Reliquary

by Douglas Preston

  “Are there any more of those?” he asked, pointing to the rail.

  “Yes,” the little man said. “I’ll show you.”

  “Jesus,” said Smithback as the match died. “What happens if you step on one?”

  “The current explodes your body, blows off your arms, legs, and head,” the disembodied voice said. There was a pause. “It’s always better not to step on it.”

  A match flared again, illuminating another yellow-painted rail. Smithback stepped gingerly over it, then watched as Tail Gunner pointed to a small hole in the far wall about two feet high and four across, chiseled out of the bottom of an old archway that had been bricked up with cinder block.

  “We go down here,” Tail Gunner said.

  Smithback could feel a hot draft coming up from below, tinged with a foul odor that made his gorge rise. Interwoven with the stench Smithback thought he caught, for a moment, the smell of wood smoke.

  “Down?” he asked in disbelief, turning his face away. “Again? What, you mean slide in there on my belly?”

  But his companion was already wriggling his way through.

  “No way,” Smithback called out, squatting down near the hole. “Listen, I’m not going down there. If this Mephisto wants to talk, he has to come up here.”

  There was a silence, and then Tail Gunner’s voice echoed out of the gloom on the far side of the cinder block. “Mephisto never comes higher than level three.”

  “He’s gonna have to make an exception, then.” Smithback tried to sound more confident than he felt. He realized that he had put himself into an impossible situation, relying totally on this bizarre, unstable man. It was pitch black again, and he had no way of finding his way back.

  There was a long silence.

  “You still with me?” Smithback asked.

  “Wait there,” the voice demanded suddenly.

  “You’re leaving? Give me some matches,” Smithback pleaded. Something poked him in the knee and he cried out in surprise. It was Tail Gunner’s grimy hand, holding something out to him through the hole.

  “Is that all?” Smithback asked, counting the three matches by touch.

  “All I can spare,” came the voice, faint now and moving away. There were some more words, but Smithback could not make them out.

  Silence descended. Smithback leaned back against the wall, afraid to sit down, clutching the matches tightly in one hand. He cursed himself for being foolish enough to follow the man down here. No story is worth this, he thought. Could he get back with only three matches? He shut his eyes and concentrated, trying to remember every twist and turn that had brought him here. Eventually, he gave up: the three matches would barely get him across those electrified rails.

  When his knees began to protest he rose from the squatting position. He stared into the lightless tunnel, eyes wide, ears straining. It was so utterly black that he began to imagine things in the dark: movement, shapes. He remained still, trying to breathe calmly, as an infinity of time passed. This was insane. If only he—

  “Scriblerian!” a ghostly, incorporeal voice sounded from the hole at his feet.

  “What?” Smithback yelped, spinning around.

  “I am addressing William Smithback, scriblerian, am I not?” The voice was cracked and low, a sinister sing-song rising from the depths beneath him.

  “Yes, yes, I’m Smithback. Bill Smithback. Who are you?” he called, unsettled at speaking to this disembodied voice out of the darkness.

  “Mephisto,”came the voice, drawing the s of the name into a fierce hiss.”

  “What took you so long?” Smithback replied nervously, stooping down again toward the hole in the cinder block.

  “It is a long way up.”

  Smithback paused a minute, contemplating how this man—now standing somewhere below his feet—had needed to travel several levels up to reach this place. “Are you coming up?” he asked.

  “No! You should feel honored, scriblerian. This is as close as I have been to the surface in five years.”

  “Why is that?” Smithback asked, groping in the darkness for the microcassette recorder.

  “Because this is my domain. I am lord of all you survey.”

  “But I don’t see anything.”

  A dry chuckle rose from the hole in the cinder block. “Wrong! You see blackness. And blackness is my domain. Above your head the trains rumble past, the surface dwellers scurry on their pointless errands. But the territory below Central Park—Route 666, the Ho Chi Minh trail, the Blockhouse—is mine.”

  Smithback thought for a moment. The ironic place-name of Route 666 made sense. But the others confused him. “The Ho Chi Minh trail,” he echoed. “What’s that?”

