by Anton Strout
“Well, not exactly the same,” he corrected. “I mean, yes, they are all technical drawings of the same building area, but look . . . There are both blue- and whiteprints of the location.” Godfrey flipped through a few to show me the difference.
“So?”
“Blueprints came about in the forties,” he said, “but whiteprints replaced them in more recent years. We shouldn’t be seeing a mix of blue and white ones together for one project given the spread of time.”
I was still confused. “Meaning what exactly?” “Meaning someone’s been working on whatever’s going on there for a long time, longer than any development cycle for most high-rises in this city. That hidden area seems to have been earmarked private for years.” He stood up, grabbing a flashlight off of his desk. “Come with me.”
Seeing the flashlight in his hand worried me. Every part of the cavernlike Gauntlet I had ever been in had been strung with at least the bare minimum of electric bulbs. I wanted to ask where we were going that we needed the flashlight, but Godfrey was already hustling through the shelves and shelves of record books.
I ran to catch up. Already we had moved past the modern metallic bookshelves into an area filled with older, crafted cabinets and storage units. The last string of electric lights ended shortly after that and Godfrey clicked on the flashlight.
“We’re not funded to string more electric lines or bulbs until next quarter,” he said. “So I’m afraid we’re going to have to rough it.”
We continued on and the area actually started to feel more cavelike as we went. With only a tiny pool of light to guide me, a bit of claustrophobia kicked in.
“Are we going spelunking?” I asked, calming my nerves with a little humor. “Jesus, Godfrey, where are we?”
“Deep storage,” he said, searching the sides of the path with his light as we went. “A lot of old New York documentation is stored back here . . . Our archives are slowly being backed up to digital formats, but we didn’t want to discard anything until we could confirm or deny any paranormal connections to all this. We’re terribly backlogged. It’s going to take us years to get back to this point digitally. So for now it all lives back here.” Godfrey fell silent for a moment, then spoke again. “I should warn you . . . there are a few creatures that roam around back here that we’ve been working to get rid of.”
I reached for my bat and pulled it out. I hit the button and it sprung to its full size. “I’m sorry . . . creatures?”
Godfrey gave me a sheepish look. “I’m afraid even I haven’t fully been through all the sections down here yet. No one’s quite sure where all this leads to or what lives down here. There have been the occasional . . . altercations.”
“Great,” I said, peering off into the darkness. “Good to know. You do your thing and I’ll do mine if it comes down to it.”
Godfrey stopped in front of one row of old-fashioned drawers and started moving along them. “I appreciate it.”
Halfway down the row he stopped and pulled open a drawer about waist high. It was then that I realized that these were an ancient equivalent of the type of record cabinet that Jane and I had rifled through downtown.
Godfrey gently pulled a sheaf of old parchment paper out of it.
“Careful,” he warned and I stepped back. He laid them out on top of the old wooden file cabinet. He reached for the corner of the pile and started flipping down lower into it, all of them showing more and more signs of age and deterioration the deeper he went.
“Fascinating,” he said.
“What is?”
“Your ‘dead space’ on the whiteprints is older than it seems.” He pointed down at one of the older, more fragile-looking sheets of parchment. “Look. The buildings concerning that block have changed over the years, but this blank space of yours has been filed since the American Revolution.”
“The American Revolution?”
Godfrey nodded. He moved his finger to a single signature that ran along the old drawings of the empty area.
“David Matthews,” he said.
I raised one eyebrow. “Please don’t tell me the Dave Matthews Band is immortal or something . . . although that would explain why they play so well together.”
Godfrey shook his head and laughed out loud. It echoed off into the chamber. “Wrong Dave Matthews. We’re talking mayor of New York around the time of Franklin and Jefferson.”
I let out a silent “phew.” “So this land has been zoned for some hidden purpose for over two hundred years?”
