Spectra Files 03 Cthulhu Blues

by Douglas Wynne

  McDermott nodded as the door passed them by. When it had previously been above them, Brooks noticed sigils and names in an arcane alphabet graven in the wood and filled with white candle wax. Now, as the door passed below their level, he saw that its outer side was adorned in the same fashion.

  “You salvaged it from the Wade House,” Brooks said. “What’s written on it?”

  “An evocation from the Necronomicon. Words of power that no living man or woman—I won’t say child—has the ability to speak. But I believe the medium makes up for the method in this case. Think of it as an invitation sent on the finest vellum.”

  “Who are we inviting to their slaughter?”

  “A minor deity. A guardian of the gate.”

  Brooks felt his flesh crawl beneath his shirt and tie. He had seen the creature before, watched it murder Becca’s father in a circle of standing stones.

  The winch clicked out the inches. The door’s descent slowed until it just touched the surface of the water some three yards out from the red platform. Ripples spread from the rectangle, fragmenting the reflection of the cloud-veiled sun, a burnished silver coin sparking on a grinding wheel.

  Through the steel cables, Brooks saw Demi Malik clutching the railing of the blue platform, Nico Merrit speaking into her short, wind-tossed hair. Brooks wondered if he was telling her that the cannon they were about to demonstrate could just as easily be trained on her son if she didn’t start helping.

  Motion drew Brooks’ gaze back to the door resting on the water below—green fireflies swarming—no, sniper scope lasers skittering over the charred wood, coalescing on the target’s point of entry.

  * * *

  Clutching the dagger in her right hand, Becca reached out with her left and ripped the pillowcase from the mirror, like gauze from an infected wound.

  She knew the words and melody, the fragment of the summoning song she’d dreamed in the hospital, and she knew what it would summon if she sang it. The phrase had looped in her head even in waking hours these past few weeks, an earworm of the vilest kind. All she had to do was give it voice and the Lady of a Thousand Hooks would rise from the silvered glass.

  She regarded her hollow-eyed reflection. A single night’s sleep hadn’t been enough to restore her. A sheen of sweat shone on her face and chest, where the impotent scarab beetle hung above the rim of her black tank top.

  Heart pounding, she closed her eyes and recalled the banishing mantra from The Voice of the Void, her lips moving, portioning the silent breath, rehearsing without uttering the words.

  She knew she could conjure, but could she banish? That was what she intended to test. But what if she failed? What would be the price of granting the dark goddess entry?

  She fumbled for the little leather book on the marble sink top, flipped it open to her bookmark—DuQuette’s card—and ran her finger over the mantra again, confirming her memorization, then turned the page and looked again at the diagram, the glyph she was to carve in the air with the ritual dagger, one stroke for each syllable.

  Django whined from the other side of the bathroom door.

  If all she accomplished here was her own death in the act of smashing a genie’s bottle, who would know what she had set loose into the world? She couldn’t expect the dog to explain her intentions when Brooks found her flayed body in his bathtub.

  Django, as if reading her thoughts, scratched at the door and expelled a short, sharp bark.

  Becca closed the book and it slipped out of her clammy hand. When it hit the floor, the business card fell out—Professor DuQuette’s name and office hours blazing up at her like a beacon in blue ink.

  She snatched up the book and card, tucked the dagger into her belt, and left the room, closing the door behind her. In a moment, she was sitting at the edge of her bed, heart thundering, cell phone to her ear, waiting for voicemail to pick up and trying to steady her breathing in case he actually answered.

  “Anton DuQuette speaking. Hello?”

  “It’s Becca Philips.”

  “Becca. Of course. How are you? Has my prescription for sleep been efficacious?”

  It took her a second to process what he meant. “Yes, thank you. And I found what I was looking for.”

  “Did you indeed? Where did our friend stash it, if you don’t mind my asking? Did it involve a puzzle? I love a good puzzle.”

  “Sort of, yes. But I’d prefer to tell you in person, if that’s possible.”

