by Chuck Wendig
Someone looked back.
Someone like her. Someone who could feel this place.
Someone whose empty, dead spaces were filled with the rude, crude facsimile of life—granted a reprieve not by a breath of life but rather from the breath of the void.
Somewhere out there is John Atticus Oakes.
And Nora is going to find him.
*
The 91st Street Station.
Abandoned for thirty years.
Amazing what the people above don’t know about what lies just below their feet. The station has no mezzanine—it’s just one set of steps down from the street. Of course, it’s blocked off: the stairs dead-end now, bricked off, sealed away. To get here you’ve got to walk the tracks or take one of the winding boltholes here in the Shallows.
That’s what Nora does. She found her way here through the old steam tunnels beneath Columbia: fat red and blue pipes winding through abandoned hallways. Steam hissed, warming the air. From there it was just a crack in the wall—she shimmied through, pieces of stone crumbling away—and there it was just a short slide into a big sewer tunnel. Unused. Smelled more like dust and death than it did of any bodily leavings—and it was big, round, a massive brick tube in which you could easily drive a small car. From there it was not far to the station.
The station is abandoned. Every inch coated in bright graffiti. A few bare bulbs shine above. Rats mill through piles of garbage. Piles of bricks and rocks lay about next to crooked heaps of wooden pallets. She shines her light all around. Hears the murmurs of voices and cars just above. The ignorant and unaware of the Above World. Dopes and dummies, eyes willfully shut to the real world. Makes them victims.
Nora isn’t a victim.
She stands here on the platform and wonders about that.
What it is to be a victim. She likes to think she’s the architect of her own existence, but now she’s not so sure.
Well. That changes now.
Especially now that her father is dead.
And here she does the unthinkable: she sheds a tear for him. More than one tear—suddenly here comes the deluge, the blurry eyes and the wet cheeks, the doubling over like she just got socked in the gut. If there’s anything that makes you weak, she thinks—that makes you a victim—it’s crying. Like a little girl. Over a man who—well, a man to whom she owes her entire existence and that’s both good and bad. He helped give her life and helped save her life but also cursed her in so many ways. Being a bad dad. Showing her the way to a life of crime, to Blue, to the Deep Downstairs of the Great Below. Not to mention shoving a Death’s Head mushroom in her mouth, binding her to this place.
A normal father might have begat a normal daughter.
A normal daughter who might think differently about shedding tears over her father. Who wouldn’t question the sorrow, and would just go with it, give into it, let it—like a common cold—run its course.
That ship has sailed.
Normalcy isn’t her bag. Neither is grief.
So, she straightens up, wipes her eyes with the back of her hand, and chokes back the image of him saving her one last time before going all Red Rage again. She narrowly escaped Yonder—hand on the rung of the ladder as the whole thing tilted downward, as if on a hinge. The whole crazy cage didn’t fall—at least, not when she was still there—but it did remain hanging by only a few heavy gauge chains on the one side. The bottom busted out as Mookie and those freaks fell through. Others fell with them: gobbos and Naga and golems, surprised at the sudden shift, plunging down into the chasm below.
With that, Nora is an orphan.
Her heart hurts from that. Some space deep in her middle feels empty. And hungry. Like it’s consumptive of all the other emotions she has.
But she reminds herself to stay steady. This can empower her. She doesn’t have any ties. No more reason to try to fix the rickety bridge between her and her father.
She’s on her own now.
She always felt like that, but reality always got in the way. Now, though? Now it’s real. Now it’s all on her. Good. Great. Excellent.
She steps up to the platform. Rats—brave as the city’s rats are—don’t care to step out of the way and so she kicks a few onto the tracks where they squeak in protest before scurrying away. In her pocket, she fishes out the 13 token.
Academically, she knows it’s light. It has little weight, and minimal density. Lighter, even, than any old subway token. But it feels heavy. Heavy with some other kind of weight. Mystery. Consequence. Magic.
