The doors of the last subway car stood open. Cold fear gripped me as I stared at that opening. Something was controlling the train. I could feel an invisible hand at work, something that wished me harm. I turned from the open doorway and moved toward the stairs. Then a terror came over me and I broke into a run. I sprinted up the stairs and onto the main floor of the station. Behind me, lights began to flicker out again. I reached the end of the station and pulled on the metal door that separated me from the outside.
The door was locked.
The station grew darker as bulbs flickered out with a buzzing angry snap of electricity. A slow wave of darkness moved down the platform toward me, as each successive bulb of light flashed out.
“Help me!”
The strange voice called out again. A gust of wind blew up from below and I heard the faint click of nails on metal. The rotted odor had increased until the scent almost overpowered me. The stench of two thousand years. I pressed my back against the security gate of the subway platform and raised the pistol.
The darkness moved forward, blotting out the advertisements on the wall, then the subway direction signs. From behind, something grabbed my shoulder. I pulled away and spun around.
Clayton stood on the other side of the gate. “You okay?”
“My God, man, open the gate,” I cried as the bulb above my head began to flicker.
Clayton pushed the handle, and with a creak of metal, the gate swung open. I flung myself through the opening and slammed the gate shut behind me.
“What happened?” Clayton asked as I held onto the metal bars for support, my chest heaving, the pistol still clutched in my hand. Together we both looked across the subway station. The lights flicked back on in a single instant, the familiar concrete pathways and walls visible once more. In the distance below us, I heard the sound of a horn and the rhythmic beating of a train pulling away from the station.
I walked back to the camp with Clayton, still feeling very much in shock over what had happened. Only by luck had I managed to escape.
“I have no doubt in my mind. We are not alone here. And whatever is here with us is not friendly,” I told the rest of the team outside the tents near the circle.
“But you never saw what it was?” Selberg asked.
I shook my head. “This thing’s strength was incredible. I couldn’t move. And the way it lured me down there. Away from the group. That shows cunning. Almost like . . .”
“Like what?”
“Like it was hunting me.”
“But why?” Selberg asked. “Whatever created this place is clearly of a superior intelligence. What would it possibly gain from hunting or killing any of us?”
“This thing’s been down here for a long time. Thousands of years,” Clayton said. “Maybe it’s bored. Who knows?”
Nasir stood jerkily, then walked stiffly to the fire and stoked it with a long stick. A whirlwind of embers spiraled into the air. “When I was a younger man, I served with the British in Kenya, near the Tsavo River. We were building a bridge over this river, hundreds of workers over nine months. Weather was hot. Hotter than anything I can remember. Brown water. Hot nights. Dust in everything. Worse than being in the desert.
“First few weeks went by without incident. But then, workers started disappearing. Vanishing. Thought maybe some of them had run off. Make a few weeks’ earnings, head out to spend the money. Have a good time somewhere. Only they hadn’t vanished. See, a few days later, we started finding the bodies. Or what was left of them. Bones picked clean. Clothes shredded up like some big machinery got at them. Only it wasn’t no machine.”
“What was it?” Selberg asked.
“It was the lions. Two of them. Big males. Seven foot long. After a while, we found out they weren’t eating the men they killed. Did it just for the sport. Maybe like this thing down in the subway. We’re just sport to it.”
A quiet descended on our group. I watched embers from the fire spiral in the air. Clayton finally broke the silence. “But the important thing is that when you shot at this thing, it felt pain.”
I nodded. “It seemed to. It let me go anyway.”
The academics on the team stared at me wide-eyed. I could see my story had shaken them up. Selberg looked especially nervous, glancing off a few times toward the dark growth of Central Park.
“Well, whatever it is,” I said, “it’s most likely still out there.”
“So we stay in camp,” Selberg said. “Post guards.”
“We can’t stay in camp,” I said. “We need to find a way out. If we just stay here and wait, we won’t make it.”
“Well, at least I don’t think we should go anywhere alone,” Selberg said.