  “Certainly. Will you be up this way again soon? I’d love to have a look. Perhaps I can be of assistance with pronunciations, not that it makes much difference, I suppose. The book is of strictly academic interest without the fabled weapon I speculated about.”

  Becca bit her thumbnail. “What if it wasn’t a fable?”

  A beat of silence on the line.

  “Were they together? No, don’t answer that. When can we meet? I’ll cancel my afternoon class if you can come today.”

  “I don’t have a car,” Becca said.

  “Then I’ll come to you.”

  This was all happening fast, but she could still hang up and he wouldn’t know where to find her. His enthusiasm was palpable, intense enough to trigger her warning lights. “You said you belonged to a secret society with Maurice and Catherine.”

  “I agree with you that this is a conversation best conducted in person.” His tone carried an edge of fear.

  “I want to meet alone. With none of your brothers. I want to test what I’ve found but I need backup. And it can’t wait. Children’s lives may depend on it.”

  “Slow down, Becca. It’s not that simple. You can’t test a banishing without an evocation. It’s dangerous business.”

  “You knew about my necklace.”

  “Yes.”

  “But Catherine kept it from the order. She didn’t leave it to you. So how do I know she trusted you?”

  He took the time to gather his thoughts before answering, sensing how close she was to hanging up if he failed the test. “I believe Catherine hoped you would find me, or I you. She would have wanted me to help you. I failed her, and I’m sorry for that. But now I have a second chance.”

  “You knew the mantra to awaken the light?”

  “Of course.”

  “What about the gem? Did you know where it was hidden? Do you know where I found it?”

  “It was hidden at a place with a history of transit between worlds.”

  “Don’t talk in riddles. Name it.”

  Silence unspooled between them and Becca wondered if, his bluff called, he’d hung up. She checked the display: the call timer was still ticking.

  “Here’s a riddle that answers your question, but just between us,” DuQuette said. “In case any little birds are listening. What’s white when dirty?”

  Becca had heard this one before, from Catherine in fact. But he’d left off the second half. The way Catherine had told it was: What’s white when dirty and black when clean? Answer: a chalkboard. But with only the first half of the clue, it could just as well be a birdbath spattered with guano.

  “Meet me there,” Becca said. “One o’clock.”

  * * *

  Brooks couldn’t hear the hum of the resonator powering up from his position on the platform, but he could feel it in his teeth and testicles. Beside him, McDermott tapped his wristwatch and spoke into his earpiece. Brooks couldn’t hear what he said, but in response, one of the engineers on the red platform with the resonator—a man wearing body armor and a flotation vest—walked onto a plank suspended over the door. He knelt, reached out a gloved hand, and turned the silver doorknob, around which a steel cable was looped. When he’d returned to the relative safety of the steel grate deck, the engineer gave a hand signal to the winch operator in the crane.

  Brooks sensed the agents and soldiers around him drawing a collective breath. All bodies, whether in fatigues or suits, were as still as a photograph as the cable pulled on the doorknob and the door came loose from the charred frame.

/>   It was as if opening the door had completed an electrical circuit. Suddenly, the black water was illuminated from within, revealing a swarm of alien organisms ranging from the amoeboid to the insectile, to more complex variations of marine life, twitching and undulating in a wash of violet light.

  The green lasers tracked some of the larger specimens, but the snipers held their fire.

  Brooks watched, entranced. The languid motion of the organisms in the water was almost soothing to behold. Then, as suddenly as they had appeared, they scattered, coalescing around the outer rim of the pool, clearing the way for something vast to rise in the center.

  The door obscured the creature as it surfaced, but Brooks saw enough to recognize the form: A tail that belonged to neither scorpion nor manta ray but some hybrid of the two, scarred crustacean armor, an array of clawed arms.

  Lung Crawthok had answered the director’s invitation.

  McDermott gazed up at the crane operator and gave a signal through his com. The winch motor engaged, causing the door to open with a creak amplified by the stepped walls of the granite crater.

