Underground

by Kat Richardson

  “Huh,” Quinton and I both said.

  “Well, you know your Campbell, right? His ideas about monomyth—universal themes in myth and religion—and universal heroes?”

  We both nodded—it’s hard to avoid Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces in college.

  “OK, well . . . he’s a bit overblown and people always forget his sources—Joyce, Mann, Frobenius, Spengler—but there is good support for the idea of universal—or at least widespread and recurring—themes in myth. What you’ve encountered is a great example. The guardian, the serpent god, the helper and slayer of warriors. It comes up again and again. So . . . my guess is that the shapes it shows are the various forms by which it’s known in different cultures and it can speak the languages of all of those cultures which call it into being.”

  Quinton interrupted. “I only saw the one form—the double-ended snake with the head in the middle.”

  “Oh?” Ben looked puzzled. “Why is that do you think?”

  Quinton scoffed. “Because that’s the shape I was expecting. Harper is the one who sees magic things. I just see what’s there to be seen.”

  “Did you have any idea what you might see before you encountered it?” Ben asked.

  “Yes,” Quinton replied. “We’d been told by an old Indian woman what it was and what it looked like.”

  Ben grinned. “Clearly the monster’s appearance fulfills the expectations of the viewer. Of course Harper sees multiple forms— she sees the magic, so she sees it all. Wonderful! I hadn’t thought of it.”

  “Well, it’s fine to see it, just not too close,” I said. “It’s big and it’s got lots of teeth in those heads. If we run into it again—and we have to if we’re to get rid of it—we need to keep it from eating us before we can send it away. It understands English and speaks a little, but mostly it spews words in dozens of languages at once, which makes it hard to understand.”

  “I’m sure it would pick just one if you get its attention long enough,” Ben suggested.

  “That’s kind of tricky,” I protested. “Its default form seems to be the native legend—the double-ended sea serpent—and that version doesn’t speak English. Also, I don’t think any of those forms are really native English speakers. Unless it turns out to be Grendel in disguise, too.”

  Ben shook his head. “No, Grendel isn’t that archetype and he would have spoken Old English at best, not modern.”

  “Well, then . . .”—I hesitated to ask, since I was already in the doghouse with one member of the Danziger family—“would you come with us to talk to it? Assuming we can catch it? We need to figure out where it came from and who controls it. There’s also an ogress around somewhere who can call it back to her side, and we’d like to send the whole bunch back to the gods and keep any more homeless from being lunch.”

  “Well, you can’t compel gods or their helpers; you can only argue with them and get them to agree to leave,” Ben said. “You’ll have to gain the agreement of this ogress to send the monster home after you separate the monster from whoever is currently using its powers.”

  “We’re not sure who controls it,” Quinton reminded me, “but we can find out. But we’ll have to catch the thing eventually and it’s not likely we can just throw a rope around its neck and drag it to the zoo. We may need to persuade it.”

  “Legends are full of that kind of lawyering—you can’t just banish power from the gods and you can’t kill gods or their guardians. If it’s a clever monster, bargaining will appeal to it,” Ben agreed, nodding. “Yes, I’ll go. I’d be stupid not to. I’ve never seen an incorporeal beastie before.”

  “This thing is not incorporeal,” I warned. “It’s got real teeth and they chew through real concrete walls. And if anything happens to you on this excursion, Mara will probably kill me.”

  “She’s not like that.”

  “She seems plenty upset with me at the moment.”

  “I think she’s more upset with herself—we both feel a bit like Ted Bundy’s neighbors. ‘He was such a nice ghost, so quiet. . . .’ It’s unsettling and we both wonder what else we may have missed seeing.” Ben raised his eyebrows at me.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know of anything else. And I only suspected Albert because his behavior didn’t add up in my mind. So far, my experience with lively ghosts has been predominantly unpleasant.”

  “I know. . . .”

