The living see, but they do not know; such is the way of existence for all things that remain sight unseen. But I have so many things to share, so much for you to learn. The very stones cry out. Will you be one to see and to hear me?
Can you be moved to exalt me, acquit me, and not merely damn me for my sins?
Do you know how many untoward moments —when you think no one is looking— I have collected, passing beneath my gaze like leaves in autumn cast down and buffeted in the breeze of busy bustle, soon forgotten? How could you possibly know your staggering multitude, your fullness of life, even when you are at your worst, New York? I count your precious heads, standing watch over the whole of this glorious, gluttonous, grievous place. I am singular and you are endless, a hydra of horror and heroism. I have pardoned all the sins I have witnessed. The river that runs at my feet is your baptismal waters and I wash you clean. Who am I to judge?
No one’s heart has the capacity mine does. When I usher you to work each and every day, I do so because I adore you. I want to hold your feet as if they were fragile blossoms and I want to ferry them gently down a stream. But sometimes you ignore my care, my dream. You stray, you fall, you fling yourself far from my grasp. But alas, I do not and will not catch you. My ardor, it would seem, is selfish and has no net.
It took great sacrifice before I learned to care. It took blood. It took lives. And when the dead accrue on my watch, those broken bodies remind me of love. And so thusly, I suppose I need a constant supply. Everyone needs to be reminded of fragility, otherwise we take the span of life for granted. Thank you, lost little sacrificial lambs, for your perspective. Your deaths honor my first victims.
When I took those boys down, down below the depths of the waters, down when I turned their very blood inside out, you have to believe that I didn’t understand what it would do. I thought we were dancing, those boys and me, fresh and full of life against my body. I didn’t know how my need for their hands on my frame would snuff out their life. How could any of us have known I would break their tender bodies by my indomitable will, plunging them down then dragging them up, torn from within? The East River Styx. On my account, scores of flesh and bone were rent. I struggle to feel guilt, for I am like a king who sent scores of men out to slaughter; while tragic, some must die so that the great might live and this is simply the way of the world since time immemorial.
I am never lonely, for those boys still dance with me, around my legs; I feel them entwine around my limbs like wires coiled into cables, cold ghosts bound to me eternally. My spectral retinue, my courtesans, I couldn’t let them go if I tried; they are the spiritual mortar of my existence.
But I grow old and fond and lonely, and as I age I grow worried for my soul. Not only have I killed, I have kept. I should release those dear boys. But what of me will go when they do?
O Holy Mother, by you, surely, I shall be sanctified. It is for Mother’s sake I live to dream.
Not everyone has a God, but everyone has a maker. And I miss her. She who engineered my heart with her tireless work, pacing around me until I was well and mighty and towered above any peer.
I miss my sweet Emily, so smart, shrewd and clever. Mother. Goddess. Who else but she would have demanded the best for me, her wayward son, even though I cost lives dear to her? I made all around her suffer. First, her father-in-law John, then the health of her husband, Washington. But I could never hurt her. She was too precious. She never blamed me, gracious mistress, for all the pain I caused. She strode out into the city to demand that I had all I needed. I was called horrid, bestial names, a grand mistake, a waste of life and funds. It was declared far and wide that I was recklessly squandering the city’s burgeoning wealth. But she knew that this is what greatness does, it takes. It feeds. It requires lives and blood and money.
Every day I look for Emily’s face to pass by me, near me. I ache for her to haunt me. But she is gone, I hope to magnificent and well deserved rest as an engineer of the
celestial skies. Without her, the vision that I grew up to be would have been only a wistful failure in old men’s eyes. Without her I would be neither girded nor strong. Without her I would be nothing. And all at a time when women were just so, nothing. But she was everything. She will never be credited with all that she was. Is. Represents. She is my foundation and my soaring heights. When you look upon me, do spare a thought for beloved Emily; I cared about nothing until she championed me.
