As we moved further along the bridge, the walls disappeared, and we could look out at the river on either side. Unfortunately, a lot of the floor disappeared as well. There were huge gaps between large wooden beams that looked a lot like extra-sturdy railroad ties, leaving open the possible thrill of plunging through a gap and falling into the water below. It gave me an initial wave of vertigo, but fortunately, someone had laid down a bunch of broad plywood sheets in the center for people to use as a steadier walkway.
Xander squinted down the length of the bridge. It appeared that every few dozen yards there were art installations and some lounge areas. “Do you guys want to explore or dance?” he asked.
I immediately said, “Explore.”
Rini simultaneously said, “Dance.”
I knew what Xander was going to want to do. He usually gave Rini her way if he didn’t have a strong opinion of his own. “Why don’t you check out what’s cool while Rini and I dance a few songs? We’ll meet you back here in, like, twenty minutes.”
I could have just capitulated and headed onto the dance floor with them, but I was feeling grumpy and annoyed that I never got my way; so instead, I waved them off and said, “Make it thirty.”
Xander gave me a goofy grin, grabbed Rini by the hand, and trotted off, leaving me standing by my only. I told myself it didn’t matter. There was plenty of cool stuff to check out, and I could easily occupy my time. I just hoped that Xander didn’t pull his usual, completely forgetting about the time and leaving me standing around like an idiot, waiting for an hour.
I scanned my surroundings, wondering what to check out first. Being under the bridge was so strange that it was the first moment that I really focused on the individual people surrounding me. Now, I’ve never been one of those guys who think that everybody living in L.A. must be hot or that all of the inhabitants of Philadelphia are ugly. The pretty-to-ugly ratio is spread pretty evenly across the U.S., from what I’ve witnessed. But for whatever reason, a large percentage of the Clevelanders who had found their way under the bridge for a little partying were unusually attractive. I mean, not Xander attractive, but some were getting pretty darn close. It was bizarre and made me a bit self-conscious. I do my best to conceal it by dressing well, but I’m sorry to report that Herbert Lehmer is not one of the beautiful people.
Shaking off my insecurities, I approached the first art installation and was confronted with way too much pictorial information about the victims of the Torso Murderer, Cleveland’s unidentified serial killer from the 1930s, who once taunted Eliot Ness. Once I got an eyeball of what the booth was all about, I decided to give it a pass. I have never been overly interested in murderers.
Next came a lounge area, the whole thing covered by long red fur—the chairs, the table, the couches, everything. It was set up like a living room, and the only thing that wasn’t swathed in the red synthetic tangle was a television screen. I grabbed a seat to see if they were playing anything interesting. It appeared to be some very Leave It to Beaver scenes of modern domestic life. A family prepared food, played with toys, ate dinner, etc… It was as if I was a fly on the wall in the most pleasant / boring household in America.
Something about it was making me feel unsettled. I was focusing harder on the screen, trying to figure it out when I caught a quick flash of the family being tortured by masked assailants. I immediately understood my discomfort. The Leave It to Beaver footage of domestic bliss and boredom had been inter-spliced with ultra-violent, A Clockwork Orange-style images. I got up again, my stomach feeling slightly sour from having been manipulated. The artists who were displaying their work under the bridge were way too focused on gore.
I don’t like slasher movies, so I wasn’t too thrilled about horror being subversively thrust at me. I felt tense while entering the next art installation area. The floor was covered in some type of reflective material that made it a blurry mirror. Overhead there hung hundreds of glittering snowflakes suspended by fishing lines. I kept looking around, waiting for some blood and guts to assault my senses, but as far as I could tell, it was simply pretty. The twinkling snowflakes were reflected on the floor. With a gentle breeze blowing in from Lake Erie and the music from the band being reduced to a muffled thud, thud, being under the bridge transformed into something very tranquil. My shoulders, which I had apparently been scrunching up practically under my ears, began to unknot. I sighed. At the very least I could stand among the snowflakes for the next twenty minutes while I waited for Rini and Xander. I closed my eyes for a moment to breathe in the warm, fresh summer air, and when I opened them again, there she was.
