Black January: A SPECTRA Files Novel Read online

  Becca laughed. “How do you feel about your ex-wife reading your dream journal? No one thinks there’s a conflict of interest there?”

  Brooks sighed. “Actually, I argued against it, but Northrup wanted her because she knows two of us well enough to sift between subconscious material and images from…elsewhere. Since you and I are the only ones on the team with EDEP, they’ll be looking more closely at our dreams.”

  “What’s EDEP?” Mark asked.

  “Extra Dimensional Entity Perception,” Hanson replied.

  “And you’re telling me Proctor doesn’t have it?”

  “He wasn’t exposed in the attacks,” Brooks said.

  “But they were carried out by members of his congregation. He didn’t want to be exposed to his own gods?”

  “The device was built by a radical who kept it secret from the church leadership,” Hanson explained. “He thought the reverend was too conservative to endorse ushering in the apocalypse. We took Proctor into custody when we raided the church after the first attack, so he was out of play early.”

  “So those spells and mantras he’s chanting,” Mark said, “he can’t even see the entities they’re supposed to protect us from?”

  Brooks shook his head.

  “Nor can he invoke them,” Hanson said. “The human voice lacks the necessary harmonics. But ritual gestures combined with his clerical voice training might offer some protection.”

  “Is it true that they castrate them before puberty?” Mark asked. “I heard that from a trans hooker in P-town who—”

  “Yes, it’s true.” Proctor had appeared at the end of the hall. He looked sweaty in his heavy black garment, despite the chilly atmosphere of the old house, but it looked to Becca like the sweat of exertion, not anxiety. If anything, he exuded the meditative calm of a man in his element.

  “Don’t worry, I can hit the high notes,” Proctor said. “And your lives may soon depend upon it.” His thumb caressed the antique silver pommel of a dagger sheathed in his belt. “So…are we ready to venture upstairs?”

  Brooks, leaning against the sink, knocked back the rest of his wine. “All right, everybody. Get your gear.”

  Chapter 6

  They gathered in the vestibule at the foot of the stairs. The light from a cast-iron statue of a woman holding an illuminated apple extended to just beyond the first landing, after which the yellow walls darkened to absolute shadow. Above, the second floor was perfectly silent. Brooks called Base Camp on his walkie and announced that they were about to make the first ascent. Becca, her hair up in a ponytail, felt the back of her neck prickle as she set her hand on the black oak banister and made her first physical connection to the realm that awaited above. She had dressed in a single layer—a black thermal shirt and cargo pants—but felt over warm even in the drafty stairwell.

  She held the dragonfly aloft and set it flying. When it reached the landing, she tapped the remote. An ultra bright LED on the bug’s head cast a beam of cold light over the decaying Persian carpet runners and threw spokes of shadow across the wall through the banister rods.

  Flanked by the others, Becca set her boot on the bottom step, feeling that she was committing to something irrevocable, pushing past the internal resistance before fear took hold of her and made her hesitate. She followed the drone up the stairs, concentrating more on the bug and its flight path than on the shadowy architecture and furnishings around her. The stairs, firm under her feet, didn’t even creak. At the top of the stairs, she brought up the camera view on her handheld and counted the doors the drone passed on its flight to the end of the hall: 3 chambers on each side. The hallway ended at a set of bookshelves built into an alcove made of a bay where it seemed there should have been a window instead, and she wondered how much light reached this floor in the daytime.

  The drone hovered like a hummingbird, wobbling slightly and turning on its axis, sending drunken shadows careening up the walls and bobbing over the spines of worm-eaten cloth volumes, lending the reading alcove the appearance of a cabin on a sinking ship, darkness undulating like a rising waterline.

  The small group of explorers stood outside the circle of light at the top of the stairs. They seemed to be holding their collective breath until Brooks found a switch plate and, with a click, threw the entire second story into stark and shocking incandescence.

  The hall was furnished with antique bench seats, one on either side, topped with dusty velvet cushions. A wide canvas depicting a landscape hung in a baroque gold frame, the only adornment apart from the iron lighting fixtures to break the monotony of the faded, burgundy wallpaper.

