But with every story, falsified or not, comes a history. Delilah thought about Manhattan in the days when it was a growing baby, its shape still being kneaded out around the edges. She thought about the story of the pirate ship buried beneath Front Street; she thought about how Wall Street got its name, a literal wall that was used to block the Indians from the Quakers over three hundred years ago. She thought about the families who escaped to the underground to get away from the poison of modern society. There was so much to discover.
A city beneath the city.
The tunnel was a whorled oblivion that branched off into endless directions. You couldn’t tell time here, couldn’t tell which way was north, south, east or west. Could you even go more south once you’d landed yourself skyscraper-deep into the city’s underground?
“Anything?”
Rez waited for something to mark his sensitive brain, but nothing came to him. There was only the snap of electric lines, the humdrum rush of water in pipes, the hissing of toxic chemicals eating away the asphalt. He looked up and saw a dazzle of darkness, and to the left of that a pile of what seemed to be the skulls of rats.
“Smells like shit down here,” Delilah said.
Each step they took brought out a new stench, a spiral of sounds. To Rez, this echoing catacomb was like living in-real-time—that pivotal moment he’d read about a hundred times in House of Leaves—Navidson uncovering the secret to his dreamy Virginia home, that the internal measurements were slightly bigger than the external ones . . . and then all hell breaks loose. Random doors appear across blank walls, the house growls, and the honeycombed darkness begins its ascent until Navidson becomes controlled by it, led willingly into the never ending world of nothingness.
This is what happens when you hurry through a maze: the faster you go, the worse you are entangled.
“Might we go forward?”
Rez’s mind rode the tunnels. It was a jungle of darkness; within lay cadaverous hands and thorny teeth. Down here the ghost of trains still slithered, BMT and the Lexington line that formed the veins and arteries of the boroughs. The sporadic light bulb lured them in no straight direction, but now that there was some light Rez could see the source of the sweet smell of garbage and the angry state of mind in the tunnel art.
MoDeRn SoCiEtY Is GUILTY of INTELLECTUAL TerRoRiSm.
ThE FaBuLoUs FiVe FoReVeR!!!
“They seem angry,” Rez said. “I can feel it.”
“Bitter is a better word,” Delilah said, lighting a cigarette.
Get out! said a snake voice. WE DON’T NEED ANY HELP!
Rez saw reptile eyes; Delilah tensed in a protective stance and then charged ahead. She swung her fists, hitting nothing but the thick darkness, the reluctant ghost. But what followed were the noises. Weird whistling like a phantom train, like a rat’s throat being ripped out. Rez thought about the rats, how big they were above ground, and could not imagine the size they would grow to down here. If the squatters had webbed feet and bathed in the sewer water, then the rats would be big as dogs and hungry as lions.
“It’s a labyrinth,” Rez said.
“But a labyrinth leads to something,” Delilah’s eyes flushed the color of inquisition.
“To the mole people.”
A homeless man reached a leathery hand out, snatched Delilah’s cigarette out from her mouth and showed off his meaty smile. His clothes were shredded and Rez could see his penis, the color of overripe fruit; his arms were marked up like mad from the needle still plunged into a bleeding vein. Rez and Delilah stepped over him and held their nose to his carrion comforts. But their cautions superseded them. Another whistle-like sound panged into their ears and the man’s eyes shot open; his bony hand reached up like the arcade claw and latched onto Rez’s pant leg.
“Haven’t eaten in weeks,” he said.
“Eat this!”
Delilah’s boot found the man’s nose with a wet crunch. A freshet of blood sprayed, slicking Rez’s hand coolly as he bent to supply the man with a warm touch. They ran, but in what direction they didn’t know. Rez imagined the streets above him, the smell of roasting Halal meat, dirty water dogs, charred pretzels and the indie book, forging a map in his mind. He thought about Tompkins Square Park and the families of lost youth in full regalia, the beatniks leading the pack, the bums who beat tin garbage cans for change, the leftover Occupy Wall Street kids with instruments on their backs putting on a show for free; the skaters scratching off the paint on the hand rails with their boards, the punks in leather who still rocked out with boom boxes on their shoulders. But it was of no use trying to think about all of this. The avenues and walkways were clouded; the numbers and figures were incalculable. The streets of Delancey, Bowery, Orchard, and Hester were all useless down here. The tunnels didn’t abide by traffic laws or governmentally placed pathways.
No single blueprint of New York City exists! Every day you wake up to a big change, something vastly skewed. One who spent his days dreaming of a concrete map would only find himself lost in his own heady version of the city, the old Dutch colony that never truly was.
“Down here man becomes an animal. Evolves,” Rez said.
“Yeah . . . well animals work in teams and have means of communication.”
Like families of maggots vomiting their brethren . . .
Like peace in the dark?
A string of rats scampered over their feet. Rez saw huge black eyes, mutated legs, and razor teeth; he heard the hissing of steam pipes, smelled their fetid drool. Track rabbits, he thought. They’re prey as much as they’re predators. But the rats did not look for the attention of the two pale shadows in the tunnels; rather, they began nibbling the corpse of a woman still clutching her malnourished child. Her breasts were leathery, her nipples dried and dead as the stems of funeral flowers. One of the rats had already dug its way into the eye socket of the infant until a jellied mass of flesh rolled free like a squashed grape.
