by S. L. Wright
Bliss shrugged. “Whatever.”
“Why don’t you go home, Crave?” I urged. “We’ll be fine with Mystify.”
“Not a chance. I’m not leaving you two alone with him.” Crave’s arms crossed as he shook his head. “This place is too dangerous. I’m going with you.”
Damn male pride! He couldn’t stand Bliss’s interest in Mystify. “Could you at least call Glory to let her know about Goad’s horde chasing us down?”
“Why don’t you?” he shot back.
“Because Goad stole my phone when he kidnapped me for Vex.”
Silently Crave handed me his phone. But when I opened it, there were no bars. We were cut off from the streets above. “No reception.”
“I know a place where you can call out,” Mystify offered.
I handed back Crave’s phone. He was adamant about staying with us. So I sighed and followed Mystify south.
It was rough going, but I soon realized there was a path worn through the uneven floor by the trampling of many feet. If you stuck to that path, it was much easier.
Soon we came on another ladder angling down through a hole in the curved ceiling. The deep rumble of a subway train going by overhead was much louder. Several dark lumps were lying end to end near the wall, recognizable as human only by their glowing auras. They were bundled up in blankets cocooned around their heads. After a second, I realized it was to protect their skin from the rats.
“Passing by, passing by ...” Mystify intoned in warning.
He tensed as if ready to react, and that made me more concerned than anything. But the sodden lumps curled up tighter as we stepped carefully along the edge to get by. Their bundles of goods were piled at either end.
When we got far enough away, Crave asked, “What are they doing down here?”
“Most of them go up on the street to beg during the day, and come down here at night to sleep in safety.”
“Safety! Give me a nice park bench any day.”
“The cops won’t let you. They hustle people away if they try to sleep on the streets. There’s not enough housing to go around and lots of the shelters are dangerous—their stuff gets stolen and people get raped. They aren’t allowed to stay if they drink or do drugs. And mothers lose their children if they’re seen on the street, so they come down here.”
Now Crave was truly appalled. “There are children down here?”
Mystify glanced at me and Bliss. “You’ll see.”
We had been walking for some time when the racket of subway trains grew much louder. Eventually we came to another ladder that led back up to the tracks. “We’re under Grand Central Station,” Mystify said, raising his voice to be heard.
He quickly climbed the ladder up to the hole above, where light faintly gleamed. He blocked the hole for a moment as he climbed through.
“Come on!” Mystify called down.
As I climbed up, the rush of air and rumble was getting very loud. A train rushed by as I was emerging. It blew a bunch of nasty-smelling soot into my eyes.
Mystify pulled me choking from the hole. There were a few feet between us and the silver side of the car. Next to us was the end of the subway tunnel. Built into the wall was a giant train stopper, nothing more than a giant spring that was designed to stop runaway trains.
I crouched down next to the hole, suddenly seeing much better. Mystify had streaks of dirt on his cheeks, as did Bliss when she emerged. I copied them as they subtly shifted their features to flake off the soot and grime clinging to my skin. My clothes were another matter, but I would have to live with that until we got home. Crave came out of the hole looking practically as pristine as he had entered, the original metrosexual.
We walked toward the glow of the subway platform. A gaping hole in the brick underneath glowed with a faint light.
“Watch out,” Mystify cautioned. “People are under the platform. Don’t ever go inside one. It smells awful. Mostly it’s drug addicts in the subway tunnels because those spaces are the easiest to get to. They sleep right where they shit.”
A train rushed by on an adjacent track, buffeting us with the suction. I had to adjust my eyes again at the comparative rush of light.
To avoid notice of the security cameras, we waited until another train pulled in on our track and people were filing off before we climbed up onto the platform.
Mystify headed for the other end. “Hurry. If there are any demons around, they’ll be able to sense us.”