The rest of the crew nodded at this. Clayton puffed his cigar, then stood. “We should move camp. This place is too open. If there is something out here, we can’t defend ourselves from this location. We need somewhere more secure.”
We divided into teams. The physically strong and the weak. Clayton with Selberg. I paired with Charlotte. Although I wasn’t certain who was strong and who was weak in my pairing. As a group, we had to find food and water and scout a location for a new camp. Charlotte and I headed west. Clayton and Selberg, east. Nasir guarded the camp. He still continued to sleep with his eyes open.
After my experience in the subway, I kept my weapon tucked into the front of my belt.
We walked west down the middle of a Fifty-Eighth Street free of cars and people. After a few blocks, we paused in front of an old diner, out of place on a street crowded with tall buildings. The walls had been painted in an art deco black and white, with large windows lining the front.
On the roof was a large sign that read simply EAT.
“Might have some food in here,” Charlotte said.
“Maybe.” I surveyed the empty street. I wasn’t eager to rush into buildings again without the rest of the expedition knowing where I was. Still, if we were ever going to find food, we had to split up at some point. And Charlotte was tough. I felt like I could count on her.
I withdrew the pistol from my belt. “Do you think it’s locked?”
I pushed on the door, and with a slow creak, it opened backward into darkness. Charlotte pulled an electric torch from her pack and handed it to me. I flipped the switch and a thin beam of light sliced across a row of laminate tables. I surveyed the room from the doorway, the beam glinting off polished chrome countertops and the glass of the cash register at the opposite end of the diner.
Charlotte pushed past me into the room.
“Can’t stand outside all day,” she said. She had another flashlight in her hand and she walked past rows of barstools, flipped up the counter and headed toward the kitchen. “I’ll see if there’s anything to eat.”
She disappeared from view, and I heard her in the back kitchen opening cabinets. I surveyed the restaurant. A calendar had been nailed to the wall over a rotating glass cabinet that should have held desserts. The calendar was open to the month of August and displayed a black and white photograph of some crowded Lower East Side tenement street. I ran my finger across the countertop and my skin came away dust free. Everything here appeared newly minted.
I checked two small bathrooms in the rear; both unremarkable rooms with a single toilet and a black and white checkered floor. A third door at the end of the hall led out to a small alley behind the diner with a battered blue dumpster and a handful of garbage cans.
That’s when I saw the woman.
She lay flat on her back next to the dumpster in a small, black cocktail dress. Her face was caked with blood, her hair dark and matted, but pushed to the side by a large gash stretching from her forehead back, to the top of her head. Her eyes bulged terribly, the whites turned a vivid red. Her shoes, small, black heels, were thrown to the side, her bare feet dirty and cut. I stared at her in shock, unable to look away.
Behind me I heard the bang of metal, Charlotte turning over pots and pans. I turned toward the sound. I wanted to speak, bu
t my tongue was dry and unresponsive. Outside came a flash of electric light, followed by a long low rumble. I could feel the crackle of electricity rising in the air around me.
This is for your own good. You won’t feel a thing.
Words came unbidden into my head. Some dark recollection of something. Outside the diner, something rumbled once more. I thought of France in the war. We’d been crouched in our trenches for days, waiting for the inevitable charge. A rainstorm had come in from off the coast. We could see the flash of heat lightning and the low rumble of thunder. The memory hit me with unexpected force. An almost physical sensation pushed me against the door frame.
I turned away from the inside of the diner. I turned to look back into the alley.
The dead woman was gone. The alley was slick black pavement, veined with cracks. The dumpster stood empty, pushed against the corner. On the ground where the woman had been lay a single business card. The card was ivory colored, with art deco gold lettering that read:
Feeling Confused? Troubled? Uncertain?
Dr. Joseph Valenstein, DMD, MMS, has answers.
