A moment later, all was quiet in the study. Even the crumpled, withered body of the old man, sprawled on the floor, was completely still. All of the ghosts had departed Simon Church’s study.
Even his own.
Chapter Sixteen
Molly wanted to go home. The problem was that she didn’t know if she had one anymore. She lay on a narrow bunk along the gangway, her ankles tightly bound and her wrists cuffed behind her back. The submarine’s interior was so cramped and narrow that she had felt smothered by claustrophobia from the moment the gas-men had dragged her down the hatch. She doubted the gas-men had the same emotions and sensitivities as ordinary people, but she didn’t know how human beings could stand to be submerged beneath the water in the cramped machine.
Not that she felt like asking, or thought the humans on board the submarine would answer her. The gas-men had dragged her on board, but they were just passengers, like she was. The submarine had its own captain and crew, men in drab gray uniforms with strange military insignia she imagined must belong to the navy of some Eastern European nation, based on their guttural speech and olive complexions. She wondered how the grizzled men had come to be in Dr. Cocteau’s employ. Had they deserted their own nation and hired themselves out as some kind of pirate crew, or had Cocteau somehow persuaded their government to loan him a crew? After the day she’d had, nothing seemed too impossible to her.
For the moment, she had only her own thoughts and her imagination for company. The berths on board the submarine were tiny bunks that could be folded up out of the way, and she had been unceremoniously dumped onto one of them. Anyone trying to pass through the compartment on the way fore or aft would have to squeeze past her or lift the bunk out of the way, causing her to roll into the hull because she didn’t have her hands free to catch herself.
No one looked at her—not the gas-men, and certainly not the pale officers with their clammy-looking flesh and heavily lidded eyes. Molly had seen men with drug problems before, and the little beads of sweat that stood out on their skin were darkly familiar.
Lying on the rough bunk, she shivered with the chill that emanated from the metal hull behind her. The river depths were frigid, and Molly had been growing colder by the moment. Gas-men and grim, pale submariners passed by but she refused to ask for a blanket, knowing she would be ignored. They barely looked at her, not even to make sure she did not attempt to escape. And they were right to dismiss such a possibility. She was bound hand and foot, in a submarine at the bottom of the icy cold river, surrounded by creatures whose humanity had been perverted by magic and men who seemed as hollow as the dead.
Where would she run?
A scream had been building up pressure inside of her since they had dragged her down into the sub and the hatch had closed. She thought of Joe, who had been kind to her, and warm in his quiet, funny way, and who must be dead by now, back in the cemetery by the occultist’s grave. There had been so many bullets, and so much blood.
Poor Joe, she thought. I’m sorry.
And yet, with every passing moment aboard the sub, Molly’s grief for Joe was gradually being eclipsed by the blossoming terror of what might happen to her once this ominously quiet crew reached its destination. Molly lay on her side on the bunk, listening for voices, for any communication that might give her a clue about what awaited her. Were they taking her to Felix? If so, then she had hope. Once she saw him, once they’d had a chance to talk, she felt sure they would find a way out of all of this. He was Orlov the Conjuror, after all.
Shaking from the cold, teeth chattering, she nursed that spark of hope.
Molly forced herself to breathe and to wait. She tried to control her shivering at first, then chose instead to ignore it. She could not stop herself from feeling the cold, but she could get a handle on her fear. In her life—particularly in the time before Felix had befriended her—she had been afraid more often than not. When the gas-men paused in the gangway and regarded her, the black lenses of their masks reflecting the dim running lights inside the sub, she only stared back, forcing her face to become its own sort of mask. When a tall, thin officer with bruise-dark circles under his eyes paused to let his gaze wander along her body, a vulture’s hunger in his eyes, she boldly returned his stare and made sure he knew that she would not submit easily to the things his dark eyes suggested. He lingered uncertainly, and then a small, stooped gas-man came ambling along the gangway and he had to move to make way. The vulture did not return.