  “I don’t think this monster business is going to be a lot more fun, but it’s at least something I don’t have to chase on my own. So,” I added, standing up, “you guys ready to go catch monsters? ”

  Ben stood up and put his glass aside. “I don’t have anything I’d rather be doing. I’ll let Mara know I’m going. I’ll meet you in the hall.”

  Quinton and I nodded and we all trooped down the first flight of stairs. Ben peeled off to find Mara on the second floor while Quinton and I continued to the first.

  As we stood in the entry hall, I concentrated on buttoning my coat. “So . . . what about the nickname?” I asked.

  “The—? Oh,” he said, remembering our interrupted conversation upstairs. “My mother’s name is Quinn.”

  “And you’re Quinn’s son. Quinn’s son becomes Quinton. . . . That’s a terrible pun.”

  “It stuck for a while. But my dad never used it—I don’t know if he even knew it existed—and I never used it around my employers. Everyone there called me J.J.”

  Once again, Ben’s appearance was ill—or perhaps well—timed and we dropped the conversation to pile into the Rover and head to Pioneer Square in search of Sisiutl, or his hunting buddy— whichever we got to first.

  I let Quinton and Ben out at Second and Cherry so I could scout a parking space Laguire’s watchers wouldn’t pick up instantly and Ben and Quinton could walk down the Cherry Street side of the Square. I found a space on Western and sat in the truck a few minutes to check my cell phone for the first time in twenty-four hours.

  I wasn’t surprised to see that the intrusion alarm had signaled my phone about six p.m. on Monday. They’d probably walked into the building and hidden until most of the offices cleared out, and then picked my less-than-stellar locks and been on their way in minutes. I’d have to be very careful what I said in my office for a while. I made note of the other numbers and messages on a pad of paper and shut the phone down again, removing the battery as Quinton had instructed. It was a pain, but I couldn’t risk being stalked by Laguire and her minions. With no other way to find me—and through me, Quinton—I hoped they’d keep their eyes on my office and not start prowling around, stirring up trouble.

  I walked up into Pioneer Square and found Quinton and Ben standing by the Chief Sealth bust, talking to Fish. I joined the cabal.

  “What are you doing out here?” I asked.

  “Grandma Ella called. Which she doesn’t do. So when she said I should come down here and find you, I figured I’d better . . . come looking for zeqwas.” He blushed and the blanket of color around him flashed in swirls of yellow and green—nerves and uncertainty. “I was thinking . . . y’know . . . it’s crazy, but . . . there’s some power in belief and if . . . someone thinks there might be a monster after them, maybe, in a way, there is. Maybe . . . maybe there are things I could do to help you. With my people down here. I’m a bad Indian but I speak Lushootseed, at least.”

  I nodded, not sure what to say.

  “Fish has been talking to Grandpa Dan and some of the other Native Americans down here,” Quinton said. “They don’t think we’re crazy.”

  “Grandpa Dan said it was their duty to be attentive—whatever that means,” Fish added. “And that we’d be granted the aid of the spirits to stop the killing.”

  “Someone besides us thinks Sistu is eating people?” I asked.

  Quinton replied, “They’re not sure of that specifically yet, but they do think there’s something magical going on—they’re getting superstitious and scared.”

  “They’re not all scared,” Fish corrected.
“Some are mad. They don’t want a monster on the loose. It’s a bad sign. They want it to go away. They”—he looked a little embarrassed again—“they said they’ll help when the time comes. I don’t know what they think they can do. . . .”

  “Did any of them have a crow with them?” I asked.

  Fish gave a nervous laugh. “There are crows all over around here, with all the garbage from the restaurants. Of course there were crows.” The apple green color of his aura got brighter as he got more nervous. I’d have bet money there had been crows— and ravens, too—in the thick of that discussion, listening in like crafty old women and carrying off their information afterward. It appeared that Quinton and I were no longer the only people taking this seriously. I also wondered how a single phone call from Ella Graham had convinced him we weren’t nuts and wound his nerves so tightly—he’d been on the verge of rejecting the whole thing by the time we’d dropped him off Monday night.

  I smiled at him. “I’m glad you came. Let’s go find a monster.”

