Spectra Files 03 Cthulhu Blues

by Douglas Wynne

  “What do you want to do? In your heart.”

  “I want to stop fighting what I’m becoming. I want to sing the song I hear in my dreams. I feel like I’ll die if I don’t.”

  The minstrel raked the fingers of his right hand over the strings, then reached out with them and brushed a stray lock of hair away from Becca’s eyes. “You should listen to that voice,” he said.

  “But won’t everything human in me, in the world, die if I give in to it?”

  He looked away and played his strange instrument, and for a second, the bustling pavilion appeared empty to her, as if the centuries had already passed, her race already fallen into extinction, the forms of the tourists around her mere ghosts, their desires and fears reduced to ephemeral whispers of no consequence amid the eternal lament of the ocean in the organ. And then he played the music in reverse, and the sun raced west to east across the sky, and the days and nights strobed backward from that tranquil moment to a day when the setting sun over Rome was replaced with an incandescent mushroom cloud, and she knew that he was answering her without words, showing her what mankind would bring to the earth she treasured: the melting of the polar ice caps, the death of the oceans, nuclear winter. He was showing her what she’d always known but had kept hidden from herself in moments of greatest crisis—that mankind was not the arbiter of rationality or the ultimate steward of the earth. Man was a force of chaos, driven by tempests of whim and violent emotion. And all life on Earth would suffer the consequences if he were not exterminated by the Great Old Ones who had once flourished in primeval peace, and would again when the children of man sang them home.

  Becca buckled forward, the breath knocked out of her. The sky cleared, the sun came to rest in its proper place at dusk on Walpurgis Night, and the white noise of the crowd swelled up around her over the drone of the organ.

  She turned toward the minstrel, but he was gone, if he’d ever been there in the flesh in the first place. A chill wind blew in off the water. Becca shivered, pulled her jacket close around her, and reached into her bag to grasp the hilt of the silver dagger, as if it might warm her cold blood.

  * * *

  The children came at nightfall, dressed in black. They gathered at the Monument to the Sun, four boys and four girls, each taking a position on the photo luminescent disk of a planet, all facing the giant disk of the sun, upon which other children and parents and lovers gathered as they did every night to watch the play of colored light beneath their feet. The disks, relative in size to the planets they represented, were small in relation to the sun disk. A faint orange light flickered between the feet of a blonde haired girl standing over Venus, while pink light encircled a hollow-eyed boy poised to sing at the center of Jupiter. Becca walked the steps of the sea organ, observing from a distance, as if afraid she might be swept into their orbit if she got too close. Was that Noah, motionless in the blue glow of Neptune? And where was the minstrel, Tristan?

  Did she catch a glimpse of him, a flash of crimson in the gloom, wending his way through the crowd, roving the outer reaches of the pavilion, a dark uncharted planet?

  A low hum, barely audible, spread over the pavilion. At first, it was almost impossible to differentiate the sound from the sea organ itself. As it swelled slowly, Becca realized she was hearing a droning unison note from the children’s throats, buzzing like a downed power cable or a hornet’s nest. A cascade of icy guitar notes rained down around the crowd, and the chatter thinned out to a patchwork of whispers. Now she could see Tristan in his red robe, circling the sun disk. Parents pulled their children away from him, off of the illuminated ground.

  Becca, despite her fear, found herself following in Tristan’s footsteps, walking toward the sun disk as the crowd parted around her, a song rising in her throat, the dagger she’d tucked into the waistband of her pants and covered with her shirt entirely forgotten.

  Chapter 20

  The Zodiac raft approached the pavilion from the north under cover of darkness, moving fast. It hugged the coast until clear of the cruise ship dock, then, after passing the Aegean Star, cut a wide circle to the west for a direct approach. Brooks felt a wave of déjà vu reading the name off the back of the ship. He checked his holster for the third time and adjusted the fit of his Kevlar vest. Colored lights pulsed on the concrete pavilion ahead, throwing black silhouettes. A crowd was gathered around the largest colored disk, in a crescent formation, open on the ocean side. He’d known there would be civilians, but the sight of them was still unsettling; there were so many, and some were children. But then, most of their targets were children.