But the strangely hunched gas-man had not gone far. In a crouch he scuttled toward her, less than half the size of the next largest of them, no bigger than a prepubescent child. The temptation to close her eyes and feign sleep was great, but Molly would not be daunted. Her shoulder hurt and the cuffs were too tight on her wrists, but she lay there, rocking with the rumble of the submarine’s steam engines, and she set her jaw in defiance as the hunched little gas-man crept nearer.
Dread trickled along her spine and spread through her. The gas-man pushed his face nearer and she wanted so much to look away. His breathing was the worst—a damp, sucking noise coming from within the mask. Molly looked at her reflection in the buglike lenses of his mask and for a moment a memory flashed through her mind of the huge gas-man—the one Joe had killed to save her—stalking her across rooftops and bridges. He had tracked her by smell. When he had paused to get a clearer scent, lifting his mask, she had gotten a glimpse of his true face … of damp, rippling lips pulsing like the maw of some bizarre marine animal, or the flower of an undersea plant, with teeth like thorns. Molly didn’t know if they were all the same, but she felt tainted somehow as the little gas-man crouched by her, knowing that the wet snuffling noise inside his mask was him enjoying her scent. It made her want to vomit, and she forced herself to take shallow breaths, trying to stave off her nausea.
The hunched creature lifted a hand and she froze, rigid on the bunk. Would he try to touch her, or did he plan to take off his mask? Frantic, not knowing which answer would be worse, she tensed to attack.
His hand reached for the edge of his mask.
Molly twisted on the bunk, pushed her back against the hull, and drew up her knees, ready to piston her legs into a punishing kick. A jarring impact made her roll toward the nose of the sub, onto her face on the bunk, and she slid off into the gangway, still bound. A loud scrape and clank echoed through the submarine, and it came to a juddering halt.
She heard the hunched gas-man right behind her, his wet breathing muffled by his mask, so close to her ear. The entire submarine creaked and settled, and a hiss of air went through, just the slightest breeze, as though the internal pressure was being vented. Molly slid across the floor and pushed her back against the hatch into the next section, using the leverage to stand despite the restrictions of her bonds. She stared at her bunk, where it blocked so much of the gangway, and found that she was alone. The little gas-man was gone.
As Molly glanced around the gangway for something she might use to try to cut through the leather strap around her ankles, the submarine began to rise, jarring her. She leaned against the arched hatchway frame for balance. Frowning in surprise, she realized that the sub wasn’t surfacing … it was being lifted. It didn’t even feel as if they were in the water anymore. As she tried to puzzle out their location, the hatch at the other end of the gangway opened and a wan, shaky-looking submariner entered.
He arched an eyebrow, studying her with a strange combination of amusement and disdain, and then he said something in that guttural language she did not understand. Molly raised her chin defiantly, ready to fight if she had to, but then the hatch behind her opened and she tumbled through, landing hard. The back of her skull bounced on the floor and fresh pain bloomed.
Two gas-men stood above her, the black lenses of their masks hiding any semblance of humanity, if they had any. Silent save for their breathing, they cocked their heads to the left in unison, as if sharing a thought. The hunched little gas-man scuttled up behind them, chest heaving with
his sickly, wheezing breath.
Her resolve cracked.
“What are you going to do with me?” she asked, a plea for mercy in her tone.
They hoisted her off the floor and carried her along the gangway, back the way they had come when they brought her aboard. Wherever they had been headed, they had arrived.
* * *
The gas-men passed Molly up through the hatch, hand over hand, as if she were someone’s old, battered luggage. On the deck of the sub she blinked in surprise at the glare of bright lights that illuminated a long, tubular chamber that appeared to have once been part of a subway tunnel. The ends had been capped with granite and mortar walls, which somehow had been made watertight, for as she looked around, she was astonished to find the submarine high and dry. A tall, broad-shouldered gas-man threw her over his shoulder—she could feel the edge of his mask jabbing her in the side but had zero temptation to try to rip the mask off. Exposing what was inside the gas-men’s rubbery outfits released the strange yellow gas from inside, and it might have given her an opportunity to flee, but she had nowhere left to run, and certainly no one to run to. Felix would be here, if he was still alive. Whatever her future held, the answers were here.
