“Yeah?”
“We cracked it.” The guy huffed and heaved.
“Cracked what?”
“The astrological diagram at the end of the Mortiferum. It points to a time when the worlds align, a specific date and time when the membrane is thinnest and the stars are right for widening the breach to let them in. It’s called the Red Equinox: the autumn equinox of the year in which the Black Pharaoh awakens. This year. This week. Monday, September 23rd, at 3:50 AM, to be exact.”
“You’re sure?”
“Triple checked.”
The phone in his hand was buzzing again and a pair of armed security police was striding down the corridor, their eyes fixed intently on his, the bizarre trappings of the lab doing nothing to diminish their focus despite the transparency of the place.
“Agent Jason Brooks,” the one on the left with an iron-gray crew cut and eyes to match said, “we have orders to escort you to room 217 for the interrogation.”
“What, is Northrup worried I won’t show?”
“You haven’t responded to his texts, sir. Please come along.”
* * *
The small theater was dimly lit to reduce reflections on the one-way glass. The two security officers closed the door behind Brooks and stood in parade rest, flanking the only exit. Of the four men already in the room, he recognized two: Northrup and Hanson, the SPECTRA director and Limbus spook respectively. A third was dressed in the uniform of a Navy admiral, but with no nametag amid the medals and regalia. The fourth was young, scruffy, and apparently important enough to dress casually in a plaid shirt and jeans. At least the jeans weren’t ripped.
Beyond the glass he saw that the conference table and chairs had been removed from the adjacent room. A large plastic tarp had been spread out on the floor to cover most of the carpet. Three objects rested on the tarp. Brooks had expected these, but somehow seeing them sitting there looking so ordinary made the whole scenario feel more real, and for a fleeting moment he wished he had shot Darius Marlowe in the chest or head and not in the gut.
Until he remembered the carnage on the train and the screams that he couldn’t differentiate between men, women, and children because most voices sounded surprisingly similar in the upper register of excruciating pain.
Northrup stabbed a finger at a folding chair that had been placed in front of the rows of theater seating. “Sit, Brooks.”
Brooks walked down the carpeted slope, sat, and leaned forward, hands cupped on his thighs. “What is this?”
“We’d like to interview you before we interview your prisoner.”
Brooks laughed. “Guess I should be happy I’m on this side of the glass.”
For a few long seconds he thought no one was going to speak. Finally Northrup said, “You’re a hero, Brooks. You caught the bad guy, and your country is grateful for your service. Thanks to the photos we’ve leaked, everybody thinks you killed him, too, which I’m sure makes you even more popular than we’d all be if Mr. Marlowe had to go through that due-process bullshit before Boston could have the pleasure of seeing him on ice. So relax. You’re going to be on all of the Sunday morning shows. You’re not here to be punished, even though you broke protocol by pursuing Rebecca Philips without a TAC team.”
Brooks stared at the backlit silhouettes of the men seated before him. “But it’s not over,” he said. “Right? Not everyone can see what’s going on in the sky, but the ones who can probably have a fucking Facebook group by now.”
“Actually, no. While you were off leash on the North Shore, we rounded them all up. Well, we’re pretty sure we got at least ninety percent of them. The one silver lining of terror events happening in public places is that you have a lot of surveillance cams to feed into the facial recognition software. And your Facebook joke isn’t that far off, either. People do most of their talking online these days, so that helped us track them down. You and Philips may be the only two people with EDEP still walking free.” Northrup let the statement hang in the air for a moment. Brooks didn’t know the latest acronym, but the unspoken accusation was clear enough: You lied to us about your exposure.
“EDEP?”
The skinny guy who looked like a young George Lucas said, “Extra-Dimensional Entity Perception. Hearing the chant causes a modulation of consciousness—”
“It’s what enables you to still see that black shit in the sky,” Northrup interrupted.
Brooks scoffed. “Ninety percent, huh? What about the other ten?”
