
Chapter 11
Tom Petrie could smell the ozone in the air as the largest air insulated Van De Graaff generator in the world cycled up. He looked down the row of seats, past Noah, at Ian, the most anxious of the children in Tom’s group. Ian had his hands cupped over his ears, but at least he’d quit uttering that high-pitched whine. Gathering his coat in his lap, Tom prepared himself to usher the kid out of the theater if the finale got too intense for him. It wasn’t Tom’s first time seeing the lightning show at the Boston Museum of Science, but for a lot of these kids, it was. When Tom thought about the content of the show, he mostly remembered the cool facts the kids would learn, like how a car is the safest place to be in a lightning storm—but not because of the rubber tires. Seeing the lecturer press her hand to the bars of the metal cage while zapping it with 2,000,000 volts from the 40 foot tall orb-topped pillars was wonderfully terrifying until she explained that the reason she was safe was because electricity traveled over the outer surface of the cage to seek the ground, and couldn’t pass through the bars to cook her hand.
What he’d forgotten, when proposing the museum to Mrs. Yardley for the last field trip of the year, was how loudly the generator crackled every time it discharged a bolt. That, and how the atmosphere in the theater felt electrified enough to raise the hair on your arms. Glancing down the row in the other direction, he saw Mrs. Yardley giving him a wide-eyed look that said: Is this almost over?
Tom nodded in a way he hoped was reassuring, and returned a grin that probably only made him look like an idiot. As the parent of a child with “issues,” Tom made sure that either he or Susan could accompany Noah on any field trips the class took. It had been a delicate process informing the teacher and school nurse of Noah’s triggers. As perplexed as it left them, Tom had opted to keep it simple, describing his son’s condition as a rare phobia of mirrors and reflective surfaces. In the classroom, this didn’t present a problem unless Noah had to use the bathroom, and at the age of five it was still possible to have the teacher accompany him to usher him past the dreaded thing. Nonetheless, Tom knew Noa
h sometimes tried to avoid having to go to the bathroom at school, a strategy that had resulted in several accidents and the need to pack a change of clothes in his backpack.
At least the Montessori school presented a contained environment with not many variables. Field trips were another matter. It was tempting to exempt Noah from them, but it pained Tom and Susan to think that their son couldn’t share the same range of experiences as his classmates just because he might see something that spooked him. He would have to adapt to the larger world a little at a time, and so Tom tried to steer things when he could. He also tried to emphasize a rational scientific view of the world for his son. He thought that might be Noah’s best defense against fear in the years to come.
Tom didn’t understand everything that had happened to him in Boston in the autumn of 2019, nor did he understand the effects of the event inherited by Noah, but that didn’t mean the mystery had to be evil or unsettling. That was what he told himself often, and again as he watched the cage rise between the poles of the generator, realizing—perhaps too late—that he had chosen this exhibit more for himself than for the children. It was just another attempt to convince himself that if the forces tormenting his son could be understood, if their causes, conditions, and rules could be known, then maybe they could be endured safely. Maybe they didn’t have to be a cause for terror, as lightning had been for primitive man.
Beside him, Noah covered his ears, but his eyes remained wide with delight as the final volley of violet-white lightning bolts flashed around the room, striking their prearranged targets in quick succession.
Tom put his hand on Noah’s knobby knee and gave it a gentle squeeze. So maybe he was a helicopter parent, hovering around his boy, ready to intervene at the first sign of distress. It wasn’t for nothing. Experience had shown how quickly things could spiral out of control without supervision. Hell, even with supervision. Like the time Noah cut his hand open with his mother’s razor in the bathtub while lost in one of his reveries, chanting about a sunken island. Nothing like that had happened in a while, but Noah had recently started singing in his sleep—a sound so unsettling that Tom and Susan spent a good part of each night lying awake in anticipation of the chilling melody.
Helicopter parent. The phrase rolled around like a stray marble circling Tom’s skull until it bumped up against something he’d tucked away in the shadows. He didn’t remember much about the so-called Red Equinox, but now, as the lightning flashed around the dark theater, he heard rotors, and his mind flashed back to an image of a tall, dark man striding slowly through the Christian Science plaza, between the church and the marble lip of the reflecting pool. Why now? His breath shortened and sweat prickled in his armpits. That man had sprouted ribbons of black ink from his shoulder blades, writhing around him like tendrils in water. A lightning storm in miniature had licked at his temples like a crown of fire.
Tom came back to the theater with a jolt, his back arching in his seat as if the final lightning strike had found him. The house lights came up. The audience clapped, stirred in their seats, and began to chatter.
Mrs. Yardley composed herself and glanced around at the children. “Well, that was very educational,” she said with an air of relief. “Gather your things, children, and stay with your chaperones. We’ll make our way to the exhibit halls now before lunch.”
“You okay, Ian?” Tom asked the straw-haired boy beside him.
The kid nodded.
“What did you think, Noah?”
“Wicked cool!”
Tom laughed and tousled his son’s hair, which earned him a withering look. “That’s my little buddy. Boston to the core. Let’s go. Follow Mrs. Yardley’s group.”
“Can we go to the butterfly garden?” a girl named Maeve asked, pointing at the sign for it off to the right.
“No, honey, that’s not on our list. Costs extra,” Tom said. He did a quick head count and had to call Ian back from wandering to the stairwell.
“But I want to see the T. Rex, Mr. Petrie,” Ian whined, leaving his rattled nerves behind him in the theater. It was amazing how resilient kids could be.
