A moment later, I step off the train and see me again for the first time.
~~END~~
Rosebank NNL
by Daniel Russo
Someone had apparently once tried to paint over the graffiti on the rusted trestle bridge above the roadway, but the letters still shone through —glowing neon green across the years to that chilly, overcast February morning in the last gasp of the Reagan administration.
Milton understood the “Rosebank” part, since that was the name of the Staten Island neighborhood he was visiting, but he’d never seen the acronym before. “Vito,” he asked his coworker, “do you know what ‘NNL’ means?”
Vito hesitated a moment before answering: “No Negro Land.”
Milton shook his head.
“That’s what you people’d rather be called, right Milt?” Vito continued. “Of course, well...whoever wrote that probably meant the other word.” Vito averted his eyes and scratched the back of his neck. His cheeks flushed.
Of course. Why should Milton even be surprised? When he had started working for the City of New York as a civil engineer, he happened to mention to his supervisor that he grew up on Staten Island. He’d regretted sharing that fact ever since. Now every time a job came up in the borough, he was the first one who got the call. He was still a rookie, so he didn’t have much say in the matter. There was a reason he’d moved to Brooklyn as soon as he could afford the rent, though. There were a lot of reasons.
Not so for Vito. He’d stayed on Staten Island his entire life, along with the endless collection of Italian relatives he never seemed to tire of telling Milton stories about. Vito’s hair was going gray now. His high school linebacker frame had developed a thick paunch that seemed destined for permanence. Every activity that required even the slightest amount of physical exertion caused him to groan, and he groaned now as he lugged the surveying tripod up the steep slope to the trestle bridge’s surface.
Milton followed behind him, trying not to trip among the rocks and debris hidden beneath the brown overgrowth. “So Vito, did you ever survey this place back when it still had trains running on it?”
Vito clucked his tongue. “How old do you think I am? Nah, they stopped this line before I was even old enough to drive. It used to go all the way out to South Beach, where they had amusement parks and dance halls and stuff. My dad used to tell me about this place called Happyland that he went to as a kid. Real classy, Coney Island-type stuff going on. Then there were some fires, and the Depression hit. And when they built the Verrazano Bridge, and the projects started going up...it was all downhill from there.”
Milton had to summon every ounce of his restraint to keep quiet in that moment. He’d been raised in the Saint George projects, up by the ferry. He’d had to deal with his share of that “other word” in Staten Island, but what had always bothered him the most were the stares he’d gotten —on the bus, in convenience stores, and in countless other public places. Those eyes fixed on him: sometimes hateful, sometimes fearful, always indicative of a judgment he had no say in. His mother must have caught him noticing the stares. She pulled him aside when he was six or seven, crouched down and told him, “Always remember —you’re a part of this place too. They can’t change that.”
At the top of the hill Milton took a look down the surface of the old bridge. The train tracks were still there, just barely visible amid the thick, high weeds that stood dusty and dead in the breezeless winter air. Milton tried to imagine the line of the tracks extending all the way to the distant shore, somewhere beyond all the anonymous tract houses that had been built in their place. He could almost hear the organ music from some long-since-demolished carousel...
Milton snapped out of his reverie and looked around for Vito. That was strange. His partner had just been there a moment ago. Looking down the hill Milton couldn’t see the van they’d traveled there in either. He was quite certain he remembered the spot where they’d parked, but now it was empty. There were a lot of empty parking spaces, in fact, and not a human face to be seen all up and down the roads near the bridge. Everything was quiet: no birds, no wind, just the sound of Milton’s own breath as he exhaled clouds of vapor against the chill. “Vito?” He called out. “Vito!”
The air began to feel warm. Sweltering, even. A briny smell filled the air, though the ocean was at least a mile away. Now he was certain that he heard the organ, wheezing and grinding its incessant melody in a lopsided tempo.
