“Becca. Are you okay?”
“I don’t know.” Her voice carried a tone familiar to Nina: the sound of someone who has been holding it together, keeping anxieties wound up tight, and now at the simple invitation of a trusted counselor, is finally breaking down.
“Is it the news? Or did something happen to you?”
A pause, a long mucousy drag of indrawn breath, then: “It’s the same, Nina. I’m involved in this.”
That made her sit up straight and put the wine glass down. But then, troubled people often believed they were at the center of epochal events. “Involved how, Becca?”
“Um…I have client confidentiality, right?”
“Of course you do. But do you understand the limits of that?”
“No. What are they?”
“If you intend to harm someone. If you’re involved with terrorists.”
“I’m not going to harm anyone….” Becca hesitated. Nina could hear a burst of breath distorting the phone speaker as the girl sighed out her resolve. She waited it out.
“You know the dreams I was having about monsters?” Becca said.
“Yes, of course.”
“I started seeing the same kinds of things in my infrared photos.”
“Becca…that could be like looking at an inkblot. Humans have a great capacity to see meaningful patterns in chaos.”
“No. Listen. The government seized my camera and computer, my hard drives, because they wanted to see what I saw. They were looking for the same creatures, expecting them to break through—”
“Break through?”
“—because they saw it happen on the train. They saw something break through from that other layer, and some people can see it without dreaming, some can see it without a special camera, and some people want to see it, they want to see the monsters….” Becca’s voice was brimming with barely constrained hysteria, but she regained control before Nina could ask who wanted to see the monsters.
“I know it sounds crazy. I would think it was crazy if I heard it a few weeks ago. And I did, I met a man, a homeless man who was spewing this same insane shit, but then I took a picture of a thin place where they pulled him through, or he walked through, or cut his way through with a goddamn cat laser….” She laughed. It might have mutated into a sob in the distortion of her breath through the speaker. “Oh, shit, I’m not helping my case here, I know. But this man who knew, I found his diary and I think he might have even been a student of my grandmother’s books…. Anyway, I saw him again. I saw him come back out in a different part of town, wounded and dying.”
“It’s an incredible story, Becca. What do you need from me? Are the authorities looking for you?”
“They let me go. Well, not really. They wanted me to take more pictures of what’s happening. But all hell broke loose and I got away. I don’t know if they care about me anymore. But I think they want my camera. I don’t know. They’d probably lock me up again if they found me, just because that would be simplest while they sort things out.”
“Where are you now?”
Becca ignored the question. “It all reminds me of the stories my Gran told me when I was a girl. I think she would have known what this is, and I’m starting to wonder about her death. Was it really natural causes, whatever the fuck that means? Was she a threat to someone? And I know I sound like I’m raving paranoid, I do, I know I do. But if you’d seen some of the shit I’ve seen, Nina, you would be too. I’m sorry…I don’t know why I called you. It’s good to be able to talk about it with someone who knows me, someone…objective.”
Silence on the live air between them.
Nina said, “It seems like a remarkable coincidence that your photos would capture an occult phenomena your grandmother studied. That is what you think happened, yes? That your process accidentally documented something she speculated about?”
“Yeah, that was what I was thinking. But now that you say it, I wonder if it wasn’t a coincidence. She encouraged my interest in photography. She used to talk about how it was an almost sacred modern art because it was all about light and shadow and perception, seeing reality from certain angles…I used to think she was a bit off her rocker, you know, it all sounded the same to me after a while, growing up with her and her metaphysical rambling. But she introduced me to my first mentor, and now I wonder if she wanted him to teach me alternate processes because she knew that if they ever came through, they would appear first at the edges of the visible spectrum—”
“You lost me there.”
“—and in the dreams of certain people. Cultists who trained themselves for it, artists, madmen, maybe even people with a genetic predisposition….”
“Becca,” Nina said cautiously, “I’m not judging you. I hope you don’t feel that I have in the past. In fact, I encouraged you to explore your dreams and try to get to the bottom of their meaning. I only prescribed the medication to stop them because you were suffering.”
“I think the dreams meant exactly what they looked like. The monsters don’t symbolize anything.”
“You think they’re real.”
“So do the men in the black armor. Look out your window. Turn on the TV. Of course they’re real.”
Nina felt a frisson pass over her scalp. Some animal part of her resonated with the simplicity of the statement. These were not clinical conditions. The wine, the darkness of the room, the furtive, redacted tone of the newscasts she’d immersed herself in. She was losing her objectivity.
“What do you want, Becca? Why did you call me?”
“I want you to judge me, Nina.”
“What do you mean? Judge your sanity?”
“No, my ability. I keep going back and forth between thinking I should turn myself in and let other people handle this, and thinking that I might be the only one who can solve it because of something my grandmother left behind for me.”
“What’s that?”
“I can’t tell you. And I don’t know how much of the way I’m seeing this has to do with my Seasonal Affective Disorder, but it seems like my family’s fingerprints are all over this, and I feel like I might owe it to my Gran to stop it. And I just need to ask you to forget for a minute that this sounds insane and pretend I’m asking you about a challenge you can believe in, because I need to know if you think I have it in me to face monsters.”
