“No, but you might have noticed they don’t tell me everything.”
* * *
The sun came out as they wound their way north through the Miskatonic River Valley. At a gas station, Becca moved to the back seat to try and nap for a while with her head on Django’s side, Brooks’ wool overcoat pulled over her as a blanket. “Great,” he said, looking at her in the rearview mirror. “Now I have blood on my shirt and dog hair on my coat. How professional.”
“Occupational hazards, Brooks,” Becca replied, shifting her hip against the car seat and finding a comfortable fit. “Wake me up when we get to Franconia Notch.”
“We’re not stopping in Arkham on the way? Over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house we go?”
“No. Maybe on the way back.”
“I know you mainly used it as an excuse for the road trip, but it’s actually a good idea to check Catherine’s books and notes for references to the house. It could be more important than finding out what your father knows.”
“Or finding out what he knows might help clarify what we’re looking for at Miskatonic. Besides, it’s only a feeling, but I think he won’t stay in one place for too long. If he’s involved in this and really trying to summon me with a Lincoln log, I think he’s in danger. I don’t want to waste any time.”
“All right. Sweet dreams ’til New Hampshire.”
* * *
Becca woke to the smell of wet pine needles and ozone through the car window. Somewhere along the way the snow had turned to rain. The mountaintops in the background remained as white as ever in January, but I-93 was slick and dark and she could hear the spray from the tires. She sat up and looked around. Django thumped his tail and Brooks met her eyes in the rear view mirror. “I told you to wake me up,” she said.
“I was going to in a minute. We’re almost there. Look familiar?”
It did. There wasn’t much on the side of the road, but somehow it looked exactly as she remembered it from childhood vacations: the campground signs and knick-knack shops, the trees, guardrails, even the curve of the winding road. Her dry mouth tasted stale from the nap. She reached between the seats and found her water bottle, took a swig, and replaced it in the console. Rummaging through her bag, she found a tin of mints, popped one in her mouth, and rolled her window down a few inches. The cold air misted her cheeks and the taste of peppermint sharpened her mind. She instinctively craved coffee and almost asked Brooks to stop at a gas station or general store for a cup, but then she thought of how she wanted to feel when she saw her father for the first time in years. She’d already had two cups today and a third would make her jittery, edgy even.
Just the idea of standing face to face with him in a matter of minutes was winding her up. She decided that any lingering fatigue might serve to provide some equilibrium.
“Birch Grove Cabins?” Brooks asked. “Was that the name of the place?”
“Yeah.”
“Haven’t seen it yet.”
“It’s coming up,” Becca said. “There’ll be a turnoff after a blind curve and a creek.”
“Your dad used to bring you here camping?”
“My parents did, yeah. Fishing and hiking in the summer, even skiing a couple times in the winter.”
“Better days, huh? Were you able to enjoy winter vacations when you were a kid, or were you…”
“Depressed? No, that seemed to kick in with the hormones, after my mother killed herself.”
Brooks stared at the road. “Is this the curve you mentioned?”
“Yeah. It’ll be on the right.”
The Ford bounced on its shocks down a divot-riddled road past squat wooden shacks painted brown to resemble log cabins nestled between the pine and birch trees in the shadow of Mt. Lincoln. Sap-clotted pine needles dusted the tar shingle roofs. A few of the rentals had vehicles parked in front, but most projected the cold stillness of unoccupied units with red-checkered curtains drawn. Brooks pulled the car up to the office beside the VACANCY sign, climbed out with the engine idling, and ducked inside for long enough to flash his ID and request a look at the guest register. Sliding behind the wheel again, he said simply, “Number nine.”
“He’s here?” Somehow Becca hadn’t expected to find him at the end of the trail he’d left.
“Pretty sure. Or someone else using a lousy alias.”
“What alias?”
“Stu Redman.”
Becca couldn’t help smiling. “Dad loved that book. Had a shelf full of second hand hardcovers. I can totally picture the ripped dust jacket with the sword fighter and the bird man.”