  Moving down the hall between Brooks and John Proctor, Becca passed two closed doors before coming to a wide doorframe accented with a hand-carved leaf motif that let onto a large chamber with a gold brocade sofa, a grand piano, and a fallen chandelier lying amid a scattering of broken crystal fragments.

  The light from the hallway spilled into the music room, but when Brooks tried the wall switch nothing happened. The broken electric chandelier had apparently been the only light fixture in the room. He drew a flashlight from his belt, switched it on and swept the beam across the floor, sending a spray of little rainbows fanning out from the prismatic shards.

  Becca sent the drone in and hung it high in a corner of the room where it augmented the flashlight, granting each person who entered a double shadow.

  Dick Hanson walked to the piano and lifted the keyboard lid, revealing inverted keys, white on black. He struck one and a note wavered and trembled in the air. When it diminished, he stepped away and Brooks shone his flashlight at the piano bench. He raised the cushioned seat and peered into the compartment where sheet music would typically be stored. Finding it empty, he dropped the lid.

  Mark passed through a doorway beyond the piano and must have found another light switch because the adjacent room lit up; Becca could see a patch of wooden slats through crumbling horsehair plaster where the wall had been damaged, reminding her of an open wound.

  “Wait up,” Brooks said, following Mark into the chamber with the rest of the group coalescing around him.

  Becca entered the room last. Her first thought was that a TV had been left on, tuned to a dead channel. A storm of black and white static swarmed in a square near the floor. But on second glance, she saw that it was a fireplace, not a screen, the cold dance of light a result of the black snowflakes rushing into the house through the chimney, energized by their collisions as they vanished into a bed of ash clogging an iron grate.

  Mark had walked past the fireplace. He stood poised before a door in a corner of the hexagonal room where one of the short walls formed a closet.

  “Can you hear it?” he said, pressing his palm against the wood. Becca couldn’t tell if he was trying to feel a vibration in the door, or keep it from opening, and now she detected a sound: the irregular rhythm of a buoy bell clanging as waves rocked it side to side. It sounded close, despite the reverberation that enveloped it, and she caught herself searching the floor in front of the door for water spilling through, but the boards were dry.

  Proctor pushed past her, drawing his dagger.

  Brooks drew his gun, pointed it at the floor, and stepped to the opposite side of the closet. Becca wondered if he meant to bring his weapon up on the reverend or on whatever might lie on the other side of the door, and realized he was probably positioning himself for either option. Only Hanson hung back and watched the scene unfold. Becca summoned the dragonfly and positioned it over Mark’s shoulder, ready to send it through for reconnaissance when he opened the door, if it should turn out to reveal more than dusty shelves.

  Mark turned the knob and the latch clicked. He opened the door just a crack. Nothing emerged, but the sound of the buoy bell grew louder and clearer. Such a lonely sound. Salty humidity laced the air, wafting on a cool breeze that jostled the hovering dragonfly and caused the sleet of static in the hearth to flare up momentarily. Letting go of the knob, Mark took a step back and allowed the
door to swing open.

  A corridor of rough-hewn stone weeping sluggish tears of algae-congested slime yawned away beyond the possible boundaries of the house before diminishing to a distant black rectangle.

  Becca tasted a fetid undertone on the air, a dank putrescence blooming into the room. She put the back of her hand to her mouth and took a retreating step just as Mark set foot in the mouth of the passage. The stone slabs joined the doorframe where they met, so Becca knew the corridor couldn’t have dimensions that differed from the frame, but when Mark stepped into it he suddenly appeared smaller, the walls and ceiling dwarfing him. When Brooks reached to seize his shoulder and pull him back, he came up short.

  “Burns, wait!” Brooks shouted teetering on the threshold. “Get back. We send the drone in first.”

  “Yeah… Okay.”