“Hello.” Violet Girl smiled.
Chapter 8
I jumped back, slightly startled. Violet Girl was standing so close to me it was almost like we were slow dancing. “Uh, hi…” I blurted. It was too late for me to try to appear even remotely cool, so I didn’t bother worrying about it.
“Hi,” she repeated, smiling up at me. She was in a dusky violet again, so her nickname felt appropriate. “I’m glad you decided to show.”
Frowning, I pulled back half a step. “I thought you said not to show.”
She lifted her shoulders ever so slightly, my comment not even warranting a full shrug. Then before I knew what was happening, she took a step forward and wrapped her arms around my neck. I wasn’t sure how to react, but putting my hands on her waist made the most sense, so that’s what I did. Violet smiled again, then tilted her head back. “Don’t you just love the snowflakes?” she said, dreamily.
I nodded. “This is the prettiest part of the whole bridge.”
My comment made Violet chuckle. “Not really,” she told me with a sly smirk. “But it is awfully pretty.” She leaned her head on my chest and started swaying. I followed suit, so we really were dancing to some imaginary slow song because the band was still thud, thud, thudding away in the distance. I knew she was probably just manipulating me to gain access to Xander—I’d been down this road before—but she was very pretty, and she smelled very citrusy and clean, so I decided to just enjoy the moment.
“What’s your real name, Violet Girl?” I murmured into her hair.
She pushed slightly away from me and frowned. “Can’t you guess?”
“Um…” Was this some kind of weird girl game where if I guessed wrong she would pout?
Violet Girl laughed at my confusion. She leaned toward me and said in a half whisper, “Do you want to see something really good?”
“What?” I floundered. Her thoughts seemed to hop around so quickly, I was having trouble keeping up.
“I want to show you something,” she said, grabbing my hand and tugging me back toward the band.
“What is it?”
“It’s a secret,” she said, a mischievous grin on her elfin face. “But I promise you, it’s the best part of the whole bridge.”
“Okay.” I followed as her willing servant. If a pretty girl wanted to hold my hand while leading me through a crowd at an illegal party under a bridge then I was all for it. I did manage to sneak a glance at my watch. There was a little over five minutes before I was supposed to meet Xander and Rini. Or at least until when I was supposed to start waiting around for Xander and Rini. But if I was a little late, that was fine. They could wait for me for once.
As we threaded through the crowd again, I marveled at the plentiful amount of hot chicks that had infiltrated the party. Almost all of them were wearing some variation of the enamel bat pendant, so apparently, it really was the biggest trend in town. As Violet pulled me past a slightly dorky guy looking out of place in his baggy pants and reversed baseball hat, I heard a female voice yell, “You’re next,” and the kid flinched in reaction. Looking down the front of his shirt in bewilderment, Mr. Baseball Hat scraped something red and slimy onto the ground. There was the shriek of teenage girls laughing hysterically. I spun around, assuming whoever had targeted the poor guy was the same bimbo who had stained my favorite jacket. But in the sea of dazzling females, I couldn�
��t identify the culprit. “Come on,” Violet said, impatiently yanking on my arm.
We skirted around left of the dance floor, then past more art, then to a railing along the side of a wide flight of stairs. They must have led down to the main entrance where people used to come up to grab the streetcars. “There.” Violet gestured over the railing toward the steps. “It’s down there.”
I peered over the side where she’d indicated, only to see that the lower steps were covered with scummy green water like someone had neglected to clean their pool for a few seasons. Some installation artist was projecting black and white images of old Cleveland onto the water. Now, I love old photographs, especially of Cleveland, so I found the whole thing kind of cool, but it wasn’t exactly breathtaking. “This is what you wanted to show me?” I wondered. “You like this?”
She peered over the railing. “Down there,” she said with a petulant little frown, then she met my gaze, her eyes sparkling. “I love it.”
