Spectra Files 03 Cthulhu Blues

by Douglas Wynne

JB: She needed someone to talk to.

  CH: What about?

  JB: She’s had a complication, a health issue related to her exposure. Her voice is changing.

  CH: Changing how?

  JB: Like the kids who were born with it.

  CH: Has your own voice changed since the events of 2019?

  JB: No.

  CH: Did Becca Philips intend to report the change in her voice to the agency?

  JB: That’s what we talked about. She’s afraid that if she reports it, she may be detained and subjected to experimentation. For the record, I couldn’t honestly try to convince her that wouldn’t happen.

  CH: Are you romantically involved with Becca Philips?

  JB: No.

  CH: Did she spend the night at your house?

  JB: None of your fucking business.

  CH: Have you ever had sexual relations with Becca Philips?

  JB: No.

  CH: Agent Brooks, I’m being asked to emphasize the importance of this question. It may seem like prying to you, and of no legitimate interest to the agency, but I can assure you that such an assumption could not be more wrong. All of the Children of the Voice were born to couples in which only one parent was exposed to the harmonics. We don’t know what the consequences would be if two exposed parents—both of whom retained extra dimensional perception and one of whom is the only adult known to have developed the voice—were to reproduce. Nor can we assume what Becca Philips’ intentions may be in that area, especially considering her mental health and family history. So I would urge you to give the question careful consideration before answering.

  JB: I’ve never had sex with Becca Philips.

  CH: Have you wanted to?

  JB: Now you’re getting personal, Bucko.

  CH: A desire can affect your polygraph readings, even if you’ve never acted on it.

  JB: I’m a straight man. She’s a fine-looking woman.

  CH: Did you grant Becca Philips access to the artifact and document archive at the JFK building on the night of April 23rd?

  JB: Yes.

  CH: For what purpose?

  JB: She thought SPECTRA had taken The Invisible Symphony from her father’s house and she wanted to destroy it.

  CH: In light of her actions today, do you still believe that she wanted to destroy it?

  JB: Yes. It was her father’s last request, so, yes.

  CH: Why, after three years, did she become interested in finding the symphony now?

  JB: She was having intense dreams. Something was calling her, trying to use her voice. She thought if it was happening to her, it might be happening to others. And she knew that if the symphony ended up in the wrong hands, anyone who had the voice might be coerced into singing it.

  CH: And you shared her concerns?

  JB: Yes.

  CH: Why didn’t you bring them to the director?

  JB: Too much paperwork.

  CH: This isn’t a joke, Agent Brooks. Your answers will have consequences for yourself and others. Why didn’t you inform the director of Ms. Philips’ mutation and your shared concerns about the symphony?

  JB: Seriously, destroying secret government property with scientific and historic value…that’s no small thing to get approval for, especially in light of the current director’s position on using eldritch tech in service to the cause. And like I said, I was trying to protect a friend from, I don’t know…dissection?

  CH: But you didn’t find the symphony because SPECTRA never found it either. Have you or Philips located it since?

  JB: No. I haven’t. I don’t know about Becca.

  CH: Are you aware that she stole an artifact from the archive under your supervision?

  JB: What artifact?

  CH: The silver dagger she was seen brandishing in the video recorded today in Allston. Was that the real reason you gave her access to the archive? To steal the ritual dagger she is now armed with?

  JB: No. I didn’t know. Are you sure it’s one from the archive?

  CH: Have you been in contact with Daniel Northrup recently?

  JB: No.

  CH: To your knowledge, has Becca Philips been in contact with Daniel Northrup?

  JB: No.

  CH: Do you know the identity of the man she’s traveling with? Is he Starry Wisdom?

  JB: I’ve never seen him before.

  Chapter 16

  Daniel Northrup lay awake, staring at the ceiling, when the nurse came in to tell him he had a visitor. “His name is Warwick McDermott. Are you up for a visitor?”

  He thumbed the button to raise his bed to the upright position, and tugged the oxygen mask down. “Send him in.”

