He stood at the viewing window and looked over the tiny bodies in their clear bassinets. Twelve in all, all nearly identical—but with names and mommies and futures.
“Sir?”
He turned to see a young nurse. She eyed him with concern. “Are you looking for somebody?”
“I am,” Rogers replied. “Maurie. She works on this unit.”
“Oh. Well, that’s me.” She frowned. “What’s this about?”
Rogers nodded toward the window. “Could they be any more helpless?”
“Sir, I think you’d better tell me who you are.”
With one of the fingers that gripped the bag’s straps, Rogers tugged stealthily on the zipper. “How much blood could they give you? Surely it’s not enough to live on.”
His eyes met the nurse’s. “You must just get off on it.”
She grabbed at him but he hit her with the bag, and as she recoiled in shock, he pulled a silver spike from it. It cleaved through her sternum like a pin popping a balloon.
The nurse sagged and Rogers let the spike go down with her. Her face began to run and she gasped, “Don’t hurt him. I was only trying to take care of him.”
Rogers had no idea what she meant, but her brain was turning to soft-serve so she probably didn’t either. When she was good and gone he retrieved the spike and wiped it clean with a towel.
Daddy?
Rogers stiffened.
I knew you’d come, Daddy.
He looked through the window and knew which one it was, the one whose thoughts called to him. Rogers walked into the room. Past the other infants, the innocents, was a fat pink cherub with blue eyes and a smile that was oddly warm and so terribly familiar.
Daddy.
Rogers pressed his fist against his teeth. “No.”
I knew you’d come. Can we go home?
Rogers’ eyes drifted to the tag on the bassinet—Baby Doe, it said, and at first he thought the moniker was meant to describe the child’s perfect eyes until he realized it was because they didn’t have a name. He must have been “found” and brought here by Nurse Maurie. Maybe they’d even done this routine before. How many hospitals, then, had the pair worked together? How many babies had they bled? In his pursuit of the nurse, how long had he also been on the trail of his own . . .
“Thirty years,” he whispered. “You’re more than thirty years old.”
Daddy. The infant’s tiny arms strained.
“You’re not a child.”
I need you, Daddy.
“I can’t help you now.” Rogers’ voice broke. He reached into the bag.
I need you, Daddy. Gray tendrils, thin and weak, squirmed beneath the infant’s skin. Don’t lose me again.
“I can only do what needs doing,” Rogers said, “but I’m doing it myself because I still love you.” Because he was still a dad—that could never be undone, not even now, nor when he left the hospital and returned to the night alone.
Born in Texas and currently living in Utah, David Dunwoody writes subversive horror fiction, including the Empire zombie series and the collections Dark Entities and Unbound & Other Tales. Most recent is his post-apocalyptic novel The Harvest Cycle. His short stories have been published by outfits such as Permuted, Chaosium, Shroud and Dark Regions. Favorite authors include Lovecraft, King and Barker. More info and free fiction at daviddunwoody.com.
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Sydney Leigh is the evil literary double of a mostly sane writer, editor, photographer, artist, English teacher, and native of the North Shore. Inspired by a one-eyed muse, her poetry, drabble, and short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies and on the skin of willing victims. Forthcoming publications include Firbolg Publishing’s Enter at Your Own Risk: The End is the Beginning, which will launch at this year’s World Horror Convention in Portland, Oregon. Look for her on Goodreads, Facebook, and at Villipede Publications, where she spends her days charming letters and constructing nightmares—or drop into her website: thespiderbox.shawnaleighbernard.com.
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Night.
Dark green night beneath the velvet shower of city stars, and Delilah was the only girl left on the rooftop; ghost-girl spilling liquid shadow as a cold slice of moon ravaged her swaying body. The clove cigarette was down to the filter but she took the last pull anyway, tasting vanilla, spice, and everything not-so-nice as the smoke twined tendrils around her calm drunk-face and through the tangle of her blue-black dreadlocks.