The booth monster—that’s the only way she can think of the freak who gave her the token—asked for nothing in return. That was curious. Yonder is always about the hard bargain, the damning deal. But there she just walked up, and before she said anything he gave her the token. Which means the deal isn’t done. She knows there’s more to pay down the line. Because nobody rides for free on the 13 Train.
So, she does what she was told to do. She steps up to the end of the platform. By a sign—miraculously bereft of any graffiti—that says ASBESTOS WARNING.
She takes the token. Flips it like a quarter onto the tracks.
It ticks against the third rail.
She hears a distant rumble.
Sees streamers of dirt and dust.
A train horn. Wonnnnk wonnnnnnnnk.
And from the darkened tunnel, a ring of light. Coming closer. Growing brighter. The ring washes out into a spire, a cone, then a light so bright she has to shield her eyes and when she looks up:
The 13 Train has arrived.
Boxy. A corroded and water-stained silver. The yellow light of a sickened liver shines through the line of sooty, smeary windows. By the door, a white circle with a crudely painted 13 in its center. As if in blood. Flies speck the sign, taking flight as it closes in. One door judders and hisses open. Then slams shut again. Open. Shut. Like a mouth clamping down. Crashing and gnashing in hunger.
Gods, I’m gonna have to go through that thing.
She steps up to the door—hiss, crash, hiss, crash—and gingerly extends a hand. Soon as her fingers get close, the door slams shut again. She curses out loud and yanks her hand back. Then, from within, a hand catches the door.
It’s him. The booth monster. The cattle-catcher mouth. The 13s for eyes.
“I’m the conductor,” he says, as if to correct her thoughts of him. “Apologies, ma’am. The door—it’s on the fritz. But I’ve got it, if you care to enter.”
“You won’t let it close on me?”
“Why would I? You bought the token. You’ll take the ride.”
“I didn’t buy the token. You gave it to me.”
“I did not, but one of my people may have. Where will you be going today?”
“Don’t you already know?”
The conductor’s shoulders shake as if he’s laughing—though no actual laughter emerges. “Of course. But sometimes our passengers feel better saying it out loud. If you do not, then it’s of no worry.” The conductor’s voice is crisp, curt. Like an old world American aristocrat. “Care to step on, then?”
“And this will take me where I’m going?” She’s suddenly afraid that this is some kind of trap. That the train will eat her alive. Strip her of meat, leave her as bone, fail to let her really truly die. She knows a lot of what’s down here is a lie—the glowing lure in the darkness that turns out is part of the big-ass fish that’s going to eat you.
But what choice does she really have?
The conductor gently nods. “It will, ma’am. You seek the river.”
“The Blackwood, yes.”
“Then, as they say, all aboard.”
He steps aside, holds the door. She hands him the token and he slots it in the gaps between the cattle-catcher bars that form his mouth. She hears it plink and clink somewhere down through him, like the sound of a quarter dropping into a soda machine.
Nora holds her breath as if she’s a child driving past a graveyard—
Then steps inside the 13.
10
Hell contains many Hells. Just as a house contains many doors, and a man possesses many faces. Hell contains many Hells.
— from the Histories and Mysteries of the Riven Worlds, by John Atticus Oakes
*
The subway car has a strong mineral smell. Like fresh Blue chipped from the rock. The floor is sticky. The seats are ripped up—yellow foam bleeding out of some, others repaired with black strips of electrical tape.
She looks over her shoulder to the Conductor—
But he’s gone.
Still. She’s not alone.
At the far end of the car is a hunched-over shape beneath a white cloak, like a child pretending to be a ghost—except, given the size, it’s no child.
Toward the middle, a tall, lean woman. Hair so red it might as well be filaments of copper wire. Skin tan—almost bronze. As she turns and looks at Nora, the woman’s body shifts. It’s like looking at a Magic Eye painting: gaze into the noise and eventually a signal emerges. That’s what it’s like being Nora these days. She can merely stare at something and see the truth of it—if that truth is stained with the shadows of the Great Below—emerge. And what emerges from this woman is a Naga: scales like brass leaves, kaleidoscope eyes, a wide mouth bristling with little hooked fangs. Her tentacle limbs undulate and that crass serpent’s mouth stretches into something approximating a smile.
