by D. M. Pulley
“There’s lots of ways outta here. We can’t all go the same way. It’ll draw too much attention. We gotta scatter.”
Kris found herself nodding. “Like roaches. Fine. But if you get me shot or arrested . . . I’m going to kill you.”
He cracked a half grin. “Deal. C’mon.”
They turned down the vaulted hall. After what felt like two city blocks, it dead-ended. “What the hell?” She glared at Jimmy.
He ignored her and squatted down to clear the dust off something on the ground. It was a manhole cover. He pried it up and shined his light down into the hole. The smell of rotting leaves and sewage hit her in the face as she crouched down next to him. It was a six-foot drop down to the bottom. Brown water trickled along the rounded floor.
“You’ve got to be kidding me! The sewer?” She backed away from the hole. “No way.”
“You got a better plan?” he asked. He sat down, dropping his legs into the stink, and then the rest of him vanished too. “C’mon! It’s not so bad,” he called up from the dark. “It hasn’t rained in over a week. I’ll catch you.”
Madame Mimi patted her arm with a sympathetic smile. “This is where I leave you.”
“What do you mean? Where are you going?” Kris looked back the way they came. “You’ll get caught.”
“That’s the plan.” The old hippie shrugged. “They can’t charge me with a thing. I’m a friend of Jill’s. Besides, no one is looking for me, are they?”
“But won’t they ask about . . . us?” Kris whimpered.
“About who? I’ve never seen either of you before in my life. I’m just an old stoned hippie. Right?” She winked at Kris’s slack face and headed back down the corridor, chuckling. She tapped on the walls playfully. “I’m going to tie those boys up for hours. They’ll be chasing their own tails.”
Jimmy’s voice echoed up out of the sewer. “You comin’?”
Kris gazed down at his face trapped in the festering tunnel. She turned back into the darkness where Mimi had disappeared without so much as a flashlight. She breathed in a prayer and put her feet in the hole.
“Don’t worry, I’ll catch you.”
Her legs dangled down into the chill of the pipe, then her hips. Jimmy grabbed her waist and held her steady as the manhole swallowed the rest of her. He set her down gently onto the floor of the giant pipe, then stretched his arms up to pull the manhole cover back into place. The sound of the iron cover scraping across the floor over her head sent a shiver through her bones. It clunked into place, sealing her fate. She was trapped.
“What now?” she breathed, struggling to control the urge to scream.
Jimmy grabbed on to her hand and started walking.
The brick-lined pipe was barely taller than she was. Up ahead, a puddle of light streamed in. As they walked toward it, she could see it led to an open grate in the street. There was another one fifty feet away.
The police speakers boomed somewhere above them, echoing down the pipe to where they stood. “This is the police. We have reason to believe a hostage is being held against her will. Any failure to cooperate will be seen as an act of aggression. Come out with your hands up.”
Jimmy trained his flashlight on her. “Hear that? You’re a hostage.”
“Shit. This is really bad. We should split up. If they find you with me . . .”
“Not gonna happen. C’mon.” He turned and started walking again.
They passed under the catch basin and the static of a police radio. A faraway voice asked, “Car two, what’s your twenty?” They were under West 7th Street.
She stopped a moment to get her bearings. “No. I’m serious. I can’t let you get arrested.” And I have no idea where you’re taking me or who you really are.
He pointed the light at her. “Good. And I can’t let you get killed. C’mon.”
They followed the trickle of brown water past three more catch basins, stopping at each to listen. At the third, they heard the crackle of another police radio high overhead. A disembodied voice said, “Nope. No sign of them. How long we holding the block?”
The answer was lost in static.
“We must be at the end of West Seventh,” Jimmy said, gazing up at the light coming in from the inlet. Ten feet ahead, the sewer pipe hit a vaulted junction. Water trickled in from the left and headed out a smaller pipe to the right. An eighteen-inch outlet continued straight ahead, several feet off the floor.
“What now?’ Kris eyed the small outlet. There was no way she could crawl through.
