A New York Nightmare!

by Barry Hutchison

  One long van ride, and what seemed like an even longer walk through a not particularly friendly area later, Denzel and Smithy stood watching Weinberg and Martinez tiptoeing along an old wooden pier.

  They’d driven all the way across to the other side of the harbour, and the towering skyscrapers of Manhattan now stood across the bay, gleaming in the morning sunlight. Nothing gleamed in the part of the city they were in now. Graffiti stained the walls of the old buildings around them, most of which seemed to have been long-since abandoned. High chain-link fences had been erected around the whole area, but most of them had been cut open or pushed down, and those that hadn’t were brown with rust.

  Weinberg hadn’t been all that forthcoming with information. The call had come from the contact in the mayor’s office again, and had said something about mysterious lights, ghostly moans and “other weirdness”. Just what that other weirdness was, or how weird it was, they hadn’t been able to say. Or, if they had, Weinberg wasn’t sharing it.

  “Nice this, innit?” said Smithy.

  Denzel hopped from foot to foot, wishing he’d insisted on going to the toilet before they’d left. His bladder felt like it was going to explode, and probably with enough force to take out half the pier.

  “Not really,” he said.

  Smithy looked around. “I’ve been in worse places.”

  “Oh? Where?”

  “Pretty much the whole of the eighteenth century,” Smithy said. “That was a bit grim. This is paradise compared to that.”

  “That’s not really a place though, is it?” said Denzel, jiggling anxiously.

  Smithy looked confused.

  “It’s a time,” said Denzel.

  Smithy still looked confused.

  “Forget it,” Denzel said. He spun on the spot to see what was happening with the others. Weinberg and Martinez were still creeping along the pier. Weinberg was crouching low, sweeping with her rifle. Martinez followed behind, his hands raised in case something needed to be zapped or transformed into a frog, or whatever he was planning to do to them.

  They were less than a third of the way along the thing, and showing no signs of speeding up. Denzel crossed his legs. “It’s no use, I can’t hold on,” he said. “I need to find somewhere to pee.”

  “What about there?” said Smithy. He pointed to an old wooden hut with two doors. Above the door on the left, a sign read: “Gents”.

  “How long have you known that was there?” Denzel yelped, but he didn’t bother to wait for an answer. He ran – or as close as he could get with his legs crossed – to the hut and almost sobbed with relief when the door opened with a single shove.

  His relief didn’t last long. The smell hammered into him, almost sending him crashing back outside. He forced himself to push on through the stink, but it felt like it was pushing back.

  The worst of it was coming from an overflowing urinal, which had been blocked with— Actually, he didn’t want to know what it had been blocked with.

  He pulled the neck of his hoodie over his mouth and tried to breathe through his ears, then diverted into the only one of the four cubicles to still have a door. Using his foot to lift the lid – there was no way he was touching that with his bare hands – Denzel frantically fiddled with his zip.

  Finally he took aim and let rip. The sense of relief as his bladder began to empty was immense. It was even worth putting up with the smell for, and there was also the added bonus that he was no longer one unexpected cough away from wetting himself.

  He was midway through – far beyond the point of no return – when the water in the toilet began to bubble. At first Denzel thought it was because of the sheer force at which he was peeing into the pan, but the bubbling became too violent for that. It was like a pot of water coming to the boil, and yet the air that rose from within the bowl was cold. Icy cold, in fact, and Denzel saw his breath as he exhaled shakily and tried to race to the finish.

  He heard the whispering just as the stream became a dribble. Denzel hurriedly backed away, doing up his trousers as a voice echoed out from within the toilet.

  He is coming.

  Denzel yelped in fright when he bumped against the door, mistaking it for someone behind him.

  He is coming.

  Denzel swallowed. His mouth was dry and it took him three attempts to force the words out.

  “Wh-who is?” he asked.

  And then, with a groaning of pipes and a rattle of porcelain, the toilet exploded.

  At least, that was how it seemed to Denzel, but technically it didn’t explode at all. Instead, a towering jet of yellow water erupted straight upwards like a geyser. It slammed against the ceiling, and with the sound of splintering wood ringing in his ears, Denzel pulled open the cubicle door and stumbled out of the hut.

