by Anton Strout
“Not too well,” he said, “but yeah. With a name like that, we get a couple of requests every few months on it from agents.”
“I bet,” I said. “Well, listen. We found a menagerie of lingering ghosts out that way. I thought it might be a Hell Mouth or something. You know, an actual gate to hell.”
Godfrey smiled and waggled a finger at me. “You’ve been watching too many Buffy reruns.”
“Only for fighting techniques,” I said. “I swear.”
“Don’t worry,” Godfrey said. “It’s not a Hell Mouth.”
“You sure about that?”
“Pretty sure,” he said, getting up. He headed for his door. “It’s named from the Dutch hellegat, which means . . .”
“ ‘Bright passage,’ I know.”
Godfrey stopped and looked at me. “Impressive.”
“Some NYU students told me,” I said. “Don’t worry. You’re in no danger of losing your spot as head nerd around here. I just need to know about the bridge and a general who may be connected to it.”
“Follow me,” Godfrey said and started walking. “You said there were ghosts out there?”
“Yeah, literally hundreds of them.”
“Interesting,” Godfrey said. He headed off toward a section filled with large empty tables surrounded by banks of old wooden drawers.
“How’s Jane?” he asked as we walked over to one of the drawers. “I haven’t seen her since they announced the cuts a few weeks back. Is she. . . ?” Godfrey couldn’t even finish his question.
“Yeah,” I said. “She’s still here.”
“Good, good,” he said, but he looked a little distracted.
“What about that girl you were seeing?” I asked. “The one who helped take down that bookwyrm . . . ?”
“Chloe,” he reminded me. “She, like all the rest of my staff, is on a reduced schedule. She helps out with some of the work I’ve been bringing home on the side, but I can’t show her preferential treatment, now, can I?”
“Look at the plus side—at least your girlfriend isn’t infected with a mutant strain of sea slime from some aquatic she-bitch.”
Godfrey looked up from the drawer he had pulled open. “That’s a strange plus side,” he said. “What does that even mean?”
“Oh, right,” I said. “That’s the more personal reason I came down here.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out a few shots Allorah had taken of the mark on Jane’s back. “I was wondering if you could look into this for me. This symbol is bonded onto Jane’s skin and I need to know what it is.” I recapped the drama of the water woman diving through my girlfriend and the strange mark she had left on Jane. When I was done, Godfrey let out a long, slow breath.
Godfrey looked it over. “Doesn’t seem familiar,” he said, slipping it into the inside pocket of his coat. “Sorry. I hadn’t even heard about the incident yet. It’s probably in my backlog of case files that are slowly taking over my entire office. I’ll look into it. I just thought you were talking about your drawer incident.”
My face went flush. “God! Does everyone here know about that?”
“We have to take our gossip where we can get it around here,” Godfrey said, suddenly unwilling to catch my eye. He turned back to the set of drawers, closed the one he was looking in, and ran his hands farther down the case.
“Do you have a section on coping with parapsychological misadventures?” I asked. “Maybe that would help me out.”
“Nope,” Godfrey said, stopping his hand on the handle of another drawer. “Sorry.” Godfrey pulled the drawer open and lifted out an oversized binder the size of a small suitcase. He laid it on the nearest table and flipped through it until I saw a familiar-looking sight—the Hell Gate Bridge. I slammed my hand down on the page to stop him.
“That’s the one,” I said, recognizing the two stone towers at either end. “You know, it looks so familiar.”
“It should,” Godfrey said. “It’s the base design for the Sydney Harbour Bridge in Australia.”
“That’s where I’ve seen it before,” I said. “I was starting to wonder if I was having déjà vu or some kind of past-life regression.”
Godfrey looked up at me, his face serious. “Sure, we can look into past lives as a possibility.”
“No, I’m good,” I said. “I have enough trouble living the life I have, thanks, let alone needing to start worrying how I’ve screwed things up in past ones.”