When it took so much sweat, so many hands, muscles, tears, hours, and lives to make me, how am I not more real than any one human being? I am a behemoth entity. I am alive. My stones are bones and my wires are veins and I stand with two enormous legs astride you, New York. And you pass, but by my leave.
Come closer, and know me better. See me. Fix your gaze upon the dual pointed arches of my great span and allow my pinnacle to pierce your heart with its skyward glory. By the structure of my cathedral arches I am made holy. I elevate you all in your travels. I am icon. Through blood and body, I am transubstantiated.
You are New York and you made a beautiful beast stone by stone. You can’t retract what you have wrought. I’m too ingrained in your heart. You do love me too much to lose me, no matter what I’ve done. The past is the past. We are co-dependent and we could not extricate if we tried. Who of you, New York, has ever lived entirely free from sin? Free from causing someone pain? Every day you make choices of who will have and who will have naught. I give myself freely to all as those who gave themselves unto me. Who is as selfless as I?
You are the world’s greatest, most fraught city and I am your bridge. We are so proud, we monsters.
Tell me you love me. Say it. Now that I age, wearied and worried, I need you to promise you’ll take care of me. Dance with me like the boys did down in the depths so long ago, like they still do long after their bodies have rotted away. This time, let me hold your feet and you’ll not suffer. Cling to me and you’ll be safe. Now that I am strong and solid enough, I do not need such destruction to feed my growing body. I’ll take better care of you now that I’m older. Wiser. Settled into my foundations.
I am your most stunning and magnificent ghost story. I am ceaselessly haunted by the lives that gave me life, and while I cannot resurrect those who float about my flagstones, I now appreciate them in the ways that only time can fashion. Forgive me, love me, and I will lift you up to heaven.
~~END~~
Hand of Bone
by W. H. Pugmire
I had taxied across the bridge, into Brooklyn, and entered the spacious white apartment on Parkside Avenue. The new temporary maid allowed me entrance and quietly guided me into Sonia’s bedroom. I confess that the sight of my once-robust friend shocked and alarmed me. Her glow of vibrancy had ebbed from her, and she reclined in her exotic divan like some pale depleted ghost. I sat silently in the chair at her bedside and listened to her quiet breathing, and I could just make out that something rested at her bosom, beneath her folded hands. Tenderly, I touched my hand to hers and saw her smile; and when at last her eyes opened, I was sad to see that they had lost their lovely sparkle.
“Sam,” she sighed. “It was good of you to come. I must look awful, judging from your expression. This illness came so suddenly.”
“Of course I look ‘awful’ to one who is never ill. I have always found your energy so exhausting, languid creature that I am. Really, my dear, this invalid pose does not suit you at all. I advise you to discard it.”
“I’ve caught something that I can’t exorcise. I feel weighed down by the world. No, not myself at all.” She hesitated for a moment and looked uncertain. “I think it’s related to this.” She patted her fingers at the thing beneath her hands. Taking up one of her own pale hands, I kissed it, and then I reached underneath her other hand and lifted her peculiar relic. “I found it last week, in the cemetery of the Flatbush Reformed Church—you know the one we walked through last summer, where all of the tombstones are in Dutch. This had broken off an angel that was half-buried in
the ground. I liked the way it shimmered in moonlight, and on impulse I brought it home with me. I think its owner misses it.”
Kindly, I laughed. “Its owner?”
She no longer smiled. “The occupant in the shallow grave.”
I scrutinized the object held just before my eyes. “You’ve been reading Poe, I suppose. His ideas can be so suggestive. I’m surprised to find this object so light, I thought at first it would be solid stone. But I think it must be smooth and polished bone. Yet it is not skeletal in design. Some kind of hoax, obviously, some macabre plaything that was planted in the burying ground as morbid jest. It feels delicate, doesn’t it? Little wonder this chiseled hand broke free.”
“Could you return it? Perhaps then I will regain my health.”