The doorbell rang. Nina jumped, almost dropped the phone.
“Becca, I practice psychotherapy, not sorcery. You’re asking me to endorse a quest?” She regretted the words as soon as she said them, but she couldn’t take them back. The doorbell had jarred her and snatched the honest reply before she could utter it: I believe you are much stronger than you give yourself credit for.
“I shouldn’t have called. I’ll let you go.”
“Wait.... You’ve reminded me of something I read in a journal. There was a study done recently. A pharma company in Cambridge. I think they were a subsidiary of Limbus; they were working on an insomnia drug that ended up inadvertently causing hallucinations. It started with all of the trial subjects having similar dreams, and then, at higher dosages, hallucinating while awake.”
The doorbell chimed again. Nina rushed her words, “They abandoned the sleep drug and changed tack, hoping to develop an anti-psychotic. I don’t know if it panned out, but I’ll look into it. It’s probably not something I could get without enrolling you in a study, but maybe in a week or so when the emergency’s over—”
“Goodbye, Nina. I don’t need blinders. I’m sorry I bothered you.”
“Wait.” Nina stood, pulled her robe tighter around her T-shirt, and started down the stairs. “Becca, you need help. Let me help you. Call me in the morning so I know you’re okay, and if the city isn’t in lockdown, I’ll see you. Where are you staying tonight? Are you with anyone?”
Nina was at the door now. She peered through the leaded glass in the side panel. Shit, it was Jason. What the hell did he want? The phone was silent, but the display showed the timer still running. Becca ha
dn’t hung up.
“How can I help you if you don’t trust me, Becca?”
“I’m going to try to get out of the city tonight. I need to look for something at my Gran’s house. I’ll call you.”
“Be careful….”
The timer stopped. The call ended.
* * *
Jason Brooks could see a distorted figure in the glass. On any other day he might only be annoyed by it, not unnerved, but today it reminded him too much of Copley, the creatures, and their way of shifting in and out of some parallel place. But then the door opened and his ex-wife’s face appeared in the narrow gap above the chain. She was holding her cell phone close to the hollow of her throat, and he wondered who she’d been talking to. Had it been Heather, who wouldn’t take her own father’s calls? A man? Or was there a man upstairs—the reason for the chain still on the door?
“Nina. Why the chain?”
“Well, the city is under siege by some kind of terror cell for starters, but I’m sure you know more about it than I do.”
“Come on. You saw it was me through the glass. May I come in? Please?”
“What do you want, Jason?”
He looked at his shoes, at the chain, and stuffed his fists into his long, black trench coat. The temperature had taken a dive with the sun.
She closed the door and he had one of those moments he’d had often as a cop when he thought it wasn’t going to open again, and in this case it wouldn’t be okay to kick it in. But she was only undoing the chain, and seeing as there was no space for the two of them to share in the foyer, he knew that letting him in the door meant letting him into the apartment. He closed the door behind him and followed her up the stairs. At the top they came to a dark room illuminated only by the cold light of the TV flickering on the west wall and the ceiling. Nina swept her palm over a switch and a pair of opaque white sconces lit the stairwell and most of the den.
Something brushed his leg. It was Verily, the cat, arching her back and curling her gray tail. Well, at least one of the females in his life didn’t hold a grudge. When she jumped onto the banister and stretched her neck toward him, he rewarded her with a scratch at the base of her skull, knowing as he gave it that he’d be picking downy fur off his coat sleeve for days.
Nina sat on the hassock, her hands on her knees, but she offered him neither a seat nor a drink. The message was clear: Get down to it or get out.
He shot a glance over his shoulder at the TV, hoping she’d turn it off. She didn’t, but it was muted, and that was all the concession he was going to get out of her.
“I’m here because Heather won’t take my calls. I need you to get her out of the city.”
“Why?”
He waved a hand at the TV without looking at it.
“Use your words, Jason. You’re a big boy.”
“You know I can’t talk about it.”
“Right. So I’m supposed to flail around blindly and protect our daughter without any details to guide me.”
“You both should have left after the flood. Coastal cities…. You know it’s only a matter of time before the coast is in fucking Worcester. Why wait? Why not get out after the first disaster? We’ve been over this, Nina. Too many times.”
“You’re saying this is about the sea level? I thought it was about terrorism.”
“I’m saying you could have made arrangements over the past year. It’s not like I haven’t warned you, but here’s the next state of emergency and you probably don’t even have a kit packed for it. Do you?”
Nina sighed and shook her head in dismay.
“What does that mean?” he asked. “What are you shaking your head at?”
“You want to save us? Is that it? Like in some action movie? You think that will make Heather forgive you?”
“I just want to know she’s safe. And you, too.”
“Because it’s dramatic, whatever the hell it is we’re even talking about—some act of terror—is dramatic, so you want to be a hero. But when we lived together…Jesus, James.”
“What? When we lived together what? Just say it, go on.”
“You didn’t lock your gun up, you didn’t change the batteries in the smoke detectors, you didn’t have a plan for the kinds of everyday dangers that actually take lives. And unless there’s a suitcase nuke in Boston right now, I’d say our chances of getting caught in the crossfire are pretty slim. She’s staying in until it blows over. She promised me.”