  Ben and Fish stood watch while Quinton and I popped in and out of the underground, looking for any sign of Sisiutl. We had no luck. Even in the monster’s lair, there was nothing, though there was some sign there might be more zombies somewhere around. Recent casts of the Grey zombie nets and a hand that was still fresh enough to ooze blood made me fear someone else was missing and unable to give up the ghost properly. We came back up into the alley knowing time was against us; Sisiutl was moving.

  “It doesn’t look like it’s abandoned its den,” I said as we rejoined Ben and Fish, “but where does something like that hide in broad daylight? Where is it now?”

  “I don’t know,” Quinton replied. “Just guessing, I’d say it’s sticking close to its master, so we need to find him.”

  “Who, what?” Fish asked, looking from one to the other of us.

  “It’s not down there. We think it’s on the move,” I explained. “It’s been cagey so far, so if it’s moving, it’s either following its master, or following his orders.”

  “Master? I’m confused. Qamaits is Sistu’s mistress,” Fish said.

  “I should say we need to find whoever currently has Sistu on loan from Qamaits. We think someone did her a favor and she lent them the monster’s aid in hunting—like Grandma Ella said. But so far, I haven’t seen any of our likely choices for the role.”

  “That’s kind of unusual,” Quinton added. “Most of these guys usually hang out right around here or over in Oxy Park.”

  We all walked down to Occidental Park. Under the glass picnic house, enjoying the beam of the sun through the panes in the comparative heat of 34 degrees—the warmest day since the storm—we found Zip and Sandy still standing watch over Tall Grass, who was babbling and looking sick by turns.

  “Hey,” Quinton greeted them. “Have you guys been here all night?”

  “Of course not,” said Sandy. “Grass didn’t want to sleep inside, so we took turns.”

  Fish muttered something in Lushootseed and Grass jerked his attention to him, letting out a torrent of the language too fast for my uneducated ears to make out as anything but shushes and trills. Fish was taken aback and stared at the older man, crouching down beside him to talk.

  We all watched a moment as the two Indians conversed in rapid harmonies of speech.

  “I wonder if he knows where it went,” Ben said. “That’s a pretty intense conversation.”

  “Where what went?” Sandy asked.

  “Um . . . Tanker. Or Lass,” I supplied, speaking the first names on my tongue, pretty sure I didn’t want to ask Sandy if she’d seen any snake monsters with her zombies.

  “Lass took off,” Zip said. “Tanker, too.”

  “Took off for where?” Quinton demanded.

  “I dunno. I in’t Lass’s buddy; dun’t go drinkin wid im much. Not like Tandy.”

  “Hey . . . Do you know if Lass was with Tandy the night Tandy disappeared? Thanksgiving I guess it was,” Quinton asked, forcing himself to lower his intensity, which roared around his head in tangerine spikes.

  “Sure was. Hit me up for smokes—traded me a swig on t’J.D. Dunno where they got it . . .”

  Ben and I didn’t know which conversation to watch.

  “Did you see them later that night?” Quinton asked.

  “Nah. They dun’t come by me. I was down to the Union fer some turkey afore, but I’s long gone to bed whenever t’ey finished off that bottle.”

  Quinton shot me a glance. Then he turned back to Zip. “And you don’t know where Lass is now?”

  “No, I dun’t! I said so, din’t I?”

  “He said he was going to the Showboat,” Sandy said. “I don’t know why he’d say that, though. They tore it down in ’94. But Tanker was taking Bella to the U, so maybe Lass was following them. I can’t say I like Lass’s behavior lately. He’s obsessed with that dog!”

  “Showboat?” I wasn’t as familiar with the campus as I was with Pioneer Square and some of the neighborhoods.

  “Showboat Theater. On Showboat Beach on the south end of the campus,” Sandy explained. “It burned in the eighties and they left it for years because of the asbestos. They finally tore it down in 1994.”

  “Why would Tanker go to a torn-down theater?”

