Lya looked ahead into the bright mist. Something dark and shapeless loomed there, indistinct, and fleetingly glimpsed in the moving folds of the fog, but she knew that she had seen it.
“Let’s go,” said Michael, his voice rough and unsteady.
Professor Carter started walking toward the mist, holding the glowing stone in front of him like an invincible weapon. Suddenly Mr. Frieter burst into motion and sped by him.
“Wait !” cried Carter. “Frieter, wait!”
The old man disappeared into the folds of the mists and Lya thought she could see the dark, shapeless mass moving in response. The next instant, a scream rose above the terrible sounds of the scurrying claws, punctuating the clamor briefly with a message of total fear. Before anyone could react, the roadbed beneath their feet began to tremble, as though there were something under the gravel struggling to burst free. The train rocked violently, and a low rumbling, an earth-groaning sound, resonated through the tunnel walls. All three of them stumbled about as if they were on the deck of a storm-tossed ship.
“Earthquake!” shouted Michael, grabbing Lya’s hand automatically and moving quickly toward Lane Carter, who was steadying himself against the side of the tunnel with one hand, the other gripping the star-stone protectively to his chest. “Let’s get out of here!”
Carter nodded and glanced into the swirling mist. For the first time during their journey, Lya noticed fear in his eyes. She watched as the wiry little man held the glowing crystal in front of him and walked forward. The star-stone crystal began glowing more brightly, more intensely, as they walked into the mist, and the clouds boiled violently away from the greenish light. The earth tremors grew more turbulent; tearing, rending sounds ripped the air as the support girders began buckling from the unseen forces at work.
“Faster!” cried Michael. “It’s going to give way!” He slapped Carter on the back, pushing him into the mist as the three of them broke into a jog.
Lya watched the mist recoil from the light of the star-stone, parting as though to allow them passage. Suddenly they were back in the main tunnel leading toward the Bleecker Street station, and the sounds of the nightmare at their backs were receding like waves ebbing. There was one final implosion of cascading rock and debris as the facing of stone blocks collapsed inward. Staggering back from the ruins of the tunnel wall, Lya kept her gaze fixed upon the star-stone, which was now dimming rapidly. What kind of power was locked within its crystalline facets? she thought wildly as the adrenaline shock pumped through her. What kind of forces were they playing with?
“Where’s Frieter?” asked Michael, still holding her hand tightly.
“I don’t know …” she said slowly. “I heard him scream. Didn’t you hear it?”
“He’s still in there,” said Professor Carter, holding the star-stone close to his chest. It was now a dying ember of light, and Lya could hardly believe it had been a miniature green sun only moments before. “The poor bastard didn’t have a chance …”
“What’re we going to do?” she asked.
“Get out of here, first,” said Michael. “They’re not going to believe very much of this.”
“Who’s they?” asked Carter.
“All the people who have to know what happened—the police, the Transit Authority, the relatives of Mr. Frieter. That’s for starters,” said Michael.
Lane Carter looked at him for a moment without speaking. Even in the dim light of the tunnel, his eyes were bright and hard, no longer fearful. “Lieutenant, I suggest that we carefully consider exactly what we tell all those folks. I have the distinct impression that, for the moment at least, we should be rather selective about what facts we divulge.” Michael shook his head. “I don’t know, Lane. We’ll have to talk about it later. For now, let’s just get out of here.” He turned to Lya and pulled her a little closer to him. She looked into his eyes and saw the apprehension, the disbelief, lurking in the brown depths. “Are you all right?” he asked.
“I think so.”
“Then let’s go.”
CHAPTER 20
LOGGINS
Another long night at Pandora’s was winding down. Kandi, the last dancer before closing, was getting down to her little glittery G-string, and the men at the bar were nursing their final drinks, waiting to get one last flash of “pink” before slinking off into the night. Maurice called Ralphie inside, and he slipped into the back room to have a cup of coffee before going home.
In the dressing room, the rest of the girls were getting dressed, preparing to leave, and Ralphie tried to ignore their conversations. Some of them were still talking about the recent capture of the Slasher, and how they hoped it would be a little safer now. As Ralphie sat in the corner drinking the muddy black liquid in quick gulps, warming his fingers against the thin walls of Styrofoam, he heard his name called softly.
Turning, he saw one of the newer dancers, a thin, fragile-looking girl of perhaps nineteen. Her stage name was Kelley Stagg, but Ralphie knew her real name was Constance. “Oh, hello, Constance,” he said, but not knowing what else to say.
“Ralphie, I got to go down to see a friend in the Village. You live in the Village, don’t you?”
“Well, yeah, I guess I do. I’m near it, anyway. Why?”
“I never been down there this late at night, and I ain’t got enough for a cab till payday. You take the subway, don’t you?”
“Every night.”
“You mind if I ride down with you? I’d feel safer that way.” She spoke with a North Carolina accent that Ralphie found charming. He knew that Constance was none too smart, and certainly not a schemer. Her request was innocent enough, and normally he would gladly have accepted the offer of company on the ride home.
