* * *
Becca couldn’t rest until she knew Django was okay. She waited at Base Camp until the runner returned with him. One ear was bandaged and his fur was shaved in a few spots where they’d stitched him up. He was loopy from the painkillers, unable to walk straight for more than a few feet, but he perked up at the smell of her, and soon she was snuggling him under a blanket on the floor of her bedroom.
She woke on the hard wood in the night, muscles aching, and moved to the cot. It wasn’t much of an improvement, and she tossed and turned for a while before popping two tabs of Klonopin to take the edge off and help her sleep. Her emotional exhaustion made the pills more effective than usual. Oddly enough, the murmured mantras drifting down the hall from the library also helped to wind her down. Django paced for a while, then settled on the blanket between Becca and the door, his nose pointed at the crack to detect any threat that might approach while she slept.
When she woke, shortly after 3 A.M., her first cycle of dreamless sleep had burned off the fatigue, and she was instantly alert to the sounds of the dog’s pacing, whining, and scratching. Not at the door to the hall, but at her closet. She sat up in the dark and groped for the headlamp she’d been reading by before falling asleep. Slipping the elastic over her head, she clicked the light on. It was still on the red setting she preferred when using it as a reading light, washing the room in a bloody hue that did little to ease her apprehension when she slipped out the side of the sleeping bag in her boxers and t-shirt, and set her feet on the cold floorboards.
The hair on her arms rose as she approached the closet door. She thought of picking up a weapon, but she had none, and realized it was a lack she might need to correct after tonight, if only with an iron fire poker filched from the parlor. Nonetheless, she swept her head side to side, scanning the corners with the red blob of light, searching for something, anything, heavy and blunt, but coming up empty.
Django’s fangs would have to suffice if it came to it, but he wasn’t growling at whatever he had detected. She took another step toward the door he was sniffing at, wondering if she should call for Brooks.
She set her ear to the door and detected a high-pitched whining sound, like the buzzing of a mosquito, or the ringing of her own ears after a concert. She moved her jaw to try and clear them, but the sound continued. The more she listened, the more she could make out textures shifting below the ringing: sloshing fluid and a scraping that reminded her of bricks sliding against each other.
She crouched and examined the crack between door and floor, her fingertips glowing red in the light from the headlamp as she touched the wood and found it dry, dusty even. Her heart raced as she lowered her head and sniffed, searching for whatever Django was picking up. Something complex and overly sweet with strains of rot at the core. It reminded her of exotic flowers and fruit gone bad; a chest filled with spices exhumed from a shipwreck.
Did she hear raspy breathing through the crack?
“Becca…”
Had she heard that right? Had someone whispered her name through the door?
“Dad?” she croaked.
The door shuddered in its frame, sending a jolt of fear through her body, but the doorknob didn’t rattle or even twitch, and it occurred to her that maybe the doorknob didn’t exist at all on the other side of the door and the only way for whoever was inside to get out was for her to open it.
She did.
Something cold and clammy fell out of the closet and dragged her to the floor with a thud. Django yelped and skittered out from under her, then launched into full-throated barking, sounding the alarm. Becca felt a wash of brackish water pooling around her and soaking through her t-shirt. The body of Mark Burns, unmoving, pinned her to the floor. She didn’t know if he was alive or dead as she struggled to look past his shoulder and see what lay beyond the threshold—a closet, or another world? But her eyes found only gray darkness lacking depth. No moving air stirred in the room or chilled her wet skin with a breeze from beyond. Nonetheless, she stretched her foot out and used it to slam the door.
Lying on the wet floor of the red-washed room, Becca felt a vibration and realized that Mark’s teeth were chattering. She pushed him off her until she could see his face beneath a fringe of dripping hair. His eyes, wide and crazed, shone like blood-dipped coins, and she realized with mounting horror that the vibration wasn’t only his teeth chattering from the cold; the deeper shaking, in his bones, was laughter.