Then, many octaves below, grew a sound that could be felt as much as heard: the distant rumbling of a train. And there he was, standing right in the middle of tracks where no train should be. After all, these tracks didn’t connect anywhere anymore. And even so, he could always move out of the way, couldn’t he? Why were his limbs suddenly so stiff?
A bright light bore down on him, growing steadily. Every synapse in Milton’s brain urged him to get out of the way, but his body remained as frozen as the ground beneath his feet. Soon the light, blinding and brilliant, was all he could see. Milton held his breath and braced for impact.
Impossibly, the train passed right through him. Now he was surrounded by rows of seats with men in straw boater hats and women in ankle-length dresses, closed parasols lying across their laps. Children ran up and down the aisles waving pennants that had “HAPPYLAND” sewn on them in red felt letters. Every last person in the train was white. Time slowed to a crawl as the faces moved past. At first the people didn’t appear to notice Milton, but gradually he became aware of heads turning. Mothers pulled their children away. Cigars fell from the corners of men’s mouths. Eventually all eyes were fixed on Milton: suspicious eyes, terrified eyes, eyes that behaved as though they were viewing a creature from another planet.
Then, incrementally, the eyes began to grow. They bulged from their sockets, blood vessels straining around their edges. They grew to the size of grapefruits, then boulders. Soon they were filling the train car, pressing up against each other to form a continuous surface that penned Milton in from every angle. The space around him was shrinking. Soon the eyes would be forced right up against him, smothering him, crushing the very life out of his body.
No. “I’m a part of this place too!” Milton screamed. His voice had grown much stronger in the years since his mother had given him those words.
The eyes stopped advancing. Their pupils slowly started to turn, shifting their gaze to the other eyes around them. Faster and faster the pupils spun, until their glistening surfaces began to ripple and quiver. Then, one by one, they burst apart. Loud, colorful explosions surrounded Milton, like fireworks in a summer night’s sky...
“This bridge is gonna have to come down,” Vito said.
Milton blinked and Vito was there again, standing right beside him. Regaining his bearings, Milton was still confused. What was Vito talking about? They’d only just gotten started, and despite the signs of rust the bridge looked like it could have safely withstood at least two or three more decades.
“See Milt? There’s definitely a dangerous structural integrity problem right over there.” Vito pointed at the graffiti, turned to Milton, and raised the corner of his mouth a tiny fraction. “Don’t ya think?”
Milton nodded. “I’ll write up the report.” As he began to walk away took one last look over his shoulder at the train tracks. His heart dropped into his stomach. There among the weeds, sticking up from one of the rails at a jaunty angle, was a Happyland banner, its crimson letters flaming with fresh color. All the notes of the organ sounded at once in a deafening cacophony. Milton’s legs buckled.
“Everything all right?” Vito called out.
Milton contemplated telling him, but thought the better of it; perhaps it was best to let the past die unmourned. Holding each other’s shoulders to keep steady, the two men stumbled back down the hill together toward the van.
~~END~~
The Mad Monk of St. Augustine’s
by Colleen Wanglund
~1968~
The abbott led the pr
ocession through the vaporous hallways of the basement levels of the monastery. Brother Gabriel was in chains, half walking, half stumbling, surrounded by the remaining monks, their numbers recently dwindled.
When Gabriel’s sins had been discovered the abbott, Brother Michael had decided to handle things quietly, fearful of any repercussions from the community. Brother Gabriel had slaughtered his fellow brothers, mutilating them one by one. What was worse, he was using the hearts of the dead monks in grotesque rituals. Before Gabriel was subdued, he was like a raving lunatic, claiming the Son of Darkness was returning and the monk himself was his disciple paving the way.
Michael had heard the stories of Satanic worship on Staten Island, secret rituals conducted in the underground tunnels of long abandoned places, but until witnessing it for himself, he had chalked it up to rumors perpetuated by bored teenagers. Brother Michael believed there was a dark entity at work here, so he contacted the Church seeking guidance.