I cocked my head and slanted my eyes. I thought to accuse her of being playful, but as I studied her face I knew that her illness was not feigned. I studied the hand of bone again. “That’s a very queer sentiment, my dear. It’s rather disconcerting, after all these years, to discover that the most logical woman I have ever known is tainted with superstition. What am I to do, mutter some obscure words in moonlight as I return this relic to its ghastly bed?” Her smile was wan as she seemed to settle deeper into her own divan. “I think you need to rest, my dear.”
“I’ll rest more assuredly if you’ll do what I ask. Will you?”
I ran my tongue along my lips and pouted prettily, and then I bent and kissed her brow. “As you wish.”
“I have a bit of silk in which I wrap it, there on that table. Thank you, Samuel. Now I can sleep.”
Rising, I located the square of silk and wrapped the hand within it. “Toodles, my pet,” I told her, and then I let myself out of the apartment and began to stroll down Flatbush until I came to Corner of Church Avenue. The moon was high and the sky dotted with starlight, and when at last I came to the Dutch Reformed Church, I paused to admire its moonlit steeple. I remembered that the church had stood there since the latter 1790s, although an earlier edifice had once stood there and the earliest grave in the cemetery was dated 1754. Finally, I pushed through the black wrought iron gate and entered the cemetery, perplexed at how the night seemed to darken as I stepped onto graveyard ground. It wasn’t a large churchyard, and it didn’t take me long before I came upon a sinister tree with outstretched branches, beneath which was the shallow grave and its impossible occupant.
Perhaps clouds had partially obscured the moon and had suddenly drifted from it, for the air grew brighter and the reposing figure more defined. In that newborn illumination, I seemed to recognize the thing on which I looked. What lay before me was Thanatos, or its Eidolon. Suddenly the area in which I found myself became enhanced by a quality of fanciful nightmare that triggered an emotional response deep within me. A diseased part of my personality thrilled at the sensation of horror, at the grave, the pale watching moon, the clinging shadows and antique church, the sudden rising of a gently moaning night-wind. Then the night was pierced by another sound: the faint distant baying of what might have been a hound, but resembled more the baying of a wolf. I tried to remember how near I was to Prospect Park Zoo.
I imagined there was movement in the churchyard, as if black things were crowding ‘round me, but realized that it was merely shadows roaming in the moving moonlight, silhouettes of gray rotting slabs and branches swaying in the rising wind. I knelt onto the ground before the shallow grave and studied the thing of bone. In general outline it was human-like, although fashioned from some kind of smooth and polished bone-like substance. Although its back was buried into the earth, I could just see the tips of wings that protruded from its back. Entirely hairless, the creature’s head was slightly canine in contour, and its cruel mouth clamped closed. Its arms were folded on its chest, and I gazed at the one that lacked a hand.
Trembling slightly, I held up the wrapped article and unfolded the silk cloth with which I had clothed it. I did not feel silly as I placed the hand onto the creature’s breast and tried to fit it into place where it had broken off at the wrist. I had caught, completely, my friend’s emotional disease, my mind completely enticed by the essence of this unfathomable creature. I moaned with the rising wind and ached to utter some kind of prayer with which to plead for the soul of my beloved associate, but I knew no Christian entreaties and remembered but snatches of the Hebrew prayers that I had uttered at family gatherings. I was overwhelmed with a profound regret that I had no knowledge of antique Greek; for I felt that that ancient tongue alone could communicate my desire to the daemon that reclined before me in its pit.
I heard the howling a second time, and reasoned that it must be a figment of diseased imagination, for it seemed to come from somewhere above me. A large shadow drifted before the moon, and I was submerged in shadow. As tears gathered in my eyes, I bent and kissed the hand that had broken off the thing of bone. I whispered an agonized plea for the benefit of my beloved friend. The merciless response came below me, and I could not understand if the creature shifted in its shallow bed or if it was all a trick of moonglow and shifting shadow. Was it a voice I heard, or some weird gibbering of wind? How can I describe that unthinkable, inhuman voice? It was dry and remorseless like unto the midnight wind that cut into me. It was hollow and haunted, like the pit in which the daemon dwelt. It was like a kiss of extinction, disembodied and unearthly. And this is what it said:
“You fool, Sonia is dead.”