“A few people who see strange things is a psychiatric problem, not a national security issue.”
“And you think you can just disappear a whole group of civilians without their friends and families noticing?”
“Who said anything about disappearing anyone? They’re being treated for PTSD on the house. You gotta love government health care.” Brooks couldn’t quite make out Northrup’s face, but he knew the smile the man was wearing right now, had seen it enough times to know how smug it would look.
“Where are they, the witnesses?”
“In this facility,” Northrup said. “And they’ll be right as rain when we send them home. No black rays in the sky to trouble them. No tentacles writhing in their peripheral vision.”
“How?”
Dick Hanson spoke for the first time since Brooks had entered the room. “We call it Nepenthe. It’s a Limbus product. One injection and the nightmares go away. We’ve prepared a dose for you, James. If you have any questions or concerns, I’m sure Gary here can address them. He developed it.”
The guy in the plaid shirt, Gary, leaned into the light, his hairy forearms resting on his knees. Brooks could see the capped syringe curled casually in the fingers of his right hand. The silhouettes of the guards at the door shifted almost imperceptibly.
Brooks sat up straighter in his chair. “Turning a blind eye to what’s happening won’t make it go away. Is that really your solution?”
“My understanding,” Northrup said, “is that this is one case when If I can’t see you, you can’t see me is actually true. These invading entities need us to share the same plane of perception with them to do us harm.”
“For now,” Gary said, and Brooks was pretty sure Hanson shot his pet genius a corrective glance.
“What if the cult sets off more of these…whatever they are…harmonic bombs?” Brooks said. “What if when you think it’s over and loosen up security, they find away to do it over the PA at Fenway Park? Are you going to try to round up thirty thousand people for mass vaccinations? Or will you just crop dust the city with aerosolized Nepenthe? I’m sure you won’t get any resistance to that in a state where you’ve had to beg parents to get an MMR shot for their toddlers. And what does he mean, ‘for now’? This breach is headed toward a critical mass, isn’t it? After that, it won’t matter if you heard the chant or not—everyone will see them among us. The Book Breakers downstairs think it will happen on the equinox. Am I right? Gary?”
Gary looked uncomfortable. Brooks was sure he could wrestle the syringe away from him as long as the two guards didn’t have his arms pinned behind his back. But what was he about to fight for, anyway? The ability to be seen and devoured by monsters? No, it was the right to see things as they really were and have a chance of stopping it without fighting blind.
“You need me to be able to see them,” he said to Northrup. “You need at least one agent who can tell you what’s really happening.”
Now Northrup leaned into a dim pool of light. “Why did you let her get away? Twice.”
“There were more urgent priorities. She didn’t represent a threat. I still don’t think she’s a threat.”
“Then why has she been in the middle of this from the start?”
“Judging by what we found at her grandmother’s house, I’d say she was born into it. She might even have pieces of the puzzle that can help us, but I doubt she knows exactly what they are and how to use them.”
“You’re talking about the scarab,” Gary said. “
The book is all about it. The guys downstairs think it could be a weapon.”
“Do you think she knows how to use it?” Northrup asked Brooks.
“I don’t know. Maybe. Who knows what her grandmother told her?”
“Really? Who knows? I think maybe your wife knows. Should we bring her in?”
“She’s not my wife anymore and she doesn’t know shit.”
Of course they had pulled Becca Philips’ medical records and knew that Nina was her shrink. But they hadn’t come to him with the information until now. How long had they known? Was this some kind of test?
“Don’t think we won’t use her if we need her to establish trust with the girl.”
“Use her?” Brooks laughed. “You don’t know Nina.”
Northrup said, “If Rebecca Philips knows how to stop this and has a device in her possession to do so, then why is she running from us?”
“Uh, maybe because we’ve been locking her up, hunting her down? I get the impression she has some trust issues.” He turned his head away from them and stared pointedly through the window into the adjacent room, where the waterboarding equipment waited. “Problem with authority, I guess.”