“This is just sick,” Delilah said.
Rez nearly cried. There would be no funeral for this woman, no one to mourn her existence like so many people above ground took for granted. Not even her child had survived. The tunnels take your life, he thought. Rez could tell this woman would not even be useful to medical science if she was excavated and studied for her abilities to live so long down here. Her body was too decomposed to determine the cause of death; too much of her meat had been stolen by the rats. But one could say her death had to do with the array of broken whiskey bottles and hypodermics lying by her side.
“The Dark Angel must be down here,” Delilah said. “Like we read in the book.”
“Matted feet, long hair . . . the ruler of the drippy underworld. Delilah—”
“Truth is stranger than fiction, is it not?” Delilah’s eyes were wide sparkling sapphires.
“Yes, it is. But once you get your mind wrapped around something you don’t stop even if it will kill you!”
It will kill you.
The sound of another whistle commenced and Rez instinctively ran toward it. If the people turn to animals down here, then these sounds warranted a warning, a signal . . . something. They stumbled over more drunken bodies with flippers for hands and gills for lips. One could hear the slither of worms returning to their chemical holes it was so quiet, and the slush of water mixed with exhaust dripping upon their heads.
No strangers in here, a voice said. No one from above!
“We mean no harm,” Rez said.
I can’t hurt you, but I can hurt the ones you care about.
“No.”
You’ve a fascination with the darkness of my tunnels. The evil within. And it is evil!
The voice skidded into Rez’s head. A schism ripped through his brain and poured out his ears hot and thick as plasma. He fell to his knees and listened to where the voice was taking him. To a nightmare of loneliness, a fountain of pain. There were the sights of desperate clawing youth running from the society that deemed them wastes of life and useless to their
cause; the homeless that were asked to leave the shelters that clothed and fed. Down into the burrows to create families bred by darkness, riots and blood. People who avoided daylight for the comfort of the bottle and the sweet alien warmth of it.
But they were like anyone else: people with opinions and feelings. But down here they were free from the strict perversions of the world upstairs, from the sickness that wept stale tears through the streets of Manhattan. Rez saw all of them huddling away from sunlight, from wind, from warmth. He saw them cutting up junk, melting it in spoons, saw the needles filling with diaphanous swirls of blood. He saw mothers eating their children out of desperation, felt the angel-headed hipsters cling to the starry dynamo of dream and false hope. He breathed their sadness, tasted their shame.
He felt their anger.
OUT!
The hands were many. The faces were peaked like bird beaks and their tongues were sluggish; their fingers kissed Rez’s face like octopus tentacles, tugging his hair and biting his neck. Delilah tackled a whole pack of them into the near wall and she became lost within a sea of gummy appendages. Rez ran to her aid and pulled four gooey bodies off of Delilah. As she rose from the frenzy, Rez heard another one of them whistle.
“We’re outnumbered.”
They came from all directions now. Though he had never felt more peace than when he was in his sister’s presence, and wasn’t a violent person to begin with, he couldn’t bear the thought of anymore of them getting in the way—especially if they were going to hurt Delilah. So with all his might, Rez completed a roundhouse kick and knocked the whistling sewage squatter to the ground. He felt the snap of its brittle bones and the wail of its pain radiate up his leg.
“Out now!” Rez yelled.
“Fuck the Dark Angel and fuck this place!”
But the walls were caving in somehow; the air was rising in temperature, choking them. Behind them were the hungry mole people; in front, a wall of blackness. Could this be the end? thought Rez. All my life I’ve fought to get out of danger, and this is how I’m repaid? Just like in that tormented Virginia home, there was no certain way to piece their way back up into the city. They hadn’t left a trail of breadcrumbs, and so they might be trapped here and become one of them. But it was a destiny Rez refused to accept.
Their eyes . . . their eyes can’t take the light! Rez remembered.
He lit his green butane lighter, found a dry walking stick a brown paper bag and crumbled cigarettes. He crushed everything together and lit it like a torch. The squatters squealed.
NOOOOO LIGHTS! NO LIGHTSSSSS!
When he found his sense of direction, Rez noticed that they had not moved five feet from where they initially dropped through the hole in the club. The burrows had played a trick on them. But Delilah backed into the wall, looked up into Rez’s eyes, and nodded. He read them clearly: step on my shoulders and get up there. Rez reached for the small door, swinging his homemade torch like a crazy person, and pushed it open. The sound of music and the saccharine smell of craft beer teased him as he used all the energy left in his body and climbed through, throwing the stick at the hobbling squatters, grey hair shielding their eyes, hands clawing for Delilah’s knees as he pulled her up.
“I’m never trusting you again,” Rez said.
Two days later, they had a few bruises and a new nightmare to worry about—but everything was fine. Electric Orchid was due to play a show; the club was bloated with gossip. Their fans were growing in numbers—it was only a matter of time before Electric Orchid was going to make it even further than New York. But she didn’t want to think about that tonight; how the band’s music promised disaster and hope, how her sibilant melodies sounded like demons pissing on Heaven’s gates.