Chapter 7
Becca lay curled in the same stuffed chair she’d claimed the first time they gathered in the parlor, bundled in flannel pants and a hoodie with Django at her feet. The sky was a dirty shade of pink watercolor under a black sketch of reeds in the bay window beside her. Mark Burns sat opposite, wrapped in an army blanket, his right foot bandaged with gauze through which a dim bloodstain had swelled. He’d rinsed in the shower, but the miasma of low tide still clung to him.
Dick Hanson tinkered in the liquor cabinet for a moment, then handed Mark a brandy on the rocks. “For your nerves,” he said.
Mark took the glass and managed to hold it without dropping it, but he didn’t drink.
Reverend Proctor hovered at the threshold of the room, eyeing Mark with what Becca thought might be envious fascination.
Brooks took a dark wood chair from its place along the wainscoting, carried it to the center of the room, and set it down facing Burns. He sat, hunched forward, and tried to make eye contact. Becca hardly recognized the man wrapped in the blanket. Since their first meeting, Mark had seemed calm and composed in the face of the unknown—maybe too much so, considering what they expected to find in the Wade House. But now, after becoming the first to confront it, he was twitchy and restless, his eyes darting to the corners of the room, his unwrapped foot bobbing on the carpet. He looked at Brooks for half a second, then sniffled and looked away, ended up gazing at the floor, swinging his head from side to side, lip quivering.
“Have a sip of your drink,” Brooks said.
Mark raised the glass to his lips. The ice rattled. He took a sip and set it on the end table beside his chair.
“Do you remember stepping through the doorway upstairs?” Brooks asked. “Do you remember that?”
Mark shook his head.
“Do you remember anything that happened to you before you fell out of Becca’s closet?”
His eyes widened and he worked his jaw, but no words came out.
“Do you remember a wave carrying you away?”
He nodded.
“Okay, let’s back up a bit. State your full name. Can you do that?”
“Mark Burns.”
“Good. Can you tell me your birthday?”
“May 9th, 1987”
“What’s your husband’s name?”
“M…um…Michael.”
“Do you know who the president is?”
“Uh…Clinton? No. Nereus Charobim?” He laughed. It took a while for him to stop.
Brooks shot a look at Hanson. Charobim was the name of a mentor to the terrorists of the Starry Wisdom Church. It wasn’t a name known to the public, and he was believed to be dead, if he could ever have been said to be alive. The Book Breakers, SPECTRA’s occult scholars and tome sifters, called him an “avatar of Nyarlathotep,” whatever the hell that meant.
“Was that a joke, Mark? Look at me,” Brooks said. “Was that supposed to be a joke?”
“No.”
“Where did you hear that name?”
Mark composed himself, shook his head, and swallowed. “Sorry, I don’t know. I don’t know where I heard it. There’s lots of new stuff in my head.”
“It’s okay. You’ve been a little scrambled by your journey through the house, but you’re gonna be okay. Just try to relax. It will help you remember.”
Mark took another sip of his brandy.
Brooks gave him a moment and then said, “You went into a stone passage. There was a bell. A wave came and washed you away. Then what happened?”
&nbs
p; “I…I was washed through halls of granite, like a… labyrinth I think. It washed me out to a place like a shore. But the sky…the sky…it was the strangest yellow. I’ve never seen a yellow like that. There was a mound of black and gray sand, like a spiral. It was like a temple with carved columns going up to that mustard gas sky…”
Brooks gave him time to go on, but nothing more came. He prompted: “What else did you see? Was there life?”
Mark scratched his chest and nodded, his upper lip curling into a grimace. “Northern stargazers. In the sand.”
“People? There were people?”
“No, it’s a fish. Astroscopus guttatus…the one who aims at the stars. Faces in the sand…eyes on their foreheads. I didn’t see them. Stepped on one. They zap you with electricity, then get you with needle teeth. Fucker got me good.” He curled the toes of his bandaged foot.
“What else? Were there other creatures?”
