Underground

by Kat Richardson

  There was a glimmer in the Grey around them and one of the other lumps spoke in a slow, old voice, the voice of Grandpa Dan. “Sometimes. Crows are the messengers of gods and the spirits of our ancestors. They speak of death and magic. They say crows flew all day over Battleground back during the last days of the People—before the reservations. I did see Jay’s crow, but it said nothing I understood. Maybe it was a raven though. Ravens intercede for us in the world of the spirits—maybe that’s why it came here, to fight for Jenny, and it lost.”

  There was an uncomfortable silence before one of the others added, “My old grandma said the animals used to talk to us long ago, but now they’re afraid and they lose their power with all these white men around. You hardly see real animals anymore in the cities. ’Cepting rats and dogs and mangy cats and they don’t talk so much.”

  Grandpa Dan nodded. “Down here near the mud where we used to fish, maybe they talk more. . . . Maybe they remember more what it was like to be real animals.” Then he looked directly at me and something atavistic in me stirred and quailed at his fierce glance. “These mudflats, they were the life of our people. It is still ours, even if it is only a ghost place now, buried under this city. We can’t leave it. We’d do anything to protect it, if we could. We will do so when the need is on us.” Then he turned his filmed eyes back to Jay, releasing me to shiver a moment. “That’s why the animals and our ancestor spirits still come here—to keep the land safe. Maybe that’s why your raven came down here, Blue Jay.”

  “Maybe that’s why Frank’s yak come here—to talk,” another voice bantered.

  “Was a musk ox and musk ox don’t talk.”

  “Do you remember what happened in 1949?” I asked Dan.

  “When was that?” Dan asked. “That was after the war—the Second World War. I was just a boy then.”

  The people around the circle watched with suspicion. I’d come with a friend, but that didn’t guarantee they’d trust me, especially interrogating an old man they respected. I pushed on, but I chose my questions with care.

  “Did you live here in Seattle?”

  Dan shook his head and shrugged, growing tiny and bent before my eyes. It seemed as if the wise old man had vanished with the movement, leaving a smaller, weaker substitute behind who mumbled in a quavering voice, “Nah, I lived on the rez. I never lived here then.” He seemed befuddled and I wasn’t sure it was an act.

  “Did you hear about the earthquake here in April of 1949?”

  “Oh, sure!” another piped up. “Buildings fell down. That’s why they torn down the old hotel and built that parking lot.”

  “You suppose that’s where all them ghosts the medicine man drove away come from?” another asked.

  “What ghosts?” old Dan asked.

  “Them old ’skins. You remember. Back in . . . what, ’ninety-four? They used to raise hell up ‘n’ down the tunnels here. Scared the tourists. Then they got some shaman down from Marysville to come and send ’em on their way.”

  The old man shook his head, deep in its blankets. “I don’t remember that.”

  “Well, they did it. And he danced and chanted and burned some nasty-ass stuff and sent ’em on their way.”

  “Where was that?” I asked.

  “First and Yesler. That’s the baddest corner. There’s an old dance hall girl there and her boyfriend. He was a bank clerk at the old bank there. Sometimes y’see ’em there. And down Oxy. There’s a lotta ghosts down Oxy.”

  That I could attest to myself. But that was about as far as we got. No matter how we asked—or who, when we moved on to the next group and the next—no one had any useful information about 1949 or the ghosts of natives or of zombies or monsters that ate people and set the dead to walking. The natives had a strange sense of proprietorship for the place; several talked about it as Grandpa Dan had, saying it was the closest you could get to the “old land.”

  “Do you know what we called this place before your people came?” one had asked.

  “No,” I replied.

  “Duwamps. Funny word, huh? But it means ‘good fishing’ and it was good for clams and collecting driftwood for fires. It was our life. Before the rez.”

  Another said something in a coughing, lilting language and the speaker answered back the same way. Then they laughed and the bottles passed again. And it was the same in every group that talked about the mudflats: a slightly drunken declaration of protectiveness and pride even as they huddled in the hollows of the ground, in the face of the amnesia and disdain of society that drew a pall over everyone down below and everything that crept there, consigning it to Lethe.