  Becca strained her eyes to look beyond Mark, forgetting for a second that she could see more by sending the dragonfly down the shaft like Brooks was saying. Was something writhing in the darkness at the end? Was the wall covered with snakes? “What the…”

  Mark turned to face his companions. The blood seemed to drain from his skin at the sight of the gulf already stretched between them. He looked at the ground beneath his feet like he expected to find a conveyor belt where there was only stone glistening with strands of green seaweed.

  Django barked loud and sharp, setting hearts jumping and nerves buzzing, putting the team on edge for what was coming. In the near silence following the dog’s warning, they heard it: a low churning rumble.

  The black rectangle at the end of the passage flashed white, leaving a tangle of violet tentacles imprinted on Becca’s retinas. As the flash faded, a thunder of percussion shook the floor. A surge of whitewater foam and agitated photons crashed over and around Burns, pushing him toward the doorway for a heartbeat before sucking him back and erasing him under the receding wave.

  Becca screamed.

  Proctor lunged forward, but Brooks body checked him aside and slammed the closet door shut, knocking the drone out of the air, and sending it skittering across the floorboards. But the dragonfly was built tough; it righted itself and got back on its feet before the reverend could do the same. He lay on his hip, his cloak pooled around him, his ceremonial dagger a few feet away, still spinning like the dial of a board game. It came to rest finally, pointing at Hanson, who hadn’t moved since the closet door had swung open.

  Proctor shot a black look at Brooks—equal parts fear and hatred. He looked like a kicked dog. Becca helped him up, but as soon as he was standing, he spat on the floor at Brooks’ feet.

  Brooks cocked his head and scowled. “Jesus, buddy. I probably just saved your life. I’m not losing two on the first night. Not to the first door we open, no way.”

  “You can’t just leave him in there,” Becca said. She moved for the door, but Brooks put the heel of his hand in the hollow of her shoulder. His gun was holstered again, but she felt his hand twitch toward it as Proctor bent and retrieved his dagger from the floor. Then, he too sheathed his weapon and the tension dissipated.

  “Open the door,” Becca said. “Open the damn door and let me look for him. You can tie a rope around my waist.”

  “Yeah, that’ll help if something in there wants you.”

  “Then let me send the drone in at least. Maybe just opening the door will bring another wave and wash him back.”

  Brooks didn’t answer. The clanging bell rolled on, now fainter, farther away.

  “Let me go in,” Proctor said. “It’s what I’m here for. I can protect him.”

  Brooks shook his head. “You’re here to help against anything that comes out. And to seal breaches like this one.”

  “You’re not sealing anything with Mark still in there,” Becca said.

  Proctor turned away from the door. To Hanson, he said, “I don’t know why you brought me here if you don’t trust me to do what I’m here for.”

  Brooks focused on Becca. “We’ll take steps to get him out, but we have to think it through. Just don’t anybody do anything—”

  Becca shot her arm past him and yanked the door open.

  “—rash.”

  The stone passage was gone, replaced with an empty closet: four dusty shelves and all the silence of a cupboard. No bell, no surf, and no sign that Mark Burns had ever been there.

  “The fuck, Becca,” Brooks said. “If you can’t follow my command you’re out. I’ll take opinions when we strategize, but in a crisis, you will obey my command. That is not negotiable.”

  “Did he go to the same place as my father?”

  Brooks squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know.”

  She nodded at the reverend. “You said he’s here to seal the breach. Like how Moe used to talk about ‘sealing the cracks.’ So when does that happen? When exactly do you decide you can’t get them out and move on to sealing them in?”

  “Back to the hall,” Brooks said. “Everybody. Out of the room and back downstairs. Don’t touch anything on the way back, and do not open any doors.”

  They stared at him, each waiting to see if another would defy the order.

  “Come on. We need to call this in and plan our next step or we could be putting Burns in even greater danger. I won’t let this escalate. Let’s go. Downstairs.”

