by L D Marr
As I went along, I looked up at the cameras attached at wide intervals on the dusty, cobwebby ceiling above me. The cold feeling inside me intensified the farther I walked in this ancient station that had stood for almost two centuries.
“Bowery,” said a placard carved into the side of the aged marble wall. Thick rust-colored metal columns supported the ceiling. The station was poorly lit, but the round panoramic cameras looked new.
I kept walking and reached the stairs at the station’s end. The stairs were built into the far side of a concrete wedge. A door shape was etched into the side of the wedge that faced the station.
I stopped and stared at the door-shaped lines. The coldness inside me became a feeling of terrible wrongness that somehow gave my mind a razor-sharp clarity. I looked up and located the camera that would record this section of the station.
It was the same as the others, wasn’t it? It looked exactly the same. But when I stared up at it, it seemed like there was something different about this one. A dead feeling.
The subway maintenance people must check all the cameras to make sure they’re working, right? I thought. It must be working.
Then I felt a sudden discomfort at the thought of this camera recording me. I stopped staring at the camera and tried to act natural and casual. As if I just happened to be waiting for the next train at the farthest end of the station for some reason.
I walked over to the rusty metal post nearest to the wedge and leaned against it. I put my hands in my coat pockets and looked sideways at the concrete wedge under the stairs.
My vision seemed to sharpen, and I saw the door-shaped lines trace a real door beneath layers of dust and grime. A bare metal door was built into the dirty stone.
As I had that realization, my sense of reality became fuzzy. Time sped up as if I were in a dream. The paths of commuters, entering and leaving trains and the station, flowed in blurred lines around me. As the rush hour ended and more time passed, the lines in my vision that were the paths of moving people thinned. I waited. I didn’t for know what.
⌛
Time passed, but I didn’t know how much. Then another odd chill that wasn’t physical jolted me back to alertness. The movements of the people and trains passing by me slowed down to normal speed. My vision blurred. Then it sharpened again.
My eyes fixed on the thin etching of the door shape under the stairs. A bright red line formed and blossomed there. Thick red liquid outlined the door and then oozed down its sides to the floor.
An acrid, bitter smell burned my nostrils and left a metallic taste in my mouth. I recognized the taste from when I’d had my wisdom teeth pulled.
That’s blood! I thought.
A puddle formed and spread toward my feet. I stepped back. Then I walked away and stood near a few people who waited in line along the tracks for the next train. People passed by and walked to the stairs built into the concrete wedge—right through the blood. But none of them seemed to notice it.
My curiosity overcame my revulsion, and I walked through the puddle of blood too, so I could watch people go up the stairs. They stepped in the blood, but I couldn’t see any blood on their shoes. And their feet didn’t leave any marks on the pale, dirty staircase.
I lifted a foot to look at the bottom of my own plain brown winter boot. There was no blood there either. I walked back around and stared fixedly at the door that was now pouring out streams of blood. It flowed down off the passenger island onto the train tracks. I stood there wondering why the liquid didn’t cause any sparks from the live electric bars that ran the trains.
Get away! a voice seemed to shout in my mind.
Another chill shook me, and this time, I felt pure fear. I turned, walked back, and stood among the people waiting for the train again, facing the direction that the train would come from.
A loud depressurizing “whomp” sound, followed by a big splash, came from the direction of the bloody door. None of the other people waiting for the train showed any reaction to the sounds. I turned my head slightly and looked out of the corner of my eye back toward the door.
A man walked out through an ankle-high river flow of blood. I stiffened with a strong sense of recognition, although I was sure I’d never seen him before.
That man is the reason why I’m here! I thought.
But I didn’t know why I had that thought. He was tall and brawny—bigger than any man I’d ever seen—dressed in jeans and a dark hoodie like anyone. A few strands of straight blonde hair stuck out from the edges of the hood that shadowed his broad, pale face.
Another thought came into my mind: I need to memorize that face.
So I studied it in my peripheral vision. A wide face with heavy features and thick lips. Light skin and eyes. But as I stared, the man’s coloring changed—from pale to brown skin and eyes, from blonde to black straight hair. Then his coloring changed back to blonde again.
Did I really see that? I wondered.
For a moment, the man stood looking at the people lined up waiting for the train, including me. His shoes and pants below the knees were damp with red liquid. But no one else in the subway seemed to notice the blood. Or the changes in his hair and skin color.
I had an intense, undeniable feeling that there was something wrong with this man. Not just wrong. An overpowering emanation of decay and death.
Now the sharp, powerful blood smell clogged the air. The smell of blood and something more that I didn’t recognize. None of the other people in the subway seemed to notice the putrid odor. The urge to vomit overwhelmed me, but I struggled to keep it down.
I can’t draw his attention to me! I thought.
Instead of walking over to wait for a train on either side of the platform, the man turned and walked around the bar-enclosed concrete wedge he’d just come out of. He climbed up the stairs and was gone.
I breathed deep in relief. My need to vomit left too.
A train pulled in, but I didn’t get on. Instead, I walked back to the stairs. The blood wasn’t puddled on the floor anymore, but the floor was stained with large red circles. Red footprints led out from one of the red circles on the side where the man had walked toward the stairs.
I followed the footprints around the black metal cage to the foot of the stairs. The bloody footprints continued up the stairs, fading near the top.
Then I turned and walked back to wait for the next train home.
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A note from LD
Dear Reader,
Thank you for reading Have Teeth, Will Bite. If you enjoyed this book, and you’d like to be on my mailing list, please email me at [email protected].
May your world one day know peace,
LD