  We had been up and down hidden stairs and through obscure doors, dragged or dropped or slid or crawled through holes and grates, and when Quinton and I finally reemerged at the end of our exploration, I was as ragged and filthy as any of the homeless. And as tired. I tripped over a rough section of cobble and felt the heel of my dress boot snap off with a stabbing pain to my knee.

  “Oh, well,” I muttered as Quinton caught me. “I didn’t really like these shoes.” I did feel bad about my coat, though, since I’d torn one of the sleeves and it was so dirty that I doubted dry cleaning would save it.

  Quinton held me upright for a second longer than he needed to, and I didn’t mind it at all. “You OK?” he asked, his voice a little husky.

  I pulled my gaze from his before anything could get out of hand. “You keep asking me that. I’m not exactly a fragile flower of femininity,” I said, looking down at myself. I didn’t have the athletic, whipcord body I’d had as a dancer, but I didn’t think I’d lost much by adding a little padding over the muscles and trading in my jazz shoes for something more practical—if a bit clunky. And, of course, I now carried a gun as well.

  “I know, but . . . I like the excuse to hold your hand.” Then he diffused the moment with a forced grin. “I’m a guy who lives in a bunker, remember? I don’t get to paw that many attractive women—any women, actually.”

  “Well, that makes me feel special,” I answered back.

  “I do my best.” Then he frowned. “But, damn, you need to get home.”

  “Are you sick of my company already?”

  “No, but you’re barely keeping on your feet—I got you up pretty early today. And you could really use a shower. You smell like basements and alleys.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “I do. And my knee hurts and I’m too tired to tell you how utterly lousy it is of you to say so.”

  “Then I’m glad you’re tired, because I’d hate you to have to tell me I’m lousy. I bathe regularly! No lice on me.”

  I caught myself giggling and pulled myself up. “I need to go home.”

  “Can you drive?”

  “I can,” I said, and I was sure it was true. I could make it that far, but if I’d had to go much farther than West Seattle I might have had to say no and I didn’t want to know where that might lead. It was inappropriate—wasn’t it?

  Quinton walked me back to my car and handed me in. Before I could close the door, he leaned in and kissed me on the cheek. “Drive safe.”

  Then he walked off and left me to it.

  Wow. Not a brotherly kiss, but not a pushy kiss. . . . My thoughts bogged down in wondering what that meant, getting tangled in the mess of bits and pieces we’d uncovered, and wandering back again to the press of his lips against my cheek. I mean, it was nice, but . . . wow.

  This was ridiculous, I chided myself. It was just a friendly kiss. A good night. Maybe. I was so tired and achy my mind couldn’t seem to sort anything. No one had had any real clues to the monster or to the events of 1949. The only things I could think of to do now were to look for the threads I’d seen before, try to physically stalk the thing, and start talking to ghosts. And not think about that kiss.

  TEN

  Sunday carillons and children’s shouts welcomed another fall of feathery snow outside my windows. This lot was thick enough to stick, and the rare white stuff turned the thin morning sun
light into a diffused glow suitable for the instant holiday. I rolled out of bed, shivering, and turned up the heater while I took a shower and did some and turned up the heater while I took a shower and did some stretches to loosen up my cranky knee and shoulder.

  I’d stayed up too long after I’d come home, petting Chaos and thinking things I shouldn’t have, and now I was paying for it under the barrage of morning sanctity. Next time I moved, I swore I’d check for bell towers before I signed anything.

  I just couldn’t get my mind into job mode—besides which, I’d worked Nan Grover’s cases on Saturday and knew where to find a couple of her wayward witnesses pretty much whenever I wanted. There wasn’t much else to do on that score, so going to the office was pointless. I didn’t want to moon around the condo all day, but all I could think of to do was replace my coat and I hate shopping. With a choice between hated activity or idle speculations and idle hands, I figured I’d be better off shopping.

  I ended up in Fremont, lurking in the back office of Old Possum’s Books ‘n’ Beans, wearing out my friend Phoebe’s ears with tales of woe and wrath over Will until she decided I needed to eat and dragged me to the nearest restaurant.

