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Everybody knew about the underground like everyone knew about Old Green Eyes out at the battlefield; and everyone had a story about winding up in a clammy spot of dirt beneath a building or beside the river. Most of it wasn’t true, or it referred to the concrete water runoff system we called “the undersides. ” But enough of the bullshit tales had legs to make you wonder if it wasn’t something else, maybe.
I’d read that during the war, people spoke of tunnels dug all over the place so soldiers could quietly move goods from the river. In the 1860s the city was held by north and south in turn, and tunnels were a known Civil War-era tactic of hiding and transporting soldiers and supplies.
It made more sense to me than a precariously piled mound of underground city fragments, anyway. But people around here believe what they like.
I didn’t really believe it. Not before, when the urban legend was passed around by my friends, and not even then, when staring down into an open hole covered by a grate.
But I knew, without believing any of it necessarily, that I was breathing down into something bigger, deeper, and longer than an unfinished basement. I listened, kneeling there beside the edge, because I thought I heard something strange—something that wasn’t coming from outside, but coming from underneath.
I leaned my head and pressed my ear down low, and there it was. A scratching, or a scuffling. Something slow-moving, but too big to be a rat. Something distant, but not so far away that I couldn’t detect the struggling pattern of feet in mud.
Yes, it was distant still. But there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that it was coming closer.
14
Help Me
“Nick,” I started repeating into the phone long before he picked up on the other end. I was shivering and cold and unhappy, and I was trying to tune out the faint sloshing scratchings coming from the hole behind me. But it was dry inside the old building, so I made use of the roof and made a phone call.
“Nick here. ”
“Nick,” I said it again. “Something extremely fucked up is going on. ”
“You’re not just whistling Dixie. ” He sounded tired, but a little bit happy to hear from me. “Where are you, woman? And please please please tell me that you’re up on the mountain still. Because if you’re down here in the city, I’m going to have to freak out. ”
“Sorry. Commence freaking out—but be warned, I’m way ahead of you. I’m in that old building—I don’t know what it’s called—the old building down off MLK. The one that’s boarded up and looks like it used to be a bank or something. You know what I’m talking about?”
“I don’t know. MLK and what street?”
“Martin Luther King and—” I raised my head as if I could see outside to the street sign. I couldn’t, so I guessed. “Broad, I think. Maybe Market, or Cherry? It’s on the corner. Catty-cornered and down the street from the library and the Read House. ”
“I don’t know it. But I could find it, if I could get there—and I’ve got to tell you the truth, I don’t know if I can get there. ”
“Where are you?”
“I’m—” It sounded like he was doing the same thing I’d just done—taking a look around and not learning much. “I’m at the bridge. City-side, not Signal-side. The 27 bridge, Olgiati. It’s—it’s chaos. I’ve never seen anything like this. ”
“What are you doing there?” I asked.
“Trying to keep from getting trampled. I’m on foot, at the moment; the news SUV was commandeered by a couple of cops for use as an ambulance—but I can’t imagine how far they’ve gotten with it. So what’s going on where you are? You sound dry and alone, and if that’s the case, then I applaud you—because it couldn’t have been easy. ”
He was hollering into the phone in the middle of a crowd, and it made him hard to understand.
“It wasn’t easy. It was creepy, and I’m really worried. I need to get out of here and . . . and I’ve got some family that just came into town, and I’m not sure exactly what I expect you to do about this, but I guess I’m glad you’re all right and I could really use some company. But if you’re all the way down at the bridge, then I don’t know. I guess just stay safe, and I’ll catch up to you when I can. ”
For all the trouble I’d gone to in order to get dry and alone, I wasn’t liking it much.
“I’m going to try to work my way back down in your direction,” he said slowly. “I think I’m going to try to get to the Read House. You must be rubbing off on me or something because I found something this morning—something I shouldn’t have found, not in a million years. ”
“What did you find?”
“The Spanish Flu, a fire, and those juvenile murals you found in the old furniture store—they’re all related. I think Caroline knows why. And I think we need to talk to her, because if we don’t . . . ”
“If we don’t, what?
He was quiet, like he was listening to someone else. Then he said abruptly, “If we don’t, this could get a whole lot worse. Something’s down there in the river, Eden. Fuck me, something is down there. But it’s not going to stay down. ”
Behind me, I heard the scritch, scritch, scritch of the faraway something crawling beneath the city. “You’re right. But what is it?”