Godfrey started to put the sheets back in the drawer, closing it. “It looks like mayor after mayor just grandfathered it forward every time the surroundings changed . . . but who and why?”
Somewhere off in the dark distance, the sound of something moving became apparent. Godfrey nearly jumped out of his skin, but I put a reassuring hand on his shoulder.
“Easy,” I whispered.
“Maybe we should get out of here,” he said.
“If you’re done,” I said, pausing to listen again to the distant sound of something dragging along the stone flooring. “I don’t think we have to hurry, though. Sounds like we’re dealing with something as slow as zombies.”
Godfrey just stared at me.
“What?” I said.
“Zombies,” he said. “You say it so nonchalantly. The idea of them down here doesn’t scare you?”
I thought about it for a second, then answered. “Not really. First of all, I don’t have to work down here, and from what you’ve told me, whatever still lurks down here likes to stay out of your well-lit areas.”
“But we’re not in a well-lit area,” Godfrey said, a little hysteria creeping into his voice.
“You didn’t let me get to my ‘second of all.’ ”
“Sorry,” Godfrey said, looking with morbid anticipation out into the surrounding darkness. “Continue.”
“Second of all,” I said, holding up my bat, “I have this.”
“We don’t really carry weapons down here,” Godfrey said. “Too much potential to damage the archives. I usually rely on running away.”
The poor guy looked embarrassed to admit it.
“No shame in that,” I said. “Given the shit we deal in, running away is a perfectly acceptable form of survival.”
Godfrey took the light from me and started heading back toward the more civilized section of the Gauntlet.
“Really?”
“Really,” I said. “Think about Connor and how he got to be one of the White Stripes. By letting a ghost pass through him. You think I want that happening to my fine head of hair?”
“I thought the White Stripes all wore their white streaks like a badge of honor.”
“Badge of horror, more likely,” I said. “I see it more as a mark of failure. Just a bunch of guys too stupid to get out of the way while fighting evil. Everyone in Things That Go Bump in the Night knows well enough to get out of the way, too. If I see something coming that’s likely to mess with my vanity, guaranteed you’ll see me running. Gotta stay pretty for the ladies. Speaking of ladies . . .” I checked the clock on my phone. Jane’s brunch meeting was wrapping up. “Think you can lead me out of here alive?”
“Hopefully,” Godfrey said, not quite the beacon of optimism I had hoped for. I wasn’t worried, though. Between my bat and his lucky breaks, I had the feeling we’d be fine getting out of there before whatever shambling mess that lurked down there could find us.
10
I needed to get the hell out of the office and over to the Gibson-Case Center with Jane during public hours if we were going to check the place out. I hit my desk for a few moments to sort out all the incoming paperwork into piles ranging from most important to burn at my earliest convenience. I was grabbing up my messenger bag when I heard a female voice clearing behind me.
Allorah Daniels was standing there. She was wearing a short white lab coat over her clothes. The same silver necklace from yesterday was intertwined with the chain on a pair of safety
glasses. Her hair was pulled back today and it worked on her. For an Enchancellor, she looked hot.
“Mr. Canderous,” she said, nodding.
“Enchancellor Daniels,” I said, throwing the strap of my bag over my shoulder. “Is there something I can help you with?”
She looked down at her clipboard and flipped through a few of the pages there. “Thank you for bringing those clothes in this morning,” she said. “I’ve gone over some of the tests I ran on what I found. Do you have the time to go over the results?”
“I was just on my way out,” I said.
“Well, make the time,” she said. Her voice was so stern, I took my bag off and sat back down. There were more pressing personal cases I needed to be dealing with, not something like this.
“Look,” I said. “I don’t want to make an issue out of this, but that encounter . . . It could have happened to anyone. It was just a monster thing, okay? I’m sure any number of divisions would love to get their hands on the follow-up for this. Perhaps Things That Go Bump in the Night would like a crack at it?”
“So you think this was a random attack?” Allorah said, scribbling on her clipboard.
