Darkness

by Sagine Jean

  Will speaks first, his voice coming out confident and sure, but his words are anything but.

  “This—you’re his mother.”

  The woman comes closer, putting the rag casually on her shoulder and reaching for Jaime, placing him firmly behind her back. Her eyes track us coolly in the dimness—cold and insect-like. It’s almost as if she’s dissecting us. I don’t know why, but it makes me uneasy and I try to stop myself from squirming under her gaze.

  “You live down here?” Will asks, and I’m too shocked to even chime in.

  The woman nods.

  “In the subway,” Will says again, sounding a little more than dumbfounded.

  “And you obviously live up there. So what are you doing all the way out here? How did you meet my son?” She raises her eyebrows, those calculating eyes assessing us like we’re under a petri dish. She’s dressed in tall brown boots, kept together with duct tape, and a large men’s sweater, riddled with holes, falling down to her knees. Everything about her looks different and alien from us. I’m still in my date clothes from earlier—jeans and a cute top—and Will’s dressed like a police officer.

  I interject and tell her the story as solemnly as I can, about Sammy, his running away, meeting Will—how we’ve been looking for Sammy since yesterday afternoon, about Jaime and his purple jacket. Will shoots me a look when I finish, as though I shouldn’t have given so much away—especially to this woman who’s stranger than anyone I’ve ever met.

  But what can I do? We can’t expect her to explain her situation if we don’t explain ours.

  “Forgive me,” she smiles, a stiff, almost pained smile. “We live off the clothes and items we scavenge. Jaime surely wouldn’t have taken the clothes of someone he knew still needed them.”

  Scavenge? In the subway? Who are these people?

  “I’m sorry,” Will says. “I still don’t understand. You can’t live down here.” I hear the edge in his voice, the need to add “it’s illegal” to what he’s just said. He doesn’t even have to—you can see it in his stance, in the way he holds himself high above the woman and her son—even me. The honorable, the strict, the precise Officer Will is back and it feels as though he’s never left. Somehow that thought makes me want to step away from him.

  “Surely you’ve heard of people like me before, officer.” She says “officer” with obvious distaste in her voice, no longer trying to hide her distrust under a fake smile.

  Suddenly, what she’s saying strikes a chord and I raise my chin to look her in the eye. “Mole people. You’re a mole person!” I exclaim in disbelief. It doesn’t even sound real—but that’s what she is. I remember watching a documentary about them in the ninth grade, baby Sammy sitting alongside me in rapt attention. He’d been so curious—asking questions about these homeless people that decided that the underground was a safer place to live than the metropolis of New York. But there aren’t people like that anymore—the city has fixed up homeless shelters, created more job programs. There is no actual need to live down here—not one that is practical and makes sense. I remember going to bed that night, confident that this was a problem that had been eradicated sometime in the nineties. That Sammy’s interest in them was something passing and unsubstantial—that he wouldn’t grow up and want to leave society like that, no matter how much he seemed to be detached from it.

  “I didn’t realize . . . ” Will starts, “that people still did this.” Apparently he’d been thinking the same thing I was.

  “Of course you didn’t. People on the surface never look past their own noses, let alone far enough down that they’d see people like us.” She puts her hand on her hips, her voice holding a sharp, cold edge. A terse smile stays on her face. Her eyes narrow as Jaime stands still and uncertain between us.

  “I’m Margo,” she says finally, resigned. “And this is my camp.” She picks up a lantern from the ground and lights it in one fluid motion. The space around us floods with more light than I’ve seen in hours. And suddenly, I see it—the shadows where she seemed to come from are not shadows at all. Far off, next to a pile of metal, rubber, and abandoned industrial tools, are three empty subway cars—old enough to be from a time my mother wasn’t even born. Around these rust-covered train cars are different-colored blankets and pieces of cloth hitched on tall metal pipes or wooden sticks.

