by James Frey
My foot hit ground and I could feel it wet and slippery, which was telling me I must be somewhere in the fucking sewers, which all of us stayed the fuck out of because they was full of rats and disease and lots of other shit no man don’t want to spend time in or around. I started climbing right back up but as my foot start rising I heard me something that was sounding like a scream. I stopped and stood listening for more screaming and I heard another fucking scream almost right away. I got down and started walking towards where I was hearing it, stepping real careful and moving real slow because I couldn’t see nothing. Even though my eyes was real adjusted, I couldn’t fucking see nothing.
Took me a long time to go a couple hundred yards down that tunnel, long-ass time. All the while I was hearing those screams, and the closer I was getting to ’em, I was knowing it was Ben, ’cause it was sounding like some of the noises I heard him making during his seizures. When I was real close I started hearing trickling water and started knowing that the screams is coming from below me, and that the water be running down somewheres. My eyes had adjusted and I saw a few steps ahead there was a huge hole, like some kind of fucking sinkhole or giant pothole that happens in New York once or twice a year, and Ben must be down in that hole, maybe hurt, and can’t get himself out. I was about to call out to him, tell him I was here and gonna help him, when I hear him start talking, talking real slow and deliberate, like he having a conversation with someone. So I slide to the edge of the hole and look down, and he be right there, maybe fifteen, twenty feet down in some other fucking sewer tunnel, and he just sitting on the ground like he Buddha, and I swear on my fucking life his skin was glowing, and his arms was already healed, the scars just blending in with the rest of his scars, and he was talking to the empty air right in front of him, and if I didn’t know him, and know how Yahya felt about him, I’d a done thought he was plumb fucking crazy out his mind.
I lied there and watched him. I was nervous he was gonna see me, so I only just peeked over the edge of that hole. I could hear him saying shit like yes or no, yes or no, over and over again, saying why, saying how, saying no, I will not, I will not. He talked for like an hour or two hours and then I see him get real still and I know what that means and he starts seizing, worse than I ever seen before, his body literally coming up off the ground, he convulsing so fucking hard. And the noises he was making scared me, sounded like something I can only imagine hearing down in Hell, if there is one. And something felt wrong, like there was something else in there with him. Something dark and evil and old as the fucking sky, something with power that was beyond power, that was fucking so deep and black it was beyond power, and it made me shake and made the hair all over my body stick up and made me piss myself, right there I fucking pissed all over myself. Whatever it was, if it was anything at all, it scared me so fucking much I turned and got the fuck outta there fast as I fucking could.
I started going back to see Ben whenever I could. Didn’t tell no one I had found him or knew where he was at. Most of the time he’d be in seizures, and they always bad. When he wasn’t, he’d be talking or sometimes screaming, screaming into the blackness, screaming into the motherfucking abyss. Sometimes I’d go down and I’d feel that thing, that mean-ass evil fucking presence, and I’d turn and get the fuck out right away. Other times it’d come while I was there. Only once or twice it didn’t come at all, and those was times when Ben was screaming, like he was keeping it at bay or some shit, like the sound of his scream had some fucking righteous power.
He was down there two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, six weeks. Down in that fucking nasty hole by himself. Far as I could see he never ate nothing, never drank nothing, never slept, never fucking left. And while he shoulda got sick or fucking died from fucking starving, it didn’t happen. If anything I was seeing the opposite. He was seeming stronger, still skinny as fuck, but stronger. And it was looking like he could somehow be controlling the seizures. Like he could make himself go in and out of ’em when he wanted to go in and out of ’em. I’d hear him ask a question or say something, some heavy-ass shit like what happened before the Big Bang, or who were they, why were they, answer the problem of quantum gravity, can we unify the four fundamental forces. After he asked, he’d close his eyes and take a breath and open his eyes and be in that place, that place like eternity, and then he’d seize. And for the entire last week I went to see him, the seventh week he was in that foul fucking hole, he was seizing. And the entire time, that presence was with him, stronger, seeming somehow active, like it would ebb and flow, attack and retreat, made me wet my fucking pants every goddamn time, scared me to fucking death. At the end of the week, I went down and he was gone. Made me real fucking worried, scared something had happened, that the fucking evil had somehow got him. I went right back to our tunnel, was gonna get Yahya and take him back and tell him what I’d seen and what I’d been doing with myself and Ben and tell him we needed to find him and help. I went back as fast as I fucking could, ran in the darkness, ran from the darkness. And when I got back, Ben was there, with Yahya, looking just fine, like he’d never left, actually looking better than I’d ever seen him, skinny and shit, but glowing like some kind of fluorescent fucking lightbulb, even though I knew he hadn’t had nothing to eat or drink in seven motherfucking weeks. He was back. And just like Yahya had seen in his visions, the end was near. The end was fucking near.