“Yeah, it’s my favorite, too. Tell him to get more creative when he’s trying to lay low. For fuck’s sake, everybody’s read King.”
* * *
Cabin 9 was one of the empty looking ones. No car, curtains drawn, raised on cinderblocks to keep rot at bay. Becca knocked while Brooks hovered at the bottom of the steps. After a pause and another triple knock, she saw motion through a thin gap in the curtain draped across the front door window. There was a long moment of stillness during which she felt her father’s scrutiny, his hesitation. He had summoned her with a clue and she came, but was this really what he wanted, to have to face her after all these years? To involve her even deeper in whatever had drawn him to the Wade House? For a moment she thought he might wait it out, lay low and pretend he wasn’t there. But then the muted rattle and scrape of a hook and eyelet gave way to the creaking of hinges in dire need of oil, and the scraggly face of a stranger appeared in the crack, his shallow blue eyes glancing over her face and narrowing as they settled on Brooks.
“Dad,” Becca said, calling his gaze back. His eyes were the same, even if the hollow sockets they peered out of were deeper and darker, his eyebrows white and wild, his skin leathery and loose. He shuffled aside and opened the door for her.
He was dressed in a faded graphic tee, flannels and a black hoodie with badly frayed cuffs. His white stubble contrasted against his weathered skin, and when he took a cigarette from a pack atop the cheap, old TV set and lit it, she noticed his fingers were gnarled and callused, with ink stains under the nails. Becca blinked. The skin of his hands seemed to glow faintly from within, like a paper lampshade, subtle, but undeniable.
“You made it,” Luke said as if she were late for a holiday meal. And then, to Brooks, “Anybody follow you?”
Brooks shook his head. “May we come in?”
“Make yourself at home.”
Brooks stepped inside before Becca. She lingered on the doorstep, half wishing that Luke had come outside rather than inviting them in. It would have been less discreet to talk with him at one of the picnic tables, but reuniting with him under the open sky would have suited her. It would have felt less intimate, more open to escape. She didn’t know what she expected from him at this late juncture, but she didn’t want to receive it in the stale murky confines of the cabin.
She filled her lungs with a deep draught of fresh air and stepped over the threshold.
The cabin managed to cram a kitchenette, electric heating unit, bed, table, and chairs into two rooms with a closet-sized bathroom. Luke Philips’ possessions were scant: a suitcase, a guitar case, and a ragged, overstuffed spiral notebook with loose and folded scraps of paper bulging out on all sides, as if they had been hastily gathered when he’d heard the car pull up.
“Dad, this is Jason Brooks. He’s an agent with SPECTRA. Not sure if you know what that is, but you can trust him. We’ve been through some shit together.”
Luke Philips scratched his beard with the two fingers of his right hand not holding his cigarette and Becca thought for a second that he might set his long hair on fire. “Yeah, I know SPECTRA. Lesser of two evils.”
“What’s the greater?” Brooks asked, pulling a chair out from under the table, spinning it around, and straddling it with his arms folded on the seat back.
“Starry Wisdom, of course. Those fuckers have a hard-on for me.”
&nbs
p; “I found the log you left in your saddle bag,” Becca said.
“Of course you did. You bring my bike?”
Becca scoffed. “Yeah, we trailered it up here and told your lesser evil we were returning it to you. Judging by the fact you left a clue instead of a note, I kinda figured you were going for discretion.”
“You figured right, sure. I just thought you might ride it up. By yourself.”
“In the snow.”
“Did it snow?”
“How long have you been holed up in here?” Becca noted the frailty of his frame. “Are you eating?”
Luke tugged his flannel pants up over his bony hips and picked his notebook up off the table. He sat on the bed and waved his cigarette at the vacant chair. “I’m all right. Sit, honey. You remember Walt Rogan? Runs the camp? Maybe not, you were just a kid. Walt cut me a deal where I can stay in the off-season in return for a little handy man work. It’s good here. Quiet mostly. Better than the apartment I had in Conway. I couldn’t focus on my work there.”