  By the time Denzel reached Smithy, the gushing geyser had punched a hole right through the roof. A column of yellow liquid reached several metres into the air, before spraying in all directions like a fountain.

  Denzel and Smithy watched it in silence for a few moments.

  “Cor,” said Smithy at last. “You really were bursting, weren’t you?”

  Weinberg arrived in a clattering of boots. Martinez was still on the pier but had stopped exploring and was standing watching the urine fountain.

  “What happened?” asked Weinberg. “Did you do that?”

  “Well, I mean … I was there when it happened,” said Denzel. “But I don’t really think it was my fault or anything. There was this voice from the toilet and then kersploosh.”

  Smithy nodded. “You did a poo.”

  “What? No! I mean that happened.” Denzel gestured to the roof of the hut. The water was still gushing up from the toilets below.

  “A voice?” said Weinberg. “What kind of voice? What did it say?”

  “It said, ‘He is coming.’”

  Weinberg raised her eyebrows, clearly expecting more. “Who is coming?” she asked, when it became clear Denzel wasn’t going to continue.

  Denzel shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t hang about to ask. But I heard the same thing at the swimming pool.” He gasped. “And, yesterday, last night, whenever it was, the guy on the door said the same thing as I got into the lift.”

  “Harvey?” said Weinberg.

  “Yes! ‘He is coming.’ That’s what he said too, but then there was all the stuff with the pizza and Martinez’s soldiers and it went completely out of my head.” Denzel looked back at the column of water. “What do you think it means?”

  “That some bloke’s coming?” Smithy guessed.

  Weinberg hesitated, but then shrugged. “It’s probably nothing,” she said.

  A sudden flash from behind made Denzel, Weinberg and Smithy turn. They caught a brief glimpse of the water in the harbour being illuminated by a piercing white light, then it quickly returned to its normal choppy darkness.

  “Was that underwater lightning?” Denzel asked.

  “I have no idea,” Weinberg admitted. She cupped her hands around her eyes to block out the sun and looked along the pier to where Martinez was tentatively leaning over the edge, gazing down into the water lapping at the wooden struts below.

  The walkie-talkie on Weinberg’s belt crackled into life. “Uh, Weinberg?” said Martinez. “It could be my imagination but I think there’s something down there. Over.”

  “Is it dolphins?” asked Smithy. He nudged Weinberg with an elbow. “Ask him if it’s dolphins.”

  “Spectral? Over,” said Weinberg, skilfully managing to completely ignore what Smithy had said.

  “I think so,” said Martinez. “We’re going to have to check it out. Over.”

  “Copy that,” said Weinberg. She hooked the radio back on her belt, clapped her gloved hands together once, then smiled broadly at Denzel and Smithy. “So,” she began, switching her gaze between them. “How are you guys at swimming?”

  It took almost three hours to get back to the Empire State Building, collect the equipment they needed, th
en return to the docks.

  The toilet geyser had stopped spraying, and the hut now stood still and silent, albeit with a few streams of yellow liquid trickling down the walls and pooling on the concrete slabs below.

  Weinberg had been able to find a way past the fences and other barricades, and bring the van right up to the edge of the pier. It was just as well, because the equipment they’d picked up back at base was pretty heavy. Ridiculously heavy, in fact. Denzel could barely carry it, so he had no idea how he was supposed to swim in it.

  He slapped along the pier in a pair of oversized flippers, his rubber wetsuit chafing him in places he’d really rather not be chafed. Which was everywhere, basically.

  Martinez walked ahead, chanting below his breath, the equipment levitating along beside him. Behind him, Weinberg waddled along in her own wetsuit-and-flippers combo, while Smithy trotted along at Denzel’s back. Both Smithy and Martinez were dressed normally. If you didn’t count Martinez’s robe, golden belt and pointy shoes, that is.

  “So tell me again,” said Denzel. “Why is it just us two?”

