PANTANAL WETLANDS REGION, BRAZIL
Becca Philips adjusted the settings on her camera, then, letting it dangle from the strap, wrapped her legs around the aroeira bough and quietly shimmied out over the dark water of the Rio Cuiaba. With dusk still some ninety minutes off, the declining sun had withdrawn the harsh highlights from the trees, and the wildlife was stirring. It was her third trip to the Pantanal since she came to Brazil two years ago, and she felt well attuned to its rhythms. This evening she was stalking a jabiru—a red-necked white stork—and had spotted one perched on a neighboring tree. In January, the water level was low, the green reeds high, and she hoped to capture a shot of the bird leaving its perch to glide down to the river bank once it chose a spot for fishing. For now, the jabiru was busy grooming its feathers, seemingly unaware of the photographer next door.
Becca went out a little further. The branch swayed, leaves rustling. On the ground below, her dog, Django, whined. Between the two of them they were going to scare the bird off before she was in position to take the shot. Wrapping her left arm around the branch, she took the camera in her right, and trained it on the bird. Her thighs stung below her cargo shorts where the tree bark had raked her with scratches and scrapes, but the pain scarcely registered while her mind was on the shot. With only one hand to work with, she relied on the autofocus and pressed the shutter release. The light was gorgeous.
She took another shot, and then another. The bird had to be aware of her by now, but it hadn’t flown off yet.
Could she reach the camera dials with her left hand and make a few adjustments? She was about to try when Django’s anxious separation whine morphed into something else: a long drawn out growl culminating in two warning barks.
Becca looked down and almost dropped her camera at the sight of the crocodile, its snout and fore claws emerging from the muddy water, followed by an endless procession of ridges. It climbed the bank toward the trunk of the tree where Django sat guard, Becca’s blood going colder with every inch until the tip of its tail was out of the water. It had to be 9 feet long. Her first instinct was to get a good shot of it, but the idea perished before it was fully formed, replaced by the urgent need to scare the monster away from her dog.
She did a quick mental inventory of objects she might throw at the crocodile, but the snacks and photo paraphernalia in her pockets were no substitute for rocks.
A buzzing sound caught her ear and she shot a glance back in the direction of the jabiru to find a dragonfly hovering in the air about a foot away from the bird. There was something slightly off about the insect’s movement and Becca realized she had never heard the sound of a dragonfly before. With wings too delicate to be detected by human ears, they weren’t supposed to buzz like bees. Was this some heightening of her senses brought on by panic?
Django barked again—aggressive bursts punctuating his droning growl. Becca couldn’t see him from this angle but pictured his hackles up. She was sweating now from the physical strain of holding on to the branch, the mental strain of the threat below, and her inability to act quickly with arms and legs essentially tied. She searched the tree for fruit or a dead branch that she could break off, but there was nothing. It was either throw the camera or hope that yelling would be enough to scare the monster back into the water.
Scare a predator in its native environment? Unlikely. She should’ve left Django back at the cabana in Porto Jofre.
The dragonfly buzzed over to her tree now, hovering nearby as she inch-wormed back down its length to the trunk. Another insect scurried across her calf and she avoided looking, didn’t even want to know what it was. But this dragonfly…there was something strange about it. It didn’t belong here.
Now that it was close, she detected other sounds: clicking and whirring.
Becca squinted at the bug’s faceted iridescent eyes.
The fucking thing was a drone. Suddenly, she didn’t know whether to swat it out of the air, try to catch it, or ignore it altogether.
The jabiru took flight, soaring toward the far bank of the river. She’d forgotten about it for a second, and when its white wings unfolded and flashed in her eyes, and set the leaves of her branch trembling, she slipped, lost her grip, and found herself hanging from her thighs, camera dangling below her head as the crocodile turned away from the dog and fixed its ancient gaze on this new gift of dangling meat.
The mechanical dragonfly shot past Becca’s face, and her gold scarab necklace slipped out from under her tank top as if to greet it as it passed. Django’s barking shifted in tone again, taking on another kind of excitement before cutting off entirely as a gunshot rang out.
Becca’s heart felt like it was giving in to gravity and tumbling into her throat, but she held on tight, crunched up, and hugged the branch. Below, the crocodile turned and slipped into the river as a second bullet plinked the muddy water. Muscles burning with fatigue, Becca reached the tree trunk, found her footing, and scrambled down to a branch low enough to jump from.
Upon landing, Django nuzzled her scraped thighs, whining. She crouched and soothed him; petting the ridge of raised fur along his spine and tucking the scarab back under her shirt with her other hand.
A man stood at the riverbank watching the crocodile retreat. The dragonfly drone hovered beside him as he holstered his weapon, and she knew him before he turned to look at her: Jason Brooks, SPECTRA agent and redheaded Boston homeboy. They had seen some shit together.
“Hey, Becca. Still doing your damnedest to die for a photo, huh?”
She tried not to smile and failed. Still, it was a wry grin that didn’t last long. “And you’ve still got my back, huh?”
“Guess so. Django doesn’t scare off the birds you’re trying to shoot?”
“I’ve trained him not to. How long have you been following me with your robot bug?”
