Black January: A SPECTRA Files Novel

by Douglas Wynne

  “How did you know the house was important?” Brooks asked.

  “I took a chance after Catherine died. When things settled down, I went to Miskatonic. Just walked into the library and showed them my driver’s license. Said I wanted to see my mother’s books and papers. I don’t know if they told anybody I was there. I didn’t stay long. Found what I was looking for, snapped some pictures of the pages, and read them when I got home. Unpublished stuff from a manuscript she was writing about the symphony.”

  “Do you still have the photos?” Brooks asked.

  “Yeah, I made print outs. I have them here in my notebook.” Luke riffled through the stuffed pages and withdrew a couple of folded, stapled sheets. He handed them to Becca. “She talks about a correspondence between Caleb Wade and a young Parisian architect named Zann. Wade had seen a house designed by Zann while honeymooning in France, and he became obsessed with it. He tracked the architect down and tried to hire him to design a house for him and his bride. His lighting business was the most successful in New England at the time. He’s remembered as a candle maker, but he did a lot more than that—all kinds of innovation with gas lamps and even chemical handheld lights. Catherine says he was a kind of physicist, with deep knowledge of the different wavelengths of light and color. Way ahead of his time. But he was especially obsessed with some unconventional theories about what he called ‘the psycho-spiritual effects of certain wavelengths on the human organism enhanced by essential salts and olfactory powders.’ I don’t fully understand that bit, but according to Catherine, Wade believed there was a connection between the theories he had about the manipulation of light with angled mirrors and the odd geometry of Zann’s architecture. He thought lighting and architecture could be composed like music to open doors in the mind, and that the process could be enhanced with special incense.”

  “Zann…” Brooks said. “I’ve heard that name before. One of the first cases I was assigned to had to do with a physicist named Zann. I wonder if there’s a connection.”

  Luke scratched his beard. When Brooks offered nothing further, he continued. “The correspondence goes on for most of a year, Wade prying Zann for the source of his inspiration and dangling large sums of money for the construction of the house he wants. Zann insists he can only design the house in relation to the landscape. Wade offers an all-expense-paid residency in America. They talk about ley lines and something called seasonal currents of force.

  “Once he starts to think that Wade might have a thing or two to teach him, you can tell Zann gets excited about the project, and he shares more about the source of his designs. Turns out, he had an uncle who played the viol in an orchestra for a while, but he was fired for embellishing the music with his own strange interpretations. This musician, Erich Zann, had his own theories about sound frequencies that parallel Wade’s theories about light. And both men were interested in the effects of these vibrations on consciousness. The younger Zann played just enough piano to appreciate the asymmetrical structures in his uncle’s music. But his talent was geometry, so he adapted those musical shapes into architecture. That’s the origin of the Wade House—it’s a three-dimensional interpretation of Erich Zann’s magnum opus, The Invisible Symphony. It’s built on Zann’s music, illuminated by Caleb Wade. Every window, lamp, and mirror was placed to make the place vibrate in a particular way. The house itself was placed on that hill to vibrate a particular way. I’m curious: did the spooks you work for tell you not to move the furniture so much as an inch?”

  “Yeah,” Brooks said. “We don’t even sleep on the beds.”

  “But the piano is what they’re most concerned about,” Becca said. “We’ve used it as a portal. They’re worried that if we move it, that portal will be lost and we won’t be able to find it again.”

  Luke looked at his daughter with horrified awe darkening his features. “Have you gone through it?”

  “Once,” she said.

  “We both have,” Brooks said.

  “Where did it take you?”

  “A different place each time,” Becca said. “Depending on what chord was played before opening the lid.”

  “It worked, then.”

  “You didn’t set foot in the house when you ditched your motorcycle there?” Brooks asked. “You didn’t play the piano?”

  “I was tempted to, but I was afraid of what might happen if I played the chords I’d puzzled out. I’ve become a musician over the years, but I’m no magician. The place was sucking in black fallout when I found it. I didn’t dare go in alone.”

  “I don’t understand,” Becca said. “Why did you spend your life re-writing a piece of music if you don’t intend to play it? What aren’t you telling us? What are your variations on the piece supposed to do? And what was the music supposed to do in its original form?”

  Brooks stood up, almost knocking his chair over. He raised a finger for silence, and cocked his ear. Becca heard it, too: a helicopter. Brooks was already at a window, parting the curtain and peering up at the sky. The sound of the rotors grew louder, faded, and then swelled again, shaking the cottage. It wasn’t passing over but circling around.

  “I think it’s one of ours,” Brooks said.

  Luke moved to his guitar case, clutching his notebook to his chest. He looked like a cornered animal.

  “Hide the score,” Brooks said. “The original. Make it disappear.” Then he sidled through the door and walked down the steps into the cyclone of the descending black bird. A cloud of pine needles, dirt, and ice billowed out over the ground in a radial wave as the helicopter touched down in the barren lot at the center of the circle of cabins.

  Becca watched from the doorway, blocking her father from view, listening to his frantic motions as he hid Zann’s score. Brooks shielded his eyes and waited for the rotors to slow.