  The creature’s face emerged from the violet murk, taking on detail as it approached the glassy surface of the water. Now Brooks could see the fang-tipped triangular flaps of flayed skin, like flower petals framing rows of horselike teeth, and the humanoid arms and legs folding inward. The creature rolled in a somersault, the tip of its tail slicing the water as it completed a revolution and breached the surface, erupting from the doorframe in a spray of white water. The armored engineers surrounding the resonator scampered backward, nearly knocking each other into the water, clutching at the railings as the creature dropped to the platform, twirling its bronze harpoon-tipped staff.

  When the god touched down, the steel grate tilted under the water, sending one of the three engineers flailing for purchase and landing with a splash beside the door. The creatures waiting at the circumference of the pool swarmed in, latched on, and pulled him under despite his flotation vest. He was gone before he could utter a sputtering cry for help, his dismemberment a shadow show of violet light and bleeding silhouette.

  Muzzles flashed from the towers above, but Brooks couldn’t tell if anyone had scored a hit. Stray rounds plunked into the water and sparked off the metal platform. For a second, he thought the snipers were terrible shots. Then he realized he was only seeing the ricochets—and that they were all ricochets. The red platform engineers cowered, covering their faces with their Kevlar plated arms. One was bleeding from his boot, another from his abdomen. The general must’ve given a signal because the firing stopped all at once, as suddenly as it had begun.

  A bowel-shaking pulse radiated through the quarry on a wave of stone dust, raking the surface of the water like helicopter rotors, forcing the remaining pair of engineers to let go of their wounds and seize the railings, lest they follow their companion into the feeding bowl.

  Brooks shielded his eyes and looked up into the glare of the sun over the rim of the pit. No, that wasn’t the sun; it was the tripod cannon firing a crackling ball of pink fire that seemed to defy all states of matter as it oozed from the metal maw of the weapon and rolled across the intervening space to splash light across the monster’s pinchers and torso.

  On impact, Lung Crawthok staggered backward a half step, then lunged forward, driving the flue of his harpoon through a cowering engineer, impaling him through the belly. The blood was lost on the red metal but for the hot spray that splashed across the last engineer’s helmet visor. He screamed as the creature raised his wriggling comrade into the air.

  Brooks felt his own gut lurch in sympathy watching the creature embrace its victim in a cage of claws, the man’s head disappearing into petals of flesh, his decapitated body tossed into the water for the lesser denizens of the deep dimension to feast on.

  The third engineer scrambled up a rope ladder toward a place where the granite steps would offer him options for escape. Another pulse from the plasma cannon pounded the quarry like a drum. The rolling pink orb was darker this time, shot through with shafts of cerulean blue. This one burst against the creature’s head, causing it to teeter for a moment in which Brooks thought it would fall backward through the door. Instead, it let out a piercing shriek, sending Brooks to his knees with everyone around him.

  Only McDermott remained at the railing, grinning into the pit like a man having the time of his life.

  Brooks pulled himself up and clapped a hand on the director’s shoulder. “That cannon isn’t up to the job!” he shouted.

  “It’s powering up. The next shot will take it down.”

  The general raised a hand to stay the M5 rifles…but was that a rocket launcher poised on the shoulder of the soldier positioned beside him on the green deck?

  The monster clambered over the resonator, stabbed its foreclaws into cracks in the granite, and skittered up the rock wall with a speed that defied its weight and mass. The last engineer had almost reached the top of the rope ladder when a serrated claw that had to be three feet long cut him clean in half. Brooks turned his head, but not fast enough to miss the sight of white spinal vertebrae poking out of the meat of the man’s bottom half as it tumbled over the rock face and splashed into the water.

  Another pulse shook the quarry, another plasma ball rolled through the air. It knocked the creature off the quarry wall, fracturing its armor with runnels of corrosive light, but the monster’s flailing tail kept it from falling backward through the doorway. It landed on the red platform and dropped to one knee.

