Books were the only good thoughts, the only safe ones, that I could conjure in this hostile space.
“Then I think you’re going to be very disappointed when you get down below,” Preston Savage said.
He was so close to me I almost tumbled off the top step at the sound of his voice. He had been hiding off to the side—so still I hadn’t heard him breathe—behind a thick beam. Now he stepped into the range of my light.
“March, girls,” Savage said. “Go on down.”
I thought of the way both my grandmother and Ms. Bland had praised this man. “You don’t have to do anything crazy, Mr. Savage. We know you’re a friend of all the people at the library.”
“How would you know that?” he asked. “To whom have you talked about me?”
Not my first mistake—acknowledging that he had been the subject of our snooping—by any stretch. “I didn’t talk to anyone at all. I just assumed it because you get to use the Map Division. We saw you there.”
“Honestly, sir, we won’t tell anyone about this,” Liza said. “We’re just kids. Nobody takes us seriously.”
The part about not reporting this to anyone when we got out of here was Liza’s first fiblet. Kudos to her for that breakthrough, I thought. The second part was all truth.
“Then why were you chasing me on Tuesday?” he asked, getting a bit too close to Liza for my comfort. “What do you think I did?”
“That was just a game,” I said, trying to direct the heat back at me. “It was rude of us, I know.”
“Since you like games so much, I’ve got an adventure for you,” Savage said, stepping aside again. “Down the steps, girls. Immediately.”
I thought of the number of times I had rudely defied my mother during my childhood. “You can’t make me do that,” I said, just as I had unsuccessfully said it to her so often.
“That’s where you’re quite wrong, miss,” he said. “Get a move on before I push you.”
I stood fast. I didn’t budge until I saw the flash of a thin silver blade in Preston Savage’s hand. And then I gasped.
Liza reached across and pinched my arm. Savage was holding an X-ACTO knife, with a precision blade, like the kind my art teacher used to cut thick paper when we did crafts at school. It must have been the metal instrument that dropped on the floor and caught Liza’s attention on Tuesday afternoon, when Savage sliced a page out of a library book.
I didn’t wait for the blade to get any closer to my face. I put my foot down one step and started to descend the broad staircase. Liza stayed at my side.
“There’s no need to hurt us,” Liza said. “We’re harmless.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” he said, a step or two above us. “I just need to store you somewhere for safekeeping while I finish my work.”
How did he think he was going to get back through that door, or did he have a fallback exit we couldn’t see? Perhaps he knew his way around all the nooks and crannies of these old libraries. Maybe he had stored his treasures in forgotten stairwells like this one.
Twelve steps down and we turned a corner, down again, another dozen. There were no books to be found anywhere within sight.
Preston Savage circled around so that he stood in front of us. He took the phone from my hand and pointed the beam at an object on the wall above his head.
It was another sign that once had probably been electrified. It, too, said EXIT.
“But where are the stacks?” Liza asked, sounding as though she was about to burst into tears. “You can leave us right here and we can count to a million or something and not come out till late tonight.”
“I think you two girls are a bit too curious to be left with a pile of books,” Savage said. “And you’ll remember that curiosity killed the cat, won’t you?”
I heard the word “kill” and a chill ran down my spine.
“So I’ve got a better place for you,” he said, pulling back the gigantic bolts that secured the steel door at its top and bottom.
While he wrestled with the old door, which seemed not to have been opened since the Dark Ages, I tried to think of all the advice my mother had given me. Never get in a car with a stranger without putting up a fight, but on the other hand, don’t struggle with someone armed with a weapon that could be used against you. Kick hard and run, or submit rather than be injured. The choices were dizzying.
The door opened and the next space was pitch-black. “Give me your phone, too, young lady,” Savage said to Liza, grabbing it from her hand. “You won’t need it where you’re going. There’s bound to be light for you at the end of the tunnel.”
Liza groped for my shirt and caught onto it. Preston Savage laughed like a madman, then pushed us through the doorframe and slammed it behind us. You didn’t need Atwell ears to hear the dead bolts slide into place.
29
“A ghost station, Liza,” I said, stepping out of the doorway, sliding to my side, and pressing my back against the blackened wall. “This is a ghost station.”
“What’s that?” she asked. Her voice was heavy, as though she was ready to explode with tears. “No one will ever find us here.”
“We have to stay calm. If we cry, we’ll never be able to see our way out, okay?”
“Wha—what’s a ghost station, Dev?”
I stood perfectly still, taking in the sounds and the smells. I knew my eyes would need a few minutes to adjust to the dark.
The space had a terrible odor, dank and moist, like an old, abandoned basement that had been without light or sunshine for so many years. I didn’t want to breathe the air in through my nose, afraid that it would make me sick to my stomach. I swallowed hard, but it was like gulping down something toxic that would burn my mouth and throat.
“Can you see yet, Liza?”
She lifted her arm to wipe her eyes. “It’s too blurry.”
The silence all around us was eerie, like we had traveled far below the surface of the earth where nothing else was alive. Every now and then I heard a very distant rumble—probably a train—that seemed always to be going in a direction away from us. Then it was quiet again, like a grave must be.