Brooks didn’t answer. He didn’t deny he’d been spying on her, either.
“Would you have stepped out if we weren’t about to get eaten?”
“Hey, it ain’t like that. You’re lucky I found you.” He raised his palm to the sky and the dragonfly landed on it. “And the toy is yours. I was just trying it out.”
Becca crossed her arms. “It almost knocked me out of the tree. I think I’m fine without it.”
“I think it was a bird that almost did that.”
“No, actually, it was your gunshot.”
“Nah. Bird. Pretty sure I got a photo of it.”
“On that?”
“Yup. Hi-res, too. Wanna see?”
“Seriously, Brooks, I almost let go when you fired that damn thing.”
“I knew you wouldn’t.” Now he was the one grinning.
Becca shook her head.
“You didn’t let go at Bunker Hill. C’mon, take a look.” He held what looked like a phone out to her and swiped the glass. “There’s your bird…and you…and the croc from above…”
He handed her the device. She took it, and was soon thumbing through shots and zooming in on details. The glass responded the way she expected it to, but the processor was light years ahead of any phone she’d ever tried shooting with. Her breath hitched in her chest at the clarity and detail. “Do you control the bug with this thing? It’s the remote?”
“Yeah.”
“And the dragonfly beams the pictures back instantly?”
“As you take them.”
She cupped her hand over her mouth.
“The drone hovers on autopilot if you have to drop the remote into your pocket. That’s why it didn’t crash when I shot at the croc. You’re welcome, by the way.”
“Why are you here?” Now that the adrenaline had washed through her system and her heart rate was settled down, she found her innate skepticism returning. “You flew down here to give me a piece of classified tech because SPECTRA loves to share these things with nature photographers?”
“You’re a nature photographer now? What happened to urban explorer? Art school student?”
“I think you know.”
“Well, I guess you’re still risking life and limb among amphibious beasts, so it can’t be that different.”
“At least I’m not risking my sanity down here.”
They had strayed beyond the bounds of jest and for a moment neither of them spoke. A flock of birds took wing from the far bank, a tumult of black against the purpling sky. The boughs and reeds sighed in the breeze. Brooks swatted a mosquito on his neck, leaving a smear of blood.
“What do they want me to shoot with that thing?” Becca asked at last.
Brooks shrugged. “If we really knew that, I probably wouldn’t be coming to you, but…probably monsters.”
“Government’s getting good at shooting things from a distance.”
“What’s that, an anti-war comment?”
Now it was Becca’s turn to shrug. “What do they need me for?”
“Let’s say you have an eye for the weird. And the case I’m on has personal relevance for you, if you care to hear about it. Even if you don’t come back to the States with me, I figured I owed it to you to let you know.”
“Know what?”
“Your father went missing.”
Becca scoffed. “That’s news? He went missing from my life a long time ago.”
“I mean missing from…this dimension. Maybe.” He swatted another mosquito, this one on his arm, and waved his hand in front of his face. “Becca, this isn’t how I intended to have this conversation. I have a boat. Let me give you a ride back to your cabin and I’ll tell you what I know.”
She scratched Django’s head. “What do you think, Django? Take a ride with Jason and hear him out? He did pay our way to Brazil, after all.”
“Hey, I even brought a bag of marshmallows. You have a fire pit?”
“Django can’t eat marshmallows.”
Brooks rummaged in his field vest and brought out a thin package. He waved it in the air. “Beef jerky, buddy?”
Django sniffed the air, but didn’t stray from his mistress’ side.
* * *
Becca poked the fire with the carved tip of her stick and watched the sugar residue burn. Sparks drifted up toward the stars splashed across the sky. Beside her wood plank lounge chair, Django snored. “You said I have an eye for the weird,” she said. “So do you last I checked. Or did you take that drug, Nepenthe, to make it go away?”
Brooks shook his head and took a pull on his beer bottle.
Her eyes fixed on the flames, Becca asked the question she feared most: “Have you seen anything in Boston since the equinox? Anything…”
“Fucked up? No.”
The fire popped. The damp wood sizzled.
“How about you?” Brooks asked. “Seen anything since?”
“In São Paulo? No.”
“Anywhere.”
Becca bobbed her head side to side. “I thought I saw something once in the rain forest, but I couldn’t be sure. I was spooked, so…might have been my own mind playing tricks on me.”
“I wouldn’t rule anything out. Brazil’s been a hotspot for UFO activity since the 50s.”
“You think what happened in Boston has something to do with aliens?”
“Well…not in the usual sense. They don’t tell me everything, but I know there are people at SPECTRA who think UFOs aren’t from other planets but from another dimension here on Earth. So…what did you see?”
“I don’t know. And it was shortly after I got here, so maybe it was residual weirdness in my own head, my imagination acting up in a spooky place.”
“What place?”
“Calçoene. It’s a megalithic site in the north. Standing stones.”
“I’ll make a note of it. Might be worth looking at, eventually.”
“Did you come here to tell me my father might have been abducted by a UFO? Because that’d be a real good excuse for him missing my birthday this year.”
Brooks laughed, set the empty beer bottle down beside his chair, and leaned forward. “All right, here’s the deal: the first weird thing we’ve seen since the black sun blew up over Boston.”