  McDermott was dressed and groomed as impeccably as ever, but he looked older. The job had a way of aging people from stress alone, but for an uncharitable couple of seconds Northrup couldn’t help hoping it had given the fucker cancer, too.

  “Daniel. Thanks for seeing me.”

  “Warwick.” Northrup held the mask to his face for a breath. “Forgive me, I’m not much of a conversationalist now that I’ve got to keep sucking on the old aqualung.” Another drag from the mask. “What’s on fire?”

  “Pardon?” McDermott pulled up a chair beside the bed.

  “Things must be pretty bad if you’ve come for my help.”

  McDermott twisted a ring on his finger. Was that a Masonic insignia stamped into the gold? Northrup couldn’t tell. “Sorry to disappoint, but the agency isn’t burning down without you. In fact, we’ve made some progress with the tech you didn’t want to touch. Just this morning I oversaw the testing of a plasma cannon. The next iteration should be quite powerful.”

  “Congratulations. What did you test it on; a frozen shank from one of the Dark Young?”

  McDermott laughed. “Much better than that.” He leaned forward to stage whisper: “Lung Crawthok.”

  Northrup’s chest hitched and he sat up, seized by a coughing fit. He pressed the mask to his mouth and nose and it subsided. His eyes were watering when he was able to remove the mask and speak again. “You summoned it?”

  “Not exactly, but for all intents and purposes, it’s the same. We used a physical portal.”

  “What does that even mean?”

  “I’m afraid that’s classified.”

  “Like everything you’ve said to goad me since you sat down isn’t.”

  McDermott shrugged. Northrup thought it might be the first time he’d ever seen the man enjoying himself.

  “What do you want, Warwick? Can’t you see I’m busy dying?”

  McDermott withdrew a slim case from the inner pocket of his jacket. He turned it over in his hands, and his gaze turned inward. “Did you wear glasses as a child, Daniel?”

  “No.”

  “I had my first pair before I was seven. They made you something of a target back then. But I was a bookworm, and they say reading causes myopia. Left to my own devices, I might have played outdoors and made more friends, but Mother rewarded learning and punished dirty fingernails. And I have her to thank for my achievements. Did you have someone like that? Someone who pushed you to excel when you only wanted to go fishing?”

  Northrup grunted. “My grandfather.”

  “We may differ on methods, but we are members of the same elite group, you and I. Only strong-minded men can handle the truth of reality. And it is our duty to safeguard the sanity of simpler men by keeping their limited reality hermetically sealed.”

  “You came here to lecture me? Why? I’m irrelevant now.”

  McDermott, still fondling the case in his hands, grinned at a memory. “I used to sneak out and go fishing with one of the negro servants.”

  “How rebellious.”

  “I’m still repulsed by the taste, I throw them back. But I think it was the taboo that made it such a thrill. And soon, Daniel, I’m going to catch the biggest fish on Earth. The Priest of the Deep.”

  Northrup stared at the man with suffocating regret. He should never have let it come to this.
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  McDermott held the case up. “Destroy it all, you said. Don’t study the tech, dismantle it. Grind the components to dust.” He flipped the case open and presented it to Northrop. Inside were a pair of dark sunglasses with thick frames and a recessed button on one of the arms. McDermott stood, unfolded the glasses and placed them over Northrup’s eyes.

  “Behold,” he said, and clicked the button.

  A static charge swept over Northrup’s skin. It occurred to him too late that a spark could ignite his oxygen flow. That didn’t happen, though, and he relaxed, unaware that he would soon wish it had. The lenses, like night vision goggles, illuminated the dim room with an eerie lavender glow.

  “What is it?” Northrup asked.

  “One of my greatest accomplishments.”

  McDermott opened his briefcase and removed a pane of black glass the size of a hardcover book. Standing at the foot of the bed, he held it in front of his chest. At first sight, Northrup thought it was tinted, but on closer inspection, he saw it was clear glass, blackened by soot and oily residue. His body reacted to the knowledge of what it was before his mind caught up, tension contracting his muscles, his heart rate accelerating and breath slowing; the instinctive reactions of a trapped animal trying to make itself small and undetectable while priming its system for flight. He held the mask to his mouth and nose and kept it there.