“I’m beginning to see shapes now,” I said. My eyes were getting used to the pitch blackness of our underground cell. Below me, and several feet ahead, the railroad tracks that must have once gleamed shined dimly in welcome contrast to the darkness that covered both of us like a heavy blanket.
Liza stepped forward and I grabbed her arm to pull her back against the wall. “That’s a subway track right in front of you. You’ve got to stay close to me.”
I was ready to cry, too. But Liza needed me right now, so I tried to channel everything I had learned from Sam Cody about ghost stations. One of us had to stay strong.
“Remember, Liza, that first time we took the subway down to the Puzzle Palace?” It had only been Tuesday, but now it seemed like weeks ago.
“Yeah.”
“I told you not to read on the train. I told you that you needed to keep your eyes open all the time ’cause a lot of stuff goes down, right?”
“I remember. I thought your subway rules were stupid.”
My eyes continued to adjust to the interior of the darkened tunnel that stretched out on both sides of us. I could see the bright graffiti on the far wall, across the tracks—big letters and numbers in neon colors that had been sprayed on over the years.
“Well, maybe some of them are, Liza. But some actually make sense,” I said. “Can you see those painted words yet?”
She picked her head up and stared straight ahead. “So what?”
“Think of it, Liza. Someone got inside here to do that—lots of kids—and that means they also got out of here. You just have to think about how happy my mom is going to be to see us at the end of the day, and that positive thought will help us work our way out of here.”
“What does that have to do with subway rules, Dev?”
“I told you I always keep my eyes open on the train—no reading, no stu
dying maps. That’s how I learned about all the abandoned stations that were built,” I said. “You can see some of them when trains pass by, even though they don’t stop at any of them. Sam even walked me through one.”
“Really? Is that why you’re not scared right now?”
I hadn’t said I wasn’t scared. I just knew there had to be an exit from this horrible space and that we had to stay together to get out of it safely. I tried to breathe through my mouth and not my nose. The dust particles burned and made me cough, but the smells were much more sickening.
“There’s an entire station right below City Hall, Liza—practically just across the street from police headquarters. One of the most beautiful places in Manhattan, but it’s a ghost town. Sam got permission to walk my mother and me through it once, about a year ago. It’s totally spooky, but having been there will help me get us back to the street.”
“I’m not moving from this spot,” she said, kind of plastering herself in place, sniffling a bit.
“But we have to walk, Liza. Nobody knows where we are,” I said. I didn’t want to choke on the fumes that drifted through the damp tunnel and swirled around us. I didn’t want to stay in a place where no one would be able to find us. “We have to try to search for a way out.”
“These are subway tracks right below us. What if a train—?”
“They’ve been abandoned long ago, I’m sure. There’s no sign or anything to mark this location,” I said. “No benches, no lights. There’s not even a shred of garbage around here. It can’t be a real place.”
“Why would the city abandon a train station?”
“It happened sometimes,” I said, trying to dig for the stories that Sam had told me, while I clutched at Liza’s hand. “There are almost five hundred subway stations in this city, and sometimes, when they were built too close to each other, one of them became obsolete.”
“What are you doing, Dev? This is so dangerous.”
My eyes were stinging now. It seemed that with each step we took I was kicking up scraps of broken tiles and mechanical debris that had been untouched for decades. If I rubbed my eyes, I knew I risked embedding the particles and making it impossible to see again.
“We’re on the platform above the tracks. It’s a perfectly safe place to be. We’re going to walk single file, and I’ll be in front. You just stay close to me. I’m going to pick a direction to walk in—starting off to the right—and you’re going to stay as near to me as you can. Are you okay with that?”
“Was Preston telling the truth?” she asked. “Can you see any light ahead of you?”
I didn’t want to tell her that seeing light at the end of the tunnel was just an expression. I couldn’t make out anything more than what was five feet ahead of me. I had no idea if I was leading Liza to a dead end, or to a way out.
“Not yet, Liza. But I’ve only taken three steps.”
The tunnel had a foul smell—a mix of old rusted metal and the fumes of the spray paint that covered the walls and ceiling. Aside from the distant rumble of trains, the only other sound I heard was the occasional scratching noise of nails against the tracks below. I knew it was caused by rodents larger than gerbils—now I could smell their presence, too. As long as Liza didn’t ask about it, I wouldn’t tell.
We must have taken thirty steps along the dusty platform. Liza grabbed the back of my shirt to steady herself. I looked at the stone pillar ahead of me and saw it had been tagged by several different artists. WHOIZTHEWIZ? stood out in cobalt blue, MIKEYGOLDLUV was painted in canary yellow, and WALLYDEGRAWDEMAN was bright red.
My courage was flagging. All I could think of was my mother and how devastated she would be if anything happened to me. I fought back tears of my own, realizing how wrong I’d been to disobey her.
Suddenly there was a huge gust of wind coming from in front of me. I stepped back, nailing Liza on her foot. She tried to balance us both and keep us on the platform as I jostled her.
I grabbed onto the giant pillar, passing on the side of it, and when I reached for the tunnel wall with my right hand, it seemed to start to curve. I was becoming disoriented by the change.