Nora shudders and looks away.
Behind her in the car is one other: a Half-and-Half by the look of him. His face a sludgy avalanche of pink skin, like a glob of Silly Putty left out in the sun to ooze. His eyeballs rest in the sluggy pockets of stretched flesh.
He looks away, as if ashamed.
The car shudders. A brake squeaks.
And the train starts to move.
Slow, at first. But then it picks up speed. Outside, the faint lights of the station fade to darkness. They pass lights. She spies a vein of Blue—feels it, too, the way you feel the white noise of a television on in the next room. Nora eases into the seat nearest to her. Outside is a flash of lights like headlights, then the growl of a different engine, and then—then it’s gone.
And the 13 picks up speed again.
Nora feels the acceleration in her teeth, her spine, her guts. She grips the seat in front of her. Everything feels suddenly out of control. Faster, faster, faster. Plunging deeper into shadow. And it suddenly hits her that she doesn’t know anything about this train. She only knows it exists and that if you have the token you can take the ride—a ride to anywhere in the Great Below you need to go. But what if that’s just a ruse? Just a lie? Where is it going?
The engine of the train gets louder and louder—until soon it’s just a high whine. Trapped within it are the sounds of bolts rattling, wheels growling, glass vibrating in its window frames. Nora closes her eyes. She feels like she’s going to puke. Everything suddenly feels like a mountain inverted, the peak pushing down hard into the center of her mind—all the weight upon her. A cascade of images.
Nora as a child watching her father rage and kick a hole in the refrigerator.
Her first time on Blue. Just a teenager. Went from seeing nothing to seeing something watching her from a sewer grate, something with yellow eyes like frog eggs—a gobbo, spying, licking its lips with its lamprey tongue.
Then: a restaurant full of dead gobbos—torn limb from limb by Mookie Pearl. The lie she told her father—that some gobbo had gotten her hooked on Blue when really she’d been using for months. She wanted to get him back, wanted to punish him for how he left them, for how he didn’t even realize her mother had died—and so she lied, told him a story about gobbos, and he ran those monsters out and she picked up their Blue stash and that was her first effort as a little mini-crimestress, a rogue element, a free radical working against the Organization and, by proxy, her own father.
She remembers Casimir. Killed by his own grandfather. Caz was sweet. Never meant for that life. (This life, she reminds herself.) All the blood, pooling on the floor—dark like puddles of liquid night.
She flashes on her mother’s obituary.
She sees Mookie falling through Yonder Market, into darkness.
When she opens her eyes again:
The Snakeface bitch is sitting right in front of her.
Turned around in the seat so she can face Nora.
Forked tongue dances over curved needle teeth. Nora concentrates, forces the woman’s serpent mask to fade, allows her human side to reemerge.
“Welcome to the 13,” the Nagini says. “I’m Sirinas.”
“Uh-huh.” Nora stiffens. Never trust a Naga.
“A little cagey, are we?”
“Shouldn’t I be?”
“We’re all friends here on the 13,” the Snakeface hisses. “Isn’t that right, Norky?”
The runny-flesh Half-and-Half looks up, startled. “Uh. Unnh. Yeah. Yeah.”
Nora hears fear in his voice.
The Nagini grins, turns back to Nora. “Poor fella. Looking for someone named Stanley. Claims he’s his best friend. Isn’t that sweet? Best friends. What a concept. One, I am afraid, that remains a bit alien to me.” She closes her eyes and rolls her head on her neck as if she’s hearing music available only to her. “Maybe they’re queer. That’s a thing, right? You humans can choose to mate with whomever you want, regardless of species? Fascinating, that.”
“It’s not mating. Not exactly.”
“Just for pleasure, then. I understand pleasure.” Sirinas holds up her arm—a human arm that Nora also sees as a writhing python ending in a flat hand, the fingers themselves smaller snakes. “I am an expert at giving pleasure. A good way to get what you want.” She reaches over, tickles under Nora’s chin.
