Underground

by Kat Richardson

  “Hi, there,” I said.

  “Hello, beautiful.”

  My face got hot. I’m way too tall and tomboyish for that description, but the warm setting lifted my spirits more than I’d expected and I took the compliment as a sign there might yet be hope for us.

  “How did your day go?” I asked.

  He smiled at my corny question. “It was pretty good. I visited a friend in the business and he asked me to look at some stuff for him. And we found this.”

  He picked up a white plastic bag from the seat beside him and handed it to me. “It reminded me of you.”

  I made a mock frown and took the bag, reaching inside to pull out a wooden ball about the size of a large grapefruit. Then I really did frown. There was something strange about it, but I couldn’t figure out what—it didn’t have an obvious Grey gleam or anything like that; it was just . . . odd. The surface was covered with sharply etched rectangular segments, and as I turned it over something rattled inside. I noticed a little threaded cylinder inset into the ball to screw it onto a post of some kind.

  As I was staring at the ball, the waiter approached and I put it aside to order. As soon as he was gone, I picked the ball up again.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “It’s a puzzle box,” Will replied. “Charlie found it in an old house he was taking apart up in Leavenworth. Someone had used a pair of them for decorations on the newel posts of a staircase. Neither of us had ever seen round ones like that before and it was kind of a strange way to use them, so he asked me about them. But I couldn’t tell him anything except that the wood seems to be teak and the threaded cylinders are much newer than the boxes. Charlie gave me that one for my time and I thought you might like it—kind of mysterious and pretty with some kind of secret inside.”

  “What’s in it?”

  “Don’t know. We couldn’t get it to open. But, you know . . .” he added, blushing a little and shifting his eyes away, “I’ve learned that not every secret has to be revealed.” He let his gaze move back to mine.

  I looked back down at the round puzzle box. “So . . .” I started, “umm . . . this is the Harper box?”

  He looked so nervous that I started to giggle. Then we were both laughing, and he reached across the table and took my hand and kissed the back. The gesture was so overtly romantic and so out of character for the recent state of our relationship that it startled me. The arrival of the waiter broke us apart and covered my bewilderment.

  Conversation became more mundane while we tended to our food. We were almost done and waiting for coffee when curiosity got the better of him.

  “So,” Will started, “what happened at the train station?” Then he added very quickly, “You don’t have to tell me. This is just like, ‘Hey, honey, how was your day?’ ”

  I shook my head, still smiling a little. I didn’t mind that he was interested. I just wasn’t going to tell him the whole truth, and that I did mind. “It wasn’t too bad, so long as you don’t mind the high ick factor,” I replied. “Some homeless man turned up dead in the train tunnel. I found him while I was looking for someone else and I couldn’t leave until the police got there and we discussed it. I’m sure the railroad isn’t thrilled about it, but the SPD didn’t order me to keep it quiet, so I guess it’s just a sad accident.”

  “In the tunnel.” He looked a little green.

  “Yeah. I figured you didn’t need to see it.” I let the subject drop and changed direction. “I like your day better. How ’bout you tell me more about puzzle boxes?”

  “That one’s really unusual,” he started, pointing at the ball on the table beside me. His eyes began to shine as he went on. Will loved these sorts of odd old objects—and it had been the more accessible mysteries of things like this that had taken him to England and away from the uncomfortable quandary of my strangeness. “Most puzzle boxes are square- or cube-shaped, and the famous Japanese ones have intricately inlaid surface patterns to obscure the moving parts. Normally, I’d call something like this one—a round one—a burr puzzle, but those aren’t hollow and puzzle boxes aren’t usually round, so this is a hybrid.”

  I sank into the warm rhythm of his speech, watched his pleasure in the conversation turn the aura around his head a bright gold, and didn’t think about dead men in tunnels for a while and wished this quiet moment wasn’t doomed to end.

  THREE

  As we left the restaurant, stepping back out into the deepened cold made more frigid by comparison with the cozy warmth we’d left, I tucked the puzzle ball into my bag. Beneath the restaurant’s doorway lights, a handful of moths trailed ghostly doubles in front of my face, making hash of my vision as we stepped onto the sidewalk and I slipped a little on the icy cement. Will caught my arm and kept me upright, the warmth of his touch spreading through me. The flutter of moth wings sounded like spectral whispers in my ears.