  “A community, like the rest,” hissed the voice. “Joined now with mine, for protection. Once upon a time, we knew the trail well. Many of us here fought in that cynical struggle against an innocent backward nation. And were ostracized for it. Now we live our lives down here in self-imposed exile, breathing, mating, dying. Our greatest wish is to be left alone.”

  Smithback fingered the tape recorder again, hoping it was catching everything. He’d heard of the occasional vagrant retreating to subway tunnels for shelter, but an entire population… “So all your citizens are homeless people?” he asked.

  There was a pause. “We do not like that word, scriblerian. We have a home, and were you not so timid, I could show it to you. We have everything we need. The pipes provide water for cooking and hygiene, the cables provide electricity. What few things we require from the surface, our runners supply. In the Blockhouse, we even have a nurse and a schoolteacher. Other underground spaces, like the West Side railyards, are untamed, dangerous. But here, we live in dignity.”

  “Schoolteacher? You mean there are children down here?”

  “You are naive. Many are here because they have children, and the evil state machine is trying to take them away and put them in foster care. They choose my world of warmth and darkness over your world of despair, scriblerian.”

  “Why do you keep calling me that?”

  The dry chuckle rose again from the hole in the cinder block. “That is you, is it not? William Smithback, scriblerian?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “For a journalist, you are ill read. Study Pope’s The Dunciad before we speak again.”

  It began to dawn on Smithback that there was more to this person than he had originally supposed. “Who are you, really?” he asked. “I mean, what’s your real name?”

  There was another silence. “I left that, along with everything else, upstairs,” the disembodied voice hissed. “Now I am Mephisto. Never ask me, or anyone, that question again.”

  Smithback swallowed. “Sorry,” he said.

  Mephisto seemed to have grown angry. His tone became sharper, cutting through the darkness. “You were brought here for a reason.”

  “The Wisher murder?” asked Smithback eagerly.

  “Your articles have described her, and the other corpse, as being headless. I am here to tell you that being headless is the least of it.” His voice broke into a rasping, mirthless laugh.

  “What do you mean?” Smithback asked. “You know who did it?”

  “They are the same that have been preying on my people,” Mephisto hissed. “The Wrinklers.”

  “Wrinklers?” Smithback said. “I don’t understand—”

  “Then be silent and mark me, scriblerian! I have said my community is a safe haven. And so it has always been, until one year ago. Now, we are under attack. Those who venture beyond the safe areas disappear or are murdered. Murdered in the most horrific ways. Our people have grown afraid. My runners have tried time and again to bring this matter to the police. The police!” There was an angry spitting sound, then the voice rose in pitch. “The corrupt watchdogs of a society grown morally bankrupt. To them, we are filth to be beaten and rousted. Our lives mean nothing! How many of our people have died or disappeared? Fat Boy, Hector, Dark Annie, Master Sergeant, others. But o
ne shiny thing in silks gets her head torn off, and the entire city grows enraged!”

  Smithback licked his lips. He was beginning to wonder just what information this Mephisto had. “What do you mean exactly, under attack?” he asked.

  There was a silence. “From outside,” came the whispered answer at last.

  “Outside?” Smithback asked. “What do you mean? Outside, meaning out here?” He looked around the blackness wildly.

  “No. Outside Route 666. Outside the Blockhouse,” came the answer. “There is another place. A shunned place. Twelve months ago, rumors began to emerge, rumors that this place had become occupied. Then the killings began. Our people began disappearing. At first, we sent out search parties. Most of the victims were never found. But those we did find had their flesh eaten, their heads ripped from their bodies.”

  “Wait a minute,” Smithback said. “Their flesh eaten? You mean there is a group of cannibals down here, murdering people and stealing their heads?” Perhaps Mephisto was nuts, after all. Once again, Smithback began to wonder how he would return to the surface.

  “I do not appreciate the doubting tone in your voice, scriblerian,” Mephisto replied. “That is exactly what I mean. Tail Gunner?”

  “Yes?” said a voice in Smithback’s ear. The journalist jumped to one side, neighing in surprise and fright.