JOHN
I had heard there were people living down there. They were called mole people. There had been a book, a couple of documentaries. It was one of those things people would talk about at parties. Frankly, I didn’t care at all. It didn’t mean anything to me. If people wanted to live underground, let them. It relieved the taxpayer of the burden of them, and it kept them out of institutions. As long as they didn’t cross my path in some way, I didn’t give a shit.
The main function of my job was the tracking of weapons that came into New York City, and the apprehension and incarceration of those individuals who chose to illegally possess them. It is forbidden by law to own or possess a gun within city limits unless you have a permit, and permits are very difficult to get. Whenever we recovered a weapon, our first priority was discovering how it had entered the city. A gun dealer in upstate New York led us to the individuals in the tunnel. We came across the dealer when a gang member in southeast Queens arrested for murder was found in possession of an illegal handgun. The suspect had not, as is standard procedure with gang members and murderers, removed the serial numbers from the weapon, which allowed us to trace it. When we arrested the gun dealer for selling weapons to individuals who did not have the required license, he made a deal with us to keep himself out of prison and started providing us with the identities of other individuals to whom he had sold weapons. At that point, he told us about the group in the tunnel, who had bought approximately sixty weapons from him, and thousands of rounds of ammunition.
It wasn’t easy finding them. There are a large number of abandoned tunnels under the city, some of which haven’t been entered in decades. We initially undertook a search of the tunnels, which was fruitless. The gun dealer had told us that the members of the group, who he described as apocalyptic wackos, made their money begging on the street, and that they all had long scars on their arms. We started looking for individuals who matched that description, and after eight months found two of them, one a male and one a female. We put them under surveillance and found the tunnel where they, along with approximately thirty other individuals, were living.
We knew very little about them when we executed search warrants on them. There was some worry we might be entering a situation similar to that of the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, where a group of heavily armed religious fanatics, followers of a messianic leader named David Koresh, engaged a federal task force, which held them under siege for fifty-one days, until the Davidians’ compound caught on fire and eighty people, including seventeen children, died. Fortunately, that was not the case. Approximately fifty law enforcement personn
el entered the tunnel through four different access points. Almost all of the individuals residing in the tunnel were asleep, and the three that weren’t were taken into custody without incident.
I met Ben when we were interrogating the suspects, who were being held at the MCC, the federal correctional center in lower Manhattan. We had found more than three hundred firearms and ten thousand rounds of ammunition in their compound, along with small amounts of cocaine and marijuana. They were also in possession of a large number of knives, swords, and spears. When we ran their prints, we were able to ascertain the identities of all of them except for two, and all of them had records, most for things like drug possession and theft, though a few also had assault convictions. Of the two we could not identify, one went by the name of Yahya and was recognized by all of them as their leader. The other identified himself as Ben Jones.
Yahya refused to speak. He literally did not answer a single question we posed to him, nor did he request a lawyer. He stared directly into the eyes of both myself and the other agent interrogating him, and never said a thing. We assumed it was a ploy to intimidate us, but having been in rooms with drug lords, serial killers, and terrorists, I didn’t find him particularly frightening or off-putting. I did Ben on my own. As with Yahya, his prints and DNA came back clean, and there was no record of him in any law enforcement database. And though there had been extensive media coverage of the raid, we had yet to release pictures of any of the arrestees to any media outlets, and had yet to receive any public help in making a positive identification.
Before I entered the room where Ben was being held, shackled to the floor at his ankles and to the table at his wrists, I looked in on him through a one-way window. One of my colleagues was standing near the window, observing him. He sat absolutely still, his eyes closed. He was wearing a jumpsuit, so I could not see his arms or body, but his head and face were badly scarred. His hair was on the short side, black, dirty, and disheveled. He was incredibly thin, the veins in his neck and forehead and cheeks plainly visible. Usually people who are being interrogated for the first time are incredibly nervous and anxious; the only ones who are calm, as calm as he was, are usually extremely hardened criminals. I asked my colleague if he had observed anything unusual. He said the man looks like a fucking freak, and he hasn’t moved at all in the last hour, and if I didn’t know better, I’d say he wasn’t breathing. I laughed and entered the room.
Ben did not move or acknowledge me in any way. I waited for a few moments, assuming he would, but he did not. He was absolutely still, eerily still, still the way large bodies of water can be still, the way they don’t appear to be moving, don’t appear to be alive, but you know they are. I spoke.
My name is Agent John Guilfoy. I’d like to ask you a few questions.