Restless, Luke stood up again and rubbed his palms over his thighs, then paced the room, the fingers of his left hand climbing his right forearm like a spider as he took a drag. Becca realized he was absently playing his arm like a guitar, working out fingerings. She wondered if he even knew he was doing it. She wondered what he was on.
“Your work?” Brooks said. “What work is that?”
Luke returned to the bed, picked up his notebook and curled it in his hands. “I might want to talk to my daughter alone about that. Yes, yes I would. Do you mind?”
Brooks looked like he might be rapidly approaching his threshold for bullshit.
“I told you,” Becca said. “You can trust him.”
“You been in the Wade House?” Luke asked.
“We’ve spent the past week there,” Becca said. “What brought you there?”
“Something in your grandmother’s library put me on the road to that house. Should have minded my own business.”
“When were you in Gran’s library? You didn’t even show for her funeral.”
Luke winced. “I’m talking way back when you were just a girl. This goes back to then, what got me involved.” He looked at Brooks, sighed, and committed to tell the tale. “She had a page of music in with all the spells and diagrams. I thought that was weird, so I asked her about it. She told me not to touch it, said it was the most valuable piece in her collection, which for sure made me curious to hear it. Maybe even just to spite her back then. She never took any interest in my music back before I gave it up and went into carpentry to support you and your mom. I just wanted to hear it, to understand why she treasured it. Seemed odd she would keep a piece of music and never hear it. So one day when she was away at a conference, I went into her study with my guitar and spent some time working out the prelude. Just the first eight bars.”
“Did anything happen?” Becca asked.
Luke laughed. “Well yeah. It took a while to work out the chords—I was never fit for playing classical, but yeah, I must have got it right enough because I started seeing the world behind this one, like through a veil. I’d taken my share of recreationals by then, but this shit was a whole ‘nother trip.”
“Did she ever find out you played it?”
“I don’t think so. Well, not until after your Mom died and I left.”
“You told her then? I remember you yelling at her before you left. I wrapped a pillow around my head to shut it out.”
“Sorry…I knew you were hurting, but I would have made it worse. You didn’t need my rage on top of it all. By then I was using and starting to think I might follow her. I was afraid you’d find me if I did.”
Becca’s eyes prickled with heat. “So you just…left.”
“Yeah. That’s what I did. Regretted it, too, for a while, but then I started to think you were maybe better off. Safer without me.”
“Safer with the woman you blamed for your wife’s suicide.”
Luke paced and took another drag. Becca could see his fingers trembling. This was hard for him. Good. He touched her shoulder, his jaw set askew the way hers went when she was sizing up something difficult. She squirmed at his touch and he took his hand back.
“Catherine was different with you,” he said. “I think having grandchildren pulled her back from the brink, made her realize she had a chance to do better with you and your cousins than she did with me and my brothers.”
“What brink?”
“You know. The abyss she was always staring into. She was fascinated by the dark infinities she found in those books and artifacts. I still say your mother saw something she couldn’t accept in that house, and I’ll go to my grave not knowing if your grandmother gave her a glimpse on purpose, or if she just opened the wrong door at the wrong time.”
Becca had figured most of this out on her own, but it helped to hear him articulate it. She had needed this, needed it for a long time.
“Your Gran never took to your mom, but she loved you more than anything. I never thought… Did she ever let you see anything…unnatural?” The question frayed into a whisper at the end, like he wanted to simultaneously ask it and never ever ask it.
Becca stared at him, the tears she’d felt rising for her mother and for the little girl she had been now subsumed under her rising anger. She made him wait for his answer.
“What if she did? It’s a little late now to take an interest, don’t you think? But hey, I’m here, so I didn’t check out like Mom. Relieved?”
“Hey now…Yeah, okay. I deserve that, I do.”