  “How did he get back here?” Smithback gasped.

  “There are many ways through my kingdom,” came the voice of Mephisto. “And living here, in lovely darkness, our night vision becomes acute.”

  Smithback swallowed. “Look,” he said, “it isn’t that I don’t believe you. I just—”

  “Be silent!” Mephisto warned. “We have spoken long enough. Tail Gunner, return him to the surface.”

  “But what about the reward?” Smithback asked, surprised. “Isn’t that why you brought me here?”

  “Have you heard nothing I told you?” came the hiss. “Your money is useless to me. It is the safety of my people I care about. Return to your world, write your article. Tell those on the surface what I have told you. Tell them that whatever killed Pamela Wisher is also killing my people. And the killings must stop.” The disembodied voice seemed farther away now, echoing through the dark corridors beneath Smithback’s feet. “Otherwise,” he added with a fearful intensity, “we will find other ways to make our voices heard.”

  “But I need—” Smithback began.

  A hand closed around his elbow. “Mephisto has gone,” came the voice of Tail Gunner beside him. “I’ll take you topside.”

  = 7 =

  LIEUTENANT D’AGOSTA sat in his cramped, glass-sided office, fingering the cigar in his breast pocket and eyeing a stack of reports about the Humboldt Kill dive. Instead of closing one case, he now had two cases, both wide open. As usual, nobody knew nothing, nobody saw nothing. The boyfriend was prostrate with grief and useless as an eyewitness. The father was long dead. The mother was as uncommunicative and remote as an ice goddess. He frowned; the whole Pamela Wisher business felt like nitroglycerine to him.

  His eye traveled from the stack of reports to the NO SMOKING sign outside his door, and the frown deepened. It and a dozen like it had gone up around the precinct station just the week before.

  He slid the cigar out of his pocket and removed its plastic wrapping. No law against chewing on the thing, at any rate. He rolled it lovingly between thumb and index finger for a moment, examining the wrapper with a critical eye. Then he placed it in his mouth.

  He sat for a moment, motionless. Then, with a curse, he jerked open the top drawer of his desk, hunted around until he located a kitchen match, and lit it on the sole of his shoe. He applied the flame to the end of the cigar and sat back with a sigh, listening to the faint crackle of tobacco as he drew in the smoke and bled it slowly out his nose.

  The internal phone rang shrilly.

  “Yes?” D’Agosta answered. Couldn’t be a complaint already. He’d just lit up.

  “Lieutenant?” came the voice of the departmental secretary. “There’s a Sergeant Hayward here to see you.”

  D’Agosta grunted and sat up in his chair. “Who?”

  “Sergeant Hayward. Says it’s by your request.”

  “I didn’t ask for any Sergeant Hayward—”

  A uniformed woman appeared in the open doorway. Almost instinctively, D’Agosta took in the salient features: petite, thin, heavy breasts, jet black hair against pale skin.

  “Lieutenant D’Agosta?” she asked.

  D’Agosta couldn’t believe such a deep contralto could come from such a small frame. “Take a seat,” he said, and watched as the Sergeant settled herself in a chair. She seemed to be unconscious of anything irregular, as if it was standard procedure for a sergeant to burst in on a superior anytime he—or she—felt like it.

  “I don’t recall asking for you, Sergeant,” D’Agosta finally said.

  “You didn’t,” Hayward answered. “But I knew you’d want to see me anyway.”

  D’Agosta sat back, drawing slowly on his cigar. He’d let the Sergeant say her piece, then chew her out. D’Agosta wasn’t a stickler for process, but approaching a senior officer like this was way out of line. He wondered if perhaps one of his men had come on to her in some filing room or something. Just what he needed, a sexual harassment suit on his hands.

  “Those corpses you found in the Cloaca,” Hayward began.

  “What about them?” D’Agosta snapped, suddenly suspicious. A security lid was supposed to be clamped down over the details of that business.

  “Before the merger, I used to be with the Transit Police.” Hayward nodded, as if that explained everything. “I still do the West Side duty, clearing the homeless out of Penn Station, Hell’s Kitchen, the railyards, under the—”

  “Wait a minute,” D’Agosta interrupted. “You? A rouster?”

