“Where’s Warren?” Lucy asked.
“Right here…fucking bitch blow job,” Warren replied, peeking out from behind a Dumpster where he appeared to have been keeping an eye out. “We need to…twat whore…move fast. Roger won’t wait.”
No one seemed to know or want to say who Roger was, only that he might be able to help Jojola learn what had happened to Grale after that night at St. Patrick’s. Ever since Jojola and Lucy had arrived in New York, they’d gone out at night trying to learn from the street people if Grale was alive. Lucy had called into sewer drains and yelled into subway tunnels.
Most of the street people they met who knew of Grale said they believed that he was dead. But others muttered that perhaps there was a connection between Grale and a shadow army of Mole People who roamed the subterranean depths beneath the city—and sometimes the streets at night—hunting evil men. But no one seemed to know for sure if Grale led them, much less how to find him.
Until one evening, shortly before Christmas, Booger and Dirty Warren had suddenly appeared. “Why…turd face…do you want to find a dead…fuck you…man?” Warren asked.
“My friend here, John Jojola, had a dream,” Lucy replied.
“Ah, the brave Indian…piece of shit…oh crap, oh crap,” Warren said with a little bow. “But you know Grale died…suck my cock.”
“We know,” Lucy said. “But John thinks he may still be alive.”
“It could be a dangerous journey, and all for nothing.”
“I still have to try,” Jojola interjected. “Can you help?”
Booger had stepped in front of him and bent over until his face was mere inches from Jojola’s. The stench of the man’s body and the foulness of his breath nearly made him gag, but there was intelligence in the small dark eyes that peered into his. “Es ’oo dangerous,” the man said as he straightened again. “Es ’adness and ’eath.”
“Madness and death,” Warren translated. “But if that is your fate…motherfucker piss breath…who am I to stop you.” He’d then told them to meet at the Thai bistro.
Outside the restaurant, Warren took Jojola aside. “It may be too late,” he said. “Take Lucy and her family and flee to New Mexico.”
“If it’s so dangerous,” Jojola replied, “why don’t you leave?” He searched the man’s face and thought, If the other one is a buffalo, then this one is Coyote, the Trickster, with his curious affliction. I should be wary of him, but on the other hand, Coyote has helped me in the past.
“Because…dumb shit…this is my home,” Warren replied. “If the beginning of the end starts here, then here I will be.”
Booger had then quickly led the way across Bowery and Canal to Chrystie. Few people were out on Christmas night and those who were gave Booger a wide berth. Every once in a while, the giant would stop his shuffling gait and look around, sniffing the air, as if he worried that they were being followed. He plunged through Sara D. Roosevelt Park and across Allen Street until he reached a row of old brick tenement buildings on Orchard Street and stopped outside the one with a sign: Lower East Side Tenement Museum.
Booger and Warren both looked around nervously; then, motioning for the others to follow, they hustled up the stairs and rang the doorbell. After a minute a light appeared inside the museum and came toward the door as if someone were carrying a candle. As was the case, when the door opened and a small, bald man wearing smeared round glasses appeared, holding the candle up to each of their faces.
“May I help you?” he asked, apparently not concerned that a filthy giant, a man muttering obscenities, an Indian, a cowboy, and a girl were standing on the doorstep of a museum that was closed for the holiday. At least that’s what the sign on the door said.
“‘Behold, a pale horse,’” Warren said. “Shit.”
“‘And the name of him who sat on it was Death,’” the little man replied. He pointed a finger at Jojola and said, “Only him. I’m sorry but the rest of you must leave.”
Lucy started to object, but Jojola stopped her. “It’s all right, Lucy. This is the part I need to do on my own.”
“Let me come with you,” she cried. “I know David better than anyone. If he’s alive he wouldn’t let me be hurt.”
Jojola shook his head. “Can’t do it, Lucy. I have a feeling we all have a part to play out in this, but this journey is mine.” He looked at Ned. “Take her home, son. And Lucy, if something happens and I don’t come back…tell my son that I love him and will see him down the trail.”