There were cans beneath her ragged Grinders, PBRs, BOMB craft beer, and she kicked them over the side of the tenement, peering down to look upon Avenue A, Oval Park, and the crazed night-drivers along the FDR Drive. The cans clattered to the concrete, but she wished for the crash of glass. It would liven the night so.
“You’ll fall if you look any farther,” a voice said.
Rez stood firm and handsome, choppy black hair pushed to one side, the usual William S. Burroughs book clenched like a pistol, a quill pen wagging free like a bird in flight. Sapphire eyes marked the night, the most beautiful color Delilah had ever seen. Then again, those were her eyes too because Rez was her twin brother.
“They’re down there,” Delilah said, pointing to the black below her. “I heard them in the pipes.”
Rez nodded, lit a cigarette, and peered over the edge. He looked much younger than his twenty-two years tonight. It seemed the stressors of life did not scar time across his soft face, they simply reflected upon his attire. If one looked hard enough they’d see a glimmer of pinstriped sock through the left sole of his Converse sneakers—reflected upon his fingernails too, bitten down to bleeding nubs. He wiped his nails across Delilah’s King Crimson t-shirt, the psychedelic print resembling a silk Chinese fan.
“I heard them too,” Rez said. “And not the voices you think.”
A story begins and ends. A story is formed. But no story, big or small, could encompass the adventure of two siblings looking to catch up on a lifetime.
A tricky side of the borough. Yawning streets and people hovering like will o’ the wisps. Nervous fingers balance cigarettes and bottles of rotgut. You can meet your best friend here or encounter a stolid rock star as your mind is ciphered out of reality and pulled into another dimension. Rez and Delilah found themselves traversing these streets looking for something to do.
Take into account a girl who just moved to New York in search of a dream long forgotten: a promised career in music. Take into account her twin brother who could hear things that others could not; consider the two of them put together after being separated at birth the first two decades of their life. There was much adventure to catch up on.
The Bowery at midnight glimmered with an air of gentrification and gloaming. New money brought in posh retail, sandblasted brick and the sweet smell of expensive perfume, but old traditions still said that struggle was the norm. Beat poets polluted every corner complaining about the best minds of their generation destroyed by madness and thrown into poverty looking for an angry fix.
“They’re everywhere,” Delilah said.
Squatters, bums, transients and stragglers. The streets were teeming with signs that said they they’d do anything to make a quick buck. For my family, one smelly man whispered, WILL TELL JOKES FOR A DOLLAR! written in scrappy magic marker across his cardboard box. Delilah bypassed a line of them digging into sloppy plates of street-meat, had to pull Rez forward so he would stop staring.
“I wanna party,” she said.
A sickly blue-veined hand reached out and gripped Delilah’s leg with a strange force. She looked down to see eyes white and glazed as lychee fruit.
Help me. Haven’t eaten in two weeks, its mouth croaked. Need to survive. HUNGRY!
She remembered that Rez had once given a street dweller a falafel sandwich only to have it thrown in his face, insulted that neither Rez nor Delilah, young like him, did not offer not play into the loneliness attained after the last sip of the bott
le.
“Off me!” Delilah said.
“. . . hungry . . .”
The bum’s mouth was opening wide, showing off a row of brown teeth rotted to fine apex points. They’re underground too, it whispered, and then those teeth were coming for Delilah’s flesh; fingers were breaking the skin of her ankles. Delilah kicked the spidery hand away and kneed the bitch in her piranha mouth. Snot and blood smeared across her knee, her black jeans ripped. But those long thin fingers were back again, so her boot came down like she was squashing an insect. The sound of crackling bones left horrible music in her ears.
SO WRONG! the bum screamed. YOU’D HURT A HUNGRY OLD WOMAN!
Hungry for flesh? Delilah thought.
“Fuck was that?” Rez asked.
“Squatters,” Delilah said.