But tonight he had been thinking about the abandoned station he had seen on the Broadway line. Every night for the past week, he had been sensing that strange disorientation as his train passed it, and just thinking about the place had been keeping him awake at night. He had finally made up his mind to do something about it tonight. And now, tonight of all nights, Constance asked him for a favor.
“Well, I’m not going right home,” he said slowly. “I have to stop somewhere first. I don’t know how long it’ll take …”
“That’s okay,” she said. “I can dig it. I’ll wait for you if it’s okay.”
“Are you sure?” He looked at her eyes, still rimmed with heavy mascara and eyeliner, searching for he knew not what.
She cocked her head to the side and grinned. “Yeah, why not? I got all night … and I don’t wanna ride that train by myself, that’s for sure!”
Ralphie finished his coffee and threw the cup in the trash. “Okay, let’s go.”
She followed him out into the Broadway night where cabs battled for one last fare and the denizens of the dark hours huddled in shadowed doorways and sprawled on street corners. He walked with Constance in silence, not knowing what to say. They descended into the Times Square station, pushed through the turnstiles, and went down to the platform. He had been thinking of quitting his job at Pandora’s because it led nowhere, and he was just hanging on because he didn’t feel like going through the hassle of finding something better. He could have talked to Constance about that, but he knew she didn’t really care. She was really just like all the others who treated him as if he were invisible; she was just using him, that was all. She probably thought of him the way everybody else did: a loser, a hunched-up, bummy-looking clubfoot.
Sometimes he thought that he would show them all how wrong they were, show Constance and everybody else. But he wasn’t sure how.
A roar filled the station as the Local rumbled to a stop. The train was a sooty, speckled monstrosity covered with spray-painted graffiti. It looked like an old, dying beast. Its doors opened and Ralphie ushered Constance inside where they moved to two seats. The air in the car was rank with the smell of cheap wine and vomit, but the only other passenger, a dozing fur-coated pimp in a droopy-brimmed hat, did not seem to notice.
The doors closed and the train entered the darkness.
Penn Station, 28th Street, 23rd. The train made its stops and hurtled along, and still Ralphie said nothing to his companion. He was thinking about the phantom station as they drew closer to it. Would it happen again? Would it be the same with Constance along? They stopped at 18th Street, then 14th. Sheridan Square was next, and the train seemed to be going slower already. He hoped that it was not his imagination. He was thinking of quickly explaining it all to Constance in the hope that she might understand, as the train stopped at the square.
Two college girls entered the train wearing almost identical suede coats and Calvin Klein jeans. They sat across from Ralphie, and one of them looked squarely at him and smiled. He was so shocked by the gesture that he felt something stir in his chest. Without thinking, he smiled back at the girl. She was rather attractive.
“You’re kind of cute,” said the girl. “Come here often?”
Ralphie couldn’t believe what he had heard. He could only stare for a moment. “What?” he asked dumbly. He could feel Constance looking at him.
The girl giggled to her friend, who looked at Ralphie and laughed, then whispered back to her friend, “Hey watch it, you’re getting Quasimodo excited!”
They both laughed uproariously, and Ralphie told himself that they must be stoned on something or other. Then Constance laughed with them, and he felt something shatter inside himself, something breaking up into dust. Why was it always like this? Why were they so cruel?
He wanted to say something to them, or at least to Constance, but the train was moving again, and his thoughts raced ahead as he sensed the train approaching his secret place once more. But there was something new smoldering in his heart, a new, still unrecognized feeling. As he stared past the girls into the reflections in the glass, he felt it happening again …
It was a slowness overtaking him, and he looked at the other passengers, at Constance. Why didn’t they feel it, too? He could feel the train struggling to get past the place, the station with no name. Watching and waiting, Ralphie sensed something tugging at the fibers of time itself. There came a flicker of light beyond the windows of the car, and, for an instant, an illuminated rectangle. The image burned into his mind: the single bulb, the cold beige tiles, and the empty platform. Did Constance see it?
And then it was gone.
The train seemed to be regaining speed, and reality was again taking over. He heard the giggling of the stoned college girls, the clacking of the wheels on the rails. How could they not have seen it? Felt it? He stood up, grabbing the center pole, and fought a momentary sensation of giddiness. He swayed drunkenly as the train slowed to a halt at the Houston Street stop. Constance was looking at him oddly.
“We’ve got to get off here,” he said. Forcing his legs to move, he limped from the car, and Constance followed him out to the concrete platform.
“Hey, Ralphie, you all right? You don’t look so good.” There was almost care, concern, in her voice.
He nodded and the vertigo passed as the cool air of the platform washed over him. The doors whooshed shut and the train clattered from the station, leaving him and Constance alone. He stared back up the tunnel, into the blackness from which they had come. It was so close, he thought. Not far from where he stood right now …
There would be no train for fifteen minutes. There was enough time. He would do it. As he began to ease off the platform and down to the roadbed, he heard Constance cry out to him.
“Ralphie, you nuts? What’re you doin’?”
Absently he looked back at her, as though she was a minor interruption of his mission. “I… I have to go back down the tunnel,” he said. “You can wait here for me if you want. I told you I had to stop off somewhere, didn’t I?”
Constance grinned. “Yeah, but I didn’t think it would be down there!”