Crave grabbed on to Bliss’s hand again, as if staking his claim on protecting her. We jogged down the platform to the arched entrance where the train entered the station. Down the other side were steps for the track workers. A short way farther was another door inlaid into the wall, this one at the same level as the track.
Mystify opened up the door leading to metal stairs jackknifing down into the darkness. He pulled out the glow stick again so we could see more easily. At each landing, there was another door. I counted down six levels before we reached the bottom. Mystify had to bump hard against the bottom door to open it.
We stepped into a very low tunnel. Crave had to hunch to walk through it. Trash was piled everywhere, with large cardboard boxes lying crushed to one side, spilling out dirty bedding. It reeked like a urinal.
Gagging from the stench, I put my nose deep in my elbow. Bliss was also covering her nose, but her eyes were laughing.
“It gets worse.” Mystify’s voice was muffled behind his cupped hands.
Crave did the same. “Of course it does.”
We picked our way carefully through the abandoned tunnel. At the front end, the smell was even worse, as Mystify had promised.
A huge metal grate had been welded into place near the end, blocking off a short span of tunnel.
Mystify pulled out a key from his pocket. “You can buy passkeys for the MTA system at a few different places. All you have to do is tell them the location of one of these gates. The transit police used to come down here every few months and destroy the condos down below. Then they got the bright idea to cut off access with this gate. Now they just come to check the gate to be sure it isn’t broken. The moles told me about a guy who lost his key a couple years ago, and instead of waiting for someone to come along and let him in, he broke the lock. The condo association brought a locksmith down here to fix it so the transit police wouldn’t go down and bust up the place. They evicted the guy, but someone said the Second Ave tunnel let him into their community.”
The hinges creaked as Mystify opened the gate and he carefully made sure it locked behind us. Inside, he lifted a piece of board that was leaning against the wall. A faint glow of light came up from the hole he exposed.
“This ladder is much longer,” he warned, as he stepped through backward.
I was glad he warned us because I got a bit of vertigo as I started down, realizing I was suspended high on the side of a cliff inside a natural cavern. Down below were a few dots of campfires and the roofs of dozens of shacks lining the bottom of the crevice. The ladders were rigged to the wall with brightly colored mountaineering rope.
With the metal clanging and banging, I rapidly descended. Bliss came down nimbly after me, hardly making a sound. The ceiling arched just above the hole where the ladder entered, and the cavern was much longer than it was wide. Two rows of shacks lined the sides, and down the center were fires and open hearths where people were cooking.
“This deep, you’ll find more established communities,” said Mystify. “Some elect their mayor or spokesperson. They say some of the mole people won’t let you go once you find them, but I haven’t run across any of those.”
A girl about ten years old passed by us. Her yellow hair gleamed in the dim light, pulled into a single pigtail. There were smudges on her cheeks and chin. “Hi, Mystify! Is this your girlfriend?”
She was looking at me. I smiled. “I’m his friend. Allay. Who are you?”
Without waiting to reply, the girl ran up the ladder like a spider, chanting, “
Mystify and Allay sitting on a ledge, k-i-s-s-i-n-g!”
My eyes went wide. Mystify leaned in. “She’s going to use the bathroom upstairs. That keeps it clean down here. And it discourages other people from setting up a camp on their doorstep.”
“Nice deterrent,” Crave said dryly.
The sounds of early morning rising drifted out. Several other kids appeared, kicking a dusty ball. Their laughter was muted, as if they were mindful of echoes.
“What do they do all day down here?” I asked.
“They go to public school up above,” Mystify explained. “They use a relative’s address to get their report cards.”
As we walked between the shacks, people wished us a good morning. Mystify pulled out small things from his deep pockets: a bottle of aspirin for an older woman and a packet of Halls cough drops for another. “They get their electricity from the extension cords dangling down from tracks above,” he pointed out. “That keeps the rats from chewing on them. The water comes from a sprinkler pipe at the other end, and they carry it home in five-gallon buckets.”