I turned the card over. On the back was an address for a place called the Munroe Film Center just off Columbus Circle with a small drawing of what appeared to be a red Easter egg. I quickly pocketed the card. I wasn’t sure what the letters DMD and MMS stood for, but I seemed to remember it had something to do with dentistry. That made no sense. What would a dentist possibly know about my situation? And why was a dentist even here?
A wave of adrenaline coursed through my body, as real and powerful as a drug. I was shaken by what I had seen. The vision of that girl dug into my brain. Certain areas in this place felt more dangerous than others. Like they carried remnants of something. Some hostile energy that coated the surface. The subway station where I had encountered that creature was definitely dangerous. But there was also the cottage in the woods. And the telephones in the lobby of The Dakota and the front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Certain streets seemed neutral, just frameworks of this system. But others felt edged with fear.
I rejoined Charlotte inside.
We sat across from each other at one of the tables. I had made the decision not to tell her what I had seen. If I was going to be neutral about all this, I had to admit there was another explanation to what I had seen. That I was going crazy. Or at least having some sort of delusions or hallucinations brought about by . . . what? Stress? But if that was true, I wasn’t alone. Others had seen something last night too. And Clayton and I both heard something in the cottage.
But I was the group leader, and if my mental state was slipping, I couldn’t let anyone know. Outside, through the window, rain began to fall. Droplets trickled down the glass. How was that possible? We were buried underground in a desert, and yet it was raining. I didn’t stop to more deeply question this. Impossible rain seemed the least of my concerns at the present.
I wondered where the rest of the team was.
“Guess we don’t have to worry about water,” Charlotte said as she looked at the rain.
I kept quiet. The memory of the dead girl was still vivid in my brain.
“You okay?” Charlotte asked.
I nodded. I must have looked sick because Charlotte stared at me with concern. I ran my hand across my forehead and felt thick beads of perspiration. “I’m fine. Really. Tired maybe.”
“Tired?” Charlotte said. “I’ve got the perfect thing for you.”
She rummaged in her bag and pulled out a single white pill wrapped in wax paper. She held it out to me.
“What is it?” I asked.
“A pep pill.”
I took and held the pill. It was made of a finely granulated powder that rubbed off white in my fingers. “What’s in it?”
“Don’t worry,” she said as she unwrapped a second pill from wax paper. She placed the pill on her tongue, then tilted back a long gulp of water from her canteen. She held the canteen out to me. I knew about pep pills. Forced march pills. They were the same as Shackleton took with him on his expedition across Antarctica. The pills were a mix of kola nut and coca leaf extract. The substance was alleged to work wonders. Make the cowardly man brave, and the weak man strong.
I dropped the pill on my tongue and experienced a bitter, aspirin-like wave of taste. I took a drink of water and the pill was gone. Somewhere above the city rolled another crack of thunder.
“Did you hear that?” I asked. “Where does the rain come from?”
“Not sure. Where does any of this come from?”
The rain abruptly stopped after ten minutes. We continued west into a more industrial section. The air was static, the surfaces slick with wetness. Old brick warehouses rose up on either side of us. We walked beneath the West Side Highway, over thin strips of grass that barely covered a layer of gravel and dirt.
A pleasant wave of energy passed over me, and suddenly, I felt better about things. A mild euphoria seemed to settle on my shoulders, like a beautiful phoenix perched on my skin.
“Feeling better?” Charlotte asked.
“I feel great.”
Lightning flashed. Giant shadows from the overpass flickered against the street beneath our feet. A second later, another roll of thunder. The low rumble seemed to come from the north. I wondered how high the ceiling was in this chamber.
We reached the far western edge of Manhattan. From somewhere deep inside the shadows of my mind, a memory rose, vivid and fresh. I’d been here before, looked out across the Hudson, the river shimmering in afternoon light.
My wife had been with me.
I remembered the press of her hand against mine. We had been laughing about something, some shared joke. Then she turned to me and said, “Cut and remember.”
“What?”
“Cut and remember,” she said. “I’m building a memory scrapbook. I read an article on it. When something good happens, you say ‘cut and remember.’”