  Immediately, he knew he’d said the wrong thing. Hayward tensed in the chair, her eyebrows contracting at the obvious disbelief in his voice. There was a moment of awkward silence.

  “We don’t like that term, Lieutenant,” she said at last.

  D’Agosta decided he had enough to worry about without humoring this uninvited guest. “It’s my office,” he said, shrugging.

  Hayward looked at him a moment, and in those brown eyes D’Agosta could almost see her good opinion of him falling away. “Okay,” she said. “If that’s how you want to play it.” She took a deep breath. “When I heard about these skeletons of yours, they rang a bell. Reminded me of some recent homicides among the moles.”

  “Moles?”

  “Tunnel people, of course,” she said with a condescending look D’Agosta found irritating. “Underground homeless. Anyway, then I read that article in today’s Post. The one about Mephisto.”

  D’Agosta grimaced. Trust that scandal-hound Bill Smithback to whip readers into a frenzy, make a bad situation worse. The two of them had been friends—after a fashion—but now that Smithback was a homicide reporter, he’d grown almost intolerable. And D’Agosta knew better than to give him the slightest speck of the inside information he was always demanding.

  “The life expectancy of a homeless person is very short,” Hayward said. “It’s even worse for the moles. But that journalist was right. Lately, some of the killings have been unusually nasty. Heads missing, bodies ripped up. I thought I’d better come to you about it.” She shifted in her seat and gazed at D’Agosta with her clear brown eyes. “Maybe I should have saved my breath.”

  D’Agosta let that pass. “So how many recent homicides we talking about, Hayward?” he asked. “Two? Three?”

  Hayward paused. “More like half a dozen,” she said at last.

  D’Agosta looked at her, cigar halfway to mouth. “Half a dozen?”

  “That’s what I said. Before coming up here, I looked through the files. Seven murders among the moles in the last four months match this MO.”

  D’Agosta lowered the cigar. “Sergeant, let me get this straight. You got some
kind of underground Jack the Ripper here, and nobody’s on top of it?”

  “Look, it was just a hunch on my part, okay?” Hayward said defensively. “Back off me. These aren’t my homicides.”

  “So why didn’t you go through channels and report this to your superior? Why are you coming to me?”

  “I did go to my boss. Captain Waxie. Know him?”

  Everyone knew Jack Waxie. The fattest, laziest Precinct Captain in the city. A man who had reached his position by doing nothing and offending nobody. A year earlier, D’Agosta had been up for promotion to captain himself, thanks to a grateful mayor. Then there was the election, Mayor Harper was thrown out of office, and a new mayor rode into City Hall on promises of tax cuts and reduced spending. In the resulting fallout at One Police Plaza, Waxie got a captainship and a precinct, but D’Agosta was passed over. Some world.

  Hayward crossed one leg over the other. “Mole homicides aren’t like homicides on the surface. Most of the corpses we don’t even find. And when we do, the rats and dogs have usually found them long before. Many are John Does, can’t be ID’d even in good condition. And the other moles sure as hell won’t talk.”

  “And Jack Waxie just files everything away.”

  Hayward frowned again. “He doesn’t give a shit about those people.”

  D’Agosta looked at her for a minute, wondering why an old-school chauvinist like Waxie would have taken a five-foot-three female rouster onto his staff. Then his eyes lighted once again on her narrow waist, pale skin, and brown eyes, and he knew the answer. “Okay, Sergeant,” he said at last. “I’ll bite. You got locations?”

  “Locations is about all I’ve got.”

  D’Agosta’s cigar had gone out, and he fumbled through his drawer for another match. “So where were they found?” he asked.

  “Here and there.” Hayward dug a computer printout out of a pocket, unfolded it, and slid it across the desk.

  D’Agosta glanced at the sheet as he lit up. “First one was found April 30, at 624 West Fifty-eighth Street.”

  “Boiler room in the basement. There’s an old access to a railway turnabout there, which is why it was TA jurisdiction.”