Nora pulls away. “Fuck off.”
“Feisty.” That word, drawn out. Fffffeisssssty. As if the mere pronunciation of the word grants the creature a moment of ecstasy. “So, Nora Pearl, why are you here?”
“I didn’t tell you my name.”
“You didn’t need to. You are a known quantity.”
“Oh? News to me.”
Sirinas shrugs like, no big deal. “You tried taking over the Blue trade in New York City. You killed the grandson of the biggest crime boss in the city and are yourself the daughter of a notorious thug who has plagued this place for far too long. You then died, were resurrected, and rode one of the Hungry Ones from the Expanse to the Shallows, arriving in time to stop a plot that would have seen the city emptied of people and left to serve as a monster’s playground. And now you’re trapped down here. Thanks to—” Here Sirinas takes a long sniff. “The Death’s Head mushroom.”
“Thanks for the recap.”
“Just wanted to make sure it was accurate. You really found Caput Mortuum?”
“Found all the Pigments but one.”
“Isn’t that precious?” She licks her lips. “So, to ask again, why are you here?”
“You first.”
Above their heads something thuds against the top of the subway car. Sirinas’ eyes flash—with what? Curiosity? Suspicion? Nora can’t tell. Snakefaces have that inscrutable thing all buttoned up. The sound doesn’t continue. Seemingly satisfied, Sirinas points again toward Norky—
“We already know that one is seeking his best friend. The one at the front of the car—” Sirinas gestures with a thumb-that-is-also-a-tentacle. “—is a Knight of Aristovilnus, whatever that means. On a pilgrimage. To the Hell beneath St. Paul, Minnesota, of all places. Me, well. I’m going to go kill someone on the West Coast.”
“Contract?”
“Not this time. Personal. An egg-mate has betrayed our brood. He has grown enamored with the Infinite Above and has chosen to live as a human.”
“Shouldn’t he be allowed to live life as he wants?”
“We dispute that assessment.”
“But he didn’t care.”
“We tried to stop him from leaving. But Senvar had other ideas. We confronted him. He killed three of our egg-mates�
��Senchin, Sanhar, Sornhir.” She unbuttons her shirt, and pulls it back to show what should be her breast but now looks like an unbaked bagel—all dough and pucker. “He stabbed me with his blade. Left me for dead. But I did not die and so I carry the vengeance of my brood with me.”
“That’s heavy.”
“Family is everything.”
Nora feels herself flinch. She tries to shake it off. “I always thought you Snakefaces were lone wolves. Ronin ninja without clan.”
“We have caste. And we have brood.”
Another thump above their heads.
Outside, they pass through rings of glowing fungus—like traveling through a star-field, warping through hyperspace.
And then suddenly the train bounces and bounds and alongside appears a sluggish subterranean river. Muddy, brackish water suturing thick banks of mounded black silt. All of it lit by a cavernous ceiling of fungus that goes on and on.
Nora’s heart catches in her chest. A river. Are we already here?
Sirinas chuckles. “This is not your river.”
“I didn’t say I was heading to a river.”
“You seek the Blackwood. That, outside, is the Fourth River. Under Pittsburgh.”
Jesus. We’re already at Pittsburgh? “I never said—”
“You did say, just not to me.” Sirinas rolls her eyes. “You told the conductor. When you got on board.”
“Oh.” Shit.
Suddenly, from behind them, Norky speaks up. His voice sounds like someone trying to talk past a phlegm-clotted sock in his throat.
“You’re going to see him. Aren’t you?”
“Shut up,” Nora says, suddenly feeling defensive.
Norky continues. “You’re gonna go upriver.”
“She said to be quiet,” Sirinas hisses.
“My friend, he went upriver, too—”
Sirinas stands. Out of nowhere, her tangled tentacle-hand produces a long, thin blade—more an icepick than a dagger. She moves fast, leaping up and running over the seat-tops. Her body pinwheels—legs over her head, arms using the seat-backs as a gymnast might the uneven bars—and she lands behind the fleshy-faced freak, blade up and angled toward his neck, about to plunge—