The block they turned onto was narrow and dark, lit only by the passing of the occasional car and the red-webbed glimmer that spoke of a stumbling drunk’s eyes. There came the cool sizzle of neon lights and girls ready to play for pay. Kids huddled in front of tenements that seemed to be built from charcoal; carnal desires glimmered from the windows; lace and leather, glass dildos, whips and butt plugs. Tendrils of smoke smudged like streaks in a window you just can’t clean as Delilah pointed to the club called CHUDS.
“This is it?” Rez asked.
“Music. All night.”
As they slipped through the door, the ground seemed to shiver and beat along with the heavy metal music thumping inside. The smell of whiskey and wine crept into Delilah’s nose. They moved so deep and so fast that Delilah was certain she’d run out of oxygen. Down into the basement of the city.
“How deep we going?”
“As far as it takes,” Delilah said.
The glow of spiral light bulbs reflected Delilah’s hair spidery white; made her skin so translucent one could see the row of teeth beneath her lips as if it were some kind of X-ray. On the ground floor ears popped to the sound of glass breaking and virulent laughter. Drugs were passed around like candy, blotter acid stamped with languid skulls, GHB in tiny vials and a new drug called Bath Salts. The Zombie Effect.
“That’s the one I like.”
Rez made the exchange with the random pale hand, didn’t bother to look at the face and swallowed the pill as Delilah took hers in a shot of Jäger. The drug hit Delilah in an instant. At first the club lilted in a shattering juxtaposition; there was a separation of reality like tearing paper in half, then a wave of colors mixed before her eyes and burst like a supernova as the music came to life.
The bar area was in full swing. Kids hounded for alcohol, their dyed hair stiff and filled with static electricity; faces marked by steel piercings, skin scrawled with flamboyant tattoos. The artistically inclined, the hipsters and the metal heads. They sat around in packs or cliques ordering beer and paid attention to nothing but the band on stage, knuckle-deep in the brain of the most irrelevant gossip Delilah ever had the curse of hearing.
Like life matters anymore? she heard. Can we still smoke cigarettes down here?
“So thirsty,” Rez said.
His eyes fixed upon the vast selection of craft beer on tap. Weyerbacher, Dog Fish Head, Dragon Slayer, Ommegang, and Brooklyn. Delilah ordered a Dragon Slayer IPA and Rez a Weyerbacher Sour Black. Beer in hand, Rez ventured away and touched everything he could: the obscene grime built upon dust, the insignias of magick, delirium, and the swirly band patches stapled to the lone billboard. It was then that Delilah saw the screaming graffiti: LiVe FoReVeR! and THE TUNNELS TaKe YOUR LiFe!
The tunnels, Delilah thought.
Living in the big city, rumors were bound to make waves. She’d already heard the stories encircling the Cannibalistic Human Underground Dwellers; how they lived below the streets, how they made the train tunnels their home of party and decadence. New York City is a puzzle on the outside as much it is on the inside. To imagine the life that thrived beneath her feet enthralled Delilah. To experience that life with Rez was all she could ask for.
“Party time,” Rez said, beer in hand and smiling.
They were on the dance floor now, sycophants twisting in sweaty unison, the strobe lights blending them into one knot of flesh. Mosh pits and violent dancing. The music jangled and raged, filling the room with a fear and loathing that rose above the horrible laughter of the crowd. And then Delilah saw why.
“No fucking way.”
They shuffled in packs, albino forms that looked as if they’d grown up in basements. Bodies were plucked off the dance floor like flower petals and pulled into dark spaces between the walls until Delilah saw black puddles of blood. Fish gill eyes shimmered, webbed hands outstretched and grins of sharp decayed teeth brought the smell of rot to the dance floor. But it seemed nobody paid any attention, too preoccupied with music and drugs.
“Get behind me.”
Delilah grabbed Rez, but soon they were upon them—ravenous forms in black and silver. Something tugged her dreads, and a hand came up between them like a tongue from hell and separated Delilah from Rez. Delilah let out a heartbreaking cry. With her mouth open and voice wailing, a wobbling assailant affixed rubbery lips to Delilah like suction cups; a slug-tongue dug so deep into her throat she felt her gag reflex take charge.