“That’s an overflow out to the river,” Jimmy said, pointing to the narrow opening. “We need to get off this block and into a crowd of people. This way.”
He led her to the left, opposite the flow of the water.
“Where does this one go?” she asked, trying to imagine the streets above them.
“North. We’re heading to the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge. There’s a street vault there.”
“Wait. What? That’s like a half mile away. Isn’t it?”
“Yeah, but don’t worry. Most of this line was abandoned years ago.”
They passed another junction where the brown water flowed in and past their feet. A block later they ran into another vaulted junction, but this one was half-clogged with broken bricks, and a coral reef of unfinished concrete hung in a frozen wave between the fissures in the ceiling.
“This is where they sealed off an old line,” Jimmy explained, climbing over and under the debris. The flashlight bobbed up and down as he went, throwing sinister shadows across the rounded walls of the pipe. True to his word, the floor of the giant pipe on the other side had run dry, leading them into utter darkness. There were no more catch basins to let in light and fresh air from the world above. Stagnant must and dust filled her lungs like fetid water. Half a block up, the gnarled, matted hair of tree roots hung in clumps. Jimmy pulled the roots aside like a gentleman opening a car door.
“How many times have you been in here?” she asked, climbing over a pile of bricks that had collapsed from the ceiling overhead. She reached up and touched the underside of newer pavement that had taken their place.
“A few.” Jimmy turned the flashlight ahead, scouting for the next obstacle, leaving her in his shadow. “Lots of folks speculate that the Torso Killer used the sewer pipes to transport bodies down to the river.”
“Is that true?” Kris stopped walking and scanned the brick floor and walls in the dim light.
“One of ’em might’ve. Like I said, there was more than one.” He stopped at another outlet, a smaller pipe set two feet off the floor. “All of these outlets went down to the river. It wouldn’t have been too hard to shove a body down, but the forensics don’t support it. They figured the skin of the bodies or the burlap sacks holding ’em would’ve been scraped up. I think they used these pipes for other things.”
“Like what?”
“Like the same thing we’re doin’ now—moving around the city unseen. There’s miles and miles of these things, new and old.”
They passed another junction that was sealed more neatly than the last but with an overhead chute covered by a manhole. A car rumbled over it, shaking the lid. Jill’s voice came back to her in the rattle, and she remembered her in the courtyard, covering up a manhole. I keep putting the cover back down, but they keep lifting it up.
She stopped walking. “Jimmy?”
“Yeah.”
“Does anyone else still use these pipes?”
“I dunno. Bums probably do. Street people are smarter than you think.” He held up a hand. “You hear that?”
Kris froze and listened. “Dogs,” she whispered.
The barking was faint at first. As they continued walking, it grew louder, and there was something about it that sounded wrong. Kris stopped and listened again. It was an echo. “Jimmy!” she hissed. “The dogs are in the pipes.”
He froze for a second and his eyes grew wide. “Fuck!”
“We have to get out!”
The barking was get
ting closer. She could hear the echo split north and south, bouncing off each junction.
Jimmy grabbed her hand and started running. They scrambled over fallen bricks and half-caved sections. “There’s an outlet a block ahead,” he panted. “But no cover. We’d be stranded somewhere on the bluff like sitting ducks. We have to make it to the bridge.”
Kris pumped her short legs hard to keep up with his long ones, leaving her brain three steps behind. The barking grew sharper. The dogs had made the turn and were heading up right behind them. As fast as Kris and Jimmy were running, they were no match for the speed of a dog, but they managed to stay ahead. The thought They’re on a leash ran through her mind almost too fast to catch.
Swampy air burned in her lungs. Her head grew lighter on her shoulders. Jimmy dragged her up and over another pile of collapsed brick, but her foot caught and sent her tumbling.
“C’mon, get up!” He pulled her arm.
“No. You should go. Don’t let them find you with me,” she mumbled through a fog. She was breathing too hard.
Jimmy pulled her onto her feet. “We’re almost there. Hold on.”
