Shadows in the White City

by Robert W. Walker

  At the carriage, he stopped and scanned the park. Little rustling noises larger than those of squirrels or rats came to his ears. It was almost as if Sara had followed them to see where they might end up, stalking amid the brush. Definitely sounds of small feet scurrying about. Then all went silent. Nothing.

  “Something amiss, sir?” asked the coachman, looking out over the park and the lake beyond, as if to see what Alastair could not see.

  “No, nothing,” Ransom replied and climbed into the cab, giving the driver his destination—home to Des Plaines. He sat back in the cushions and parted the window sash just as several dirty little animals scurried off northward in the direction Samuel had gone. It was not so much that these homeless looked dirtier and poorer than most that attracted his attention and worried him, but that they moved so low to the ground, like a hunting pack—three in all that he could see, one a female from her more catlike pose. Were they playing at war games? Something in their stealth, something in the way they stopped and started, such wolf packlike crouching and darting of heads, the directing of their eyes, and something he could not put his finger on said these toughs were a nasty bit of a gang bent on robbing Samuel of the money that had changed hands. No doubt, they had seen the transaction.

  Alastair’s cane shot up and with the knocking, the driver peered down through the message slot and asked after the disturbance. Alastair said, “Never mind Des Plaines for now. Go slowly northward. I am looking for a boy about eight, maybe nine.”

  “Oh, indeed, sir, and will there be a tip in it for me?”

  “What? G’damn you, man! The boy is working for me.”

  “Yes, sir…I am sure, sir.”

  “Pull your mind from the gutter and search for him!”

  “’Tis hard seein’ anyone on a night like this, sir.”

  “I just left him. He may be in danger!”

  The confused cabbie decided he’d best remain silent on the subject. Ransom pushed up the window and scanned for any sign of Samuel, but the boy had disappeared into the night as effectively as had the family of homeless.

  It appeared Samuel knew how to make a quick exit and how to take care of himself. Needlessly worrying, Ransom told himself.

  The following night

  The train yards in Chicago lay out in broad mass across a large portion of the South Levy district, some said like the spinal column of the city. Others called the yards at least as great a blight on the South Lakefront area as the stockyards they fed. But it was money hand over fist, as a thousand trains entered or left the city every day.

  Getting a late start, Inspector Alastair Ransom, along with his latest investment, young Samuel, started out for the deepest, darkest depths of the Levy district, moving toward the train tracks, where yet another man had only this morning been killed by a passing freighter. Those who kept records on such accidents informed the press that Joseph Adair, a part Indian, on an early drunk, had not seen the train when he’d driven a mule lorry loaded with Hall’s Bitterroot Cider kegs across the expanse of track; he’d just let one train pass when he slapped his reins and sent himself and the animal into the path of a train going in the opposite direction. Theory had it that he thought the sound of the second train was the echo of the retreating first. It proved a fatal assessment.

  Adair represented the sixty-fourth victim of a train in the Chicagoland area this year, and once again the debate to force train companies or municipalities to foot the bill for crossings and alarms raged. But “civic improvements,” railroad tycoons argued were the purview of civic leaders, not railroad barons. They all gave lip service to safety provisions, agreeing to the dangers inherent in speeding trains flying through, but it remained a loggerhead. Just not at our expense…a “local” problem requiring a local tax measure that must be dealt with by each community the railroads served. Meanwhile, the city council considered it an expense that ought to be borne by the railroad companies, which they “allowed” to flourish within their boundaries. Lost in all this were the over six hundred killed in the United States through train mishaps.

  Beyond the giant washboard of tracks laid side by side over a hundred yard width, Alastair was joined by Sam. Together they passed into a fenced-off area that meant to keep people out of Chicago’s intricate underground tunnels, blasted out years before. A train ran below ground on one level, but even farther down were tunnels and retired tracks. Samuel led him down and down.

  Alastair began to feel like he’d found Dante’s Inferno below the city. The walls here were alive with dampness and reflected light—as torches lined the area. All around them were homeless people huddled in groups, fearful of the well-dressed intruder who obviously did not belong.

  “I’d heard rumors the homeless were using the underground, but I had no idea it’d become so widespread.”

  “This is nothing,” began Sam. “Since the Vanishings began, a lotta people’ve had enough and they’ve left the tunnels and some have left the city. Gone westward.”

  This kid’s got a future, Alastair thought, so long as he doesn’t vanish.

  Alastair attempted asking questions of the inhabitants here. Most were living in cardboard boxes, a few lucky ones had wooden crates. One man said to Alastair, “This is my place! This is my crate, and I will fight you to the death for it.”

  “I don’t want your crate, sir.”

  “Sir?” He laughed. “No one calls me sir. Did you hear that, Mother?” he asked a sleeping woman behind him. The wife only grunted and turned over.

  “I am looking for Bloody Mary; have you seen her?”

  “Have not.”

  “Does she come here?”

  “Seldom.”

  “When is seldom?”

  “Seldom is seldom.”

  “Seldom in daylight or seldom at night?”

  “I tell you, she has not been round here since…well since the vanishings began, I’d say.”

