Red Equinox (24 page)

Nina’s face had changed while he spoke, and he knew he wasn’t doing a very good job of explaining, probably
couldn’t
even if he were allowed to be more explicit, but for a second, before she guarded it, he was tempted to think she believed him.

“What is it? What have they unleashed?”

“I don’t know, honey.” He almost flinched at the word as it left his mouth. This talk about mortality was erasing years.

She was standing before him now. He didn’t know when she’d risen from the hassock. One of her slender hands reached for his face; slowly, the way a hand goes toward a potentially dangerous animal, one that might bite. He was looking away from her at the floor when she said, “You’ve seen it.” It wasn’t a question. She would have made a good interrogator, but she was a better shrink.

She touched his stubbly chin, grazed her thumb over the dimple there, the one she used to like. He wanted to get out, almost regretted coming here, and at the same time, he wanted to pick her up and carry her into the bedroom and fuck her and somehow he knew that she would let him. A tear ran onto her fingertip, bridging the distance between them even as it was born of the knowledge of the void that yawned between their respective worlds now—hers the ordinary one they had once built a life in, a life he had wrecked; and his, a realm of monsters.

He swallowed and cleared his throat. The sound was loud and harsh in the silent room. “Heather should have a choice,” he said. “She shouldn’t have to see things she’ll never be able to
unsee
…shouldn’t have to live in the world I’m living in now without even knowing she had
a choice.”

Nina took her hand away and looked at the water on her fingers.

“It’s not contagious,” he said, “Not contagious except by hearing. I don’t know how fast it will spread, but it’s starting here. If you listen to me, you’ll have a head start. Go anywhere. Just get her in a car and go.”

But Nina wasn’t listening anymore. She was staring over his shoulder at the TV as if she’d seen a ghost. Brooks turned to the muted screen, and there was Rebecca Philips in a box beside a news anchor. One of the self-portraits SPECTRA had pulled from her hard drive? If so, it was one of the few that wasn’t a nude with ghostly exposure trails and weird shadows. Maybe a friend had taken it. She stood in front of a graffiti-stricken wall, the hint of a smile almost lighting her haunted face.

Agent Brooks met his ex-wife’s eyes and recognized the glare of the guilty. “You know her, Nina?”

Becca slouched in the back seat of the Jeep Cherokee Rafael had borrowed from a drummer friend who’d been happy to go a few days without parking tickets, her head against the foggy glass, Django sleeping in her lap.

She had finally stopped searching the night for flashers and had been drifting in and out of consciousness, lulled by the drone and vibration of the road, only hanging on because Raf had no idea how to get where they were going and had ditched his GPS-enabled phone before picking her up at the abandoned school.

They had followed Route 1A up the coast and found that, away from the highways, the warnings of roadblocks were baseless, at least so far. There weren’t many cars on the road until they joined Route 128 and encountered something of an exodus to points north. But before long, they were alone again, wending their way through streets familiar to Becca, coming into Arkham along the Aylesbury Pike.

Django perked up and crawled across Becca’s lap to sniff at the cracked window where the sulfuric low-tide reek of the Miskatonic wafted into the vehicle. As they dropped around the shoulder of Hangman’s Hill, the town opened before them: huddled rows of slouching gambrel rooftops punctuated by the rising spires of several churches, bisected by the silvered black curve of the river and frosted by the glow of a cloudbank reflecting the lights of the surrounding mill towns. Arkham appeared to have tucked itself in by midnight, except for the iron lamps lining the paths of the Miskatonic quadrangle.

Becca leaned between the seats and directed Rafael to take a right onto Boundary, followed by a left onto Crane, a quiet lane of mostly renovated houses, many owned by the university and leased to tenured faculty. She felt the tension in her weary body finally beginning to uncoil when they pulled up in front of number 19, a modest, cream-colored house with black shutters and a central brick chimney. Gran’s house.

Becca passed Django’s leash to Rafael and dug around in her army bag for her key ring. “I hope my uncle hasn’t changed the locks yet. He’s probably too cheap for that, but he might have just to keep my dad from crashing here.”