“You don’t understand, Constance, but I have to go down there.”
“Well, I’m not staying here by myself. I’m coming with you.”
He helped her down to the roadbed, warned her about the electrified third rail, and started down the tunnel, which gaped in the darkness like a great mouth waiting to devour them. The tracks curved to the left and soon the lights from the Houston Street platform were obscured. They walked along in almost total darkness, illuminated only by the blue lights and a distant semaphore signal. An emptiness hung in his bowels as he moved slowly ahead. He could hear Constance’s ragged breathing, but she was obviously so unnerved by the experience that she was not in the mood for talking. He soon lost all sense of time and concentrated instead on keeping his footing on the uneven roadbed, on the dead touch of the wall to his left. Even with the girl behind him, he felt terribly alone, and he had the feeling in his gut that he was going to a place no one else had ever been before.
Something was taking shape ahead of them, rimmed by faint light. He saw that it was the outline of a support girder along the wall. Another came into view, and then another. With each step, the light grew stronger, and he could see the shine on the rails ahead of them. The wall curved to the left again, and suddenly they could see it: a rectangle of light suspended in the darkness. It looked unreal, like a stage devoid of props and actors.
“What’s that?” asked Constance.
“That’s where we’re going.”
“But what is it?” There was apprehension in her voice.
“I don’t know. That’s what I want to find out. Now, be quiet please.”
He pressed forward and pulled himself up over the edge of the platform, then reached down to help Constance up. He sensed a coldness about the place that transcended temperature. It was a chilling sense of timelessness that touched his mind rather than his flesh. Ralphie could see that there were no stairs leading down to the platform. No doors. Nothing but seamless walls stretching off into the shadows beyond the circle of light from the solitary bulb.
He knew that he must walk into those shadows, and as he did so, he became more aware of the silence of the place. The sound of his elevated heel seemed so loud, so obscenely loud. He should have been afraid of this place, but fear was overpowered by an almost mystical need to know this place. Something seemed to be calling him here, and he had to identify it.
Suddenly something touched his face coldly. Out of the shadows, it languished and played upon his cheek like heavy fog. Constance shied back and called his name, but he ignored her. They were staring into a thick, bright mist that seemed to glow with an energy of its own. “Come on,” he said softly.
Constance shook her head, but he took her hand and tugged her along, into the mist, which seemed to grow brighter the deeper they penetrated its depths. He sensed a barrier ahead, but not anything that could stop him. Rather a portal through which he must pass.
He stepped forward …
… to find that they were standing on a narrow, rocky ledge, which wound through and along the sheer face of a great cavern. An underground cavern that could not, should not, be here so close beneath the streets of the city. Above them, like the vault of a cathedral, the ceiling arched, defined by the phosphorescent glow of mineral veins. To his right, a sharply edged cliff dropped off into utter darkness; to his left was a perfectly vertical wall.
“Ralphie, what the hell is this place? What’re you doin’ here? I’m scared, Ralphie, I wanna get out of here!”
“Shut up!” he said, his voice carrying an authority he had never known he possessed.
He advanced along the narrow path, and Constance had no choice but to follow him or be left behind. As they moved forward, each step brought a rising sound more clearly to them. At first it was like a gently gathering wind, whispering, then murmuring, then finally howling through the cavern. It sounded like uncontrollable wailing.
Ralphie recognized the sound immediately. He knew it in the center of his soul—it was the sound of loneliness, utter and complete aloneness. It was a sound made by something totally alien, and simultaneously all too human. It was a s
ound that, until now, he had heard only in the depths of his own mind; such a primal, basic sound. He was entranced by it, moving closer to its source, forgetting Constance.
Then they saw the thing.
The girl gasped and recoiled, trembling and whimpering. The ledge ahead of them had widened, becoming a mesa which sloped gently upward to the sheer cliff face. Affixed to the side of the cliff upon a jagged outcropping of rock was the creature. Even from a distance it looked monstrous. Its arms and legs gave it a vaguely human form, but its true shape was amorphous, indistinct. There was a shimmering, almost slimy aspect to its body as it writhed and strained against the great shining chains that bound it to the rock.
“Ralphie, let’s get out of here …” Constance’s voice was a hoarse whisper. She tugged at his coat sleeve, but he paid no attention.
Moving closer, he saw that a bird was perched on a piece of the jagged rock. At least, it appeared to be a bird, but he knew that it was something else. Balancing and swaying, hatting the air with its leathery wings, it was skeletal, reptilian. Its head was hideously out of proportion to its thin body, all curved beak and yellow, moon-pool eyes.
The bird-thing paid no attention to Ralphie’s approach, continuing its deadly task—savagely tearing out the chained one’s entrails. With each rooting thrust of the bird’s beak, Ralphie heard the wailing fill the chamber, each time louder than the last. Ralphie watched the nightmare for a moment— one foul creature feeding upon the other—and knew it for what it was.
“Ralphie, Fm leaving! Let’s go, please! What is that thing?!” Constance was backing away from him toward the swirling mist. She called out his name one more time, then turned and ran, terrified, into the glowing clouds. Ralphie ignored her departure.
Night-Train Page 19