Godfrey nodded, and then went back to the schematics. He checked a few notes written in the margins alongside the drawing. “The Department has sent several teams out there to investigate it for an actual hell gate over the years, to insure the bridge was safe. Nothing paranormal has been reported there.”
“Does that mean that something not paranormal has been reported? One of the spirits talked about a General Slocum. Maybe he was a commander back in the day?”
“Slocum isn’t a ‘he,’ ” Godfrey said.
“No?”
Godfrey shook his head. “No,” he continued. “It’s a boat, so it’s technically a ‘she.’ A passenger ship, to be exact.”
Godfrey ran his finger down the side of the schematic until they came to rest on a set of reference numbers that didn’t make a lick of sense to me. He looked off toward one of the other aisles and hurried off.
“Follow me,” he said, almost as an afterthought. The head archivist was in his own little zone now. I ran after him as he headed off down an aisle that had books from floor to ceiling on either side.
While a bit of claustrophobia set in, Godfrey stopped, stood on his tiptoes to reach a book high above him, and came down with it. He flipped it open and started looking through it. I stood there in silence, waiting, letting my mind wander back to some of my personal issues, namely my situation with Jane.
“So, things are going good with Chloe?” I asked. “Other than being cut by the budget?”
Godfrey took his head out of the book and smiled. It was the first time he had truly looked neither pissed off nor businesslike the entire time I had been down here.
“Excellent,” he said.
“Have you two had the ‘drawer’ conversation yet as well?”
“Oh, she has more than a drawer,” he said. “I gave her half of my space. Gave up a good percent of my closet as well.”
“So soon?” I asked. “Weren’t you the one dating a supermodel just a few short months ago?”
“Actually, a string of them,” he said with a blush of red spreading over his face. “Was on a bit of a lucky streak, I guess.”
I bit my tongue. Half the Department knew about Godfrey’s streak. . . an almost preternatural ability that was like a luck field radiating from him. We had been instructed to never talk about it directly with him, and I still felt horrible for using him once for this ability when I tracked down the cultist Cyrus Mandalay. “You poor guy,” I said. “Dating models. Rough life.”
“Actually,” he said. “It was.”
“How so?” I asked, not quite believing what I was hearing out of him. The worst I could imagine from dating a string of supermodels was that my body would cramp up from a lifetime of pleasurable delights.
“I’m not going to whine about dating a bunch of gorgeous women,” Godfrey said, “but look at me. I’m pasty white, I wear glasses. I have a hard time relaxing or cutting loose. I get worried that my tie isn’t always straight. I’m a poster child for book nerdery.”
“You’re being a bit hard on yourself, don’t you think?”
“That wasn’t my point,” he said, continuing. “I’m just saying that I know how lucky I was that these out-of-my-league women seemed fascinated with me for a while. I relished it, but to be honest—and I don’t mean to stereotype them—it was all a little vacuous. Chloe, on the other hand, she’s the right mix for me. The perfect mix, I should say. I know how fortunate I am to have her in my life. I don’t want to screw that up.”
“You make it sound so simple,” I said.
“It is that simple,” Godfrey said. He turned back to his book, flipping through the pages once again. “The question should be why isn’t it simple for you?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve been having these. . . flare-ups, with my powers. I’ve actually felt what can happen with that deep kind of love, the anger and rage it can turn into. I’ve been in the mind of a person crazed by that level of closeness. You got the incident report I filed on the ghost tattooist at the Gibson-Case Center, right?”
Godfrey nodded without looking up. “Last I checked,” he said, lost in the book, “you weren’t a ghost tattooist. Why should her choices affect how you react?”
I went to speak, but he had me there. I couldn’t explain the intangible mental blurring of the lines between my emotions and hers to someone who hadn’t experienced it himself. Instead, I shut my mouth and waited for him to find what he was looking for.
“Here we go,” he said, tapping at the page. “June fifteenth, 1904. The General Slocum was a steamship that was chartered for a yearly church trip. More than thirteen hundred people were on that ship, and most of them went down with it.”