Lucy nodded and allowed herself to be guided back down the stairs. The little man closed the door and locked it behind them. He looked up at Jojola’s face, searching for a moment, then turned and led the way back through the museum.
They reached a stairway and headed down into the basement, past an ancient boiler and coal furnace, until they came to a wall. Jojola wondered why they’d stopped but then the little man tapped on the wall with a small stick. A portion of the wall then moved outward, and another man, only slightly bigger than his guide and dressed in a long, hooded robe, jumped out.
“This is Roger,” his guide said and turned to go.
When he was gone, the new man looked up at Jojola from beneath the hood, which shrouded most of his face in shadow. “So, you’re the up-worlder who killed the demon Lichner,” he said. “Nice work. You must be pretty handy with the pig-sticker you have in your bag. You might want to keep that handy where we’re going.”
“Where are we going?” Jojola asked.
The man grinned. “Why, down under, don’t you know.”
“Is that where I’ll find Grale?”
The man shrugged. “Who knows what you’ll find. Maybe only death.” With that the man turned and went back through the secret passage.
Jojola hesitated. He didn’t want to follow this man. He didn’t want to die where the sun would not find his soul. Pulling open his backpack, he removed the night-vision goggles, which he placed on his head, and his knife, which he attached to his belt.
“You coming?” a voice said from beyond the hole in the wall.
“Right behind you, Roger,” he said and plunged into the dark.
They’d marched for several hours in the dark—Roger using a small flashlight, Jojola with his goggles. The paths they took varied. At first they seemed to follow some sort of passageway between buildings, with old bricks beneath their feet and lining the walls.
Then Roger squeezed through a crack and Jojola followed him into what appeared to be an ancient sewer system. “Built in the 1800s and abandoned,” his guide explained. “This whole island is honeycombed with passages and sewers and subway lines—some of them working, some of them not and long forgotten. Some we have no idea who built them or why.”
For a time they’d followed a subway track. “Stay away from the third rail,” Roger warned. “Touch it and you’ll disintegrate.”
That path had led to a hole that went down a rickety old ladder that had obviously been taken from somewhere else—it looked as if it had once belonged on a fire escape—and into a narrow, damp passage carved from the rock. The passage plunged down, turned corners, rose again. Sometimes there’d be a roar and a subway train would pass overhead or to one side. Other times they’d march along with no other sounds than the dripping of water and the scurrying of rats.
At least Jojola thought they were rats. Roger sometimes paused when the scurrying grew louder in side passages. He seemed concerned, but all he’d say was, “We need to keep moving.”
Although at times they kept up a good pace, other times the going was slow as they wound their way through the maze of tunnels, and even seemed to double back. At one point, after they’d plunged for what Jojola estimated to be a half mile, Roger called a halt.
“Sorry, need to catch my breath,” he’d panted.
“You okay?” Jojola asked.
“Not really,” Roger replied. “My liver’s giving out on me. Used to be a stockbroker in the up-world, you know. Had a wife and kids, nice
home in Mount Vernon. But, man, did I love the bottle. Lost everything, including my self-respect. Now look where it got me.” The man laughed bitterly.
“Yeah? I had my own love affair with tequila and whiskey,” Jojola said. “Spent a lot of time in gutters and jails. But why live down here?”
“Too hard to stay sober up there,” Roger said. “And I guess this is my self-imposed purgatory to atone for abandoning my family, as well as myself. I did some pretty terrible things up there. At least here I’m doing some good.”
“How’s that?”
“Why, trying to keep the hounds of hell at bay so that the rest of the world can enjoy their Christmas dinners and PlayStations,” Roger said with another bitter laugh. “Demon hunting, Mr. Jojola.”
“Demon hunting?” Jojola asked. But instead of an answer from Roger, he was struck by a rock that came out of the dark, and then another.
“You’re about to find out, Mr. Jojola. I suggest you get out that knife,” Roger shouted, pulling aside his robe to produce a long knife of his own.