~~END~~
Beautiful Dreams
by D.J. Tyrer
Thirty-nine Chambers Street. The address sounded innocuous when said like that. He remembered it as it had been a few years before, back before the states went to war, a comedy theatre and before that an opera house that had failed to maintain its pretensions. Then, the Federal Government had taken it over and made it into a courthouse. Of course, they’d justified their choice due to its proximity to City Hall, but that was not the real reason why it had closed; he recalled the plays the place had hosted, tragicomedies of shocking content that haunted his dreams yet. The city had done nothing about it, leaving it to the Federal authorities, too many bigwigs having been secret patrons. New York was a city of the decadent and the damned, lost souls that had washed in on the tide.
Shivering in the early morning January chill, he approached the courthouse, the figure of a fine gentleman; 1864 was getting off to a cold start. He had business here. Not court business like following the Draft Riots that had shaken the city the previous year. No, this was a private retainer. There was only a narrow window of opportunity, for the man he was here to see was destined for The Tombs, New York’s notorious prison. There, he lacked the tame guards willing to look the other way for a bottle of gin and a nod and a wink. Here, he could be in and out undetected.
“Someone to see you, Breton,” spat the guard, opening the cell door and pausing only to collect his ‘gift’ before vanishing off down the corridor.
“Who are you?” the man in the cell asked, looking up from where he sat on a bare bench. Disheveled and unwashed, there was a sullen look about him.
“Good morning, Mister Breton. My name is Chambers. I’m an attorney.” Stroking his whiskers, he appraised the prisoner.
The man didn’t react to the name, had not recognized the coincidence with the place in which he currently was held. It was no great surprise: Breton was a recent arrival from France, fleeing scandal for a new life in America that, now, seemed set to be lived behind bars.
“Oui?” Breton queried with the habit of a lifetime, looking up and wiping greasy hair off his face. “You are a bit late,” he added, sardonically, “for the trial, she is over.”
“Oh, I’m not here in a professional capacity. Or, I should say, I’m not here in connection with the court. I’m here on behalf of a client. ”
“A client? I do not follow. My English is not so good.”
Chambers doubted that. The pretense was merely an attempt to avoid the question he must surely know was coming.
Switchi
ng to French, Chambers took delight in the prisoner’s surprised expression as he repeated his introductory words. Ironically, Breton’s attempt to feign ignorance of English was of some benefit as speaking in his native tongue meant they were less likely to be understood if overheard by a passing jailer. There was unlikely to be anyone else around at this time of day.
“I am an educated man, Monsieur Breton.”
“What do you want?” Breton asked, eyes narrowed, no longer playing the role of the bumptious foreigner. Now, there was more of a cornered animal about him, fearful yet alert.
“You had something in your possession, something you stole, and I have been retained to retrieve it.”
Breton gave a bitter laugh. “Feel free to search me. I am sure you have already searched my room.”
Chambers had. He’d also looked over the inventory of items confiscated from Breton upon his arrest. It had not been there.
“Where is it, Breton?”
The prisoner laughed again. “Why should I help you?”
“I repeat, where is it? Was it stolen from you? Or, did you gamble it away? Sell it for booze? Or give it to another for safekeeping? Tell me, damn it!”
Breton yawned, insultingly, then said, “And, I repeat, why should I help you? What is in it for me? You are too late to have me found innocent of my crime, can you get me released?” He waited a beat, studying Chambers’ face, then added with a sigh, “I thought not. It seems that the beautiful dream is over and, now, I descend into nightmare...”
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