Northrup nodded at one of the guards, who in turn opened the door and signaled someone in the hall. A moment later two more black-clad security contractors led Darius Marlowe into the room beyond the glass. A third man, with wavy blond hair, a weathered face, and a sporty white neoprene shirt entered the room behind them, his body language casual, almost lazy as he leaned against the wall and waited for the guards to strap Marlowe’s ankles and arms to the board.
Marlowe’s black robe had been replaced with a navy blue smock and matching linen pants. He didn’t struggle, only stared blankly at the ceiling, his mind fixed in another zone entirely, as if he could see the black orb, the promise of salvation, through the ceiling and roof of the building.
Brooks stood, but the guards in the theater didn’t make any move toward him. Somehow, with no verbal command from Northrup, the focus had shifted away from inoculating him with Nepenthe. For now, anyway. Northrup turned in his chair to face the glass. The two guards flanking Marlowe squatted and angled the bottom of the board so that the prisoner’s feet rose above his head. The microphones were live in the room, fed to speakers in the theater, and Brooks could hear every rustle of the plywood on the plastic tarp.
“Everybody thinks he’s dead,” Brooks said, looking at Northrup’s transparent reflection in the glass. “Is that because he soon will be?”
“Pronouncing him dead was a calculated risk: the fastest way to flush Philips out of hiding. If martial law were still in effect we’d have no chance of finding her. But with normal transit up and running, she gets signals that we no longer care about her, and she’s likely to return to familiar places.”
“But you can never let it get out that I didn’t kill him at the scene.”
“True. Darius Marlowe has passed beyond the realm of due process.”
The man in the neoprene shirt bowed over Marlowe’s inverted head, set his hands on his knees, and, staring into the prisoner’s eyes, said, “There was a tall man at the Mapparium and reflecting pool. People heard him chanting when the shit hit the fan. Same songs you like to play on your boom box. He goes by many names, but I believe you know him as Nereus Charobim. He’s your mentor, your connection. He provided you with housing, money, materials, and information to execute your plot. Where is he now, Darius? You’re going to tell me the truth within fifteen seconds of getting the water, that’s just a statistical fact, something I’m sure you can appreciate as an MIT guy. So why not cut the extreme suffering out of the equation and tell me now? Everyone thinks you’re dead anyway. No one’s ever going to know how long you lasted. They already think you’re a martyr.”
Marlowe gave no sign of having heard the speech, none that Brooks could discern from the other side of the glass. The interrogator took a small, dark-green towel from beside the water pitcher on the floor and draped it over Marlowe’s face, tucking the sides behind his head. He picked up the pitcher, and, holding Marlowe’s chest down with his left hand, poured the water in a long, slow stream over the towel. The shrouded head jerked from side to side reflexively, then settled, as if bracing against the inescapable flow. It lasted mere seconds, but to Brooks it felt like an eternity. He had read about the gag reflex, the body’s panicked certainty that it was drowning, the burning in the lungs, and again, he wished he’d aimed higher in Arkham.
The interrogator removed the wet towel. Marlowe spluttered and coughed, the wheezing through his nose loud and distorted in the theater speakers.
“Same question, Darius. Where is he? Where is Charobim?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then how do you get in touch with him?”
“I used to need a consecrated mirror.” Marlowe drew ragged breaths, winced at the pain they brought to the bandaged wound in his diaphragm. He pushed through it, wanting to speak. “But now his presence is palpable. I can find him in any mirror.” He turned his face toward the one-way glass and stared straight at Brooks, a grim smile lighting his waxy face. Brooks recoiled from it in revulsion.
“Whatever sixth sense you turned on in people, we’re shutting it down, Darius.” The interrogator said. “We have a drug that shuts it off.” He took a syringe from his pocket and held it close to Marlowe’s eyes. “I’ll give it to you. Maybe that’d be worse than the water, huh? Losing your ability to see, hear, and touch your precious gods. And you’re never going to get your hands on the technology again, so…your prayers will be as good as Pig Latin. You’ll have as much chance of evoking Cthulhu as the Flying Spaghetti Monster. It’s over, Darius. Your part in this is finished. Tell me where to find Charobim.”