“You don’t get absolved for leaving a piece of a toy to summon me to where we had happier times. Sorry, but you don’t. You left me. You fucking rode off with your guitar over your shoulder and didn’t look back.” And now she was crying. Damn him, she was shedding tears for the old waste.
“Did she hurt you?” Luke asked. “Did she hurt your mind?”
“No. She was good to me. My mind was…” Becca wiped her nose with a balled up tissue from her pocket, then squeezed it in her fist. “…damaged enough without help.”
“I’m sorry, honey. Truly. I didn’t know what to do. I stole the music when I left.”
Becca stared at him.
He nodded. “She said it was the most valuable thing in the house, so I took it. Figured I’d sell it on the black market if I could make the connections, but mostly I made off with her treasure just to spite her. Then, when I got up here in the mountains, I wanted to hear more of it. I wanted to see more, more of what it revealed. I started playing it, working it out in bits and pieces, one phrase at a time. Before I knew it, I was in deep. Not eating, not sleeping, just playing my fingers raw.” He turned his palm up and looked at the underside of his right forearm. “Skin started to glow from touching the guitar where the vibrations were strongest. Thighs, too, where the body rested on my lap. Sometimes I’d go translucent for a while and be looking at my own veins and bones.” He uttered a cold laugh.
“What’s funny?” Brooks asked.
“They call it The Invisible Symphony. That’s the title. But I didn’t know it would make me invisible. Thing is, that other world was becoming more visible the more I played, and I think I was getting more solid there. After a while, I thought I should stay away. I couldn’t bring myself to set it on fire, didn’t know what would happen if I worked up the nerve to try, but I came to believe I’d taken the most dangerous thing in that house away with me.”
Becca pondered the odd title. “All music is invisible.”
“True,” Luke said. “I think it’s a double meaning. It’s not just to do with an invisible world. There are hidden variations in the music, inversions of themes implied between the lines. Over the years I puzzled out how to play some of them.”
“You re-voiced the chords?” Brooks asked.
“Yeah. Are you a musician?”
“No, but one of the guys on our expedition team at the house is. He figured out to do the same thing with a fragment
of music we acquired. Probably a piece of the same score. Do you still have the original, the whole thing?”
Luke nodded. “And every possible permutation right here in my notebook.”
“What were you doing at the Wade House?” Becca asked. “Did you go there to play the piano?”
“No. I wanted them to think I did so they’d stop looking for me in this world.”
“They who?” Becca asked. “Did you even go inside the house? I came back to Massachusetts because I thought you were lost in there. I thought you were in trouble.”
“They is the Starry Wisdom cult. Catherine sent colleagues looking for me the year after I left, men she thought she could trust because they were academics. She didn’t realize the cult was thriving underground at Miskatonic. In the decade since, they’ve probably got their tentacles up in the government, too. I catch references on TV—odd words dropped into political speeches, newscasts, and Hollywood movies. Secret messages for them that have ears to hear.”
“You know you sound paranoid, right?” Becca said.
“Better paranoid than dead. A pair of them came looking for me when I lived in Conway. Well-dressed, clean-cut, no tattoos. Not your typical Starry Wisdom types. But they wore rings with a symbol I recognized from your Gran’s books: a triangular rune. I think it represents a triad of musical notes, a chord that opens the gate. Back then I didn’t know much, my experiments hadn’t progressed much, and I almost admitted to having the score. Hell, I came this close to trying to sell it to them. But they gave me a bad feeling, so I played dumb. They found me again at a different address a few years later. By then I was playing a lot, wearing gloves and long sleeves to hide the glow. That time they beat me up and tossed my apartment, but I had the score rolled up and stashed in a lamp pole, so they didn’t find it. I also had a gun under my mattress and when they flipped that, I grabbed it and scared them off.”
“They weren’t armed?” Brooks asked.
“They had a ritual dagger they threatened me with. You can cut someone up to get information without killing them. But I knew if they came back a third time, it would be with guns. That’s when I decided to make it look like I crossed over at the Wade House.”
Black January: A SPECTRA Files Novel Page 16