A company of gas-men and submarine officers crossed a metal footbridge that had been rolled into place, connecting the deck of the sub with a broad ledge that ran along one side of the chamber like a balcony. Molly jounced along on the gas-man’s shoulder, giving her a perfect downward view. A small stream of water ran along subway tracks far below. Giant metal clamps held the submarine in place on either side, and a kind of platform supported it from below. It took her a moment to work out how it was possible, and then she realized that the sub had not surfaced. Instead, it had entered this chamber through some kind of door, now closed, and once the clamps and support were in place, all of the water had been somehow vented from the place. The stream below was the trickle that made it through the seal, or what remained after the room had been drained.
They were still underwater. Still deep beneath the Drowning City.
The grizzled, uniformed crewmen stopped on the platform and let the gas-men pass by, their job complete. They had made her nervous with their unsavory appearance and salacious glances, but at least she could see their faces and knew they were human. As she was carried through an arched metal door, she watched them filing back across the footbridge onto their sub, and wondered if she had left the last of ordinary humanity behind.
Before the door clanged shut, the bright lights in the submarine drydock winked out, throwing them all into darkness, and yet not one of the officers cried out. She imagined them scurrying like rats back into their hole, and realized that her last glimpse of ordinary humanity had been that of the burly detective, Joe, sprawled in the graveyard in Brooklyn Heights in the rain. Whatever happened from here on, she would not mistake it for ordinary or human again.
The gas-man carried her up an iron spiral staircase that seemed to have been sunk into the bedrock, perhaps originally installed for the workers on the early New York subway. Lightbulbs burned in metal mesh cages overhead and the walls wept moisture. Molly twisted around, trying to get a better look at her surroundings, just in case she and Felix had to come this way while escaping.
Once she found Felix, once they were in the same room, then her first goal would have been accomplished, and she could start work on the second one—setting him free and somehow getting back to the surface.
If he’s alive, she thought. If he’s still in his right mind. Images of the last moments of the séance with the Mendehlsons forced their way into her mind. What had gone wrong with Felix just before the gas-men had burst in? Had it killed him? If not, had it damaged his brain, incapacitated him somehow?
Shush, she admonished herself. You’ll know when you see him. She only hoped that would be soon.
The gas-men trooped up the spiral staircase, their clothes rustling and flapping. As Molly twisted to look upward, she saw the little hunched one almost scampering up the steps, two ahead of the gas-man who carried her, and revulsion rippled through her. The rest of them inspired a kind of primal fear in her, a natural response to things that were fundamentally unnatural. But that skulking creature bothered her all the more because there seemed something so primitive about it.
A loud clanking came from above, followed by the squeal of hinges. They reached a landing in the staircase and the gas-men filed through a small doorway that was more of a hatch. Glancing back, upside down, she saw that the iron stairs continued to circle upward. Then the gas-man who carried her ducked through the doorway and the hatch clanged shut behind them. One of them spun the wheel that sealed the door closed, and then the one who’d been lugging her put her down roughly, and others moved in to remove her handcuffs and the leather strap around her ankles. Her wrists were sore and her ankles chafed, but her hands and feet prickled with newly unrestricted blood flow and the rust left behind by disuse.
On the bridges and along the canals of the Drowning City, living amongst Water Rats and hardened survivors, Molly had learned to be an actress, to project an air of weary indifference and callous disregard. She had also learned the value of a sharp tongue. But as the gas-men gathered in a strange half-moon cluster to regard her, she found all of those skills useless. What acerbic remark would benefit her here? None.
With the hatch closed behind her, only one path remained open. Molly forged ahead, rubbing the circulation back into her hands and wrists as she marched along the corridor and around a corner, only to find another hatch awaiting her, guarded by a single gas-man. At the sight of her, the door guard spun the hatch wheel and hauled it open with a screech of hinges, holding it for her as if he were a queen’s footman. Molly hesitated only a moment before stepping through.