  Alastair noted several children clinging to the man and his wife. “Are you not fearful for your children, sir?”

  “There he goes again, Mother…calling me sir.”

  “Well? Have you fear for your children?” persisted Ransom.

  “My true children have abandoned us, mother and father. These little ones you see here have adopted us, so to speak.”

  “Adopted you?”

  “They elect to stay close.”

  It did appear the children were here voluntarily and held no fear of this couple. “Still, sir, tell me, what is your name?” asked Alastair.

  “Crusoe…Robinson Crusoe.”

  Obviously, the man was educated, well-read, and enjoyed verbal jousting. “Well, Mr. Crusooo…have you any opinion of the Vanishings?”

  “I have my suspicions, yes.”

  “And what are these?”

  He held out his palm for money. Alastair filled it with a dollar bill. “I have recently come across a horrid fellow, a man who is Anti-Christ if I am human.”

  “Anti-Christ?”

  “The Anti-Christ.”

  “Who is this man, the same as the children call Zoroaster?”

  “I suspect so. I’ve seen him slaughter small animals, skin ’em and eat ’em uncooked. Says I to him once, why not build a fire and fry that meat?”

  “And his reply?”

  “He asked back, ‘Ever e’t raw meat?’”

  “Then what?”

  “Then I decided to let it go.”

  “And what makes you think him evil other than eating the flesh of animals?”

  “It did not stop at his eating uncooked animal flesh.”

  “Go on.”

  “He fed it to his children.”

  “Indeed!”

  “Indeed…and his woman.”

  “The whole family is eating dog flesh?”

  “Times are hard. Dog, rat, cat, and I fear children now.”

  “It is too crushing to believe it.”

  “Didn’t someone say the bodies are carved up? Like grandma’s holiday tur
key?”

  “Yes, this is true. All the same…what you propose, Mr. Crusoe, is beyond the kin of all but wolves.”

  “Wolves’re kinder. Several knives of varying blades are used so I read.” He held up a tattered Herald.

  “You are well informed, but the general feeling is that the butcher uses several knives.”

  The decrepit man shook his head. “Reverse that thought. Several butchers, some large, some small, trained on a separate blade—all carving on the carcass.”

  “A horrible notion.”

  “Hard to swallow, you mean!” He laughed at the bad joke until the laugh turned into a coughing jag. “But it’s what I told the other man who came asking.”

  “The other man? What other man?”

  “Why the doctor. It’s what I told the doctor.”

  “What doctor? Please tell me it wasn’t Dr. James Phineas Tewes.”

  “No, not ’im. The surgeon, Dr. Fenger. He called himself Dr. Josephs, but I read the papers…maybe a week late, but I read ’em when folks throws ’em away, you see.” He warmed to his subject, waving his soiled paper. “I’ve spied his picture in the paper more’n once.”

  “Fenger came down here and talked to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “A day ago now.”

  “And this butchering family…these cannibals? Did you point them out to Dr. Fenger?”

  “Point them out? No. They’ve relocated by all accounts, so there was no chance.”

  “Where did they relocate to?”

  “Dunno.”

  “And this is what you told Dr. Fenger?”

  “I never let on I knew who he was.”

  “But you informed him as you did me? No deviation?”

  “I did, and he paid me a damn sight better’n you.”

  “Was anyone with him?”

  “Yes, that big-shot guy.”

  “Big shot?”

  “Ahhh…fellow they call Chief in the papers.”

  Kohler and Fenger here, tracking down this cannibalistic family twenty-four hours ago, and Christian knowing this even as he autopsied Danielle, yet he’d said nothing of it, confided nothing of it. It could only mean one thing.

  “Tell me…when’d you last see the Anti-Christ and his family?”

  “Not for days now.”

  “Does the Anti-Christ go by a man’s name? I understand he goes about in men’s clothing.”

  “He calls himself Jones, Smith, and sometimes Dobbins.”

  “Dobbins?”

  “Donald P. Dobbins.”

  Ransom wondered if the man made it up as he went. He decided this was the case to some degree. “Dobbins, I see. Can you show me where Dobbins and his family can be found? Where they sleep when here?”

  “Aye…for another buck.”

  Alastair yanked out another bill and laid it in Robinson Crusoe’s hand. “What about me?” asked Sam beside him. Ransom frowned at the boy but gave in, handing him his last single.

  As they followed Crusoe down the maze of the sewer, tramping through turgid black water part of the way, Alastair gave thanks that it’d been a dry month.

  They passed others who’d taken up residence here below the city—desertlike expressions on their faces like so many zombies. One gaunt, weather-beaten old woman loudly tsk-tsked at their passing and shook her head and loudly announced, “I’told ya all…predicted this. My daughter told me so. They’ve come to root us out.”

  “I’m not here to harm you, old mother,” Ransom assured her.

  “The angels will catch him some day. Leave him to the angles. They’ll destroy him,” said the addled woman.

  “In Chicago, we’re not much for leaving justice to angels or to another life, my lady.”

  She twittered at his calling her “my lady.” She came alongside Ransom with a small vial of water, splashing it over him, calling it holy water to protect him. “If you’re that stubborn bent on it, you’ll need protection,” she finished. “Besides, the Anti-Christ hates holy water. Burns his soul like acid.”