  “The goggles you’re wearing contain a miniaturized Tillinghast Resonator. And this glass is from a window from…”

  “The Wade House,” Northrup said. “What’s your game, Warwick?”

  “What do you see, Daniel?”

  Organisms that resembled marine/insect hybrids—centipedes with piranha faces—wriggled at the edges of the glass and bumped the barrier, testing its integrity.

  “Are you acquainted with the Bardo Thodol?” McDermott asked.

  “The Tibetan Book of the Dead,” Northrup said through his mask. The agitated creatures glared at him from their bulbous alien eyes. Keeping the mask on his face was the only imperative he could hold onto. Taking the glasses off hadn’t yet occurred to him.

  “Yes,” McDermott said. “Monks read it to each other when consciousness is departing the body at the moment of death, to guide the untethered mind toward enlightenment amid overwhelming visions of what they call the peaceful and wrathful forms. The angelic and demonic entities that would drag the dead off to realms of bliss or torment. Both of which would prevent liberation, according to the Asian worldview. They say the key is to recognize the illusory nature of these denizens of the beyond when one encounters them.”

  Northrup, drowning in dread, was having trouble focusing on McDermott’s words and the sense of them, if there was any. He’d heard cultists go on tangents like this to reinforce their insane philosophies.

  “But I imagine they look quite real to you now,” McDermott continued, looking down at the glass in his hands as if he too could see the creatures.

  Northrup dropped his oxygen mask and pulled the shades off his face. The windowpane was dark and empty again without them.

  “Right,” McDermott said. “Child’s logic: If you can’t see them, they can’t see you. But do you know when they can see you again? When you shuffle off the flesh, with its rough senses, and slip between worlds. The monks are right about that. But they’re wrong that it’s an illusion. The shoal that was drawn to the glass, to this room, will linger here for a while. Because they can smell blood in the water.”

  Northrup swatted the shades from where they’d landed on the blanket to the floor. McDermott slid the glass pane back into his briefcase, then picked the shades up, switched them off, and returned them to their case, which he pocketed. Northrup wheezed into his mask again, glaring at McDermott. He removed the mask long enough to blurt, “You said we’re on the same side.”

  “Are we, though?”

  Northrup coughed, took a drag on the mask. “What are you, a cultist?”

  “No, no. But Becca Philips might be. Did you aid her?”

  Northrup shook his head.

  “Did you steal a meteoric dagger from the archive before you left and give it to her?”

  “No.”

  McDermott closed the door to the hall, and walked around the hospital bed to the oxygen tank where he rested his hand on the valve. “Who is the man she’s with?”

  “I don’t know…who you mean…wheeze… Nurse… Nurse!”

  “Who’s helping her? Teaching her spells to sing? A man with a white beard.” McDermott turned the valve.

  “You’re wrong about Becca,” Northrup said. “She’s…using…the voice…to fight back… If she has the blade and the book…she has a…wheeze…chance.”

  McDermott opened the valve and let some oxygen through. Northrup drank it deeply.

  “She’s been here. You admit it. What did she want from you?”

  “Symphony… She wanted to destroy it. But you know we never had it.”

  “You said ‘blade and book.’ What book?” McDermott touched the valve again.

  Northrup closed his eyes, drew a deep breath and removed the mask to speak. “You put your faith in gadgets, Warwick. Weapons over wisdom. You don’t know…what you’re fooling with…wheeze.” Northrup clutched his chest, and McDermott placed the mask on his face.

  “Stay with me, Daniel. Tell me what book and I’ll go, and the critters will disperse. What book did you send her after?”

  “Voice of the Void… DuQuette. It’s a banishing manual.” Northrup sucked on the mask. His arms and jaw were going numb. It felt like McDermott had placed a cinderblock on his chest. Was this what a heart attack felt like? The oxygen was flowing, but it didn’t help. The mask fogged as he said, “Nurse. Get the nurse.” But his voice was weak, and the room was dimming to a deep murk in which violet shapes wriggled toward the bed.