What they did was send an exorcist... although Michael didn’t think it had worked. Now, they were preparing to seal Brother Gabriel into a cell where he would remain for the rest of his days.
Shadows danced on the moldering walls as they reached the subterranean cell that would be Gabriel’s prison. The light from the torches accentuated Gabriel’s sunken cheeks and eyes.
“Would you like to make your final confession, Gabriel?” asked Michael, wanting to get this over with as quickly as possible.
Gabriel lowered his head. “He is coming,” he stated in a barely audible whisper.
“Lock him up,” said Michael, disgusted.
Alone in his bare cell—furnished with nothing more than a cot, a small table on which stood a water basin, and, in the corner, a bucket for excrement—Gabriel stood, arms outstretched, pleading to his nefarious god. “Why have you forsaken me?”
Gabriel spent the next few days in a psychotic rage, clawing frantically at the walls, the door, even his own skin. The monks brought him food and water and disposed of his waste, all slipped through a small opening in the door. After hearing the reports of Gabriel’s behavior, Brother Michael finally went to see the mad monk. Entering the cell, Michael was aghast at what he’d found. Covered in his own blood, Gabriel had chewed apart his own wrists like an animal caught in a trap and had bled to death. Written in blood on the wall beside the corpse were the words “He is Coming.”
~1986~
The usual group of friends gathered at the pool hall in New Dorp on Staten Island across the street from the high school, trying to decide what to do to alleviate the boredom. They were a fairly close-knit group, having known each other all through high school and a few even longer than that. The pool hall sat at the end of a strip-mall on Hylan Boulevard that also contained a movie theater, restaurant, and deli. Usually full of people playing pool and video games, they tended to avoid going inside, instead choosing to gather outside at the back of the pool hall, next to the rear exit of the movie theater. The lights in the parking lot barely reached this corner so no one bothered them as they sat on the hoods of cars and yapped all night, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. Tonight, though, they were restless in the muggy warmth of spring.
“Hey, let’s go to the old morgue at Seaview,” suggested Chris, a big toothy grin on his face.
“Nah, we just did that two weeks ago … and it poured on us,” said Nicky.
“We could get some beers around the corner and just chill out here,” shrugged Colleen, brushing her long red hair off her shoulders.
“What about going up to the old St. Augustine’s Monastery?” asked Lisa. “I’ve heard about it from a couple of friends. They say the place is haunted.” Her dark eyes glinting in the dim, fuzzy yellow light of the parking lot’s overhead lamps.
“I’ve never heard of that place. Where is it?” asked Colleen.
“It’s up by Wagner College. We could get some nips to take with us,” said Lisa.
“Sounds pretty cool. Maybe we’ll see a ghost!” laughed Alex.
Nicky shrugged. “Okay. C’mon Alex, let’s go to the deli.” Nicky could always buy beer without getting carded. He was almost six feet tall and his long dark hair and mustache made him look older than seventeen.
While Alex and Nicky were getting the beer, Lisa and Chris filled Colleen in on the past school week. Colleen went to a Catholic high school, but had known Lisa and Nicky since middle school.
The boys soon returned with a case of nips and the group of teens piled into Alex’s car, a late-model Chevy Camaro that he kept surprisingly clean. If you wanted a ride with Alex you had to take your garbage with you when you left, no exceptions. Nicky rode shotgun while Lisa, Colleen, and Chris squeezed into the back seat, barely enough room to hold them. They headed to the North Shore of the small island, the stereo tuned to the local college radio station, heavy metal blaring out of the speakers.
The old monastery was located up on Grymes Hill, one of the highest points on Staten Island, on the grounds of the prestigious Wagner College. The monastery was originally opened in the 1920s as a boys’ Catholic high school and seminary by Augustinian monks, but closed in 1969 due to financial constraints. In 1983 the old building and the land it sat on were bought by the college with the idea of turning it into student housing. Three years later, the abandoned monastery was still an empty hulk.