  McDermott had emphasized the directive to take the kids alive, and Becca as well, but Brooks didn’t trust Merrit to comply. He needed to be first out of the boat when they landed, to put himself between the SEALS and Noah—at least Noah, if he couldn’t do better. The thought of looking Tom and Susan in the eyes when he got back to Boston weighed heavy on him as the growl of the twin engines was overtaken by a louder drone.

  Light flared around the boat. For a second, Brooks thought Agent Kalley had fired the plasma cannon, but then he saw that the sea was illuminated from below, as if a blue star were rising from the deep. The light was so bright that the silhouettes of fish and rays could be seen roving above it. Were they fleeing its approach?

  The crowd around the monument where the choir sang had also noticed the glowing ocean. Some broke away and descended the steps of the sea organ for a closer look, probably marveling over what special effect the minstrel had employed to extend the light show from the pavilion to the water.

  Brooks could see that figure now, orbiting the largest lighted disk in a red robe, blue sparks flitting about his head like a crown, his face a patch of blackness darker than night. The sound of his guitar carried over the water, a skeletal structure supporting the flesh and blood formed by the mingling of the choir voices with those of the sea organ.

  The music was causing something to manifest around the star rising in the water. It bloomed in the deep, unfurling tendrils and limbs of twining fire. Brooks felt an overwhelming urge to urinate at the sight of it. He had seen this entity, this phenomenon before. Azothoth, the book breakers called it. It had been unleashed by Darius Marlowe’s sonic bomb on the Red Line subway in 2019 and had ascended the sky to a zenith from which it endowed other entities with the power to manifest; a puppet master dripping strings of black oil over Boston. Becca’s scarab had fractured this god of chaos, blasted it into fragments that had snowed black flakes on the region, swirling around the Wade House until its chimneys sucked them back into the deity’s native dimension. But here it was, about to breach, about to be born anew. And this time, the talisman capable of shattering it was itself shattered; the gem of power lost to that other world.

  Brooks scanned the pavilion. He had passed over the night vision goggles while gearing up, choosing instead to rely on his EDEP.

  The Children of the Voice glowed with a greenish aura like swamp gas, while the minstrel burned a bright red that seemed to gather intensity from the music’s crescendo. Another adult (Becca?), standing at the center of the largest lighted disk, was wrapped in a shifting veil of yellow and violet. He could hear his shipmates exclaiming about the star rising beneath the boat—even they could perceive that burgeoning manifestation, but he doubted they would see the choir in the same way he did if they removed their goggles. Whatever was flourishing in Becca and the children was not yet fully formed in this dimension.

  Not yet… Not yet… Not yet.

  As the boat passed over the glowing water, a school of giant jellyfish broke the surface and rose into the air like helium balloons of billowing tissue, flickering with electricity in their cores. The crowd let out a sigh of awe as the boat sped away from the floating creatures, away from the light, and ate up the remaining yards to the concrete shore.

  And then, the time for nervous anticipation had passed. The captain cut the engines and two of the SEALS tilted them out of the water to keep the pro
ps from grinding on the steps. The nose of the Zodiac bounced, and Brooks was out, running up the sea organ steps toward the crowd and the choir.

  Facing the water, Becca looked past Brooks, or through him, her gaze fixed on the rising jellyfish creatures and the surfacing star. The minstrel was nowhere to be seen. He had melted into the shadows of the crowd again, the sound of his instrument fading, as the sound of the choir surged. The song sent waves of pain rippling through Brooks’ head, patterns of violet stars speckling his field of vision. He struggled against the compressed air, as if he were running into the water rather than away from it, his momentum thwarted by the sonic surf.

  The heads of the children seemed to float in the darkness, their black clothes blending with the shadows, their faces wavering in the shifting light cast by the disks and the glowing sea, as the rising creature’s aura covered the final stretch of water and touched the bottom step of the monument.

  Becca, like the children, looked hypnotized, enraptured. What had they done to her to make her sing?