  Brooks could hear people retching, could smell the acid of their vomit on the air, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the gaping horizontal door and the monster teetering at its threshold. It was impossible to reconcile the size of the creature with the portal it had come through. But then, he remembered, there was never anything rational about the geometry of the Wade House.

  Something blazed past his face with a whoosh, not a slow plasma blast, but a rocket. A cloud of orange fire bloomed in the bottom of the quarry and the observation decks rocked.

  When the smoke cleared, the resonator was scattered in fragments of copper and glass, and the water had gone dark. The creature was unharmed. It launched into the air, vaulted up the quarry wall, passing between the cables and platforms, its blazing emerald eyes pinned on Brooks.

  McDermott turned away from the railing. Was that fear on his pale face? Violet light seeped out from under the lenses of his dark shades.

  “Do you still see it?” McDermott asked.

  Brooks nodded. “It sees me, too. It’s coming.”

  McDermott shoved Brooks in the chest, pushing him away from the railing. The other agents on the deck gave them a wide berth. Without the resonator, they couldn’t see the monster, nor could it see them. The director pressed a finger to his ear and gave a command. Across the chasm, the cannon operator swiveled the weapon in his gloved hands and trained it on McDermott.

  McDermott held his arm up in an L beside his head, index finger pointing at the sky.

  Brooks felt the urge to draw his gun, but what good would it do if all those armor piercing rounds had failed? The only thing his 9mm could do was end McDermott’s suffering if Lung Crawthok took him. But no, the creature couldn’t touch the director while they inhabited different dimensions. Only Brooks had a foot in each world. Or were those shades McDermott wore some kind of personal resonator prototype?

  McDermott pulled them off his face as Lung Crawthok vaulted over the railing. Ghost claws passed through his body, failing to connect with living tissue.

  McDermott swept his arm down, signaling the gunner.

  A violet light flared behind man and beast and McDermott hit the deck. The monster shuddered and sizzled as deep purple plasma washed over it—face flaps twitching and teeth chittering, its throat issuing a gurgle of what Brooks prayed was more pain than rage. He held his breath, watching as the creature toppled backward off the platform and down through the open doorway with a splash.
/>   Chapter 13

  To Becca’s relief, Allston Asylum remained perched atop the hill overlooking Commonwealth Avenue. She’d feared that it might have met the wrecking ball since her last visit, or that SPECTRA might have cordoned it off with an electrified fence, like the Wade House.

  She had the carpod drop her off at the bottom of Brainerd Road so she could walk up the hill with Django on a leash, thinking it would be harder for anyone to trail her on foot without being conspicuous. A panoramic view of the city emerged as they ascended: Dark clouds hovered over the skyscrapers, but the rain had passed, leaving shining drops on the parked cars and mailboxes, the day already warm enough to make her sweat from the exertion. Her bag bumped at her hip with each step, heavy with the book, dagger and camera. She didn’t know what she might need that last for, but experience had shown it was usually better to have it.

  At the summit, she checked her phone and found she was ten minutes early. Scanning the street, she saw no sign of the professor in any of the parked cars, but she had no intention of lingering in plain sight. If he knew the place, then he could find her in the courtyard. Maybe he was already there.

  Apart from the new graffiti, she could almost believe that not a day had passed since she’d last walked across the overgrown field and stepped over the fallen door into the rambling brick building. Inside, she unclipped Django’s leash and let him roam. He sniffed at the corners for animal droppings, and marked the wall.

  She let the dog set their course through the building, indulging his urge to explore, before focusing on what she’d come here for. She hurried to keep up with him, her boots crunching the flakes of peeled paint that covered the cracked tile floors like autumn leaves, telling herself that it was simply good reconnaissance to scout out the location first and to trust the ferreting out of any hidden inhabitants to Django’s sharper senses. But after following his aimless trail for a while, she realized that every moment spent roaming the outer corridors of this place was a moment spent avoiding the inevitable confrontation with the tragic memory that waited at the center.