“I’m usually pretty up on people trying to purposely kill me,” I said.
Allorah looked like she was holding back. “Let me be blunt,” she said. She walked around to Connor’s side of the desk and sat down, resting her clipboard on one of the stacks of paper. “Have you made any enemies lately that might set something like this on you?”
I laughed. “I don’t think so. As a matter of fact, it hasn’t even crossed my mind. Ordinarily, I’d say yes, but I haven’t been in the field to make any new mortal enemies. I haven’t had enough time away from my desk or all this paperwork to piss new people off. Which is why I think it’s okay if you want to farm this out to someone else . . .”
“Forgive me for pulling rank,” Allorah said, “but this creature attacked you and if you don’t mind, I’d like you in the loop on it whether it was gunning for you specifically or you were simply planning your ‘Taco Night’ at the wrong place and time. Understood?”
I nodded and remained silent.
“Good,” she said, checking her papers again. “Now, I’m analyzing some of the mucus that was all over your clothes from the attack . . .”
“That sounds like a fun time,” I said.
“For me?” Allorah said, giving a smile. “Yeah. It kinda was. It beats sitting in on another meeting of the Enchancellorship.”
That made me smile. Finally someone in power who held the same kind of disdain for bureaucracy that I did.
Allorah’s smile vanished as quick as it had appeared. “I think that’s all for now,” Allorah said. “I’m running a few more tests that will take a bit more time, but I trust I will have you full cooperation?”
I nodded. “If I don’t get killed first, sure.”
Allorah stood and cocked her head at me. “Why do I have the sneaking suspicion, Mr. Canderous, that you might prefer a nice death in the field instead of talking lab work?”
I laughed and stood. Allorah walked over to me and her face went grim. “Make no mistake about this,” she said. “The other Enchancellors might be slow to act, but I’m not. If I find conclusive results that we are dealing with some form of vampire, I expect you to drop everything, along with the rest of the department.”
Her tone rubbed me the wrong way and I couldn’t help but be a little short with her. “I have taken vampires seriously around here before,” I said. “Remember? But I’m not going off all Code Bela on this until you show me something that says we’re actually dealing with the undead. Until then, I’ll be busy doing my job.”
I turned and left Allorah standing at my desk as I walked away. That creature from the grocery store was just one in a heaping pile of my daily nightmares and right now I was looking to get to the bottom of the one that was affecting my absent partner. I may have been a shitty friend lately, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t correct that.
I shook off my conversation with the intense Ms. Daniels as I left the offices and strolled out through the movie theater. I found Jane having coffee with Mrs. Teasley up front in the Lovecraft Café. The old woman had just finished reading Jane’s fortune in a pile of used coffee grounds, promising Jane that she was about to make an electric connection with someone. I didn’t bother to get into the crack-pot shoddiness of Mrs. T’s fortune-telling. Instead, Jane and I headed outside and I hailed a cab for us. We rode in silence for a bit, both too tired from running around the night before to say much. By the time we were heading crosstown on Fifty-ninth toward Columbus Circle, I felt myself waking up in anticipation of getting some answers at the Gibson-Case Center.
“How was the Arcana brunch meeting?” I asked.
Jane looked like she was perking up, too. “I’d say pretty poorly named since it was totally BYOB,” she said, shaking her head. “Bring Your Own Brunch.”
The cab pulled up along the circular drive in front of the Gibson-Case Center. “Well, let’s hope we can find something to eat inside,” I said. I paid the cabbie and got out.
As we approached the center, its towering structure gave me a bout of vertigo, and that was just from looking up at it. The sun was high and bright this time of morning, causing a near-blinding reflection off the polished steel and endless windows of its exterior. Being regular operating hours, the revolving doors of the public atrium were bustling with people coming and going with bags and packages of every shape and size. Stepping in through the doors myself, I felt like I was entering the Mall of the Future.