  Hanson moved first. Becca wound up her foot to kick the drone across the floor in frustration, but stopped short at the last instant as Django shot down the hall in a cacophony of claws. Becca snatched the drone up and ran after him, bumping Hanson aside and catching sight of Proctor’s black frock swirling around the corner of a bedroom doorframe after Django’s tail. In an instant Becca was rounding the same doorway, her heart pounding in her chest, her ears filled with canine snarls, a piercing feline squall, and the incongruous, authoritative drone of the reverend’s sonorous incantations.

  Was he attacking Django?

  Becca reached out to shove the reverend aside, but coming up behind him she saw that he wasn’t touching her dog. He waved his gleaming dagger in the air, slashing geometric figures with it and trailing ghosts of blue light, hurling waves of energy that Becca could actually see into the corner where Django had trapped the black and white cat.

  Was it a cat, or something masquerading as a cat, revealing monstrous alterations in a fit of fury?

  The air wavered and for a moment she was seeing the skirmish as if through layers of reflective glass stretching down a long corridor—a kaleidoscope of fang and claw, fur and blood.

  Proctor inhaled deeply and the illusion smeared toward him. He reared back and then thrust the dagger forward beside his spear-fingered left hand, a current of energy rippling over him, crackling from the tips of his fingers and blade, carrying his incantation down the tunnel like a depth charge. “PHI-THETA-SOE! THIAF! ABRASAX!”

  The cat creature shrieked and recoiled as the mirror corridor collapsed, leaving Django staggering back, whimpering, and drizzling blood on the scuffed boards. Becca lunged past Proctor and fell to her knees, clutching the dog in a fierce embrace.

  * * *

  When she had cleaned Django’s wounds well enough to know that he would need stitches, Becca turned him over to a SPECTRA runner who promised to get him swiftly to a veterinarian the agency had on call. Blood-smeared and exhausted, she finally joined the others in the first floor parlor where they fidgeted in a half circle of antique sofas and chairs. Brooks paced the carpet, waiting for Northrup to arrive.

  Northrup entered without a knock and found his way down the hall. He clicked on a digital recorder, set it down on the coffee table, and folded his arms over his chest. “What happened?”

  Brooks gave a complete account of the first excursion, with Becca chiming in to add details.

  “Unbelievable,” Northrup said. “You can’t even get through the first night without letting the house swallow one of your team?”

  Brooks glared at him.

  “It all happened so fast,” Becca sa
id.

  “Nothing came out, right?” Northrup said. “Nothing came out of that door? Not so much as a slug or a spider?”

  Becca looked around the room. No one answered. “There was a cat,” she said. “Django chased it into another room and it attacked him in the corner.”

  Northrup cocked an eyebrow. “A cat? Where did it come from? The closet Burns went into?”

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  “It wasn’t a cat,” Proctor said. “Not just a cat.”

  Northrup looked at the reverend. “Where did it come from? What was it?”

  “It was Caleb Wade’s companion.”

  “You’re telling me this cat is from 1782?” Northrup said.

  “It was his familiar,” Proctor said. “Maybe it’s something else on the other side. Here it’s a cat. It roams secret passages outside of time and space.”

  “Did you kill the thing?” Becca asked Proctor. “Whatever it was?”

  Proctor shook his head. “Wounded and banished it is all.”

  “Did you catch it on video?” Northrup said.

  Becca fished the remote from her pocket. “I don’t know. Maybe a glimpse. I was chasing after Django before I even saw it. But I got everything that happened when Mark opened the closet. Here, check it on a big screen.”

  Northrup took the device from her and switched off his audio recorder. He slipped both into a leather valise, sighed and ran his hand through his wavy black hair. “I should pull you all out of here tonight and rethink this. We thought it might take weeks to detect activity, but…I don’t know. Maybe the house is becoming unstable, more volatile.”

  “Pulling out would be a mistake,” Brooks said. “You need eyes and ears in here. Any clue one of us picks up could be the key to finding him. Even something from a dream, right?”

  Northrup nodded. “Okay. You’ll stay the night and we’ll reconvene in the morning. But nobody leaves the first floor. I’ll be back at sunrise. Maybe by then we’ll know more about what we’re dealing with from the video.”