  The crowd was dispersing, losing interest in the choir. Some walked toward the jellyfish creatures hovering in the air at the water’s edge, flashing like heat lightning, trailing tendrils of some viscous substance. Others focused on the men with the guns, goggles, and armored vests jumping out of the raft behind Brooks. Some froze in place, paralyzed. Only a few retreated, knocking into each other, casting around for something that would make sense of the scene. But no one that Brooks could see was doing the sane thing—running away from the waterfront into the shelter of the town. They might know that the soldiers represented danger, might sense that the physics-defying creatures represented worse, but in most of them, denial was winning out over self-preservation. Denial and curiosity. The deep-seated belief that the unfolding spectacle would soon be unmasked and resolved as an entertainment. And then he noticed that the ones closest to the water, who had gravitated toward the danger, were holding their devices up, framing shots and recording video, secure in the feeling that their lenses and screens offered some kind of immunity by placing them in the category of witness rather than victim.

  One of the SEALS was shouting at the spectators, waving the muzzle of his rifle, telling them in his best American drill sergeant holler to, “Get out the way! Get down or get the fuck outta the way!”

  When almost no one responded, the first weapon discharged, shearing the night with the sound of lethal reality crashing in on the hypnotic fantasia. Brooks didn’t know who fired at the sky, but it had the desired effect. People hit the ground or scattered. Parents swept up children in their arms and sheltered them, but Becca didn’t even flinch. She kept singing and staring at the sea. Brooks had almost reached her when another shot rang out, a single crack, followed by a moan. He whipped his head around as one of the children crumpled to the ground, a boy on one of the larger disks.

  Dear God, was it Noah?

  Brooks’ own weapon was in his hand now, though he didn’t remember drawing it. It was only a handgun, but it dispersed the crowd around him. Brooks watched in horror as the child squirmed on the plate of pulsing light, a dark pool of blood spreading like a shadow growing from his neck.

  It was Phineas Malik. For a flash, Brooks was back in the child’s bedroom in Sedona, seeing his scattered Legos and the mirror he had crawled through, seeing the fear on his mother’s face.

  The killing shot broke the spell. The song faltered and the other children wandered from their stations, not fleeing like the bystanders now were, but wandering toward the water, like kids lost in a mall, scanning the crowd for their parents.

  Brooks turned to the water, searching for which of his companions had fired the shot, but he knew even before his gaze landed on Merrit, poised on the third step of the organ, sweeping his rifle over the remaining children, tracking them through the scope. Beyond Merrit, the SEAL team was divided: some aiming their weapons at the flaming orb god rising from the water, others hauling the Zodiac around to point toward the water so that Kalley—manning the plasma cannon with those weird gloves—could get a fix on it. It wouldn’t be difficult; the thing was fucking huge.

  A woman’s scream cut the air. A large man in a floral shirt and swim trunks had been seized by one of the mammoth jellyfish, his upper half vanishing into its cloudy flesh, his legs bicycling wildly as it lifted him into the air. Blood poured over his exposed belly from the monster’s convulsing maw and dripped from his sandals, pattering on the white stone. One sandal fell off and bounced, leaving a red mark; the only sign he had ever been there when the rest of him was sucked into the billowing pink tresses.

  A SEAL fired at the jellyfish as it floated out over the sea, but if the bullets pierced it, they had no effect.

  Brooks looked at Merrit. He was staring through his scope at the body of Phineas Malik, his lower lip trembling, his one open eye glistening with an unshed tear. He blinked, swallowed, and trained the rifle on another target. Brooks followed his aim and saw that Becca was next in his sights. He stepped into the line of fire, shielding her as the children ran past him to the water.

  A crackling ball of light erupted from the cannon mounted on the nose of the Zodiac and soared over the water. Azothoth rose into the air like an eclipsed star, a heart of darkness sprouting roots of black light through a white corona, ascending among the retinue of jellyfish. But before the plasma ball from the cannon made contact, the creatures faded to transparency, and Brooks knew that Kalley’s shot wasn’t responsible—Merrit’s was. In taking down a member of the choir, he had shattered the song, depriving the god of the energy drawing it into the world.

  It was over. There was no need for Merrit to take Becca, too. Standing in front of her, Brooks raised his gun and aimed it at Merrit’s face. “Leave her be,” Brooks said. “Find the minstrel.”