On the other side of the door, she froze.
The room on the other side seemed impossibly vast for something underwater. The concave ceiling rose to a height of forty feet or more, and she could not clearly see the far side of the chamber. Huge pipes entered and exited the walls and ceiling at odd angles, reminding her of the piping in the submarine. They branched and twisted, sometimes meeting in seemingly senseless knots where their paths joined and then separated again, as though the entire chamber was some strange, vast musical instrument. Pipe joints and seams were rimmed with bolts and rust and glistened with condensation. Dim lights gleamed at intervals like distant campfires along the walls and amidst the various pieces of machinery, throwing the whole chamber into a cascade of strange shadows that suggested more details than the lights illuminated.
The walls seemed to sweat. Loud machines breathed hissing steam and thumped like giant beating hearts. And yet what astounded Molly most was not the room’s machinery or the overall feeling of grime and neglect. What had caused her to hesitate and stare was the dreamlike contrast of the massive chamber’s decorative touches. Beams and posts had been arrayed in places throughout the room, and someone had hung curtains, intricate tapestries, and heavy velvet drapes from them, giving the whole room the impression of a traveling gypsy theater troupe attempting to portray a royal court on a makeshift stage.
Only when the little, hunched thing in its eerie mask scampered out from behind the nearest set of curtains did Molly realize that he had somehow gotten ahead of them. He stared at her, cocking his head for a moment, and then pushed back through the curtains. After a moment, he stuck his head out again, watching her with whatever eyes lurked behind those darkly glinting lenses. The gas-man wanted her to follow, but Molly could not get her feet to move.
Another gas-man nudged her from behind and got her started, and then they were marching her forward again as the skulking little gas-man led the way. She followed him through the curtains and, once within the confines of that makeshift room, she had another surprise. There were stained rugs on the floor and old paintings hung from chains, displayed against the curtains and drapes. Ornate furniture had been arranged as if in a sitting room, and Molly realized
that the various chambers created by the posts, beams, and fabric hangings were meant to mimic the rooms of a palace. Yet the decorations felt false, like a flimsy set built for a theatrical production, ready to be whisked off backstage the next time the curtain closed.
With the pipes dripping high above and the machinery still chugging nearby, behind the curtains, she followed the skulker through several rooms and along one corridor of this strange, false home with the gas-men trooping behind her.
When at last they emerged in a much larger room, Molly faltered once again. With all of the pumps, pipes, and drapes blocking her view, she hadn’t had any idea what awaited her. Now she held her breath as she glanced quickly around, trying to take in the mad panorama without being overcome by its pervasive bizarreness. She saw a dais with an ornate chair that could only have been intended as some kind of throne, a long dining table with a single chair, and a trio of what appeared to be dingy surgical tables with weathered leather restraints dangling from the sides. Shelves and standing counters nearby were piled haphazardly with surgical supplies and things floating in jars.
And yet none of these peculiar trappings startled her as much as the object that seemed to be the room’s centerpiece—an enormous glass sphere, twenty feet in diameter, which sat atop a metal base replete with levers, wheels, and valves whose purpose was not at all apparent. The first thing the sphere made her think of was the cracked crystal ball Felix had given her to use when she was decorating the séance room in the old theatre. He swore it had once belonged to a Gypsy fortune-teller, but when she asked if it actually worked, he would only reply that it depended entirely upon what one wanted to see in the crystal.
After a moment, though, Molly realized that the sphere reminded her less of the crystal ball than it did of the array of glass snow globes the old man had kept on a shelf in his kitchen. There had been only four of them—not quite enough to constitute a collection, but enough that it seemed right to display them together. Once, while dusting, she had broken the antique Coney Island snow globe, only then discovering that it had also been a wind-up musical snow globe, which played an old tune called “Ain’t She Sweet” when one turned the key on the bottom … or dropped and broke it while dusting.
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