They parked on the steep and winding street, lined with stately homes and neatly manicured lawns, walking the rest of the way through overgrown brush and sagging trees. It was dark, but there was a full moon and Alex had been thoughtful enough to grab a couple of flashlights he kept in the trunk of his car.
“Is there a caretaker or anyone else here? I don’t wanna get caught breaking in.” Chris tossed an empty beer bottle into some nearly shrubs.
“Not that anyone knows of, but homeless people have been known to sleep here, so we should be careful,” Lisa said.
They emerged into a clearing and took in a collective breath at what they saw.
The building was falling apart, but it was massive. The monastery was a three-story brick structure containing a long central section with two huge reaching wings creating a U-shape that formed a courtyard. In the center of the courtyard sat a large fountain that resembled a Celtic cross. There were two immense turrets on the main section of the building just off either side of the main entrance and off to the right there loomed an imposing bell tower.
Every window on the ground floor was boarded up and most of the clay tile roof was gone, having collapsed in on itself. The group of five teens made their way around one side of the building and found a loose piece of plywood. Nicky and Chris succeeded in prying it off so they could get inside.
The place was a mess. Graffiti covered the inside walls, including many Satanic symbols, and empty beer cans and bottles littered the floor. There were a few pieces of broken furniture, but they were decayed to a point that made it impossible to identify what those pieces had come from.
The teens gathered together some trash and started a small fire, enough to give them some light to see each other by, but not enough to stave off the shadows creeping around them.
“So what’s the deal with this place?” asked Chris, poking his foot through the debris.
Lisa began the story as the rest gathered around the fire.
“Well, from what I’ve heard, after the high school and seminary were closed St. Augustine’s became a monastery. There was a monk living here in the 1960s who had gone completely insane. They call him the Mad Monk. He was killing other monks and hiding their bodies in the basement levels, where he would mutilate them. When he was finally caught, he was locked away in a cell in the basement where he tore at the walls until he died. I’ve heard there are as many as ten levels below ground and they’re haunted by the ghosts of the murdered monks. They say if the Mad Monk catches you here, he’ll kill you, too.”
Everyone was quiet for a few seconds and then the giggles started. They turned into hearty laughter, though s
ome sounded a bit uncomfortable, as though they didn’t know if the story were real or not.
“Oh, that’s funny. Ten floors down? Mutilated monks on Staten Island, the forgotten rock in New York City? Yeah right!” Alex hooted.
“Like that Andre Rand dude at Willowbrook,” chimed in Nicky.
“Hey, I’m just telling you what I heard. My friend swears that you can hear banging, chains dragging along the floors, and the laughter of the Mad Monk.” Lisa held up her hands.
There was more laughter as the boys left the fire to inspect the graffiti on the walls of the room.
“So how do you get to the basement?” asked Colleen, sipping a beer.
“Somewhere in the main part of the building, I think,” said Lisa.
“C’mon, let’s go find it,” said Nicky, the hint of mischief in his grin.
“Yeah, let’s go find the ghosts of the Mad Monk and his victims!” Chris snorted.
Nicky and Alex stomped out the fire and taking the nips with them, the teens warily picked their way through the ruins of the ancient building. The going was slow and treacherous, with holes in the floor, bottomless yawning caverns with no way to tell how far down they went. What made it even more dangerous was that they couldn’t see the holes until they were practically on top of them.
The teens reached the building’s main staircase, but hadn’t found the basement entrance. They decided to go up, instead. Carefully making their way up the broken staircase, some steps significantly bowed and others completely gone, the teens found the second floor was flooded with moonlight so the flashlights were extinguished. No one had deemed it necessary to board up the windows on the upper floors.
Over the course of the next few hours the kids cautiously moved from room to room, finding more broken furniture, scattered papers, moldy bookshelves, and a few scurrying rats. In some of the rooms the walls were covered in pentagrams and weird writing, along with large rust-colored stains.
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