Mark shuddered. He stared at a blank space on the wall and nodded. “Tall, slender ones in black robes. Not people. They had pale faces like the bellies of fish. Scales and no hair. Mouths, but no ears. I thought they had no eyes, but when they opened their mouths to chant, I saw it: one eye where the tongue should be, ringed by sharp teeth, like…seashell shards. They chittered and chanted and struck their clawed fingers together for percussion. Such a sick sound. And then the northern stargazers—but they weren’t really, they were too big, too awake to really be stargazers, but they were something like them, something more evolved—they sang the bass notes, and the sand buzzed around their half-buried faces and made patterns. It was like they were communicating through the shapes, signaling to something in the sky that could read the patterns in the sand, and…and…”
“And what? Did you see something in the sky?”
Mark shook his head vigorously. Becca couldn’t tell if he was answering no or refusing to describe what he had seen, or teetering on the edge of a seizure.
“What did you see?” Brooks asked again. “What did you see in the yellow sky?”
Mark’s jaw worked and his brow knotted, but the only sound to escape his lips was a guttural groan like a death rattle.
“Stop it,” Becca said. “You’re stressing him too much.”
Brooks leaned forward and squeezed Mark’s shoulder. “It’s okay. You’re gonna be okay.” He stood up and approached Proctor. “You recognize what he described. I can see it on your face. What are they?”
“The Twilight Choir. They gather the tides of the astral ocean and usher currents into the dreams of sensitives on the terrestrial plane.”
“Speak English,” Brooks said.
“They are keepers of the borderlands between dimensions. Heralds of the Great Old Ones. Their songs can cross the membrane between worlds and flood the dreams of artists, mystics, and lunatics. But they cannot physically pass into this world. Not without a breach like the ones Darius caused in Boston.”
“You sure about that?” Brooks squatted, positioning his face in front of Mark’s unblinking eyes. The biologist had finished his drink, and was crunching an ice cube in his teeth. The sound grated on Becca’s nerves. “How did you get out? How did you find the door? Did they try to follow you?”
“I don’t know what happened. Another wave came. I was carried on a current. I told you what I remember, but some things don’t fit the words I have. I’m sorry.”
Brooks sighed. “Okay. You may remember more with time, or find a way to tell it. The important thing is you made it back, we thought we lost you in there.”
“Mark,” Becca said. “Did you see a man? A man with long hair and a reddish beard?”
Mark shook his head and swallowed.
The sound of the front door opening traveled down the hall. A moment later, Northrup entered the parlor carrying a metal attaché case, accompanied by a petite woman in a gray overcoat smudged with black flakes that matched her short hair: Nina Rothkopf. Becca made eye contact and Nina gave her a curt nod, then settled in the chair her ex-husband had just vacated, facing Burns.
“Hello Mark, I’m Nina. I’m a psychiatrist. Dr. Matheson is on his way to give you a complete physical. But I’m here to check a few things first. I’m going to shine my penlight in your eyes, okay? I’d like you to track it as it moves.”
Mark nodded. When he had done as she asked, she tucked her penlight away, apparently satisfied. Hanson had taken Northrup aside and presented him with a vial of cloudy liquid that reminded Becca of a urine sample. “I squeezed this out of his clothes,” Hanson said. “Let me know what the chemists find.”
Northrup pocketed the vial, then knelt beside Mark and undid the clasps of the attaché case. Becca drifted closer and looked over Nina’s shoulder. Inside the case a small stone idol occupied a cavity cut to size in a bed of black foam rubber. Northrup carefully removed the figure and handed it to Nina. She held it up in front of the dazed biologist, who reacted to it with a snap to attention.
“What do you see, Mark?” she asked.
“A statue.”
“Describe it.”
“It’s like a monster, standing on a stone block carved with runes.”
“Very good. Does it have a color?”
“The base is greenish brown but the figure is sort of blue.”
“How much detail can you see? Describe the figure to me as if my eyes are closed.”