  Chapter 17

  DuQuette’s cat greeted Django with a hiss before jumping over the couch and disappearing. The professor’s university housing wasn’t as spacious as Catherine’s had been, but the clutter of books, papers, and shelves of trinkets made Becca feel right at home. He asked for her jacket and hung it on a rack already overburdened with various overcoats and fleece pullovers. Carrying her bag by the handle, Becca followed him through the maze of furniture. He had converted what would normally be a living room into a sprawling office space. There was no TV, but she counted one desktop computer, one laptop, and a large desk in the middle of the room that appeared to be reserved for working longhand with a stack of journals. Judging by the pipe rack, ashtray, and accumulation of dirty tea mugs, this had to be the desk where he did the majority of his work.

  Django sniffed around the room, but thankfully, he didn’t go looking for the cat. Becca only had to reprimand him once—for sticking his nose in one of the professor’s boots. DuQuette gathered the mugs and, on his way to the kitchen with them, nodded at a powder blue love seat embroidered with peacocks in front of the main desk. Becca settled on it, and Django curled up on the rug at her feet with a sigh.

  The sound of running water reached her from the kitchen as she took in the room. She was tempted to get up and examine some of the more intriguing objects more closely, but resisted the urge to stir Django, who would be restless if he thought there was a chance she might be leaving. The longer she absorbed the details of her surroundings, the more apparent it became that the knick-knacks were probably priceless artifacts, and the sofa, an antique.

  A moment after the whistle of a kettle, DuQuette returned with two steaming mugs on a tray, along with milk, honey (in a plastic bear), and an assortment of teas. Becca chose a packet of green tea and a squirt from the bear. She took a pill case from her bag and downed two aspirin for her throbbing lacerations, along with the daily Zoloft she’d forgotten earlier. DuQuette didn’t ask, allowing her to convalesce in silence until she was ready to talk. She was grateful for the space. Nor did he appear to mind her curious gaze lingering on the contents of the cluttered room, despite being the sort who en
tertained visitors seldom enough to have done away with his living room entirely.

  Her gaze eventually settled on a scuffed violin case leaning against a bookshelf. He knew what she was looking at without turning his head. “Do you have it with you?” he asked.

  Becca removed Luke’s tattered and bulging notebook from her bag and placed it on the desk. DuQuette’s hand hovered over the cover and she had the feeling that he was reluctant to open it for fear that it might disappoint him. He ran his thumb over the fringe of sheets protruding from the edges, scraps that Luke had taped or stapled into the book to supplement the work contained in the bound pages. Some of these were torn from pieces of brown paper bag while others were jotted on proper staff paper, cut to the size of the relevant fragment. Becca had poured over the notebook at Brooks’ house, reveling in years’ worth of her father’s handwriting; but unable to read music, the book had yielded no secrets to her. She couldn’t hear the notes in her head, only read the handwritten commentary, which may as well have been scrawled in Aramaic between the penmanship and the mystical content.

  “He really did labor over it for years, by the looks of this,” DuQuette said. He drummed his fingers on the cover, withdrew his pipe from the rack on the desk, and fingered the stem absentmindedly, his other hand reaching into a pouch of tobacco beside a green and gold banker’s lamp. He was about to strike a match when he glanced up at her. “Do you mind? I won’t get any ash on the paper of course.”

  Becca shrugged. “He sure did.”

  While the professor leafed through the notebook, Becca sipped her tea and scrolled through the photos of the birdbath on her camera. DuQuette’s brow furrowed as he hunched over the notebook, a wreath of smoke gathering around his snowy head.

  “Does your computer take SD cards?” Becca asked. “I’d like to see these on a bigger screen, if that’s okay.”

  DuQuette nodded and reluctantly pried himself away from the notebook, rolling his leather chair over to the smaller desk with the laptop. He flipped the lid open, typed the password, and waved at the screen. “All yours, my dear.”