  I peer inside, letting in a sharp breath when I make out what’s there. People. Mole people. All ages, all sizes, all races—huddled together, peering at us with wide eyes adjusting to the lantern’s light. There aren’t many of them—maybe seven or eight—but it’s enough that I’m more than a little intimidated. Especially if they’re going to assess us the way Margo has so far.

  A man comes forward out of the train car and approaches us. He’s tall with a broad smile that almost can’t be faked.

  “Dad!” Jaime runs toward him and grabs onto his fingers. “Look at the friends I brought.”

  He must have heard everything we’ve said before, because he’s not as startled as Margo was.

  “Hello,” he says brightly. “My name is Ruiz. And you all are?”

  I look between Jaime’s parents—Margo and Ruiz. Definitely not as imaginary as I thought.

  “I’m Sydney Mendoza and this is Officer Will Tatum. We’re looking for a little boy. Blond hair, very smart, kind of shy.”

  “A little boy?” Ruiz looks at Margo, his face confused. “Jaime and I were out for a walk earlier today when I thought I saw someone on the ghost tracks. When we went closer, we didn’t’ see anyone, just a purple raincoat. I assumed the dark was playing a trick on me and took the coat for Jaime. I didn’t realize that anyone else would be this deep down here.”

  My heart stutters. It isn’t until this moment that I realize that I’ve feared the worst. That part of me has assumed that something bad happened to Sammy— that he was hurt somewhere and it was all my fault. But I feel like some sort of tension in me has been released. Tears spill down my cheeks completely out of my control. I don’t normally cry—especially in front of other people—but I can’t help it. Sammy is out there. I let myself dare to hope, to dream, to pray that Sammy and I will make it out of here.

  “Take me,” I say. “You have to take me to where you found him. You have to take me to those ghost tracks.”

  HONESTLY, WHO WOULD HAVE GUESSED that the subway could be this complex? This is ridiculous. And I’m not even talking about the group of people who actually live down here.

  Ruiz explains what ghost tracks are as he and Margo lead us toward them, and I think that this day can’t get any weirder.

  “They’re abandoned subway tracks—the one we’re heading to right now were started in the sixties and never finished. There’s more stuff like that than you’d realize. There are tons of abandoned routes down here that just get forgotten over time. This place is bigger than most people know.”

  He didn’t have to tell me; Sydney and I have been here for longer than anyone ought to. From now on, if I need to get somewhere, I’ll take a friggin’ Uber.

  But Ruiz, Margo, Jaime? They’d lived here for even longer. Jaime might have lived here his entire life. It was hard to be sure with these people. Something about them seemed off, other than the fact that they lived their lives in a place most people would never consider living in.

  “Have you guys always lived down here?” I ask. Sydney elbows me sharply in the ribs as if I shouldn’t have asked that and I glare back at her. For a moment, I wonder if she’s like this with that Ezra guy, her probable, maybe boyfriend. Always pushing and shoving and bossing around. I wonder how he can take it, especially if he’s the kind of guy who’s scared of everything when Sydney is so clearly afraid of almost nothing. Somehow that doesn’t seem to be the type of guy she’d go for. If they are dating, that is.

  I stomp this line of thought down and focus on Ruiz.

  Ruiz doesn’t seem to think I’m being rude at all and he replies with a laugh. “I wasn’t born here if that’s what you’re
asking. And neither was Jaime. We moved when he was young enough to not remember much of the surface.”

  Move. As if he packed up his house in a moving van and moved from Harlem to Brooklyn—like he’s not basically living in the sewers. As though she can hear my thoughts, Sydney raises her eyebrows at me. She thinks I’m judging them too harshly. But it’s hard not to—they have a child. A son that doesn’t seem to know anything about the outside world. A kid who’s probably never been to school.

  Maybe I think this just because I’m a cop, but how can this be someone’s only option? I want to say something, anything, to let them know how wrong I think this is—but I can’t. Not until we find Sammy, not until they help us.