She found the key and slotted it into the lock, turned the knob and gave it the same old lift as she opened it, a time-worn habit to minimize the noise of the ill-fitting frame, a remnant of days when sneaking in at midnight would have woken Gran.

It had been apparent from the street that the house was dark, but stepping inside, Becca felt a wave of grief wash over her at the cold emptiness of the place. Somehow the vacancy of the house she had grown up in made the loss more visceral than the body at the funeral had—that cosmeticized shell that didn’t quite resemble the woman she had loved. Here, in the silent interval before a realtor removed the scuffed furniture and the wax-stained carpets, before the painters changed the color of the walls just as the embalmer had changed the color of her Gran’s complexion, there was still a sense of the woman’s soul in the musty air. Here, where Becca had memories attached to the scuffs and stains, she could still smell the woman who had been a mother to her, could almost hear her voice.

Drawing the mingled perfume of moldy curtains, old incense, and baking spices deep into her lungs, she knew that this was the smell of home. And it would soon be sold to pay off debts.

She set her bag on the couch and flicked a switch by the door, filling the room with warm illumination from a lamp on an end table—an orange and yellow beaded globe suspended from a curling iron arm. A star pattern of stained-glass diamonds set amid the beads and plaster gave the lamp a Turkish vibe. Gran had acquired it on one of her travels, and it had always reminded Becca of a sunrise in miniature. There were similar lamps and hanging globes in other rooms. Becca recalled the cool blue and purple glow of the one on Gran’s desk in her study. The woman had abhorred plainness and had brought the rich cultures she’d studied into every room of her home. Rafael was turning on his heel, taking in other adornments: the African statues, the framed illuminated manuscripts, the Persian rugs and jade carvings.

Becca felt a tingle of relief at their presence. That her uncle Alan hadn’t yet cleared the place out and boxed everything up for sale was an unexpected blessing. She had been under too much stress since the funeral to even begin to confront and process her feelings. She had come here in search of something—that was true, there was an objective to the visit—but she realized now that she had also come seeking refuge, seeking a sense of Catherine’s presence. Maybe what she sought was still here. She collapsed onto the couch with a bone-weary sigh.

“You grew up here?” Rafael asked, taking it in.

“It seems a lot smaller after living in a warehouse. Or…with her not here.”

They had risked stopping at a convenience store on 1A, and now Rafael found the kitchen and set a bag of food and a six-pack of Sam Adams on the counter. Becca watched him across the opening in the wall through which she had so often talked with Catherine while the older woman cooked. Rafael opened and closed drawers until he found a bottle opener. Becca knew he’d succeeded when a sound like a spinning coin winding down reached her ears.

Django, finished sniffing out the living room, jumped onto the couch and laid his head in her lap. She stroked the downy fur around his ears. Rafael returned and set her beer on the end table beside her. She pulled herself up, opened the end-table drawer, and fished around for a coaster. There was a cash-register receipt in the drawer, penciled with a list of words in Hebrew and Greek distilled to numeric calculations. Becca felt a pang, as she removed the cork coasters, passed one to Rafael, and slid the drawer shut on the scrap of paper. She had grown up surrounded by similar notes; they’d been more common than grocery lists.

“Cheers,” she said. “To getting the hell out of the city.”

Rafael laughed. “You make it sound like a weekend getaway.” Clinking his bottle against hers, he said, “To not spending the night in custody.”

After a long pull on the bottle, Becca got up and retrieved the dog food from the jeep. She poured some into a Tupperware bowl, filled another with water, and set the pair down in a corner of the kitchen. Django, who had tracked her every move, took to them with relish.

Rafael waved his hand at the table where he’d set two plates: one with his own plastic-wrapped Italian sub, the other with a sad-looking peanut-butter sandwich and a banana for Becca.

“Thanks, Raf.” She scratched the back of her head and her stiff hair failed to fully resettle. She knew she must look a wreck and hardly had the energy to even eat. She wanted a hot shower and sleep, but to stay the night here would be risky. If SPECTRA still considered her a priority, they would pay a visit to her prior residence sooner or later.

“Sit down,” Rafael said, “You gotta eat, girl.”