“What does that do?”
“It’s like a mantra. You repeat the phrase and it helps you remember what just happened. Then you can save all these memories in your head like a scrapbook of the mind.”
“That sounds insane.”
“No, it totally works,” she said and squeezed my hand. “We always mock what we don’t understand.”
“No. We mock what makes no sense.”
“Well, I think it makes perfect sense. And I’m going to remember your skepticism for my scrapbook.”
It was a pleasant memory. And then like a movie projector that ends suddenly and leaves flapping film trailing around and around, the memory ended. But for a moment I had been there, with her. The feel of my wife’s hand. Her smile. The Hudson River shimmering under the sun of a forgotten summer afternoon long ago.
Now I knew. She had been the woman in the photograph with the other me. The photograph Clayton and I found in the apartment over Columbus Circle. Before, I had no recollection of her. But now I knew she was my wife. I didn’t know what connection I had to that place. Or where the bloodstains on the carpets and walls had come from. But I was sure now that I had been in that photograph.
I stood on the western edge of Manhattan Island. Where the Hudson River had once stretched out toward New Jersey was now a rocky wall, which rose high above us. I reached out and touched the sandstone-colored barrier. Solid.
“Looks like we reached the end,” Charlotte said.
The wall extended as far north and south as I could see, curving slightly to the contours of the island. The euphoria I felt just minutes ago had faded. The memory of my wife had left me sad and lonely, trapped beneath the Earth.
“Head back?” Charlotte asked.
I cleared my head of everything. Tried to put myself in the present. No matter what happened in the past, we had to find a way out of here or we were dead.
“Yeah,” I said. “Let’s head back.”
There had been no more thunder. Electricity still hung in the air, and we seemed to walk through it like one might walk th
rough a light fog, particles clinging to our skin. The rest of the team was back at camp. Selberg sat cross-legged beneath the statue of Columbus scribbling furiously in a notebook while Clayton ran a whetstone across an enormous knife. Charlotte went to work on her translations while Nasir sat apart from everyone and watched the group. I slowly walked off to find the address on Dr. Valenstein’s card.
No one noticed me as I wandered up Broadway. After a few blocks I reached the wide pavilion of Lincoln Center lined with large concrete and glass buildings. In the center of the pavilion, water spilled into the air from a fountain. In a city of such stillness, the movement was unusual, jarring. Behind the fountain, a banner hung from one of the buildings advertising a ballet company. I stood near the pavilion and scanned the long glass of the buildings.
I had an awareness of how exposed I was. There was no cover for fifty yards in any direction. On a normal day, this would have been beautiful. I imagined hundreds of people, men in tuxedos, women in dresses, making their way through the glass doors into the elegant lobby of Lincoln Center for a night of ballet. The lights would dim momentarily to signal the beginning of the show. Pleasant conversation would die down as people moved in perfumed unison toward their seats.
And somewhere in my brain, a synapse of memory fired. And I knew I wasn’t imagining. I was remembering. I had been here before. I had been in that crowd. The memory only lasted for an instant, like the single flare of a nerve cell, but in that moment, I knew.
And then the moment was gone and I was alone once more.
I crossed the empty pavilion, cut between two of the larger buildings, then headed down a set of stone stairs. Giant red lettering across the face of a glass and metal building just off Sixty-Fifth read The Munroe Film Center.
I entered the theater. Inside was a cinema lobby, concessions to the left and two small ticket windows to the right. Concessions was in a typical glass display case with shelves on the back wall, so much like the back of a bar. The display case should have been empty. But it wasn’t.
Lined up along the wall, bottles of booze. They stood there in a perfect row, beautiful glass bottles filled with different shades of liquids. I stared at the bottles, the first drinks I had seen anywhere in this strange city. Bourbon. Whiskey. Vodka. My old friends. I held up my lantern, and the glass twinkled in the light.
The Memory Agent Page 9