  “Can I give you a lift back to your truck?” Will offered. “Mine’s just under the viaduct.”

  I’d have been foolish to refuse a two-block walk to a comfortable ride in favor of walking the six frozen blocks to my parking structure or standing in the cold waiting for a bus. And having put a few patches over the rough spots of the morning and afternoon, the rest of the evening looked encouraging. I accepted and we began walking toward Elliot Bay.

  The viaduct’s elevated double-decker road looms over the flatland of the waterfront like a concrete house of cards waiting to collapse onto the desolate parking lot wasteland beneath it. Blocks of old warehouse buildings on one side face the patchwork quilt of the waterfront businesses on the other. Crazed, pitted blacktop, striped with parking stalls and lane markers, stretches the width of the missing city block between them. An uneven fringe of stunted shrubs marks the edge of the old trolley line, but nothing else grows under the viaduct’s unloved shade.

  I batted at the moths that muttered around my head and nearly missed the small animal that darted out from the scruffy hedge. Wan yellow light from the streetlamps on the waterfront gleamed on its russet fur. Doglike with huge pointed ears and a brush tail, it ran into the empty lane and then darted a few steps toward us before it cast a look over its shoulder and bounded away into darkness, dragging a shadow behind it.

  Will stared after it and asked, “What was that?”

  “A . . . fox, I think.” I didn’t know why, but a shiver of dread swept over me.

  “Fox?” he questioned, taking a couple of steps away from me, following the vanished animal. “Where did it come from? We’re a long way from the zoo to be spotting an escapee.”

  I turned to look where the fox had glanced and saw two vaguely human figures emerging from a shadow that should have been too small to hold them. The world around them boiled in the Grey and heaved layers of time like stacked plates in an earthquake. I faltered forward a step, and the figures moved into a thin slice of streetlight.

  In the ordinary light, they looked like two men dressed in rags, stumbling a little from drink or debility, but as they moved forward into shadow again, they shed their normal aspect in my eyes. One was the shaggy creature that had braced me in Occidental Park and it was leading the other, shambling and putrescent, toward me. The clinging cowl of black threads and Grey strands like spiderweb wasn’t necessary for me to know that the thing was dead—a walking corpse. I gagged on the stink of decay the zombie carried with it.

  The hairy man-thing held out a hand to me. “Help, lady. Free—”

  Will pulled me back and stepped between us. “Don’t touch her,” he warned the scarred creature. “We don’t have anything for you. Go your way.”

  “Will,” I started.

  He put a protective arm up in front of me but kept his eyes on the two creatures. I knew he didn’t see what I did. He must have thought they were just a couple of bums panhandling a bit aggressively.

  I began objecting again. “No, Will. Don’t!”

  Will tried to push me back. The matted hair on the furry one’s head and neck rose like
hackles on an angry dog. It lowered its head and growled. “No. Need lady!” Fury sparked in its green eyes and it jumped at Will, butting its head into his midsection.

  Will tumbled backward and both the monstrosities rushed for him, voicing weird cries. Bright lines of Grey energy rippled around them as the three figures tangled on the ground, thrashing.

  “No!” I shouted, plunging into the fray. I didn’t want to touch the Grey things and I didn’t want them to touch Will any more than they had. I grabbed onto him and hauled backward as hard as I could, pushing back on the Grey as I went. I shoved the edge between us and the shambling, furious things that flailed at Will. “Stop it!” I yelled at them. “Stop!”

  Will’s hand connected with the zombie’s face and a chunk of rotten flesh fell away, trailing Grey strands on Will’s fingers like glue. The dead man’s jaw sagged open, unhinged on one side. Will recoiled with a shout, stumbling back and staring at the gaping thing and its feral companion. His shout turned into inarticulate sounds of horror, but I didn’t look back at him. The shaggy thing lurched forward again and I slammed my forearm across its chest, shuddering at the touch of its matted hair and knotted body.