“Later, maybe. If we all go together. Come on, this way. Don’t you want to learn about the science of playgrounds?”
“No.”
“It’ll be fun. You can burn some of that energy you just collected.”
“What?”
“You know, pretend the lightning exhibit charged you up with energy you can use to lift weights and run fast. They have a thing that measures how fast you can run. Like on The Flash.”
“The what?”
“It’s an old TV show. About parallel worlds and… Never mind. Let’s go.”
The Science in the Park exhibit was already bustling with older kids from another field trip. Adding the kindergarteners increased the pandemonium exponentially—the shrieks, sneaker squeaks, and chatter echoing around the vast hall. Tom’s group fractured as soon as they entered the area, each of his kids choosing a different activity with classmates from one of the other chaperones’ groups. At least the open area made it easy to scan the room and keep an eye on them all with no partitions in the way.
Noah headed to the bicycle wheel, Maeve to the seesaw, and Sophie to the running track. Ian waited for an older boy to tire of the weights and levers, but soon shuffled back over to Tom.
“I have to pee.”
“Okay.” Tom scanned the larger exhibit hall and found the Blue Wing restroom signs across the stairwell. Mrs. Yardley was too far away to shout at over the noise, but Tom caught the eye of another chaperone with a raised hand. “Lisa.” He pointed at the shuffling boy beside him. “I’m taking Ian to the boys’ room.” She made the OK sign, and Tom led Ian through the currents of rainy day patrons toward the men’s room, thinking about the criminal background check form he’d had to fill out to be a school chaperone. He supposed it was, in part, for scenarios like this one.
Walking back a moment later to the playground exhibit, hands still damp despite the jet-powered dryer, Tom felt a flutter in his stomach. A second later, his right eyelid started to twitch. He recognized his own stress reactions before fully tuning in to what his ears had detected: an exotic, slightly dissonant melody gliding along beneath the chatter of the children, like a water snake weaving through a forest of little legs at a riverbank.
He froze and put a hand on Ian’s shoulder, stopping him in place.
“What are we stopping for?”
“Shhh.” Tom held up a finger and cocked his ear.
Was that Noah’s voice? Was it the melody he sang in his sleep? Or was Tom so sleep deprived and paranoid that he was hearing it in random noise now, like seeing Jesus in a piece of burnt toast?
Chimes trickled through the crowd off to his right, mimicking the melody he thought he’d heard. Some kind of sound exhibit? His heart rate had gone up to the register it would be in if the restroom trip had required a jog up a staircase. He snapped out of listening mode and picked up his pace, pushing the boy along in front of him, and scanning the field trip children from a distance. His eyes flitted frantically, searching for a glimpse of Noah, eyelid twitching all the while.
It seemed to take forever to guide Ian through the crowd milling around the 4D theater, then past some kind of lighthouse, and finally back to the green painted room with the seesaw. Maeve was still riding it. Sophie had joined her on the opposite end. The bicycle wheel was spinning unattended on the residual momentum of whoever had just abandoned the activity.
If Noah was still in the area, Tom didn’t see him.
Mrs. Yardley was trying to organize the kids into something like a line at the running track with the digital speedometer. Tom sidled through and touched her arm. “Have you seen Noah?”
Her eyebrows went up, but not as much as he knew they would have if he’d asked about a kid that wasn’t his own.
“I thought you took him to the bathroom. Lisa said—”
“That was Ian. Noah’s not here.”
“Maybe he went after you. I’ll keep an eye on your kids. Backtrack to the bathroom and look for him.”
“Ian, stay with Mrs. Yardley.”
Tom power-walked back to the main concourse, weaving through the throng and trying not to let his escalating panic make him frantic. He knew if that happened, his sense and senses would be diminished, his chances of spotting his son in the crowd lessened. But knowing the pitfall didn’t mean he could avoid it.
“Breathe,” he muttered under his breath, craning his neck to see past taller men. “How far could he go?” And why the hell would Noah’s teacher think he’d brought his son into a public bathroom? Those places were all mirrors. Didn’t she get it by now?
“Breathe, Tom. Don’t put your anger on her.” And now I’m talking to myself like a nut job. Susan’s gonna kill me. She knew this was a bad idea. Too many variables.
The crowd milling around the 4D theater was even thicker than it had been just moments ago. Had to be a show letting out. He was considering going the long way around the stairs when something caught his eye and made him do a double take.
The lighthouse between the playground exhibit and the theater hadn’t really registered with him the first time he’d passed it. Now he tuned in to the structure: a blue and white striped octagonal tower with an illuminated glass section at the top, filled with dozens of prismatic mirrored cubes. A large sign emanated from the glass, like a ray of light.
LIGHT HOUSE
Beaming, Bouncing, and Bending Light
Beyond the sign, all manner of prism, projection, and mirror activities awaited. Taking them in, Tom felt as if he’d stepped into a plunging elevator.
Off to the right, the bespectacled face of an Indian boy smiled and bobbed from side to side, refracted at myriad angles from a wall of mirrors. A few feet farther on, a girl and her bearded father watched their own reflections warp and bulge in an array of convex mirrors mounted on the wall. Tom stood under the sign, listening for Noah’s voice, or even for those tuneless chimes, but he heard nothing of the sort—only the sound of agitated children’s voices, some kind of commotion deeper into the exhibit, and a placating adult tone.
Spectra Files 03 Cthulhu Blues Page 11