“It uh…looks like a warrior, like a man with rows of crab claws running up his sides and crustacean armor plates and a tail like a stingray. Its face is flayed open like something on a dissection table, with flaps of flesh spread out in a diamond where the face should be, a fang at the tip of each flap, and in the middle a rictus of square teeth. It’s horrible. And it’s holding a weapon that looks like a harpoon, but nastier.”
Becca saw the same thing, though no one asked her. He had described it perfectly.
“Lung Crawthok,” the Reverend Proctor whispered in awe.
Nina studied him. “Do you see it, too?”
“No, I see a broken base with no figure, but that’s what he described. Lung Crawthok, the guardian.”
“Why can’t he see it?” Brooks asked Nina. Becca thought he already knew the answer but wanted confirmation.
“Extra Dimensional Entity Perception,” Nina said. She passed her hand through the solid figure as if it were a candle flame or a hologram. “I can’t see it either,” she said, “or feel it. Becca, you try.”
Becca extended her fingers toward the revolting figure and was not entirely surprised when they stopped at solid, carved stone.
“Those of you who have been exposed to the harmonics—Becca, James, and now Mark—can interact with things that originate on the other side. You can see, hear, smell, touch and be touched by…dare I say taste and be tasted by…them.”
Becca withdrew her hand and suppressed a shudder. “But it’s a statue, not an entity. It’s not alive. Is it?”
Nina looked to Hanson. “Not exactly,” he said. “I mean it’s not organic. But as far as we can tell, it’s been imbued with enough energy to exist in both dimensions for those who have the ability to see it.”
“How?” Becca asked.
“Probably from being the focus of worship for so long. It’s very old. Certain practices may have endowed it with some of the properties of the god it represents. We’re not sure. We’re still studying it, but it makes a good litmus test for EDEP, if nothing else.”
“And when you look at it, you only see the base?” Becca asked.
“Right,” Hanson said. “You see the fault line above the creature’s feet?”
“Yeah.”
“It ends there for me. We think the astral form you can see was left behind when the physical statue broke off and was lost. By then, it had become real enough that the image of the god lingered on some level.”
Becca glanced at Proctor. He was staring hard at the stone pedestal in Nina’s hand, drinking up every moment it was out of the case, as if staring hard and long enough
would grant him a glimpse of the idol. She felt a pang of sadness for the man, alienated from his own gods. Gods he now claimed to renounce for the sake of his fellow man.
Nina, perhaps sensing his scrutiny, put the statue back in the case and closed the lid.
“You called it the guardian,” Becca said to Proctor. “What does it guard?”
“The inmost gate, of which Yog Sothoth is the key.”
“What’s beyond the gate?” Brooks asked.
“The Island Out of Time. The city of the gods.”
* * *
The team dispersed to their private rooms, aimless and anxious while Norhtrup and Nina escorted Mark Burns to the hut for a full medical exam and psych evaluation. The unexpected return of their lost teammate had woken the house in the early hours of the morning, and Becca knew she would need a nap to recover before she could function and focus on whatever the next step was. But before showering off the brine and returning to her cot, she led Django to the kitchen and gave him an antibiotic the vet had provided, with a bowl of kibble.
While she was bending over to set the bowl on the floor, the scarab slipped out of her tank top. When she rose, she found Proctor in the doorway staring at it.
Her hand moved reflexively to her chest to conceal the pendant, but she stopped herself and watched him until he met her eyes.
“You didn’t try to use it,” Proctor said. “When your dog was attacked.”
“Well, you had it under control. Thanks.”
“It’s what I’m here for.”
Becca didn’t know what else to say. A beat of silence passed and then she let the words on her mind slip out: “Is it? What you’re here for? Don’t you want them to come back, your gods?”
He licked his lips and she wondered if he was considering lying. “Not at such a cost. Humanity is not without its merits. And who knows? Maybe they’ll take me, if they want me. Anyway, my congregation doesn’t.”
“Why not?”
His eyes returned to the golden scarab clutching the scarlet gem. “After my interrogation, they didn’t trust me.”
Black January: A SPECTRA Files Novel Page 8