  “Stop!” I ordered. “Stop now or I won’t help you.” I was panting from the adrenaline surge. “That’s what you want, isn’t it? My help?”

  The thing whimpered with frustration but turned its gaze to me at last. “Yes. Help,” it whined. It reached for the undead man and drew him closer to me. “Trapped. This spirit, tangled here. One of my people, before your kind. Free it.”

  I peered at the standing dead man and saw a tangle of Grey threads, yellow, blue, and black under the unnatural spiderweb of soft Grey—similar to the stuff I’d seen in the train tunnel—that seemed to bind the rotting flesh together. The threads were inside the body, but the rot was well advanced and only the web of Grey held it to form. I’d pulled a living Grey thing apart before, deconstructed it by force, hating every burning instant. As I looked at it, I could make out a shadow of a face amid the tangled strands of energy and magic, a face that suffered and implored with a look where voice had long failed.

  It was disgusting and repellent, but . . . I’d have to make the best of it. I didn’t know if I wanted the blue strand or the yellow one, but if I pulled them both out, I could disentangle them more easily. This old corpse shouldn’t have been walking around for any reason—he’d been dead a long, long time and deserved to lie down for good. My stomach lurched, but I braced myself to do it, sending a muttered “Gods help me . . .” to the sky as I pushed my hands into the rotten flesh.

  The threads of spirit felt like live wires and burned my fingers. I gasped and bit off a yelp of pain as I hooked the living energy in my fists, squeezed my eyes closed against the coming flare of agony, and pulled. Fire and electric shocks jolted up my arms and down my spine, raging through my chest. And then the stands broke free. I staggered back, opening my clenched fists and closed eyes.

  The zombie tumbled to the ground, decomposing as it fell. The energy strands slid apart and for an instant two faces looked at me. I gasped. Two? That was all wrong. I stared at the faces—one pleased, one furious—and wondered why the angry one seemed familiar before it flashed away. The other was an Indian—some kind of local Native American, I would guess—and he looked on me benignly for a moment before all cognition faded. He didn’t say anything, didn’t smile or nod, just slowly vanished leaving a sense of profound relief in his wake.

  My shoulders sagged and I let my head fall forward as I exhaled. Could have been worse, I supposed. I heard a noise behind me and turned, having forgotten about Will in the pressure of the moment.

  Will was staring at me, breathing in panicky pants. “You . . . you killed that man.”

  “Shit,” I muttered. “No, Will. He was already dead.” I tried to close the distance between us, but he backed away from me, so I stopped. “Look at the body. Just look.” I turned my head back to see the rotten pile moldering into dirt as we watched. I glanced at my hands and then at his. A thin greasy dust clung to my fingers where the dead man’s remains had already dropped away. But I saw a knotted thread of blue energy clinging to Will’s fingers and wrapping around his arms where he’d touched the zombie.

  I walked toward him again, reaching for his hand to brush the energy strand away, but he jerked back, staring in disbelief at me and then at the pile of dust and dirt beside the now-docile hairy creature. I didn’t know how much of the Grey he could see by dint of the tangle on his hand, but it seemed to be enough. Or maybe he could only see the absence of a body, but that would do. He looked sick and his skin was slick with fear sweat that gleamed in the jaundiced light. He started shaking his head in a stiff manner that signaled the edge of hysteria. I kept my hands where he could see them and stood very still.

  “Will,” I said in the calmest tone I could muster. “I didn’t hurt anyone. And I wouldn’t hurt you, either.”

  “They attacked you. You—you attacked back!”

  “No. They wanted help.”

  “You tore that one to pieces!” he shouted, pointing at the drifting pile of dust.

  “Will. No. Will, I can’t tear a person up. It can’t be done. The body fell apart on its own. Will. It was a zombie. It wasn’t alive. It was a spirit trapped in a rotting corpse!”

  I shouldn’t have yelled. At the sound of my raised voice, Will turned and bolted. I tried to go after him, but the hairy man-creature loped after me and caught me, pulling me back around by the arm.