  I poked at my breakfast and Phoebe frowned at me. “If Poppy saw you treat good food that way, he’d talk you blue.” Phoebe’s family owned a restaurant and food was taken very seriously, especially by her parents, who considered my rangy frame a personal challenge to their aesthetic sense. “You know you better off without that man.” Phoebe’s mild Jamaican accent rendered it as “wheat-oudt dat mahn.”

  “Yes,” I said, stabbing a potato. “I don’t need anyone else’s doubt and paranoia—I have plenty of my own.”

  She smacked the back of my hand with her napkin in a gesture exactly like her mother’s dish-towel reprimands to anyone who tried to sneak a taste from her pots. “Don’ start that. Doubt and paranoia are part of your job—you don’ got to take them home. Besides, those rawboned men got no wind—how’s he gonna keep up with you, all skinny like that? You’d wear him out. You need a man with some strength. Strength of character at least. Imagine saying you’re too difficult for him!” Phoebe snorted. “Jackass.”

  I laughed. That was not a word I’d ever have applied, but the vision of slender, silver-haired Will with donkey ears à la Pinocchio was irresistibly funny.

  Phoebe grinned at my laughter. “That’s better. Now, what’re you gonna do the rest of the day? Don’ say you goin’ back to work. Nor home mopin’.”

  “No,” I replied, still chuckling. “I have to buy a new coat—I wrecked my old wool one last night and it’s too cold to go without. You know how I shop for clothes.”

  She nodded. “You buy whatever’s closest to the door and get the hell back out.” Which was exactly what I did, so I nodded, too. “All right then. You finish your breakfast so I don’ be tellin’ Poppy you starvin’ yourself and I’ll take you shoppin’.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Yes, Mom.” That earned me a stern look that went completely awry on Phoebe’s round, good-natured features, but I did finish most of my meal before we left.

  We were shoulders deep in the racks at Private Screening—a vintagewear shop down the street from Phoebe’s bookstore— when my phone went off and what passes for normal life reared its head.

  “Hi, Miss Blaine. This is Fish from the morgue. Sorry to call on the weekend, but I found some stuff and I thought you’d want to know.”

  “You work on Sunday?” I asked, tangled in a mohair monstrosity from the fifties.

  “People die seven days a week. And my boss usually stays home on Sunday, so I could search the database without him getting mad.”

  Phoebe glared at me. “Is that work, girl?” she asked, her voice rising and falling in annoyance.

  “Yes.”

  She snorted. “I shoulda known from the way you perked up.” She helped me out of the coat as I tried to talk to Fish.

  “What did you find?”

  “Some of the records are pretty old, but I’ve got a few other deaths with similar wounds and blood loss, and they go back to just after the fire, during the reconstruction. Not a lot of them, but a few in dated clusters. All Pioneer Square and the lava beds.”

  “Lava beds?”

  “The area around the new stadiums was the red light district. They called it the lava beds. Most of the matching deaths were south of Yesler, and they coincide with periods of destruction or construction. Just like the recent ones.”

  “How many?”

  “I got . . . eleven solid over the fifty years or so between the fire and the earthquake in 1949. There might be more, but they didn’t come up specifically. I might find them if I did the search by hand.”

  “No, Fish, please don’t bother. This is fine—it establishes a pattern over time and an area to search. Thanks.”

  “What are you going to do with this information?”

  “Would you believe me if I said I was going to go hunting for monsters?”

  He laughed. “I might. Could be anything down there, and with this long a pattern, it’s not a human—unless it’s a copycat, but they like to copy high-profile crimes, not obscure accidental deaths.” Interesting: Fish was taking the idea of a nonhuman killer in stride—or seemed to be. I filed that mental note for another time.

  “Is that what the coroner is calling them, officially?” I asked.

  “Not officially. Misadventure is most likely, but he hasn’t closed any of these except Cristus, so far—and only because the family pressured him. The deaths are strange, but they don’t look like murder or accident or natural causes and there’s not much else.”

  “So Robert Cristus had family.”