  He imagined the old woman had stolen the water from one of a hundred churches in the city.

  The old man shooed her off, while Sam said, “Holy water makes his skin dissolve and turn to steam…weakens him. But tainted holy water don’t bother him in the least.”

  “Right, son,” replied Alastair, tired of hearing this kind of nonsense.

  But Sam kept on. “You know, like sewer water and like tap water’ll do for ’im. That he can even drink and it don’t bother him, but not blessed holy water. I know a priest sells it outta the back of St. Alexis shelter for the homeless.”

  “I’ll bet you do.” Alastair took a moment to jot down the priest’s name, as he wanted a talk with this man.

  Just then Alastair saw a large figure rise in the distance here, a strange steam coming off him. The figure appeared flanked on two sides. On one side, a woman, on the other a child. Then another child, then another. They seemed to curl up from out of the ground like smoke. Alastair heard the song sung in the streets by children replaying in his head:

  On a night so dark,

  Amid a sky so blue,

  Down through the alley

  Satan flew

  It’s here each night

  he sends his Bloody Mary,

  who looks such a fright

  but flies like a fairy

  and eats the flesh

  of live snakes, drakes, and hakes—

  Skins and eats kids too…

  You may ask till blue

  Answer is in the rhyme

  That many ne’er see in time

  That her secret name is true…

  So call out Mary, Mother of God!

  Else she carves you as a calf

  and feeds you to her devil half.

  Alastair looked from Sam and back to the homeless family shrouded in gloom here, below ground. They looked back with vacant eyes: This motley group, not so deadly as pathetic, recalled a family in one of Philo’s photos.

  Ransom spent a few moments with the father—a man calling himself Gideon Tell—commiserating about his inability to find work. Ransom made a few suggestions, people to speak to, an alderman in the district, telling him to use his name to break the ice as a kind of letter of introduction. “There is the chance in this to feed your family,” finished Alastair. “You, too, Crusoe, but you’ll have to supply your real name.”

  Crusoe grunted. “That’d be Robert Louis Stevenson.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Across town at the same time

  Jane and Gabby had not been able to sit idle all this time and had gone in search of Audra. They located her on a street corner in the company of others, including King Robin. All of the children had undoubtedly heard of Danielle’s fate, and most of them scattered on seeing Jane and Gabby, but Audra, Robin, and a handful held their ground.

  Jane convinced those remaining to accept a carriage ride to Hull House where she had friends who would take care of them. “At least until the police catch this madman who killed Danielle,” she pleaded.

  “No one can catch the Devil,” countered Robin, even as he urged his followers to climb into the carriage. None of them had ever been in a cab before, and they took it as a great opportunity that would not come again. It quickly became a free-for-all.

  In fact, the ride to Hull House was boisterous and fun for all, but as they neared their destination, Gabby began interrogating Audra, asking when she had last seen Danielle and who might have been with her when she’d disappeared. “Why was she alone? Where were the other children in her gang?”

  “Danny…she sometimes went off on her own,” said Robin.

  “Said she needed thinking time.” Audra began sobbing. None of the other children could add to this.

  Robin explained that the two bands mutually supported one another, and that everyone liked Danny as they affectionately called her. After this, Robin opened up, telling Jane and Gabby a story about himself
and his mother. “One night last year, we made a bed out of a large freight box, newspapers, and some brush in the park by the lake, the place where a lotta drunks gather after all the bars are closed. And it was my turn to stand guard against the “screamers.”

  “Screamers?” Jane asked, making all of Robin’s followers laugh.

  “Packs of roaming addicts—screamers.”

  “What sort of addicts?”

  “All sorts. Booze, heroin, opium. Anyhow, while mama slept, I guarded her. That’s when all of a sudden Charlie was standing before me, dressed in his army uniform.”

  “And Charlie is?”

  “My dead brother. Died in the Indian Wars out West.”

  “I’m so sorry Robin,” Jane replied, placing a hand over his, but he quickly withdrew.

  Robin then gnashed his teeth, gulped, and teared up but kept on with his story, pretending some lint had flown into his eye. “My brother’s spirit, says he, ‘The Devil got loose from under the river!’”

  “The river?”

  “The Chicago River. He found a hole under Lake Michigan and came up through the river is what Charlie was saying out of his dead mouth. Then he said, ‘The rich people didn’t stop him!’ And then he says, ‘The angels need soldiers.’”

  “So he was warning you, your brother?”

  “That’s what I’m telling you. He’s close by, watching us right now.”

  Gabby piped in. “One of the good angels, heh?”

  “Where is your brother now?”

  Robin opened the window sash on the carriage and looked about. Seeing nothing, he stuck his head out farther and returned his head with a smile. “He’s atop the coach, beside the driver, enjoying the ride.”

  “He’s perched on the coach seat?”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  Gabby asked, “Is he, you know, stuck on this plane of existence, this realm?”

  “Charlie’s spirit thinks he is needed in the war.”

  “The war?” Gabby repeated just as the coach hit a huge pothole, jarring her but making the children cheer.