  “Lady, lady, dead lady. Even now.”

  “What?” I demanded. “Even for what?” Exasperating thing!

  It touched the scarring around its eye. “This.”

  “I didn’t do that to you!” I cried, frustrated, horrified, wanting to run away from it, to run after Will, and knowing it was too late.

  “This because of you. Scaled man struck me. Because you didn’t come with me.”

  I stared at the shaggy thing, halted in my thoughts of Will and forced into another direction. “Scaled man?” I thought hard and came up with pieces that fit. “Wygan? The vampire? The white-haired one?”

  It nodded. “Scaled man.”

  I swore and spit on the ground, damning him till the air quivered with my fury. Bloody Wygan! The bastard vampire who’d stuck a knot of Grey into my chest, bound me inextricably to the grid of the Grey for his own reasons and without my consent, and ripped reality in two for me once and for all. So Wygan had sent this bizarre, simple creature to do his dirty work and then punished it for failure. It blamed me as much as him. I didn’t know why Wygan had done any of this and I wouldn’t enjoy finding out—but someday I would.

  I take vows seriously. As a kid—pushed into activities and occupations I didn’t choose, forced to pursue my mother’s remodeled dream without heed to my desires—I’d made a vow: to find a way to run my own life, my way. I had done that only to have it all turned on its head. And now, another: I would find out why this had happened to me and what Wygan had done.

  The creature patted my chest, wresting me from my thoughts. “Even.” Then it turned and loped off, vanishing into shadows of the Grey that drew around it like curtains.

  I looked around, suddenly emptied of rage and action, and was taken in a fit of shaking from cold and a swift stab of despair. I was alone under the viaduct. Will was long gone, the dust of the released zombie was already blowing away in the icy breeze off the water, and even the strange moths had disappeared. I clenched my fists tight and felt as if the world was twisting and falling down around me. I stumbled on solid ground, choking on a scream I couldn’t release, and forced myself to walk away, back toward Pioneer Square, away from the empty street under the viaduct. But emptiness came with me, kindled only by the tiny spark of my pledge.

  I finished the walk to my truck alone. I drove home in a daze of post-confrontation exhaustion and carried the puzzle box upstairs to my condo, shoving it into a bookshelf at random after the door clicked closed behi
nd me.

  Chaos, my ferret, rattled the door of her cage, demanding immediate release. I let her out only to imprison her again against my chest.

  “What am I going to do?” I asked the ferret.

  Chaos, impatient little beast, wriggled with annoyance as I tried not to break down. I gave up and let her go, dropping onto the sofa and putting my face in my hands. Hot salt water ran against my palms and down my wrists but nothing, not even breath, could pass the stone that seemed to have settled in my throat. I didn’t even have the comfort of howling or sobbing, just stupid, hard tears.

  I cried until it stopped hurting and put my head down on the arm of the sofa. Chaos skipped over to check on me, climbing the upholstery to lick the moisture from my face. “You don’t love me, you just want salt,” I muttered, letting her tiny kisses tickle my cheeks until I stopped feeling so wretched and wrung out.

  “What now? I’m not ready to go after Wygan,” I continued. “Not skilled enough for that yet. So . . . just pick myself up and go on like there never was a William Novak in my life? Yeah, right.”

  I wondered what had happened to the thread of Grey that had tangled on Will’s arm. I’d have to check—

  The ferret stuck her cold nose in my ear.

  “Hey!”

  She snorted and bounced away, busy as always. Busy.

  That’s what Will and I would both do. That’s how we got by; working to avoid dealing with the personal ugliness. He wasn’t likely to let me near him for a while—at least not until he wasn’t so horrified. Much as I wanted to get at that bit of Grey, I’d have to wait and let his mind make some more comfortable suggestion of what had happened before I could. We’d have to talk and it would probably be the last time—I could no more keep on with this mess than he could, after this—and that would be my chance to fix what I could, including the strand, and let the rest go forever. But the Big Break would have to wait for calmer daylight, when there were fewer shadows heavy with reminders of shambling creatures and dark actions under the otherworldly stare of fox eyes and ghostly things.