  “Step aside, Brooks,” Merrit said.

  “She was hypnotized. They all were. We take them in alive.”

  A swath of red fabric, like a matador’s cape, flashed at the waterline, south of the team gathered around the boat. Brooks pivoted and fired at it and Merrit flinched. The robe seemed to ripple like a pool of paint, the man wearing it gliding down the wide steps into the waves. Caught by the wind, the cloak flapped up, unfurling like a giant flag, revealing the Children of the Voice. They flocked behind their leader, splashing into the dark water under the canopy of his billowing cloak.

  Then Becca was running after them, past Brooks. He snatched at her arm but only felt the sleeve of her jacket slipping through his fingers. He ran after her, reaching the water just behind her. The crimson cloak floated on the surface a few yards out. The sea had gone dark again in the wake of the god’s withdrawal. Bullets plunked in the water from Merrit’s rifle. Brooks paid them no heed, flying down the stairs amid the unceasing moans of the organ.

  Becca walked down the steps into the water, following the vanishing cloak until only her hair trailed behind her on the surface. Then she was gone.

  Brooks took a deep breath and dived in after her.

  Chapter 21

  Becca vomited brine onto stone. Daylight blazed in her eyes and made her head pound while her stomach spasmed and convulsed. The sound of surf reached her ears, but all she could focus on was the cold, wet stone beneath her hands. There was something wrong with it. It wasn’t the flat concrete of the sea organ steps. And where was the breath of the organ, those long ambiguous chords lingering between major and minor?

  She wasn’t in Zadar anymore.

  She had swum into darkness with the children. She had followed a ribbon of red through the gloom. It was coming back to her now. She had almost drowned again for the second time in twenty-four hours.

  She put a hand to her jawline, felt a flap of flesh, a gill, and recoiled from the touch.

  A hand on her shoulder, small and gentle. She looked up into Noah Petrie’s big green eyes. Becca drew a ragged breath and managed to exhale without retching again. The boy smiled at her. She shifted to a sitting position and sei
zed him in her arms, pulling him into a wet embrace. Noah squirmed and struggled, causing Becca to let go. He took a few steps back and smiled at her.

  Her voice was hoarse when she spoke. “Are you okay, Noah?”

  He nodded. “I thought you drowned,” he said.

  Becca coughed, clenched her fist in front of her mouth, then stood up, carefully. She wondered if the tide had battered her against the rocks. Every muscle ached, every bone throbbed. The shrieks of children reached her ears, filtered through wind and surf. Playful shrieks of wild abandon.

  “Where are we?” Becca asked.

  “Tristan says it’s Easter Island,” Noah said. “But we can’t find any eggs. Anyway, Easter already happened.”

  Easter Island? Had they walked the Twilight Shore again? A memory flashed into her mind—or was it a nightmare? She and the children riding on the back of a giant white sea serpent through tide pools and coastal rivers.

  “Where is Tristan?” Becca asked, looking around the shore, her hair fluttering in her face. She spotted two of the children playing in the tall grass where the cliff sloped down to a beach, but no sign of the one who had brought them here.

  “He went to the cave, to get the treasure,” Noah said.

  “It’s a lava tube,” a girl’s voice said. She had come up the beach to stand beside them. Her black dress was stiff with salt, trimmed with white sand. In her blonde hair, strands of red seaweed were tangled like ribbons. “Tristan says the caves were made from lava. They used to hide in them and travel underground like in a subway.”

  “Who?” Becca asked.

  “The cannibals,” the girl said with a tone of impatience. “The first folk of the Starry Wisdom. The ones who made those.”

  Becca followed the girl’s pointing finger to a ridge where a line of cyclopean heads carved from dark stone ranged across the horizon. She had seen pictures of these icons growing up. Occasionally on TV, but mostly in Catherine’s books. Her mind reeled at the sight. After all of the weirdness she had experienced in the past few years, the past few days, it suddenly seemed that the most impossible fact confronting her was that she should be here, on Rapa Nui, looking at an ahu platform on which a line of moai stood sentinel, gazing across the ocean. Across the centuries.