“It sank?”
Godfrey flipped ahead in the book. “It’s attributed to a fire that started on board,” he said. “That, and there was little in the way of working lifeboats or flotation equipment at the time. Most everyone either burned or drowned.”
“That seems like the kind of life trauma that could leave a lot of spirits roaming the material plane,” I said. “Is there any mention of a woman in green?”
Godfrey read on, and then after a moment shook his head. “Nothing in here,” he said. “It could be possible that she was one of the leaders of the St. Mark’s Lutherans who arranged the outing, but she wasn’t on board.”
“I’ve encountered that woman,” I said, “and she’s no Lutheran. She struck me as something much older than that.”
“Which would make sense,” said Godfrey, tapping the page where he was reading. “The Slocum wasn’t the first ship to go down there. Hundreds had sunk well into the latter half of the nineteenth century, all blamed on the harsh currents and dangerous rocks below. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers started blasting away what lay beneath the surface in the mid-eighteen hundreds. Looks like it has clearance now, but I don’t think anyone has messed with the area since the 1920s.”
“A dangerous place with a dangerous name, it seems,” I said.
“So it appears,” Godfrey said. “But let me make this clear. This stuff I’m looking up is just regular plain ole New York history. There’s nothing paranormal associated with it in our records . . .”
I turned around and started heading back through the stacks to the stairs leading up to the offices above. “Those hundreds of ghosts didn’t get there themselves, Godfrey,” I said. “And they’re afraid of a woman in green who I think is responsible for Mason Redfield’s death. There’s more to the Hell Gate Bridge than what is in your history books.”
“Where are you going?” Godfrey said, but I didn’t hear him following. He was probably taking the time to put the book back using a little caution.
“I need to know more about what’s happened at the Hell Gate Bridge, the stuff that’s not in the history books, and for that I’ll need to find something from one of those sunken ships,” I said. I could already feel the electric tingle of my powers inside my gloves. “Something I can get my hands on. Hopefully the F.O.G.gie boat’s ready, or else it’s going to be a long swim.”
19
From the bow of the Fraternal Order’s converted cabin cruiser-turned trawler, the East River was a mix of creepy and calm, a dark canyon of water that lay between the lights of Manhattan and Queens. For once, the sky was clear, and I was thankful for the break from all the rain. Connor steered from inside the closed-off cabin, but Jane and I couldn’t help but ride up front like tourists on the Circle Line. Jane’s face practically lit up as she stood there, gripping the railing, eyes closed and wind flapping her ponytail back and forth.
“You look like you’re feeling better,” I said.
“I don’t know what it is,” she said. “Being on the water just makes me feel almost normal again.” Jane reached up and pulled the band from her ponytail, letting her hair fly loose in the wind like a sexy blond Medusa.
“Good,” I said, “but if you shout out that you’re queen of the world, I may have to push you overboard.”
Jane laughed out loud, her voice ringing out over the sounds of the water and the low, constant hum of the boat’s engine.
“I’ll try not to,” she said. She leaned forward over the prow and I reached out to grab her.
“Easy,” I said. The last thing I wanted was to fish her out of the East River. Her arm was freezing in the warmth of my hand and I pulled her to me, holding her. “You didn’t have to come, you know.”
“Yes, I did,” she said, looking deep into my eyes. “You don’t understand. I had to get out of the Department for a bit. I was getting claustrophobic in the offices. Wesker and Allorah were driving me nuts, running all these tests on my mark.”
“I can certainly understand Wesker driving someone nuts,” I said. “Prolonged exposure to him can also cause a rash.”
The wind blew Jane’s hair across her face, but it wasn’t enough to hide her look of worry. “I know,” she said. “I just needed a break from all the poking and prodding.” She looked into the wheelhouse where Connor stood at the controls. “You sure he’s okay with me tagging along on this?”