Tonight she wanted to spread a message.
Delilah had written a few new songs and wanted to try them out. Songs about the Dark Angel, the squatters, and the infamous underground. Her first solo set, opening for her own band, a new rock ’n’ roll riot within this new day of rage.
“It was a nice change of scenery.”
“Yeah, a nice way to rot in hell . . .”
Delilah hit the stage. The kids didn’t make any noise for her at first, not like she cared anyway. Delilah didn’t need anyone’s confirmation to judge the quality of her songs. The music cued and Delilah began to hum behind the keyboard’s spiking rhythm that bordered on the insane, the drums that beat in time with her, slow and mischievous. The guitarist crept up to the chorus pressing various pedals, mixing wah-wah, distortion and overdrive like some crunchy rhythmic beat. When Delilah opened her mouth, the crowd seemed to sober up and stood attentive; their graceless hands moved into the air and began to clap. Her voice was ripping but soft, like that of a goddess, and she told her story through the lyrics, wondering if they were listening.
There is a city beneath the streets, and with it comes peace in the dark.
J. Daniel Stone was germinated in New York City and is still thriving there to this day. He’s only been on earth for 27 years but has already been published by Grey Matter Press, Prime Books, Icarus: The Magazine of Gay Speculative Fiction, The Dreadful Cafe (Fall 2014), and more. His first novel, The Absence of Light, was published by Villipede Publications. Currently, his second novel is looking for a publishing house; simultaneously, he is hard at work putting together his first short story collection. Come find him on Twitter @solitaryspiral.
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David Shearer is a Fraser Valley based freelance Master Graphic Designer and Illustrator. Since his childhood he’s been blessed with talents in both fine and technical art and has focused a great deal of time in honing the creativity and problem-solving skills that come naturally to him. Compromises or half-way solutions are not in his vocabulary as he constantly pushes the envelope, thinks out-of-the-box, and drives towards clean and uncluttered design—while at the same time providing a tangible representation of his clients’ vision. His decade-long track record proves that he consistently delivers excellent customer satisfaction.
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Monstark (Mark Thompson) loves to make monstrous things. He resides reclusively in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he is slowly procuring the means to trans-shape from human form into beast. He will continue to make art, zines, comics and music until he finds his hands too large, his claws too unwieldy, to use tools.
monstark.com
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Matt Edginton’s art has always leaned to the darker side. Because of this, in his youth he was once subjected to an impromptu exorcism, which worked . . . for a few months. Matt’s father has served as a constant artistic influence throughout his life, as well as the work of Brom, Jae Lee, Giger, and many more. Battle Beasts were and are his favorite toys, and if he could meet any two people of historical significance, they would be Bruce Lee and Rick Moranis. Matt makes metal do his bidding, coordinates Villipede Publications, and lives in Idaho Falls, Idaho, with his beautiful wife and three wonderful daughters.
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For handcrafted home decor, art inquiries, and tegu breeding techniques, contact Eric Ford at [email protected].
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Stephen Cooney has been a fan of art for as long as he can remember. Watching fantasy and horror in his youth served as a model of inspiration for his art, as did his dreams of designing heavy metal band album covers. He attended Exeter Art School, but felt it was not a good fit as his teachers didn’t fully “get” the dark nature of his artistic inclinations. After years of painting, a tattoo artist fell in love with Stephen’s work and hired him to design tattoo flash, which in turn led to him taking up the art of inking clients himself. Since returning to his first love of painting, he has involved himself largely with horror and fantasy projects but welcomes opportunities to move outside of those genres. His influences include Derek Riggs, Ken Kelly,
and Edward J. Repka, all artists who design album covers. Stephen and his wife Amanda live in the UK and have two children, Hayley and Steven Junior. Look for his website soon.
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Dennis A! is an artist, sculptor, and illustrator from SW Lower Michigan producing the second generation of Zombie Toes, one-of-a-kind “dismembered” toes of the undead—each sculpted and hand-painted to be both gruesomely realistic and charmingly hilarious. Dennis also creates original Rock and Metal posters for bands such as Steel Panther, OTEP, GWAR, Mastodon, and the legendary Alice Cooper. He is currently working on The Rise of Cthulhu series, a fan art “mash-up” homage to some of his favorite pop culture characters taking on the tentacled creatures of Lovecraft lore, and original skateboard designs for an ArtDeck Co. skateboard art show this fall.
parabolastar.com
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Luke Spooner a.k.a. “Carrion House” and “Hoodwink House” currently lives and works in the South of England. Having recently graduated from the University of Portsmouth with a first class degree, he is now a full time illustrator for just about any project that peaks his interest. Despite regular forays into children’s books and fairy tales, for which he has won awards for literary and artistic merit, his true love lies in anything macabre, melancholy or dark in nature and essence. He believes that the job of putting someone else’s words into a visual form, to accompany and support their text, is a massive responsibility as well as being something he truly treasures. Visit Luke’s site at carrionhouse.com.
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Justin Wheeler is a very passionate and driven individual with an extremely diligent work ethic.
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