Then a screeching whistle—a terrifying burst of sound in the dead-quiet space—pierced the silent tunnel. The glaring headlights of a subway train meant that it was barreling down the tracks, coming directly at us and blinding me as it threatened to kill us, just like Liza had predicted. I closed my eyes, clenched my teeth to stop them from chattering, and flattened myself against the wall.
30
“You can open your eyes and stand up now, Liza,” I said. I reached for her and helped her to her feet.
“I—I thought it was going to hit us,” she said. “What happened?”
“I thought so, too. But it’s a great thing, Liza. That proves this is a ghost station,” I said. “There must be a place very close by, up ahead beyond this curve, where the tracks divide. The train just looked like it was coming this way, but the real station must be the one where we got off in Grand Army Plaza.”
“I’m afraid to keep walking.”
“You have to do it, Liza. Keep close and follow me.”
It took a few minutes for me to collect myself and move forward. My knees were weak, and I wanted my footing to be more secure. I squeezed the imagined odors of dead rats and visions of giant insects out of my brain and urged us on. If I gave in to my fears—the moist chill of this underground cave, the blackness that was all around us, the thought that I would never see my mother again—I knew that we would lose our chance to get out of here.
Ten feet farther on and I could see it. “There is light, Liza! It’s not the end of the tunnel, but there’s a bright glare a quarter of a mile away.”
“Really, Dev?”
“I promise you.”
Liza was coughing, too. “Let’s stop. I need to rub my eyes so I can see better.”
“I don’t want to stop until we get right there. And you can’t rub this dust into your eyes. You’ll never see anything.”
I grabbed Liza’s hand and pressed it between mine. “You’re doing fine. Just stay right with me.”
We stumbled along until we reached that point on the platform. I could see that it was a space where the curved wall ended at the very spot where the track made the turn into the actual subway station. The brightness was from narrow gratings in the sidewalk above the train tracks.
“Go there!” Liza shouted, almost pushing me in that direction.
“We can’t do that,” I said. “It’s way too risky. The tracks are electrified and we have no idea how much space there is between the trains and the tunnel walls along that stretch.”
“But can you see the real platform?” Liza asked. “Can you see any people?”
“Nope. We’re too far from that. We’ve got to stay in the ghost station. It’s a much safer place to be.”
“What if we stand under that grating and shout up to the street. Won’t somebody hear us?”
“You stand under that grating,” I said, “and the next number three train that comes along will turn us into pancakes.”
I stayed on the ledge of the platform on which we’d started our walk. The open space to the active tracks was behind us now. The tunnel grew darker again, and I had to readjust my eyes for the second time.
Despite the heat of the day, it was wet and cold in this subterranean space. Dank, dim, and deserted.
“What do you think you’re going to find, Dev?”
“It’s what we’re going to find, Liza. You and me together, okay? There are always emergency exits in subway tunnels, Liza. All of them were built that way,” I said, trying to convince myself that fact was not an urban myth. “In case trains got stuck between stations, there had to be ways to evacuate passengers.”
“Have you ever needed to be evacuated?” she asked.
“Does now count?”
“I would have preferred that you’ve had a dress rehearsal, Dev.”
“Hold on,” I said
. I could feel the steel railing before I saw it. “There’s a staircase over my right shoulder.”
I pivoted and could see that there were six steps leading up to a landing. The handrail was painted orange, and there was the muted glare of a stainless-steel box mounted on the wall.
I ran up the steps and felt around the edge of the box for an opening, but it was secured by a padlock.
“What does it say?” Liza asked. “Is it a phone?”
“No such luck. SIGNAL EMERGENCY POWER INLET is what the sign reads.”
I ran my hands along the wall next to the box, feeling the grime accumulate on my fingertips as I followed the pipe that led away from the box.
“More steps above us,” I said to Liza. “That can only be a good thing.”
Orange paint bordered the ten steps that led farther up, which were so covered in graffiti that I figured the artists had been able to have easy access to this stairwell.
“What’s at the top?” Liza asked.
“A ladder,” I said. “An iron ladder with about six rungs. We’re in business, Liza de Lucena, but you’re going to have to help me here.”
She was right at my heels, but I couldn’t reach the lowest rung of the ladder.
“Cup your hands, Liza. I need a boost.”
She stood beside me, leaned over, and held steady while I put my right foot into her hands and let her lift me up eight or ten inches. I grabbed the bar and swung loose for a few seconds, until I could pull myself up and stand on the bottom rung.
I climbed three more rungs until my head bumped against the ceiling above us. I held on with my left hand and reached up with my right.
I could feel an indentation in the steel design of the beams. I put my fingers on it and followed it around. There was a circular object cut into the heavy metal.
“We’ve got our escape hatch, Liza,” I shouted.
My voice echoed through the tunnel. I wasn’t worried about Preston Savage hearing us. He must have known where his own escape route was long before he trapped us in here.
“Can you see out, Dev?”
“Not yet. But it’s a manhole cover,” I said. “It means the street is directly above us.”
Into the Lion's Den Page 17