Then Jojola saw them. A dozen pale human figures with luminous eyes, flitting from crevice to crevice toward them. They brandished sticks and metal bars; occasionally one stooped to pick up a rock and hurl it in their direction.
“Show them no mercy, Mr. Jojola,” Roger said. “They’ll show you none.” With that he shouted, “In the name of Jesus Christ, I commend your souls to hell,” and ran to meet the attackers.
Jojola followed and found himself face-to-face with a large man in tattered clothing with fingernails like talons. “Stop, I don’t want to fight you,” Jojola said.
The man opened his mouth in a horrible leer but just hissed as he swung a huge club at Jojola, who ducked and stabbed for the man’s chest. The blade sank deep and the man screamed and fell to the ground writhing.
Before he could turn, another of the attackers jumped on Jojola’s back and sank his teeth deep into his shoulder. Reaching up, Jojola grabbed the man by the hair and pulled him off. Still holding him up, he slashed with his blade and nearly severed his assailant’s head from his body.
The attack was over as suddenly as it began. Jojola and Roger had backed themselves against a wall with their blades out when one of the group barked some command and they retreated—though not before clubbing the first of Jojola’s victims to death and dragging him and the other dead man off.
“Something for the old stew pot tonight,” Roger said and laughed mirthlessly.
“What in the hell was that?” Jojola said, rubbing his shoulder where he’d been bitten.
“We like to call them morlocks, you know, after the creatures in H. G. Wells’s book The Time Machine,” Roger replied. “But really they are evil men—murderers, rapists, pedophiles, the criminally insane possessed by demons—who have fled into these lovely depths, though they venture out on dark nights to prey upon up-worlders. These, and others even more dangerous, are the ones we hunt, Mr. Jojola…. What’s wrong with your shoulder?”
“One of the bastards bit me.”
“Hmmm, that’s not good. They don’t have the best dental hygiene, you know, and their bites tend to cause infection. We’ll have to have it treated when we arrive.”
“And when will that be?”
“Soon, Mr. Jojola. But I should caution you, we are in a very dangerous spot and not just from our hungry friends. We will have to go very slowly and carefully.”
The troop of armed men had proved Roger right, but they’d run into no further problems by the time they reached their destination. Jojola’s guide led him down another ladder, at the bottom of which stood a half-dozen men and women, all armed with a variety of weapons, from knives and spears to one or two guns.
“Your knife,” said the largest, stepping up to Jojola with his hand out.
Jojola stepped back. “Sorry, no one touches my knife while I’m alive.”
“Suit yourself,” the big man said, lowering a sawed-off shotgun.
A moment later, the shotgun clattered to the ground, and Jojola straddled the man, who lay on his stomach, and pulled his head back by the hair, the knife at the man’s throat. The man’s stunned comrades who’d hardly had time to react when the Indian disarmed their leader, pointed their weapons but seemed unsure of what to do next.
“If they don’t back off, you’ll die before I do,” Jojola snarled.
“Stop!” a loud voice commanded from off to the side. “We are all friends here.”
A tall, hooded figure entered the tunnel from behind a curtain of burlap sacks sewn together. He threw back his hood and Jojola found himself looking at the face that had haunted his dreams recently.
“David Grale,” he said, releasing the leader of the guards.
“John Jojola, I presume,” Grale said and laughed, which caused him to suddenly bend over and gasp in obvious pain. He straightened again and, his voice weaker, said, “My friends tell me that you and Miss Lucy Karp have been inquiring about my health, which is sadly lacking, I’m afraid.”
Jojola pointed to Grale’s midsection. “The knife wound?”
“Yes,” Grale agreed. “I’m afraid the demon Lichner has done for me, although it will take a bit more time than he would have hoped.”
“But I felt for your pulse…the blood…”
“Why am I not dead?” Grale asked with a solemn look. “I believe it is because God has more tasks for me before He calls me home. That and our wonderful little medical clinic we’ve established here in my…kingdom. But come, let me show you.”