  “Because you’re the one who’s been hearing voices,” said Weinberg. “If whatever’s down there is connected to the ‘He is coming’ stuff, then I want you there to tell me if you hear anything. Plus, either me or Martinez need to stay up here and keep a lookout, in case anything goes wrong.”

  “Wrong?” Denzel spluttered. “What do you mean? What could go wrong?”

  “Well—” Smithy began, but Denzel stopped him going any further.

  “OK, OK! Now I come to think about it, I don’t actually want to know!”

  “Probably for the best,” Weinberg mumbled.

  “What?!”

  “Hmm? Oh, nothing,” said Weinberg. “This’ll do, Martinez.”

  The words Martinez had been muttering changed, and the equipment turned in the air. Denzel took a worried step back as one of the things floated towards him. Weinberg had called it a “Subsea Suit” but if it was a suit, then there was quite a lot of it missing.

  Essentially, it was a glass dome with a couple of shoulder pads, a chest plate and some padded arms with gloves on the end. Two short vents extended from the back of the shoulders, and Denzel couldn’t help but notice that one of his was held on by tape.

  “Relax. It’s perfectly safe,” said Weinberg. “I built it myself.”

  That didn’t exactly fill Denzel with confidence, but he thought it best not to say as much. Instead, he planted his feet and braced himself as the Subsea Suit slid over his head and down on to his shoulder.

  The sounds of the city became distant and echoey, and were replaced by the sound of Denzel’s own breathing as the glass dome locked in place over his head. A cool breeze filtered in from somewhere above him, tickling his scalp. Weinberg had warned him that would happen, and assured him the whole thing was watertight. The suit held enough air to last almost ninety minutes, and a tiny hidden pump would keep it circulating throughout their trip.

  Denzel started to walk forwards but the weight of the suit pulled him back. He would have toppled over had it not been for Martinez stepping behind him and catching him by the shoulders.

  “You OK?” Martinez asked. His voice sounded muffled and far away. Denzel shouted back to make himself heard, and the boom of his voice almost made his eardrums pop.

  “Fine! Terrified, but fine!”

  There was a soft hiss from somewhere near his ear, like a snake getting ready to strike, before Weinberg’s voice replaced it. “You receiving me, Denzel?”

  “Uh, yes. Over,” said Denzel.

  “It’s two way; you don’t need to say ‘over’,” Weinberg told him.

  “Oh. OK. Over,” said Denzel. “I mean, not over. I mean OK.”

  Weinberg had given him a quick introduction to the Subsea Suit during the drive over. There were two joysticks built into the palms of the gloves, which controlled direction, and a button that acted as the throttle. If he’d ever played Minecraft, she’d said, he’d be able to master it in no time.

  Unfortunately, Denzel had only played Minecraft once, six months ago, and something about the way everything had spun around on screen had made him vomit into one of his shoes. Still, he was sure he’d get the hang of it. Eventually.

  “You know who you look like?” Smithy asked.

  Denzel shrugged. Or he tried to, but couldn’t. “Darth Vader?” he guessed. Smithy shook his head. “C3PO? A Dalek? A Cyberman? Someone else out of Doctor Who?”

  Smithy kept shaking his head. “Give up?” he asked eventually.

  “I give up. Who do I look like?”

  Smithy pointed to Weinberg. “Her,” he said. “It’s probably the diving-suit thing.”

  Denzel searched Smithy’s face for any sign he was winding him up but saw nothing to suggest he was. “Yeah, it’s probably that,” he agreed, then he followed Weinberg to the edge of the wooden platform.

  The water looked almost completely black. It lurked beneath them like a vast, endless cavern, just waiting to swallow them whole.

  “I’d say the source of the light is maybe sixty feet that way,” said Martinez, pointing away from the shore. “But deep. Way down deep.”

  “Gotcha,” said Weinberg, and Denzel heard her voice through the glass and the speaker inside his helmet at the same time. “Ready, Denzel?”

  “Not really,” Denzel admitted. He wondered if it was too late to go to the toilet again, but then Weinberg’s hand was on his back and, with a shove from her, he tumbled over the edge and plunged into the icy blackness of the Hudson River.