“All right.” I pulled out my phone. “If you like it so much, let’s get a picture of it.” I wasn’t the first teenage guy to indulge the whims of a pretty girl, and I wouldn’t be the last.
I lined up the shot and was about to snap a photo when, giggling, Violet Girl smacked my elbow jarring the phone out of my hand. I fumbled for it and caught the corner briefly with the tips of my fingers, but that only caused it to cartwheel faster over the railing, spinning end-over-end toward the murky green water. “No!” I shouted as I watched my phone fall.
The weird thing was, the phone didn’t exactly splash into the water. It kind of fell through the water, bounced off a couple of steps, and clattered to a halt. I gazed down at it, wondering if I leapt over the railing and snatched it from the drink whether it would be any less fried than if I simply strolled down the steps to retrieve it.
I felt my face grow hot with anger. It was one thing to dance a guy around a little to gain access to his friend, but there was no excuse for knocking my phone in the muck. I don’t care how cute a girl is; there are limits. “What the hell did you do that for?” I snapped at Violet Girl. But when I turned to shoot her a death glare, she was gone. “Great,” I grumbled, looking forlornly over the railing, “just trash my phone and leave, why don’t you?”
“What are you looking at?” Xander appeared at my side, peering over the railing.
“My phone’s down there,” I explained, jerking my thumb toward the steps.
Xander’s face fell. “What? In that green scunge?” A nod of my head caused him to squint and crane his neck forward. “What’s it doing down there?”
Now, I know it was absolutely not Xander’s fault that my cell had drowned, but I felt irrationally irritated with him anyway. If women from all walks of life weren’t constantly pursuing him then I wouldn’t have been caught up in said pursuit, and my phone would be alive and happily nestled in the breast pocket of my sport coat. I inhaled a deep breath with the intent of verbally laying into him. But then I realized that Xander was genuinely dismayed about my phone. All the air escaped my lungs, and I felt the beginning of a headache behind my eyeballs. Pinching my fingers to the bridge of my nose, I grunted. “Never mind. It’s a long story. I’m just going to fish it out. I’ll tell you about it later.”
“Whatever works for you.” Xander was amenable. As I rounded the railing and headed down the stairs, Xander plucked his phone out of his pocket. “I think this deserves documentation,” he called. A flash dazzled my eyes, and I’m sure I looked like a raccoon caught heading for a garbage can.
“Thanks,” I said, the word sour on my tongue.
The steps were much dryer than I’d anticipated. Initially, I inched along, worried I’d slip and crack my head open, but they were perfectly fine. My silhouette created an enormous black figure in the photographic images, and for a moment, a giant shadow monster was attacking Victorian era Cleveland. Something about the water was strange, though. The closer I got, the less it looked like water. At the final step, before the green sludge, I squatted down and took a poke at it. Much to my surprise, it wasn’t liquid at all. It was a very fine silk material someone had stretched over the bottom of the stairs. Most of it was reflective, but translucent, which gave it the watery effect. Bits of fine, moss green threads were woven into patches around the cloth to create the “scunge.” Taken out of the context of being scummy water, the fabric was actually quite beautiful.
“What are you doing?” A girl’s voice wafted down to me.
I didn’t have to look up to know that Rini was standing next to Xander. “Hey, guys,” I called to them. “Come down here. You have got to check this out.”
“Mmmh,” was Xander’s reply. I couldn’t exactly see his face, but I knew the expression he wore. His, yeah-I-don’t-think-so expression.
“Seriously.” I stood up and waved my hand in the get-over-here gesture. “You definitely want to see this.” Reluctantly, they joined me.
“Wow,” Xander breathed as he too felt the delicate fabric. “Why would someone put this here?”
“To keep kids from messing around down here,” Rini said as if stringing up fake water was the most obvious thing in the world.
“Couldn’t they just build a barricade or something?”
“No.” Rini shook her head. “If you build a barricade in a place like this, then teenagers want to find out what’s on the other side. If you fill the place with green, nasty water, then kids will probably leave it alone.”