The atrium was open and huge, the sun cutting through the enormous panes of tinted glass that rose several stories straight up. It shone down onto an actual garden within the building, complete with trees that dwarfed the ones nearby in Central Park. And the stores! They stretched outward and upward in every direction.
“Wow,” Jane said. “I know I’m going to sound all country mouse here, but this place puts the Mall of America to shame.”
“It’s okay,” I said, taking her hand. “City Mouse finds this pretty damn impressive himself.”
I looked around, unsure of where to start our search. I turned to Jane, but her eyes had gone glossy. She turned to me, smiling with all her teeth showing.
“I can has shopping?” she said.
“Focus, Jane, focus.”
The light died in her eyes. “Right,” she said, trying to hide the disappointment and reluctance in her voice. “I know. I’m just . . . umm, getting into character.”
“If you say so,” I said. I squeezed her hand and we set off under the guise of a happy couple out for a day of touristy shopping. All in all, not a hard disguise to pull off. Feeling bad about denying Jane some retail therapy, I stopped and bought her a red resin heart on a chain with the word FOREVER across the front of it on a silver banner. I put it on her, unable to wipe the cheesy grin from my face or hers. There was no reason we couldn’t have a little fun playing our roles, after all.
After wandering the open expanse of the lower mall area for more than a half hour, we found one of the building’s touch-screen directories that was set farther away from the hustle of the shopping crowds. I immediately started tapping away at one of the display panels.
“Well, there seems to be a lot of options—residential, the shops, the restaurants, rental opportunities, co-ops . . .”
“Great,” Jane said, leaning up against the directory bank. “Nothing like an afternoon sifting through the mundane. Is there anything about the management company, maybe?”
I shook my head and continued scrolling through the various directories. After several minutes my eyes started to bug out. I stopped poking and rubbed my eyes.
“Maybe . . .” I said, but stopped myself.
“Yes?”
“Maybe you could tap into the building,” I suggested. “Its power supply or something?”
Jane looked hesitant. “Umm . . . I’m not really sure if I can do that.
”
I shrugged. “Just a suggestion. I thought you might be able to make some small talk with one of their computers, kinda like you did at City Hall.”
Jane shrugged.
“Sure,” she said. “I’m not promising anything, but I’ll give it a try. Just . . . pull me away or something if I look a little too comatose at the console, okay?”
I kissed her forehead. “I’m sure it’ll be fine if you just ask nicely.”
Jane let her hands hover over the touch screen on the directory kiosk and let out a low whisper of her strange sort of machine language. I looked around to see if anyone was paying attention, but between our remote location and the sounds of mall life, no one was even looking in our direction.
Without warning, Jane let out a low, guttural moan and let her hands fall toward the touch screen. Instead of slamming against it, they sunk into the solidity of the screen as though she were submerging them under water.
“Jane?” I grabbed her by her arm, only to feel a harsh jolt of electricity hammer into my body, knocking me on my ass. My muscles were twitching and I had a hard time shaking it off, but taking it slow, I got back on my feet. “Jane!”
Hearing the desperation in my voice seemed to pull her out of her trance. She looked down at her hands and turned to me in a panic, her eyes bugging out.
“Help . . . ?” she croaked.
I started to reach for her again, and she violently shook her head no. “What if my hands come off at the wrist?”
The muscles in her arms flexed as she tried to pull herself free, but every move she made caused her to sink even farther into the screen.
“Don’t struggle,” I said. “It’s like quicksand.”
But Jane was beyond panic now and tugged wildly to free herself.
I was about to yell at her once again to stop struggling, but when I looked at her I froze. Jane was glowing. A soft white light was spreading up her arms and down her body.
I had no idea what was going on, but I had to do something, even if it meant taking another serious jolt by touching her. This time, however, I would be ready for it, and I pulled my gloves out and slipped them on. I hoped they would at least reduce the conductivity a little, but a second later, it didn’t matter.