  “He didn’t go there,” Fish said, looking up from his conversation with Tall Grass. “He went to the University dock. Grass says Tanker was going to try to get a job on the research vessel’s dock crew. He says Lass and . . . Sistu followed him. Grass’s pretty freaked out. He says he saw it following Lass like a dog. . . .”

  “Shadow of a dog,” Grass corrected. Then he hid his face in his hands and started shaking.

  “Oh, shit,” Quinton muttered. “It’s Lass.”

  SEVENTEEN

  We bundled into the Rover and went after Lass. The three of us who’d seen the bodies had no desire to see another. Ben caught our fear and started blurting nervous questions. I just concentrated on getting us there as fast as possible in the fog that was boiling up from the icy water of the lakes and canal, muttering pleas to whatever gods might bother to listen that we not find another body.

  “What’s going on?” Ben demanded. “Who are we chasing?”

  “Lassiter,” I replied, making the connections. “He’s one of the homeless guys and the monster is trailing him around like a faithful hound. He also sent Quinton and me to Sistu’s lair last night, and neither of us—who spend a ton of time around the Square and thought we knew every inch of it—knew about the back door to the comfort station,” I started, reconstructing my thoughts out loud.

  “What comfort station?”

  “The one under Pioneer Square.” I turned a glance at Quinton. “That’s what the revenant on the tour meant—a place with no comfort, between the tides. What are the chances that Lass, who came to you worried about monsters following him in the underground, would know a bolt-hole you didn’t know about? The hole was camouflaged and there was no evidence anyone had ever used that bit of the underground as a flop. And if Lass—the paranoid—knew about such a snug little hole, why would he be sleeping in the bricks and risking the wrath of Tanker and Bella— whom he is now chasing?”

  “How would he get control of Sisiutl?” Fish asked. “There has to be a gift made, not just a favor.”

  “A gift? What sort of gift?” I demanded.

  “A token from Qamaits to signify his command of— Sistu.”

  “Well . . . if it’s following him like a dog, maybe Qamaits gave him the thing’s leash—it must have a leash of some kind; that’s how these things work,” Ben said.

  “Why would he want the stunner if he had the monster’s leash?” Quinton asked.

  “If he doesn’t speak Lushootseed, he might not know what the ogress had given him. He might not understand that Sistu meant him no harm since he wouldn’t understand what she told him,” Fish said.

  Quinton shook his head. “If Lass understands Lushootseed, that’s news to me.”

&
nbsp; “So he wouldn’t understand the monster was a gift, not something stalking him.”

  “Probably not. But the stun stick wouldn’t have been much help against that kind of monster. So why did he come to me?”

  As we turned in near the oceanography buildings, I made a suggestion. “Given Lassiter’s erratic behavior, I’m not sure he knew it wouldn’t help, or that he understood how Sistu operated. He might have thought it just ate whoever it wanted but hadn’t yet attacked him for some reason.”

  “He seems to have gotten the hang of it now,” Quinton said in disgust. “He’s bringing the monster right to Tanker and Bella—he hates them—and you know he’d harm them both if he thought he had the tool to do it.”

  “I agree. It’s the known dead who are Lassiter’s victims—those are the ones Sistu killed for him. The others, they were just food for Sistu. The legend says you have to keep the monster fed or the gods get pissed off,” I thought aloud.

  “It also says you shouldn’t abuse their gifts,” Fish added as I turned into a parking lot. “Qamaits isn’t a goddess, but she still lent out their pet. A couple of days ago I wouldn’t have taken this seriously, but . . . I may be changing my mind. These legends are kind of specific. This Lass guy will have to answer to the gods for messing up or there’ll be hell to pay.”

  The area was under construction here and there behind the medical center—the inevitable expansion of a growing campus— and once I’d parked the truck, we had to run around the west end of the South Campus Center buildings to get down to San Juan Road and the oceanography dock. My cranky knee protested the whole way.

  There was no sign of Lass or Tanker at the dock. Quinton skidded to a halt beside me in the thickening mist seeping off Portage Bay. “Where is he?” he snapped. “That damned Lass . . .”