  “This must be where they last saw him,” says Margo. She’s not as warm as Ruiz is, just cold, curt, and unnervingly polite, as if she’s counting the seconds until we leave. Sydney seems just as rattled by her as I do, yet she’s trusting her, something I can’t quite bring myself to do. For any of these people. Ruiz seems to agree with Margo as he looks around.

  “How did he look? Was he okay? Did he seem scared?” Sydney chimes in, her voice hopeful and desperate all at once. It breaks my heart. I watch as she tries to hold it all together, her shaky tone the only thing betraying her composure. I wonder, for maybe the hundredth time, what would have happened if I hadn’t stopped her. If I had helped her immediately. Would she have found Sammy by now? Is this my fault somehow? Could I have been better to her? These questions filter in through my guilt and, despite myself, I take her hand in mine almost as if to lend her strength. She squeezes back and somehow I’m comforted. Somehow in her touch, she conveys just how strong she is—how fearless and brave—and it feels like everything is going to be okay.

  “I’m sorry, child. As I said earlier, I didn’t get a good look at him. These tunnels can get pretty dark.”

  “And you’re okay with that?” I ask immediately, Sydney’s hand in mine somehow making me feel stronger. “With living your life down here in the dark? Never seeing the sun again?”

  Ruiz laughs again. “You surface people think that the light is so great. That it’s the dark that’s scary. But it’s just the opposite.” He doesn’t explain more and instead continues along, as if his lifestyle is much too nuanced to bother explaining to us. I roll my eyes at his turned back just as Sydney pulls her hand out of mine and rushes to catch up to them.

  As always, there’s nothing I can do but follow her.

  It feels like hours later when we stop our walk along the ghost tracks, Sammy still nowhere to be found.

  “It seems like your brother is not on these tracks. He must have taken another path from here,” Margo says in that brusque tone of hers. She turns to Sydney. “If you don’t mind my asking, why did Sammy run away from you? Was he upset?”

  I don’t like the way she says “run away from you.” As if Sydney did something to provoke him, as if this is all her fault. I hope she doesn’t take the bait and blame herself. I turn and watch as Sydney’s eyes turn livid and I want to smile. Of course she wouldn’t let this woman get under her skin.

  “Sammy has Asperger’s. He doesn’t act like everyone else does when there’s a lot going on. He runs and hides—not from me, but from everything.” You would think that that would be enough to shut Margo down, but the woman’s eyes stay shrewd.

  “From the world,” she says softly, then begins walking ahead of us, back toward the direction of the camp, seemingly giving up on helping us find Sammy today.

  Ruiz gives us an apologetic smile. “My wife can be a little critical of the surface world. I’m really sorry about that.” But Margo wasn’t just being critical of the surface world; she was being critical of Sydney.

  “Hey!” I bark at her and Margo slows her pace but doesn’t turn. “I said, hey!” This time she stops and crosses her arms, looking me squarely in the eyes.

  “Yes, officer?” she says, almost mockingly.

  “Do you have any idea what’s going on up there? The worst storm in New York history has flooded most of this system and, if it’s this bad down here, what do you think’s going on up there? What do you think it was like on that subway platform for that little boy who hates being touched? It was all bodies, shoving and fighting for their lives. There was nothing Sydney could have done except what she’s doing now—chase after her younger brother and do whatever it takes to find him.”

  I finish on a shuddering breath and Margo stares at me, her lips pressing into a thin line.

  “Then I wish you both luck in getting to the surface.” Cold, calm, and unsettling, her voice drops to an almost-whisper.

  She looks between the two of us, her eyes narrowing almost imperceptibly before she turns on her heel. We walk back toward their camp in silence.

  Sydney won’t talk to me. It must be well into the evening now, more than twenty-four hours since we’ve been here, and I’m starving. My stomach is grumbling for something other than granola bars and raisins, and all I want is for Sydney to turn around and talk to me, but she stares straight ahead.