  Nico Merrit emerged with his head low and strode across the field toward Brooks. His sidearm was in plain view, but he made no aggressive gestures toward his fellow agent. When he’d cleared the blades, he set his hands on his hips and nodded toward the cabin. “You and Philips taking a romantic weekend getaway, or is her father in there?”

  Brooks scratched the back of his head.

  “Tell him to pack a bag. I have orders to bring him back to Concord.”

  Chapter 15

  Becca was out of the car before Brooks had put it in park, running for the door of the hut, running to find her father who had never come running for her, Django on her heels.

  Inside, she bumped into an agent, nearly knocking him over. “Where is he?” she asked. He pointed down the row of cubicles to the one she had been assigned as a temporary bedroom. She caught her breath and composed herself, striding briskly down the row, the strains of an acoustic guitar reaching her as she approached. The sound, faint at first, grew stronger: a delicate, plaintive minor key sequence, lazily strummed with ornamental arpeggios between the chords.

  Luke Philips looked up from the cot where he sat perched with his guitar in his lap, the last chord he’d struck ringing for a second, then abruptly muted when Django thumped his tail against the body of the instrument and licked Luke’s hand. Becca hung back, her own hands stuffed in her pockets.

  Luke scratched the dog’s head and extended his chin for a licking. He looked at Becca. “Your dog?”

  “Yeah. His name is Django.”

  Her father flashed a delighted grin and played a sloppy Django Reinhardt riff before tapering off and setting the guitar down on a folded wool blanket beside him. He continued petting the dog, but it seemed like he was doing it more to soothe himself than the animal as he wrinkled his brow and tried to read Becca’s stony expression.

  Finally she said, “Have you been here the whole time just chilling? I was worried. I thought they would…”

  “Interrogate me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They did.”

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “Nothing harsh. Mostly the same questions you had for me.” His eyes flick
ed deliberately toward the ceiling, telling her that he knew they were likely under surveillance.

  “So what now? Are you free to go?”

  “I have been conveniently reunited with my bike, but no. They want to keep me handy for now.”

  “What for?”

  He sighed heavily and his hand reached for the neck of the guitar, an unconscious comfort. He brushed the strings on the headstock and they chimed faintly, reminding Becca of piano notes. “Your man in charge explained that the membrane between the house and the other world was breached by a cultist who tried to pass over, or is maybe still trying to pass over. He said the radiation released by the breach dissipated while you were on your road trip and now they want your team to go back in and try to find him before he can do more damage.”

  Becca processed the news under her stony façade. It inspired conflicting feelings. She wanted to go in again—that was the explorer in her, the urge to follow strange paths to wherever they led. But a stronger urge told her to flip her finger at the people who had plans for her. Especially if her father agreed with them.

  “Are you on the team now? Are you going in now that…” Now that you have someone to hold your hand on the threshold of madness?

  “No. I’m supposed to sit it out, wait here in case they need me.”

  “For what exactly?”

  “Plan B.”

  “What’s that?”

  “If all else fails, I bring the house down.”

  “Can you?”

  He stared at the floor with a grimace. “We’ll find out if they tell me to try. They wanted to know if my inversions of the music could seal the portals or nudge the house out of alignment. I don’t think I can do that. Might even make things worse trying. But there’s one sequence I could try if things can’t get any worse that might destabilize the whole thing.”

  “Well good luck with that,” Becca said. She picked her bag up off the floor and slung it over her shoulder.

  “Where are you going?” He started to rise from the cot. She held him at bay with a raised hand.

  “Don’t. Just don’t. You don’t get to comfort me and reconnect now. Somehow I got caught in the middle of this with no guidance. This…Philips family business. Things you and Gran never bothered to warn me about. ‘Sorry, kid, but the true nature of the cosmos would be too much for you to handle, just be careful you don’t step in it.’”

  Luke started to respond, but she cut him off.

  “But I did step in it. And you know? Now that you’re here to help them, I think I’ll wipe the black slime off my boots and go back to Brazil. I don’t need to end up like Mom, or Catherine, or Moe Ramirez.”

  He squinted at the name. “Ramirez. You knew him?”

  “Briefly, yes. Was he a friend of yours? He forgot to mention that during the opening act of Armageddon.”

  “No. He was Catherine’s prize student for a while. Before he dropped out. She said he was wasting a great mind. He accused her of dabbling in things she couldn’t control.”

  Becca scratched at her arm. “She told you that?”

  “She told Grandpa. I overheard. She was offended. Probably because she knew he was right.”

  “Well, I’m done dabbling.”

  “They need you.”

  “They don’t. They have other people who can see what I see.”

  “Then why did you come back?”

  Becca hated the heat she felt rising in her face, hated his oblivious blindness. She bit her lip, clenched her fists, and waited to get control of her voice. When it spilled out of her, the words were clipped, choked: “For you.”

  Luke approached her, hesitated, afraid to touch her. “Me?”

  “They told me you might be lost in there.” She sniffed. “But you’re not. So I can go.”

  “Becca, I’m sorry. I know it’s not enough, but I’m sorry for so much.”

  She folded her arms and exhaled. He touched her hair. She didn’t flinch.