He slowly opened his eyes. I hadn’t had any contact with him during the arrests and hadn’t seen his eyes when observing him, and I had never seen anything like them. At least, not naturally. They were black, obsidian black, the black of silence, the black of death, the black of what I imagine it must be like before birth. They startled me, scared me. I waited for him to say something, and I waited until I was over the shock of his eyes, and I spoke again.
Do you understand why you’re here?
Yes.
Have you been treated well?
Doesn’t matter.
I’m going to tell you upfront that the more cooperative you are with us, the easier things will be for you.
He smiled, laughed to himself.
Is there something funny about that?
Go on with your questions.
We’ve been trying to identify you, and you haven’t turned up in any of our computer databases. I’m wondering if you can help us in any way.
I gave you my name.
Is it your real name?
I consider it so.
Is there another one we should be checking?
There have been a few.
Such as?
None of them will be of any use to you.
Try me.
He smiled again, didn’t say a word, waited for me.
I stared at him, tried to intimidate him. I might as well have been staring at a rock. He was silent and still and unmoving. I spoke again.
Do you understand the charges against you?
Yes.
You understand they are extremely serious?
If you say so.
You’re looking at years, maybe decades in prison.
Yes.
That doesn’t bother you?
No.
Why?
I can be free anywhere, just as someone can be imprisoned anywhere.
Is that something your leader taught you?
I don’t have a leader.
No?
No.
Yahya was not your leader?
My friend.
A dangerous friend.
If you say so.
He and his followers, amongst whom we count you, were in possession of hundreds of weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition.
I possess nothing.
Did you know of the weapons’ existence?
Yes.
Then according to the laws of the government of the United States, you were in possession of them. He smiled again.
If you say so.
Do you find this amusing?
Yes.
Why?
I think your laws are silly.
Why is that?
People should be allowed to live and act as they choose.
Not if they endanger or impose on other people.
No one in that tunnel was imposing on or endangering anyone.
I would disagree.
As is your right.
You were living illegally on public land and hoarding weapons designed to kill people.
If the land is public, why can’t we use it?
Because it was designated for other purposes.
And how can the most heavily armed, most militarized government in the history of civilization tell its own citizens they can’t arm themselves in preparation for the coming annihilation?
The coming annihilation?
Yes.
The apocalypse?
If you want to call it that.
You believe it’s coming?
Yes.
The seals have been broken and the signs are appearing?
No.
The Bible says so?
It does, but those words mean nothing to me.
Christ is coming back to do battle with the Devil?
Is that what you believe?
What I believe is irrelevant. I want to know what you believe.
I’ve told you.
This have something to do with Allah?
It has nothing to do with religion.
Then how do you know?
Look around you.
And what will I see?
That it’s coming to an end.
And you can see it?
In a way.
And it’s coming soon?
Yes.
I took a deep breath. I wasn’t sure if he was a fanatic or mentally ill. In either case, interrogation is virtually useless. Fanatics don’t break unless extreme techniques are used, and those sorts of techniques were forbidden in my branch of the government, and whatever the mentally ill say is considered unreliable, and is usually unusable in court. He closed his eyes and started taking deep breaths through his nose. I asked him if he was okay, and he slowly nodded. I asked him if he needed something to eat or drink, and he slowly shook his head. He just breathed, and I waited. After a minute or so, I thought I’d leave him alone, grab a cup of coffee, and come back and try again. When I stood up, he opened his eyes, and he spoke.
I can take it away.
Excuse me?
I can take it away from you.
What are you talking about?
I’m sorry. Terribly sorry.
What are you sorry for?
; For your loss.
What the fuck are you talking about?
You lost a child.
I was stunned. I was shot in the line of duty during my first year as an agent, shot in the shoulder with a.38 caliber revolver. The bullet entered my shoulder and exited my back. Ben’s statement shocked, hurt, confused, and scared me more than that shot, more than anything in my life, except the event to which he was referring. There was no way he should have known. He had never seen or heard of me before I entered the room. I had asked all of my colleagues not to talk to me about it. We had not released an obituary, so it had not appeared in any sort of media. At the time, I believed there was no way he could have known, though that belief certainly changed.
I sat back down. I looked at him. He hadn’t moved. He just stared at me and waited for me to say something. I couldn’t speak, and if I had tried, I would have broken down. I stared at the table and clenched my jaw and thought about my little boy, about the first time I saw him, immediately after he was born, about the first time I held him, two minutes later, about a picture, which I could not look at until after I met Ben, of me and him and his mother, who I am no longer with, taken just after we brought him home. I think about his room in our house, about his first step, about his first word, which was Dadda. I replay his life in my head, and I think about how happy we were for the two years we were together. And then he started twitching, and having trouble walking, and he went into the hospital and he never came out and my life fell apart, except for my life at work, which was the only thing I could cling to in order to stay sane. I lost everything else when I lost my little boy.