Marlowe stared at the needle. It was still capped with orange plastic.
“He will arise on the blood-soaked earth when the stars are right. He will appear in his guise as the Haunter of the Dark. He will inhabit the stone and usher in the new aeon at the Red Equinox, and you are powerless to stop it!”
The board had been tilted so that Brooks could see Marlowe gloating through his bloodshot eyes and quivering lips. “You want to know where he is? I’ve seen his safe house…a palace of black crystal on the shores of the Cerenarian Sea. I have crossed over and back again from that nightside realm, and I no longer need science to evoke my gods, to draw them forth from the spaces between worlds. I invoke them to inhabit my own flesh and blood. No drug will purge the blessed brine from my blood. And all your torture games will only empower—”
The interrogator wrapped the wet towel over Marlowe’s face, cutting off the mad diatribe. He began to pour again. This time there was no struggle. The towel went concave at the location of the mouth, as Marlowe seemed to suck it in, inhaling the water. Then the shape under the towel began to change. Something was writhing under it. Marlowe’s forearms, the only exposed flesh on his body, turned a grayish-green hue. His muscles went taut and seemed to inflate. The straps snapped, and the guards scrambled to seize his ankles.
Brooks was on his feet. He could hear the guards behind him rushing out of the theater to provide backup. He sensed the other men in the room also standing, moving closer to the glass, transfixed. Marlowe reached up and swiped the wet towel from his face, revealing a squirming nest of tentacles with a chattering, many-layered beak at the center. The guards were scurrying across the floor to get away from it. One kicked the water can and spilled it. The creature seized the interrogator by the hair with a clawed hand and yanked the screaming man’s face into its own, as if for a kiss. The tentacles wrapped around the back of the interrogator’s head. Blood sprayed from the gaps in the sinewy embrace.
The two guards from the theater burst into the room, guns raised. The first squeezed off three shots, two of which penetrated the Marlowe creature’s shoulder, causing ripples but no damage. The gray flesh sprouted puckered orifices, which spat the lead out onto the floor.
The creature
dropped the interrogator’s limp body and approached the glass. Brooks sensed his superiors retreating to the rear of the theater.
When it spoke, in a mockery of human speech, the words seemed to bubble from a deep well of putrid mucous. Brooks could only make sense of the mangled words coming from the overhead speakers because they were already familiar to him. They were from a poem that had haunted his memory ever since he’d first encountered its beautiful, harrowing nonsense in a high-school anthology. “Weave a circle round him thrice and cross your heart with holy dread, for he on honeydew hath fed and drunk the milk of Paradise.”
It walked toward the mirrored glass, crouched, swung its elongated arms back, then dove and disappeared, leaving the glass intact and the men behind it shielding their eyes against the impact.
Chapter 22
Becca waited at a coffee shop down the street from Rafael’s apartment while he went to retrieve what they needed. She wasn’t sure if he was being tracked by SPECTRA, wasn’t even sure if she was anymore, but it seemed prudent to assume that she was, despite what she read in the newspapers while she waited.
She was the only patron seated on the outdoor patio, and the server had even brought her a bowl of fresh water for Django. Thankfully, the girl didn’t seem to recognize her. Becca’s innocence wasn’t front-page news; it was tucked in after the details of the slaying of Darius Marlowe and the PTSD treatment being offered to witnesses of the attacks. There, on page seven of The Boston Globe, was a small black-and-white headshot and a headline that said almost as much as the article:
Photographer Cleared of Suspicion
Apparently she’d been brushed under the media carpet. The mayor had stated in a press conference that she had only been a person of interest because authorities believed she might have captured photos of the cultists.
Red Equinox Page 23