She stumbled forward. The barking bounced off the walls all around her, shuddering through her head. They’re here. They’re almost here.
Jimmy let go of her arm at the next junction to climb a rusted metal ladder.
“Whoa. Easy, Gunner. Easy, boy. You got somethin’?” A familiar voice called out fifty feet behind her, “Kritter? That you down there?”
Kris slowed her feet. Ben?
Jimmy pulled at her shoulder. “Kris, c’mon!”
But she couldn’t run anymore. She’d have to face Ben and the truth about her drunk mother and her father’s terrible past. Ben wouldn’t hurt you, her father’s voice echoed from the back of her clouded mind. You’re like a daughter to him. “Run, Jimmy!” she whispered. “Don’t let him find you with me!”
A radio crackled behind her under the barking dogs. “I got her.”
She dropped her hands to her knees and took in a labored breath. Sunlight burst into the pipe with the metal scrape of a manhole cover. It was quickly eclipsed by a hulking shadow. “Well look who it is,” it said.
“Troy?” Her words were lost in the metallic clunk of steel hitting bone. Jimmy came crashing down off the ladder in a heap. “J—!”
A shot of pain exploded between her shoulder blades, buzzing white and blue until she dropped to the ground.
“Keep a watch, son.” Ben’s voice floated over her as her mind plummeted down a black hole. “We’d better wait till the other boys clear out.”
SAYS PELLEY HAD PLANS TO BE ‘KING’
Blond Agent Tells Dies of Silver Shirt Plot
Washington, April 2—(AP)—From the lips of a blond secret agent, Miss Dorothy Waring of New York—the Dies committee heard today that William Dudley Pelley had planned to use his Silver Legion to seize the United States government and make himself king.
At the same time, the committee received evidence that aides of the Asheville (N.C.) publisher had kept in close touch with a national guard officer at Detroit who trained Ku Klux Klan members for cavalry duty during “the coming turmoil.”
—Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 3, 1940, p. 2
CHAPTER 46
April 9, 1938
Ethel heard purple voices. They garbled and hummed through fifty feet of water. Her lungs constricted under the flood. The weight of an ocean pressed against her skull. The voices swelled and crashed like waves.
“O Lord, bind this wicked soul with Thine hand.” A deep voice echoed between Ethel’s drowning ears. “Protect us as we endeavor to Thine will. In Jesus Christ’s name, we pray.”
She recoiled from it, trying to lift her hands to her aching head, but they didn’t respond. Her arms wouldn’t move.
Several voices answered from all sides, “Amen.”
“All trespassers against Your house shall be bound by the power of God,” the man proclaimed. His voice sounded familiar.
Ethel forced her eyelids open. A large shadow floated in front of her surrounded by a fiery glow.
“Keep these unclean spirits from our hearts and foul intentions from our minds, O Lord.” The shadow split and moved.
“Amen.” The other voices murmured at her feet. Ethel blinked her eyes while her head sank deeper under the phantom water.
“I awash my hands in innocence and go to your altar.” The split shadow moved again.
Legs, Ethel realized, focusing her aching eyes. A pair of legs walked across the ceiling, hard black boots hitting the flat stones.
“Humbly I pray for the repentance of my enemies.” It sounded like Brother Wenger.
Ethel craned her neck to see a huddled shadow clinging to the stones over her head. It was a woman on her knees, bowed in prayer. On the ceiling.
“Mary Alice?” Ethel called out through the water in a choked slur of rasps and coughs. “Mary Alice . . . Run!”
The woman gazed at her from her upside-down perch. “Amen,” she said again.
The inverted man walked up beside Mary Alice and patted her on the shoulder. Ethel watched in horror as a man she vaguely recognized placed a hand on the girl’s head and reached the other down to the floor. “Lord bless Your humble servant Sister Mary Alice for being Your eyes, Your ears, and Your mighty hand when the devil was at our doorstep.”