Grale turned and passed through the burlap sack curtain, expecting Jojola to follow. They walked quickly down another tunnel, then climbed another ladder into a large hall.
Jojola was surprised to see that the gymnasium-size hall was illuminated by electric lamps.
Grale caught his glance and smiled a little sheepishly. “We’ve several electricians among our brothers and sisters here in down-world, and I’m afraid we’ve been naughty and tapped into New York public utilities.”
Looking around, Jojola took in the “brothers and sisters,” who walked through the hall or conversed in small groups. Some were obviously mentally troubled, meandering around, talking to themselves. One half-naked woman ran past, shrieking, “They’ve taken my baby! They’ve taken my baby!”
Grale watched her disappear out of the hall and turned back to Jojola. “My apologies; Helen’s five-year-old disappeared on the way home from school some ten years ago and she’s never recovered. Some of our brothers and sisters among the Mole People take more looking after than others. But it’s our Christian duty and we’re happy to help.”
“Who are the Mole People?” Jojola said. “I take it there is some difference between them and the morlocks or demons Roger and I met.”
“Ah, so you met those we hunt…and who sometimes hunt us,” Grale said.
“Yes, I had to kill several, and one bit me on the shoulder.”
Grale frowned. “We’ll need to see about antibiotics. Those wounds are common and they tend to cause nasty infections. Anyway, in answer to your question: yes, the difference is that between day and night, good and evil. The Mole People are—as Lady Liberty might say if she could speak—the wretched refuse of New York, the unwanted, the sick, the despairing…”
“Homeless…street people?” Jojola asked.
“One more step farther down the ladder of acceptance in our society,” Grale said. “Those who for one reason or another—shame, loathsome physical deformities, up-world desires that they would prefer to avoid—have found their way down here. But they are not homeless. This is their home. They were a bit unorganized and were set upon by the evil ones who lurk down here as well until I arrived and brought with me the light of Jesus Christ Our Savior…as well as that of New York Electric. But now, as you can see, they have a place to call their own.”
Grale pointed and Jojola saw that the hall was lined with small alcoves. Some were closed to view by more burlap sacking. But others were open a
nd revealed beds and other furniture—obviously recycled from the up-world—and personal effects. Some were occupied by a single person, but others housed what appeared to be entire families.
“How do they survive?” Jojola asked.
Grale shrugged. “Scrounging, begging—and I’m afraid a certain amount of stealing, though we try to discourage it except in cases of survival—in the up-world.”
Leading him to one of the larger alcoves, Grale pulled back the curtain to reveal an amazingly well-equipped medical clinic. “Sorry, appears that the doctor is out,” he said. “But here my life hung in the balance for some weeks. I guess I needed four complete blood transfusions. But come, John Jojola, you did not make this journey to ask questions about people the rest of the world has forgotten, or my health.”
Grale led Jojola to an alcove, spartan except for a crucifix on the wall and a straw mattress on the ground. “My humble abode. So tell me, what brings you?”
A half hour later, Jojola finished his story—both the Vietnam version and the dream version.
As he spoke, Grale’s already haggard face looked even more tired. He sighed. “I think I can explain some of your dream by showing you something.”
Grale swept out of the room and was joined by two bodyguards and Jojola. They walked for perhaps a quarter of a mile—apparently paralleling a subway track, judging by the regularly interspersed roars as trains went past on the other side of the wall. As they walked, Grale filled him in.
“I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of a man named Alfred Ely Beach? Well, in 1870, Mr. Beach, a real dreamer, secretly built a small prototype of a pneumatic subway that would run a short distance under Broadway. He figured, correctly, that Boss Tweed and his cronies in Tammany Hall would have extorted huge sums from him to build his experiment, so he did it under their noses by renting the basement of Devlin’s Clothing Store at Broadway and Murray and then, over a period of fifty-eight days, having his men dig out a tunnel.”
Fury (The Butch Karp and Marlene Ciampi Series Book 17) Page 39