  “From what I saw, not the sort you’d want to snuggle into the bosom of.”

  “Maybe that’s why he lived on the streets.”

  “Could be. Uh-oh . . . Gotta get back to work. Call me if you find any monsters. I want to get first shot at the necropsy.”

  Fish cut the connection and I stuck the cell phone back into my pocket.

  “What you was saying about monsters?” Phoebe asked, holding out another coat.

  “Oh . . . a joke.”

  Phoebe frowned at me. “Don’t be tryin’ that on me. You up to something.”

  “And I’m not going to tell you what.”

  Phoebe made another snort. “How’s that one?”

  I put on the dark wool coat and felt wonderful. The sleeves were long enough to cover my wrist bones and the hem came all the way down onto my thighs, both of which were rare for me. I gave it a suspicious stare, half expecting some Grey gleam, but it was just a coat—a nice coat—and that pleased me even more. Of course, it turned out to be an expensive nice coat, but that wasn’t unusual. I bought it anyway, hoping it wouldn’t go the way of the previous one.

  Another fine flurry of snow had started up by the time we left the shop. I thought I had spent enough time feeling bad about my morning and the weather, so I thanked Phoebe and took off, much to her disapproval. I needed to get started on interviewing ghosts before the weather got any worse.

  The voice from a coffee shop’s radio assured listeners that the snow wouldn’t last and the temperature would soon be rising, but it didn’t feel that way to me. The kids I’d heard shrieking in the snow that morning were probably hoping he was wrong as much as I hoped and doubted he was right.

  The darkening sky seemed bleak and portentous overhead as I headed for work. I’d have to contact Quinton; I needed someone to watch out for me down in the tunnels and out in the streets. I wasn’t always sure how safe or visible I was when I went Grey-walking. I’d dodged a ghost through the layers of time once, but I didn’t want to repeat the feat, especially if there were other people around who might cause problems—or get upset. I’d had my fill of that for a while. And Quinton not only had a stake in the proceedings, he didn’t mind my oddities, which made me downright happy.

  I called Quinton while I waited for the Rover’s heater to ki
ck in, and he agreed to meet me outside my office so we could begin hunting for long-dead witnesses to whatever was killing people in the underground. I took off my new coat and redonned my old leather jacket, missing the warmth but hoping the hide was tough enough to withstand crawling through the Grey. Then I headed back to Pioneer Square on foot. Quinton was waiting as expected, wrapped in his stiff waxed duster.

  I told him what Fish had discovered about the long pattern of deaths. “So,” I concluded, “we’re looking for something that’s been down there quite a while. Questioning the living hasn’t helped.” I drew a long breath. “So I’m going to start asking the dead.”

  “You mean . . . the ghosts of Go-cart and Jenny?”

  “No. They don’t seem to have left much trace. I’m going to have to look for ghosts who are aware enough to talk and who also were alive during the periods and in the places the . . . thing has killed people in the past.” I didn’t want to get used to thinking of the creature as one thing or another and risk closing my mind to clues, but the vision of a giant man-eating spider still flitted through my head and I shuddered. “The area of most activity has been down here in what Fish called the lava beds, south of the old skid road,” I added, pointing at Yesler Way.

  “The bricks.”

  “Is that the whole area? I never heard the term before you and the undergrounders used it.”

  “Yeah, the corridor flanking Occidental a block on either side from Pioneer Square south. The whole place is full of those big, white bricks they used to pave the park and the Square. There’s a lot of stuff under those bricks.”

  “Fish said most of the deaths had been south of Yesler, so let’s leave the Square for later, when there are fewer people in it—it’s a bit exposed for what I need to do.”

  Quinton looked at the sky, as bright as it would get all day, even with the cold white flakes still drifting down. “We’d better start in the alleys.”

  We walked around the corner and went down the nearest alley, plodding through the slushy filth of snow, garbage, and urine that had built up between the buildings. I let my hand run along the striations of time that tipped up near the alley wall and felt the edges of years ruffle against my fingertips. I stopped and peered at them, fanning the time shards out enough to look into them. I heard Quinton make a noise and turned back to him.