  We sit on a medley of different chairs, buckets, and stepping stools around a small bonfire, roasting some questionable meat and heating up cans of beans. The camp isn’t as bad as I thought it would be. The dwellers—mole people, as Sydney called them—are all happy and bright-faced, telling stories around the fire and laughing with one another. An older man with a graying beard plays an out-of-tune guitar and people dance against the faint lights of the fire. Even Margo smiles from time to time, stroking Jaime’s head and laughing as Ruiz comes close and whispers into her ear.

  They’re like a family—down where the rain doesn’t hit and the storm is nonexistent. Their lives are untouched, unruffled by the turmoil of the outside world. The storm is probably pretty much over by now, anyway. It’s only a matter of time before rescue crews start moving through these tunnels— only a matter of when.

  I try to catch Sydney’s eye, but she still won’t look back. With her dark hair pulled to one side, the fire illuminates the soft angle of her jaw, the brightness of her eyes. It’s strange how I only met her yesterday. I feel like we’ve been down here for weeks—I feel like I’ve known her for weeks. And not because I feel like we have some strange, instant cosmic connection—I’m not crazy. It’s just that so much has happened since I yelled “Miss!” out into a crowd of panicked commuters. So much has happened since I vowed that I would get us out of here no matter what. I’d felt so much older than her, like I was so much more responsible. Now she’s the one who seems braver, stronger. It’s the way she pushed her way through these people, the way she’s navigating this situation as if it’s nothing. Even the way she laughs freely at the jokes people start telling around the fire is fierce and independent. She isn’t afraid of any of these people. Even if she’s wary of them, she’d never let any of that show.

  “So are you kids planning on staying or what?” asks an old woman, who may or may not be blind. She says “kids,” but she’s looking more into the fire than at us.

  “We’re just here for her brother,” I say sternly. I’m not like Sydney. I won’t pretend that this situation sits well with me.

  The woman lets out a hearty laugh. “Well y’all should. This place’s got everything you need and more. Margo and Ruiz do a good job of keeping us happy, that’s for sure. Ain’t it, Jaime?”

  The little boy chimes in with a cheery smile and lifts up a meat kebab in salute. I sniff at my piece of meat and decide that I’m too hungry not to take a bite.

  I’m not surprised that Margo and Ruiz run this whole thing though. It makes sense—everyone looks at them with the kind of respect and awe you can’t fake.

  Ruiz smiles, putting his arm around his wife lovingly.

  “So why did you choose to come down here?” Sydney asks, directing the question toward the couple.

  “Choose?” Margo turns the friendly tone Sydney used into something aggressive. Her normally cold tone turns sharper than usual. “Who told
you we had a choice? The world up there is a cancer, okay? A cancer. And everyone there is slowly dying and they don’t even know it. It’s like one of those sleeper agents. The noise, the pollution, the violence, and the greed—slowly killing them one by one. And the worst part is, they’re all a part of it—all willingly a part of their own deaths. I used to be a part of it, too. Until I decided that enough was enough and I couldn’t deal with paying that society every month in taxes and mortgages. Until I decided that I needed to live in peace. That’s why we came here. So we could live and breathe in peace.”

  We stare at her in shock. Peace. Under a dirty subway system. Where there’s no running water, no grocery stores? Margo merely sits back down, her cool eyes holding a glint in them I can’t quite interpret. And looking at her, it almost makes sense. In a way this place is kind of peaceful. It’s calming and weirdly relaxing being so far away from responsibilities and the drama of the real world.

  I look at Sydney and see her brows furrowed, and I wonder if she’s contemplating the same thing.

  We eat in front of the fire and don’t speak much for the rest of the evening. Still, Sydney won’t look at me—she won’t speak to me.

  Eventually I can’t take it and tap her on the shoulder when we finish eating, the rest of the camp too preoccupied with their conversations to take notice.

  “Hey, you okay?”

  What I really want to say is this: Are we okay? Are you mad at me? Did I do something to break the small bit of friendship between us?

  “I’m fine,” she says and gets up to walk a little ways away. I stand, too, and softly touch her elbow.

  “Syd.”

  She freezes at the sound of her nickname.

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean t—”

  She suddenly whirls around to glare at me.