“She promised you.”
“Yes.”
“She’s nineteen. Think of the things you promised your parents when you were her age.”
“You would tell me if there was a nuke in the city.”
He dragged his fingers through his hair. “You have no idea. That’s the bar I have to meet to get you to listen to me? A nuke? Why can’t you trust me just a little?”
If she knew there were drones headed for Boston right now, talk about taking out the city with a micro warhead, she’d do whatever I asked. And this apartment is probably bugged.
“I lived with you long enough, and heard you comment on the news enough times to do some deduction,” she said. “Something went off at Harvard Square, but the city’s still here, so I figure if they had something big they would have used it first, right?”
He had to admit that she was throwing his own kind of logic back at him, borrowed from days when she’d scared easier and he’d learned how to reassure her. “It’s not that simple,” he said, “Something is changing, and it’s starting here, in Boston. The people who are exposed to it may never be the same. The way they see the world, see reality, will be fundamentally changed. Not for the better. It makes you vulnerable. It’s hard to explain.”
Nina’s face had changed while he spoke, and he knew he wasn’t doing a very good job of explaining, probably couldn’t even if he were allowed to be more explicit, but for a second, before she guarded it, he was tempted to think she believed him.
“What is it? What have they unleashed?”
“I don’t know, honey.” He almost flinched at the word as it left his mouth. This talk about mortality was erasing years.
She was standing before him now. He didn’t know when she’d risen from the hassock. One of her slender hands reached for his face; slowly, the way a hand goes toward a potentially dangerous animal, one that might bite. He was looking away from her at the floor when she said, “You’ve seen it.” It wasn’t a question. She would have made a good interrogator, but she was a better shrink.
She touched his stubbly chin, grazed her thumb over the dimple there, the one she used to like. He wanted to get out, almost regretted coming here, and at the same time, he wanted to pick her up and carry her into the bedroom and fuck her and somehow he knew that she would let him. A tear ran onto her fingertip, bridging the distance between them even as it was born of the knowledge of the void that yawned between their respective worlds now—hers the ordinary one they had once built a life in, a life he had wrecked; and his, a realm of monsters.
He swallowed and cleared his throat. The sound was loud and harsh in the silent room. “Heather should have a choice,” he said. “She shouldn’t have to see things she’ll never be able to unsee…shouldn’t have to live in the world I’m living in now without even knowing she had a choice.”
Nina took her hand away and looked at the water on her fingers.
“It’s not contagious,” he said, “Not contagious except by hearing. I don’t know how fast it will spread, but it’s starting here. If you listen to me, you’ll have a head start. Go anywhere. Just get her in a car and go.”
But Nina wasn’t listening anymore. She was staring over his shoulder at the TV as if she’d seen a ghost. Brooks turned to the muted screen, and there was Rebecca Philips in a box beside a news anchor. One of the self-portraits SPECTRA had pulled from her hard drive? If so, it was one of the few that wasn’t a nude with ghostly exposure trails and weird shadows. Maybe a friend had taken it. She stood in front of a graffit
i-stricken wall, the hint of a smile almost lighting her haunted face.
Agent Brooks met his ex-wife’s eyes and recognized the glare of the guilty. “You know her, Nina?”
Chapter 18
Becca slouched in the back seat of the Jeep Cherokee Rafael had borrowed from a drummer friend who’d been happy to go a few days without parking tickets, her head against the foggy glass, Django sleeping in her lap.
She had finally stopped searching the night for flashers and had been drifting in and out of consciousness, lulled by the drone and vibration of the road, only hanging on because Raf had no idea how to get where they were going and had ditched his GPS-enabled phone before picking her up at the abandoned school.
They had followed Route 1A up the coast and found that, away from the highways, the warnings of roadblocks were baseless, at least so far. There weren’t many cars on the road until they joined Route 128 and encountered something of an exodus to points north. But before long, they were alone again, wending their way through streets familiar to Becca, coming into Arkham along the Aylesbury Pike.
Django perked up and crawled across Becca’s lap to sniff at the cracked window where the sulfuric low-tide reek of the Miskatonic wafted into the vehicle. As they dropped around the shoulder of Hangman’s Hill, the town opened before them: huddled rows of slouching gambrel rooftops punctuated by the rising spires of several churches, bisected by the silvered black curve of the river and frosted by the glow of a cloudbank reflecting the lights of the surrounding mill towns. Arkham appeared to have tucked itself in by midnight, except for the iron lamps lining the paths of the Miskatonic quadrangle.
Becca leaned between the seats and directed Rafael to take a right onto Boundary, followed by a left onto Crane, a quiet lane of mostly renovated houses, many owned by the university and leased to tenured faculty. She felt the tension in her weary body finally beginning to uncoil when they pulled up in front of number 19, a modest, cream-colored house with black shutters and a central brick chimney. Gran’s house.
Becca passed Django’s leash to Rafael and dug around in her army bag for her key ring. “I hope my uncle hasn’t changed the locks yet. He’s probably too cheap for that, but he might have just to keep my dad from crashing here.”
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