“Amen.” The other voices answered, but Ethel couldn’t take her eyes off the girl she’d found beaten and scrubbing blood off the floor. Her friend. The charitable Christian that took in the poor and fed them and—
“Ah, I see our guest has risen to join us.” Another man’s legs slowly approached Ethel’s head as his body folded into a crouch on the ceiling. He gave her an inverted smile that sent a shudder through her. As her flesh chilled at the sight of him, she realized she was naked. “I remember you.” He brushed her cheek with the back of his hand. She struggled to pull away from his touch but couldn’t move. “You had a boy. Shame he didn’t make it. I never forget a face . . . as much as I might like to.”
She blinked at him as his face floated back down toward her feet. He had stood over her bed after they’d cut her baby out. Infections set in so easy with working girls like you, he’d said. Even through the fog of morphine, she’d heard the clinical disgust in his voice as she’d wept. Try to be thankful I saved your life. Although I do suppose some might argue I’ve done you a disservice.
The doctor walked across the ceiling to a metal table upside down in the corner. He was wearing a long black apron. Ethel blinked at it as he picked up one of the larger knives, and realized it was the same table she’d seen earlier. It had been sitting on the floor next to—
“Brothers and sisters, we are at war,” Brother Wenger announced while the doctor lifted the knife between both hands. “A plague has taken hold of our cities. A plague of sin. Murderers, thieves, and harlots walk our streets. Satan’s soldiers are massing together against us. Our only hope is to fight back in God’s name.”
A murmur of agreement answered him.
“The only hope to save this poor lost soul before us is to guide her back into the grace of God. We must help her atone for her sins. In Leviticus, He tells us, ‘For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life.’”
Ethel barely registered his words as panic shrieked between her ears. Looking down at herself, she discovered why she couldn’t move and why the world had inverted. They’d lashed her naked body to the wooden cross to be crucified, upside down.
“Ambrosia.” Wenger turned his voice toward her. “I’m going to need you to repeat after me. Have mercy upon me, O God.”
Ethel’s eyes bulged from her head as she craned her neck to look around the room. All her blood pooled in her skull, her lungs collapsed into her throat. The place where Mary Alice had been kneeling was now taken by a small figure in a white shroud with
only small holes cut for its eyes. Five more hooded figures stood next to it. Johnnie’s voice whispered in her ear, They had no faces. Their hands were clasped before them in prayer.
A piercing pain in her right leg ripped everything else out of her head. Ethel screamed. Warm liquid dripped up her thigh.
“I said, repeat after me,” Wenger barked. “Have mercy upon me, O God.”
Ethel’s voice shook. “Have mercy, O God.”
“Good. Let us continue . . . According to Thy loving kindness, according unto the multitude of Thy tender mercies, blot out my transgressions.’”
The words tumbled out of her trembling mouth in an incoherent chorus.
“Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.”
As Ethel forced the words out, she felt something warm and wet on her feet. A hooded figure was at her side, scrubbing her raw skin with a sponge. It was wearing a black apron.
Wenger kept going as the hooded doctor washed her. “For I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.”
“For I acknowledge . . .”
Ethel lost track of the call and answers as she hung there with thoughts screaming through her flooded head. They hung Rose just like this. They’re going to bleed me out. They’ll cut my throat and then pull me to pieces.
Then Brother Wenger’s voice changed its cadence. “Ambrosia, before God and these witnesses, do you take Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.”
There was only one correct answer. “I do. Please . . . Let me go.”
“Do you repent the sin of fornication?”
“Yes. I’m sorry. Please. God . . .”
A sharp pain pierced her arm. “Do you repent the sin of blasphemy?”
“I do. Christ, I do.” Ethel turned to the six hooded figures standing like a choir. “Mary Alice! You can’t let them do this. Help me!”
A cold steel blade dragged across her stomach not far from where the doctor had cut her four years earlier. “Do you repent the sins of self-gratification and deceit?”
Ethel let out a scream as the blade pressed deeper. Warm liquid dripped up her torso. Her head reeled out of her control.