“We’ve seen? Or you’ve seen? You’re the only one besides me who still has the sight, right?”
“Far as I know, yes. And it’s ‘we’ because anyone can see this. Everyone can.”
Becca and Brooks didn’t have much in common, but the special perception they shared set them apart. In September 2019, a radical member of the Starry Wisdom Church had set off a harmonic bomb on a subway train. The technology, cobbled together from a boom box and a 3D printed, lab grown larynx known as The Voice Box of the Gods, enabled the pronunciation of ancient spells and mantras the human voice was no longer capable of producing. Brooks was on the train at the time, was one of the only survivors, and was exposed to frequencies that altered his perception, enabling him to occupy the same plane of reality as the trans-dimensional entities evoked by the event. And anyone who could see the entities could also be hunted by them.
Becca had become entangled in the situation—first as a suspect when her infrared photos started picking up traces of the same incursion, and later as an ally in the fight against the cultists and their dark gods. She was uniquely positioned to make a difference because of family secrets kept by her late grandmother, a professor at Miskatonic University and authority on the occult. In a sense, it was a war she had been born into, and her grandmother had left her an heirloom to aid her in the fight to turn the tide.
After first resisting the lure of secrets that had torn her family apart, Becca, in a moment of peril, had embraced her role, exposing herself to mantras chanted by the Black Pharaoh himself during an attack on Boston’s Christian Science Center in broad daylight. In the aftermath of the crisis, unlike the other civilians exposed, Becca had refused the drug that shut down the extra dimensional perception. Brooks had advocated to grant her that right, making the case that she was an unsung hero in an invisible war. He understood that she, like him, wanted to retain an early warning system in case the incursion wasn’t really over. In case the monsters came back.
“You know how those of us who were exposed could see the black sun and the tendrils that dropped down on locations where there was a manifestation? Well, we think this might be some kind of fallout from when your scarab blew it up. There’s black snow falling over Boston now, like ash. There were isolated reports of it around Christmas last year, or I guess you could say since the winter solstice. Then nothing. But now it’s back and gathering intensity.”
“And the people reporting it weren’t exposed in ’19?”
“No. Like I said, everyone can see it in the sky. You don’t watch the news, huh?”
“I avoid the Internet altogether unless I’m in contact with a client.”
“What kind of clients do you get?”
“Too few, but living here is cheap. Go on.”
“We didn’t know what it was. Still don’t. But we had a breakthrough when we realized the black snow is gathering at a specific location. It’s the weirdest fucking thing. When you map it, it literally looks like iron filings drawn to a giant magnet.”
“What’s the magnet?”
“It’s a house. An abandoned mansion west of Boston, in Concord. It had a reputation for being haunted even before the black snow, but hey, it is an old abandoned mansion, why wouldn’t it? Anyway, we’ve cordoned off the site, locked it down. Everyone on the scene can see the black snow. Of course, the neighbors saw it first. Publicly, they’re calling it an environmental disaster cleanup site. Even set up a shell company we can sue for toxic emissions at an old factory in Waltham. That’s the official explanation for the fallout.”
“People are buying that?”
“Managing the press has been…tricky. Fortunately, what the neighbors can’t see—and this place can be hard to see at all from the road—is that most of the black snow is being sucked down the chimney. The hill around the place is still covered with it, but it seems to want to go in. The house is definitely an attractor.”
“What does this have to do with my father?”
“When we first arrived, we found a motorcycle registered to him parked on the property.”
“And you haven’t found him.”
“No. Not at his last known address, not in the house or the surrounding towns. We even ran his picture on TV for a little while—with a fake name so people wouldn’t associate it with your five minutes of Beantown fame. No leads.”
“And obviously you didn’t find him in the house.”
“Yeah, no. Here’s the thing, though: this house, well, you know how mirrored surfaces and pools of water acted as portals to let things through? Well, the house hasn’t let anything out into our world yet—that we know of—but it may be letting people pass through into whatever world those things came from.”
Something cold wormed in Becca’s stomach. A knot popped in the campfire. “You think my father went into the house and got lost in another dimension?”
“Maybe. It’s possible. The place is strange. Its architecture changes. Passages and doors appear where they weren’t before. Other things too, little things like the number of steps in a staircase, the number of panes in a window. It’s all in flux, up for grabs. That’s the other reason they want your help; to explore it.”
Becca splayed her fingers. “Whoa, hold up. Not likely.”
“Not only would you have a drone camera you can safely maneuver into any questionable space you want to photograph, but you’ve already trained yourself in urban exploration. Abandoned buildings are your thing, right?”
“They don’t need me. You have the sight. And I’m sure they have military guys who can get around in a derelict mansion.”
“This is no ordinary mansion, Becca. And you’re no ordinary photographer. We need to document this. And…I thought you’d want to find your father.”
She crossed her arms. “You thought wrong.”
Brooks stood. “All right then. I told them I’d give it a shot, but I kind of figured Boston in January would be a hard sell for you. I’m glad you’re happy here.” He fished his phone out of his pocket to call for extraction.
Black January: A SPECTRA Files Novel Page 2