A filthy cat rubbed up against my leg. I couldn’t tell what its original color was, but now it was gray all over. I tried to pet it, but it felt so nasty I didn’t want to do much more than rub its cheek. “Poor cat,” I murmured.
“The cats keep the rats away.” Mystify swooped it up and gave it a cuddle despite its appearance. The cat purred, closing its eyes and radiating bliss. “They bathe them every once in a while, but the cats hate it. They wouldn’t have a community without the cats. They’d be run over by vermin.”
From the giant flies buzzing around the exposed bulbs, I would have said they still had a vermin problem. But I had to admit that everyone looked reasonably clean and healthy. The smells from the coffee and the eggs starting to sizzle over the fires smelled as good as any restaurant. It looked like several shacks shared a common fire in metal barrels that were cut in half to hold the grill.
Mystify stopped at a corrugated-metal hut near the middle of the row. It was as humble as the rest, but a huge man emerged from the cloth-draped door stretching and yawning. His skin was as dusty black as his clothes, and though his shoulders were broad and he topped the other men by several inches, his pants drooped on his hips and his hands seemed to hang huge on his bony wrists.
“Travis, I’ve brought some friends. They’re passing through with me.”
Travis was wary as he settled into an old bench seat that had been removed from the back of a car. “You’re new to be bringing guests.”
“I won’t do it again,” Mystify instantly promised. “We were being chased. I didn’t want to leave them exposed.”
“Never again,” Travis warned, giving us all a hard look. “You can’t speak of this place.”
“No problem,” Crave interjected.
I hurried to add, “We wouldn’t want to bring harm to you. It’s amazing what you’ve accomplished down here.”
“We try,” he said simply.
The condos certainly looked snug enough in the dim light. They didn’t have to contend with rain or cold or heat since underground it stayed a constant, perfect temperature. We saw one guy reclining in a hammock strung between two shacks, and a woman was singing as she washed some dishes in a bucket. There wasn’t the same frantic pace like up on the streets, as if they were untouched by outside events. It was relaxing, and I felt myself slowing down to match the more contemplative pace.
Mystify sat down on a cushion next to Travis, who was asking him questions about getting a new generator. I chose a stool nearby. Bliss was petting the dirty cat, wandering here and there after it. Crave kept one eye on her and the other on the local head honcho as he leaned against one of the poles that supported the shack.
“Do you have reception down here?” I asked Crave. The thought of Glory waiting to hear from him bothered me. I wanted her on my side, not against me.
Crave checked his phone as Mystify said, “You have to go up to the tank room. The back ladder is at the other end of the street.” He gestured farther down the double row of shacks. “I’ll take you there in a minute.”
I could tell that he wanted to stay in good with Travis, having endangered his place by bringing us here. From his copious pockets, he pulled out a few MetroCards. “These still have fares left on them.”
Travis nodded, pocketing the cards. His people would need them to get back in from the street. “What about Charlene?”
“I found a clinic that will see her for free as long as she brings her disability card. It’s up in Harlem, but she can take the highway almost all the way there.”
“She won’t like going topside,” Travis agreed.
“If she doesn’t get a prescription for her blood pressure, then she’ll die.”
Travis nodded slowly. “I tell her that.”
With that, he ambled back up the street to one of the corrugated lean-tos. “Charlene! We’re coming to see you.”
As I watched Mystify try to convince a sad old woman to go up into the light for the first time in five years, I realized that Crave and Bliss had disappeared. I could still feel Crave’s signature, so I knew they hadn’t gone far.
Walking a few steps away from the shack, I could see the ladder we had come down. There was nobody on it, or in the dusty end of the cavern beyond the condos where the kids were still playing.
I figured Crave had sneaked off with Bliss to try to charm some more kisses out of her. I hated it that Glory had made it my business what they did with each other. Surely if she couldn’t control her own incubus, then how could she expect me to?
Mystify came out from the shack, assuring Travis that he would make the appointment, before he rejoined me. “They’ve wandered off,” I explained.