“Who cares?” I asked, smiling at her. “I’m just glad you’re feeling better.”
Jane spun around in my arms, putting her back against me. “I never realized how much I enjoyed the open water. Growing up in Kansas didn’t exactly offer much in the way of water-based activities.”
Jane let her head fall against my shoulder. I loved the mood she was in. Days of sniping at each other over the whole drawer debacle melted away, but there was still more than enough to worry about, thanks to the mark.
We rode along the river in our own mini version of the Love Boat until I spotted the Hell Gate Bridge just past the much larger Triborough. Connor angled our boat into the waterway between the shores of Astoria Park and Wards Island. He slowed as the boat passed underneath the bridge and killed the engine entirely when we were at the sweet spot between the two stone towers that sat on either shore. Jane and I headed toward the back of the boat via the narrow walkways on either side of the cabin. Connor was already at work on the newly mounted set of winches, pulleys, and metal draggers that had been added to the back of the boat.
“Sorry to interrupt your pleasure cruise,” he said when he saw us walking toward him.
“You could have at least provided some drinks or hors d’oeuvres,” I said.
Connor stood and looked at me. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Who captained us here again?”
“Fine,” I said. “You drag something nice up to the surface with all the equipment that I can use my psychometry on out here, I’ll buy the drinks. Fair enough?” I worried that I might get another visit from the rageful tattooist if I did use my power, but with Jane’s spirits improved, I hoped that would help quell it. Besides, I couldn’t avoid using them as much as I had been, not when there was a real chance of making headway in the case.
Jane stared at the contraption Connor was readying.
“What is that thing?” she asked.
“A dredger,” Connor said.
“Oh,” I said. “So it dredges.”
Jane laughed, but Connor didn’t. He just shook his head at me.
“You know how to use that thing?” she asked.
“Hey, ask your boyfriend about it,” Connor said. “It’s his boat.”
“Technically it belongs to the Order. I just commandeered it. I didn’t say I knew how everything worked on it.”
Connor stripped off his trench coat and laid it carefully aside on the back bench of the port side. “Don’t worry, kid,” he said. �
��I’m Greek and Irish. I think I’m genetically predisposed to knowing how to operate all seafaring equipment. . . unless you want to volunteer to do a night dive out here instead?”
I looked down into the murkiness of the East River. The smell coming off it made my eyes water a little. “I’m not even sure I want to get splashed by that water, let alone immerse myself in it.”
“I didn’t think so,” he said and threw the winch lever next to him. Its motor whined into action, the lights in the cabin flickering. As the coiled cable began to unwind, the business end of the device lowered itself into the water.
“So, what are you hoping for here?” Jane asked.
“An abnormal number of boats have gone down in these parts,” I said. “Some blame it on the currents, some fires. . . but if Professor Redfield was working on a film about this location, I want to know what he discovered, because there’s a connection between him, the woman in green, and those ghosts up on the bridge. If I can get my hands on any pieces of the boats down there, maybe I can get some insight into at least just what the hell really happened to those people here.”
“There has to be something more to this location than the mundane,” Connor added. “All those ghosts wouldn’t still be here unless something terribly traumatizing had happened to them.”
“So we’re floating over a mass grave,” Jane said, looking a little sick. “Nice.” She gave me a forced smile. “You take me to the most romantic places.”
“It was this or the mutant alligator cleanup in the sewers that Shadower Division got stuck with,” I said.
“Good choice,” she said. Jane wrapped her arm around me while we waited on the winch to unwind, leaning her head on my shoulder.
Connor killed the switch after a few minutes of running it, and an eerie silence filled the air. “This is the creepiest fishing trip ever,” I said.
Jane giggled and Connor turned to her. “Why don’t you two go run the engine? We’ll trawl back and forth until we hook something, and then haul it up.”
Jane saluted him. “Aye, aye, Captain,” she said, her chipperness bordering on sickeningly sweet, before she skipped off to the cabin.