  A current tugged on Denzel’s flippers, pulling him deeper beneath the surface. A spotlight illuminated on top of the suit’s domed helmet, cutting a thin beam through the murky water.

  The Hudson River, Smithy had helpfully told him, after googling it on one of Weinberg’s many laptops she seemed to just leave lying around in the back of the van, was one of the most polluted rivers in the whole of the United States. Factories had been pumping waste into the water for decades, so many of the things living down there had been killed off. Those creatures that hadn’t died off had become larger, tougher and probably quite a lot angrier – and that was round about the time Denzel had closed the lid of the laptop and hastily changed the subject.

  Through the gloom, Denzel saw another light illuminate. Weinberg. At least, he hoped so. It was either her or one of those ugly fish with the lights on their head and all the teeth. If it was one of them, he reckoned, and it came swimming out of the dark at him, there was a very good chance he’d immediately die of fright.

  “Hey, Denzel. You OK?”

  “Uh. Yes. Ish,” said Denzel. “Is that you? The light, I mean?”

  The light bobbed up and down. “Yeah, that’s me,” said Weinberg. “Suit OK? Any leaks?”

  “Leaks?” Denzel yelped. “No! I mean, I don’t think so! Why are you asking that? Why would there be leaks?”

  He tried to turn his head to check the back of the helmet, but only succeeded in turning himself the whole way around. He couldn’t feel any water seeping through though. If there had been a leak, he’d have noticed by now, wouldn’t he?

  It wasn’t as cold as he’d imagined. There had been a brief biting chill when he’d first hit the water, but it had passed in a few seconds, and now it was surprisingly … not comfortable, that was too far. Tolerable, maybe.

  “It’s darker than I expected,” said Weinberg.

  “Do you know where we’re going?” Denzel asked.

  A light pulsed some distance away. It was brief and bright, and came from somewhere deep beneath them.

  “That way, I guess,” said Weinberg.

  Denzel squeezed the throttle buttons in his gloves. Tiny motors inside the suit whirred and he shot forwards, throwing out two trails of bubbles behind him.

  With propellers spinning and flippers kicking, Denzel and Weinberg swam onwards into the dark.

  The floor of the Hudson was dotted with all sorts of rand
om junk. Denzel’s light picked out the skeletons of old shopping trolleys, sunken boats, rusty barrels and even what looked like part of a plane.

  There were surprisingly few fish, which he was pretty pleased about. Fish freaked him out, if he were honest, even the ones without the lights on their head. He’d had visions of being surrounded by the things, but they’d only spotted a handful, and they’d all quickly scarpered when they’d seen Weinberg and Denzel approaching.

  “Martinez hates the water,” said Weinberg. “That’s the main reason for leaving him up there. I just didn’t want to say it in front of him.”

  “Oh,” said Denzel. “Right. I mean, I’m not exactly water’s biggest fan either…”

  Weinberg laughed. “Trust me, you’re already doing waaaaay better than he would be. If it hadn’t been for you guys being there, I doubt he’d even have set foot on the pier.”

  “He seems to be frightened of a lot of stuff,” Denzel said.

  “Yeah, maybe,” Weinberg conceded. “But he can pull it together when it counts.”

  They swam on for another couple of minutes, heading roughly in the direction they thought the flash had come from. Weinberg had explained the suits had some built-in scanning equipment but hadn’t told Denzel how any of it operated. He was relieved, actually. It was taking all his concentration just to keep on top of the steering.

  “I’m not picking up any Spectral Energy,” Weinberg said. “Maybe a little background stuff, but nothing you wouldn’t expect. Less than you’d expect, even.”

  Denzel said nothing. He had no idea how much Spectral Energy he should expect down here. He wasn’t even sure how Spectral Energy was measured. In per cent? Millilitres? Marks out of ten?

  “It’s barely hitting four Gloogs,” Weinberg said.

  Ah. Gloogs. Of course, thought Denzel. Because that isn’t ridiculous at all.

  “That’s not a lot of Gloogs,” he said, even though he had no idea how many Gloogs would be considered a reasonable number. Or, in fact, what a Gloog even was.