Xander gave Rini a crooked smile. “I love your brain.” Rini blushed. I subdued my gag reflex.
My phone had made a small tear in the fabric, but not big enough for me to fit my arm through to reach for it. Even though the cloth had been masquerading as gross water, it really was beautiful up close, and I was reluctant to rip it more. I noticed a larger tear next to the wall below the railing. It was heavily in shadow, so no one would have noticed it unless they were standing at faux-water level. “I’m going to get my phone,” I announced, heading for the gap.
It was easy enough to slip through the cloth, and I quickly grabbed my cell. Besides a small scuff, it seemed no worse for the wear. Before frisking back up the stairs, I thought I might as well see what there was down the dark walkway that someone had taken so much trouble to conceal. I tried using the light from my cell phone screen to cut the night, but it provided very little penetration of the inky black. So I took a picture. I don’t have the best cell on the planet, but it does have an LED flash that gave me a little assistance. In the brief moment of light, I glimpsed a clean, reasonably pleasant-looking hallway. Or about as clean and pleasant looking as you can get in a structure that was made for mass transportation. The long, wide hallway was obviously being maintained for some reason. Unfortunately, the flash wasn’t strong enough to give me a clue as to what was at the end of the passage. “Weird,” I mumbled to myself.
“What are you doing down there?” Rini called to me.
“Just checking it out.”
“What’s it like?” Xander asked.
“I’m not sure yet,” I called back. “I’ll tell you in a minute. I’m going to go take a look.”
“Wait for me.” Xander stood up from where he had been crouching on the steps. “I’m coming down.” He headed toward the gap in the silk.
“Yeah, me, too.” Rini started to follow him.
Xander turned to her. “No, you should wait out here. I mean, I’m sure it’s fine, but if we disappear or something, we want someone on the outside.”
Rini crossed her arms and gave him the stink eye. “Oh, and it should be me who stands around waiting just because I’m the girl. Right?”
Xander was caught off guard for half a second. “Come on, Rini. You know I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Then how did you mean it?”
This threw Xander for several seconds. He was used to girls doing everything he said without question. All girls except Rini, that is. He should have been accustomed to Rini being obstinate, but for some
reason, he wasn’t. “I just…” he started, “…wanted to go see what Sherbie is looking at, and I said for you to wait here without thinking. I didn’t mean it because you’re a girl or anything. I’m sorry.”
Rini softened. “Okay, well… I guess that’s acceptable.”
Speaking cautiously so as not to fall back into the giant metaphorical hole he’d just climbed out of, Xander added, “I’d like to check out this tunnel with Sherbie. What would you like to do? I mean, there might be something cool down there, but it also might be safer to stay here.”
“There’s no way I’m standing here while you guys get to go have an adventure,” she said in her most fully actualized feminist voice. Then she cracked a grin. “Let’s check it out.”
The combined bluish glow of our three cell phones improved visibility a bit. We were able to move forward without the fear of running smack into a wall or falling off a ledge, but more than four feet in the distance, and everything was cloaked in pitch black. My heart was beating like a drum. I kept having a horrible feeling that someone or something was going to lunge out at us from the dark. I don’t know why I was so nervous; it was just a hallway, like any one you’d use to access an older subway or train station. It had obviously been renovated sometime since the Cleveland streetcars stopped running in the 1950s. The walls and floor were clean and cobweb free. There was no peeling paint hanging from the ceiling. “Maybe the city’s going to start up the streetcars again or something,” Xander wondered aloud as we moved hesitantly forward.
As the steady thub, thub, thub of the Goth band’s party music began to fade, it was replaced by a new sound. Something rhythmic but definitely not modern. Classical, I guessed. The further we moved along, the better I could hear it. There was the sound of violins and horns and timpani. “Do you guys hear that?” I said in a voice just above a whisper. I had no idea why I was whispering, but it felt like the right thing to do.
Fangs for Nothing (Vampire Hunting and Other Foolish Endeavors) Page 6