“Travis says they went up the back exit.”
“Maybe they went to try to get cell reception.” But I didn’t hold out hope that speaking to Glory was on the top of Crave’s mind.
Mystify smiled, looking a lot like Theo Ram. But I didn’t get that same yearning to reach out and touch him, to stroke his hair and press my body into him. Mostly it just reminded me of Ram. What would he do in this situation?
I had no way of getting hold of him. Not even a message drop under a statue. Why hadn’t he given me some way to get hold of him?
“Let’s go find Bliss,” I said.
We walked through the double strip of shacks to the back end. A pipe was rigged up to drop water into a spigot, with damp paving stones forming a small catch basin below. Not far from the pipe was another ladder slanting up the cliff at the end of the cavern. This ladder wasn’t straight up and down like the other one, but as I started up, I realized that made it even harder to climb.
At the very top, I stood on the shelf of the cliff looking down at the condos. I waved down to Mystify, who was halfway up. I nodded, giving him the thumbs-up.
I looked around but didn’t see any way off the narrow rocky shelf until Mystify arrived. He showed me a crack in the very end. Another ladder disappeared into the narrowest of openings.
“They don’t use this as an entrance,” he said. “It’s too awkward. But they need to have a way to get out if the transit authority comes down.”
“Every bolt-hole needs a back door. Unlike that spiral staircase to nowhere you sent us down to get away from Goad.”
He grinned. “No choice. It was the closest.”
Mystify shimmied between the rocks of the crevice. It would be hard for anyone with any real padding on their bones to get through. But everyone I had seen in the condos had that spare leanness that came with hard living.
The end of another ladder stuck up into the downward-curved end of a discharge pipe. The hole was about two feet across.
I crawled up after him, then had to bend and contort to get around the ninety-degree turn into the horizontal part of the pipe. Mystify’s rubber boots were right in front of my nose.
In a claustrophobic moment of panic, I thought I was trapped. I couldn�
��t catch my breath, there was no air, and my throat closed. I grabbed on to Mystify’s ankle, crushing the rubber.
“Ouch! Allay, what’s wrong?” He tried to see me, but the pipe was too narrow.
I couldn’t answer, lost in the midst of a memory. The walls closed in oppressively as I scrabbling at the stones trying to pry them apart. Voices on the other side grew more hysterical with each passing moment. I was stuck in the darkness, buried under rock, while people busily moved among the buildings above, oblivious of the horror under their feet. . . .
“Allay? Are you okay?” His feet pulled away. “I’m opening the grate so we can get out.”
I forced myself to crawl after him, keeping one hand on his ankle as if it were a lifeline. My head swam from the lack of air, or was it too much? I heaved, barely able to see for the purple spots in front of my eyes.
I was in a panic.
It was Plea’s memory. One of those disturbing pieces of my progenitor’s life that I had sealed off from myself.
Mystify swung open the grate with a muffled clank, then a slight squeak. He held it open for me as I slithered out and onto the floor. There was barely an inch-high lip between the floor and the pipe.
I lay there gasping like a beached fish.
“What’s wrong, Allay? Are you sick?”
Putting my hands to my head, I managed to say, “A flashback. Plea.”
He frowned. “You mean memories?” When I nodded, he said, “Mine aren’t that strong. It’s more like remembering a movie I saw.”
My heart wasn’t racing as badly now that I was out of that pipe. I couldn’t explain that I had forcibly kept Plea’s memories at bay for a decade. Now they were breaking through with a vengeance. I was losing the fight to not see and feel things my progenitor experienced.
I took a deep breath and let go of the struggle. The images flooded over me. I was surrounded by walls built of small round stones, stacked nearly to the ceiling of the cavern just above my head. Then slowly I realized the stones were bones, human bones, neatly stacked higher than my head. Tibias and femurs were laced together by the thousands, interspersed with neat rows of skulls.