Another one came upon her left and assaulted the maddened patterns of her tattoos, the fine points of her bones with blood-slimed lips. Delilah pushed it down, but its sharp fingernails dug into Delilah’s arm and chest, bringing bright beads of blood to the surface. Its nose crinkled in delight at the smell of her blood and it came back for more, smearing red down her belly into the hairless cleft between her legs. Time slowed to a crawl; the neon became as bright as the sun as the Bath Salts took charge. It made her feel strangely hungry; that is until she saw her brother scared out of his wits.
They formed a circle around him, writhing to the crunch of the metal band like a ritualistic dance that sent shockwaves of bodies to the floor. Hands groped Rez’s beautiful black hair, sweet face, and exposed chest, sliming his xylophone ribs. They were drawing blood; a bite mark resembling tattoo of a hemp leaf was carved into his sharp shoulder. Cannibals. Delilah immediately elbowed one of the mole people in the face, its soft gummy features spattering green goo onto her arm. That’s when they began to scamper away, dragging Rez in the direction of a hole in the wall she hadn’t noticed before.
“Let him go!”
She lifted a bottle of Old Number 7 from the bar and swung without looking, connecting it to the head of a bum—but the bottle didn’t break—rather, it sunk into its skull like Jell-O and formed a crater that quickly filled with swampy blood. Somehow they received her angry message and let Rez go. Off they went, slithering into the hole behind the poster board of cryptic advertisements, gone as quick as they came.
“You okay?”
“Only in fucking New York,” Rez said, dizzy.
“I’m going after them.”
Rez reached for his sister, but before he could stop her she was already diving into the deep dark chasm, holding her breath, ready to swim the murky waters of the city beneath the city and kick some mutant ass.
It all started when Delilah saw the news report: thriving homeless communities discovered beneath the streets of New York City. Pulled out of their dank caves by angry police, lugubrious forms with talons for fingers and rat teeth, others strung out and blinded by the sun. Their lizard eyes were glossed over and they did not speak like that of the world above them. Sadly, this was a glimpse of how a city could degrade an entire population so badly that they were forced to seek life in the tunnels below the black top. It was a sight straight out of a Rob Zombie film.
Some of them lived so deep they became blinded by sunlight, an officer said.
Some live only in the train tracks . . . others live deep as deep can get. We needed gas masks so we could stand the stench.
Delilah was still living in Pennsylvania and hoping that Electric Orchid would be her one way ticket out of the boondocks. After the band h
ad traveled to New York City and won a battle of the bands contest for the contract of a lifetime, the thought of the mole people came right back into Delilah’s head.
She came, she conquered, and she thought she saw it all in New York. But there were still the mole people. Alphabet City is where Rez resided, where the beatniks partied around huge garbage can fires, drinking and pissing in the same clothes day in and day out. Alphabet City is where she first heard the sounds from the bathroom pipes. So many fucking sounds, yet not ones like you’d think.
Deeper than the clatter of resting drainage, not the flush of a toilet two floors above you; it wasn’t the dark glittery tap-tap-tap of insects invading various apartments, or the sound of a leaking drain patting against rusted metal. She heard voices that belonged at the bottom of the sea. It was the secret tongue of muck and grime. Fish gossip, zombie-stomp, mole people.
“I hear them down there,” Delilah said as she took her head away from the shower drain.
That night she found Rez resting upon the couch, jotting things down in his moleskin notebook, trailing the pen along his one arm with the raven quill tattoo, swirling the black ink in the same pattern that twilight was descending upon his window. Blood orange light crept over everything; it illuminated the array of posters tacked to the ceiling, magazine cut-outs he’d saved since he was a teenager. He wore glasses now that he could afford a pair, tortoise print Converse frames, and they sat upon his aquiline nose like a maddened librarian as he flipped through a book called The Mole People, which was written by a famous journalist accused of fabricating the entire manuscript.
Life in the Tunnels beneath New York City.
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