She nodded but didn’t sit. The idea of lingering was making her nervous.

“What? You already have your peanut-butter quota for the day? Guess I should have got spaghetti—the other thing you eat,” he teased.

“No, it’s good, it’s fine. I just need to check the study first.”

“You said she had a lot of books, right? Could take a while. At least have a bite, or take it with you.”

She shuddered theatrically. “Handling books with peanut butter on my fingers? Gran would have another stroke. I just need to know they’re still there. Then I’ll eat.”

Rafael unwrapped his sub and dug in with an enthusiasm to rival Django’s. The dog sniffed the air beside the table, and when no cold cuts were forthcoming, turned and trotted after Becca, his tail swishing against the narrow walls of the hallway.

At the top of a steep staircase Becca came to the hushed, carpeted sanctum of the second floor, Gran’s domain. When she’d lived here, Becca’s bedroom had been on the ground floor, and every trip up the stairs to the old woman’s bedroom, private bath, and study had brought a feeling of crossing a threshold and passing into more rarefied air. Voices were kept at library volume here, and doors were to be knocked at before entering. Knowing that Gran was gone and never coming back did little to diminish Becca’s sense of reverence for the woman’s domain, and as she paused at the bedroom door, she almost raised her hand to rap her knuckles gently against it before pushing it open.

The room was dark, the bed made. The green globe lamp sat on a white doily where it always had. The same wood and stone artifacts still congregated around the bed: guardian figures rendered in plaques on the walls, statuettes on the bureau. The Sumerian Marduk hunting the winged dragon Tiamat with his arrows and thunderbolt trident; the Archangel Michael brandishing his flaming sword and grinding the serpent beneath his boot heel; the thousand-armed bodhisattva, Chenrezig, his limbs fanned out like spokes in a wheel of weapons and gifts for the protection and aid of all sentient beings. As a girl, Becca had heard the tales of these heroes and countless others. And now, with one foot in a wedge of light from the hallway, she offered up a silent prayer to the retinue of protectors who had watched over her Gran through all her nights of dreaming, and petitioned them to accompany the great lady on her final journey through the deepest dream of all.

At the end of the hall, she came to the carven oak door of the study, and for the first time in her life, found it ajar. Something squirmed in her stomach. She pressed her fingers against the wood, and watched it drift inward with a rising whine.

It was dark, but as she stepped over the threshold from the Persian carpet runner onto the hardwood floor of the study, she knew from the echo—before her eyes could even adjust to the faint streetlight through the window—that shelves laden with leather and cloth were not absorbing her footsteps.

The curator of the university library had already been here with his movers. Uncle Alan or Catherine’s attorney had let them in, ushered them up the stairs, and in accordance with the late scholar’s last will and testament, granted them access to her most private room.

Becca found the light switch. Ripping the shadows from that room was like pulling a shroud off of a naked corpse. The bookshelves, all of them, were bare.

*   *   *

Django was waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs, sitting on his haunches and swishing his tail. She had told him to stay, and to her surprise, he had. Maybe training him would be easier than she’d hoped. Or maybe he was afraid of some lingering vibe on the second floor. Becca could well remember being afraid of the study herself when she’d been small. The door had seemed to tower above her, locked more to keep abominations in than people out. Had she acquired that vague notion through an accumulation of things Gran had said to keep her curiosity in check? Or from scraps of conversations with colleagues over tea in the den? Had Becca
seen
things she had thrust into the dark recesses of her mind? Things that would have made it impossible for her to grow up sane if left unrepressed?

The smell of old leather and parchment lingered in her memory. And incense. And ink. And something…else. Something fishy. She patted Django and went to the kitchen for her sandwich. Peanut butter didn’t exactly go great with the taste of beer in her mouth, and she wanted to finish the beer more than she wanted to eat at this point, but she knew she needed the sustenance. She took an ice pack from the freezer for her aching wrist and carried it with the sandwich into the den, where she found Rafael kneeling in front of the fireplace, positioning chunks of firewood from the iron ring around some balled up newspaper, his boxers hanging out of his jeans.