  “This is bigger than us,” he said, “but I’m glad it led you to me. I always wanted to see you. To start making it up to you. But I didn’t know how.”

  Silence welled up between them. The bustle and chatter of agents, techs, and machinery seemed far away, in another dimension.

  “You can go to Brazil, New Zealand, Nepal, or wherever,” Luke said, “but that gate the reverend is looking for…if something gets out when he opens it, it won’t matter where you are. It won’t be far enough, honey.”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “You can’t run from this stuff.”

  “You would know.”

  And before she could cave and make it easier for him, she turned and walked off, Django at her heels. She paced a circuit of the hut’s outer aisles, not caring where she was headed, only that it was away.

  Brooks caught sight of her from over a cube wall and stepped into her path. “Hey,” he said. “You okay?”

  “Yeah. No. I don’t know.”

  “What happened?”

  “I just…I don’t know what I’m doing here, Jason. We found my father, and honestly, I’m kinda shocked to find that he’s probably of more use to SPECTRA than I am.”

  “I seriously doubt that.”

  “Have you seen Northrup since we got back?”

  “Yeah. All is forgiven with regards to our little trip off the reservation. They’re just happy we found your dad before someone else did.”

  Becca lowered her voice. “If they followed us, then they know we visited Tom too, right?”

  Brooks’ eyes darted around. “Can’t tell yet if anyone is pursuing that. Honestly, it might be best for the family if they are.”

  Becca considered this. She didn’t feel good about the prospect of Tom having to depend on people like Northrup to do what was in Noah’s best interest. And would he think she and Brooks had betrayed his trust if a black van showed up to take them in? A moment ago all she could think of was getting herself out of this tangled web, but now she remembered that there were other unwilling people ensnared in it. If she cared about Tom, Susan, and Noah, why didn’t she care about everyone else who would suffer if the monsters clawed their way back into the world? Or what if they didn’t have to claw their way in because the gate was left swinging wide while she looked the other way because…why? Because her daddy had abandoned her and it went against her grain to work for The Man?

  “For now we have to focus on the more urgent priority,” Brooks said. “The house is clear of radiation. Levels dropped fast. Hopefully that doesn’t mean Proctor found the gate at the heart of the maze already and sucked it all down the drain. We have to go on the assumption that we can still stop him. We’re going back in tonight. Are you in?”

  There was an intensity in his eyes. He really believed he needed her.

  She couldn’t do this for Luke Philips or Daniel Northrup, not for God and Country—neither of which she’d ever had much faith in and less now than ever—but she could do it for Brooks. She could step up for him because he expected her to. He’d seen another side of her once in a moment of crisis; something she hadn’t known was in her until fate demanded it. And hadn’t she grown a little then? Hadn’t she been braver and more assured since? Who was she trying to kid, thinking she was going to turn her back and run now? Thinking for even a moment that she was going to let Rafael’s sacrifice be in vain after all.

  “I’ve come this far,” she said. “I’m in.”

  “Good. Charge the dragonfly.” He started to walk away to make his own preparations, thought of something else and turned back. “Hey, Becca?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You wearing your scarab?”

  She nodded.

  “Good.”

  * * *

  The expedition team climbed the hill together through the mist of melting frost into the lumbering shadow of the Wade House. The silhouette of the house was cut here and there with planes of light slicing through the mist—not the lamp light one would expect to find emanating
from a house, but the cold light of another world arcing out in razored parabolas stretched at odd angles from windows, gaps in the shingles, and cracks between the chimney bricks. Becca walked third in line behind Brooks and Hanson. Behind her Mark took a more winding path, and she paused to make sure he was coming along. She couldn’t tell if his meandering could be attributed to fear or distraction. He had mumbled to himself in an incessant stream ever since the night when he’d passed through the closets, and now his babbling was intensifying with proximity to the house.

  It was just before midnight when they entered. Brooks went first, finding none of the same dazzling light inside. He used his flashlight in the foyer until he found the wall plate and flipped the switches, bringing the faded brocade wallpaper into view, and with it, a quiet, mundane reorientation to a house that appeared to have changed not at all since they’d last occupied it.

  Becca stepped around Brooks and looked down the hall. The architecture was unwavering. The curtain still hung across the entrance to the library. She could see the corner of the grandfather clock perched at the entrance to the parlor and hear its perpetual kronk-krunk, could glimpse the cabinet of shattered china in the kitchen beyond the carved walnut arch at the end of the hall; the very spot where she’d caught sight of Reverend Proctor’s cloak gliding away down a stone passage the last time she stood here in a radiation suit. But now all appeared normal, and somehow that unnerved her more, set her on edge. The stillness of the house felt like that of a patient predator.

  She reached into her coat pocket and withdrew the intricate metal dragonfly, touched its concealed button and set it hovering in the stale air before her face.

  “No one opens a door alone,” Brooks said. “We’ll clear this floor first. Watch for any reflective surfaces. If you see anything, anything at all, even a flicker that might be a breach, speak up. Got it?”

  Becca and Hanson nodded while Mark wandered ahead toward the velvet curtain.