Madness Under The Tracks

by William Vitka

Madness Under The Tracks

  By William Vitka

  Copyright © 2013 by William Vitka

  "Wanna hear somethin scary?"

  The old guy asking this as he kicked the bloated body of a rat from the subway track.

  The kid lit a cigarette. Didn't look grossed out but wondered how many rodent carcasses it might take to knock a train off the rails. "Sure."

  They walked along the R line in Queens, which ran all the way from 95th Street in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn up to 71st Street in Forest Hills. It was an old route. Started operating in 1916 as Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit.

  Trudging through the tunnels on foot was like being stuck inside a Stygian gullet that went on forever. No end they could see. Just floods of light at stations. Everything in between a wet tartarean tomb.

  The tracks were slippery and dangerous. The electrified third rail would fry your ass. Trash and debris sat in piles. Pools of rotten filth shuddered and swayed like tiny, terrible seas.

  And things lived down here.

  Rats. Bugs. Sometimes homeless who'd given up and gone feral.

  The kid felt for the crowbar on his belt. Glad to have it.

  He and the old guy checked the tracks for stresses and cracks. By flashlight. Which seemed to the kid to be more MTA bullshit. He was sure there was a better way. A smarter way. But, this was the goddamn MTA. They'd sucked at their job for about a hundred years.

  "Well." The old guy lit his own smoke now. "Were you workin for us when Jimmy Grant was still on the board?"

  The kid shook his head. "No idea. Guys on the board never shake my hand, why I care who they are?"

  "This was five years ago."

  "Only been in the tunnels for three. Night shift crap."

  "OK. Well, Jimmy thought it'd be a good idea to show off some of the renovation work they were doin to the local line up here. Between 71st and 67th. Get the wealthy folks together. Walk em along the tracks. Show em how shiny it was. Their rider fees at work, right?"

  "Yeah." The kid grabbed for the tools on his belt. Held them in place as he jumped over a small sea of filthy water. "All that rich people shit. Like they wanna see the subway sparkle so long as they don't need to work at it. Wish they'd all hit the third rail."

  The old guy grunted. "Yeah. Fuck's your name again, kid?"

  "Felipe."

  The old guy nodded. Pointed to himself with his cigarette, "Daniel. Dan's fine.

  "Anyway. This jackass has the whole thing ready to go. Convinces the MTA to suspend northbound local service between those stations for like a half hour some Sunday morning. Riders are pissed but that never stopped the MTA from doin what they want."

  Felipe chuckled. Stared down at the tracks. Checked them. Kept his distance from the third rail.

  Dan said, "Ended up being like fifteen people. Big donors to local churches. Synagogues. Whatever. Fifteen big bank accounts and Jimmy, walking the line between stations. Just tickled stupid that they're doing this. One asshole's taking photos. Another's recording it on video.

  "They get to 67th and they applaud. Some other MTA guys are there, not me, helping folks onto the platform with little stairs and shit. Everybody happy.

  "Guy with the video camera asks, since he and Jimmy are still on the tracks, if they could go a little farther. See where the cleaning stopped and compare it to how beautiful 67th and 71th are.

  "Jimmy shrugs and says sure. Pats the camera guy on the back. Why not? Guy's a walking check book."

  Felipe nodded. Didn't say anything. Fifty feet in front of them, he could see the 67th street station. The kid thought, Man, come on. This story needs to get scary already.

  A downtown train roared by on the express track at the center of the tunnel. Rattling metal echoed and bounced off the walls. They'd have to be careful when an uptown local needed to get through on these side rails. Push themselves into a wall cubby so they wouldn't be smashed.

  Dan said, "So they walk a little more past the station. Where it gets dark. The cameraman's watching Jimmy and the walls. And Jimmy's just trying to stay on two feet, falling over stuff. Then, bang –" Dan clapped his hands together, making Felipe jump. "Jimmy takes a good spill. Tumbles to his side. Hits a wall. Goes through the wall."

  Dan smiled. A hint of evil glee there.

  Felipe eyed him. Didn't wanna let on he'd been spooked. He pulled on his cigarette like it was no big damn deal.

  "Right through the goddamn wall," Dan said. "They heard the fall on the platform. Couple MTA guys jump onto the track. Go looking. Camera guy's still filming. Asks if Jimmy's OK. Guy grunts back he's fine. But says he fell. Says he fell down below the tracks. He's in some dark place full of water. Can't get out. Can't reach up.

  "MTA guys go back for some rope. Tell Jimmy to hang on."

  Dan turned to Felipe. They both stopped.

  The kid fingered the crowbar at his side without thinking.

  Dan let his light fall, pointed straight down. The station lights nearby painted half his face in a dim white glow. "Then the camera guy hears Jimmy screaming. Screaming help. Screaming get it off me. Screaming bloody murder. Making noises people aren't supposed to make. Gurgles. Then it went quiet. Just a slithering sound. But if you listened close, you could hear a voice and weird pounding. Like a pulse. Bass drums you'd feel more than hear. Faint, but there. And something talking in some old language nobody knew."

  Felipe stared at Dan. Crowbar out and in his hands now. "You're fulla shit." Not sounding as tough as he wanted to.

  Dan dropped his cigarette. Shook his head. "I saw the video kid."

  "Bullshit."

  Dan said again, stern, "I saw the video kid."

  "Then where is it? We're right here. Show me."

  Dan smiled. Brought his flashlight back up. Turned it to the wall behind him. Kept the beam on a door-sized, boarded up section of the wall. The whole thing had been painted black. Nobody would ever see it, unless they knew what they were looking for.

  "That's it," Dan said.

  Felipe walked toward it. Hesitated for a second. Looked back Dan.

  "I wouldn't," Dan said. "Video was enough for me. But other guys say you can hear it on the other side. Moving around like it's waiting down there – specially when it's late like this."

  Felipe turned back to the section of wall. He leaned in. Put his hands against the solid concrete on either side, not wanting to actually touch the wood. He listened. Hard.

  He could hear water. Lapping like in a pool. He jumped when an uptown train shot by, blaring its horn. Stupid bastards.

  He listened again. Still only heard water. He gave it a minute. Waited for his ears to adjust to quiet.

  He heard it.

  A pulse. Thuds in a monotonous rhythm. Deep thumps. Then something wet, but heavy. Sliding against the rock down there. Slithering. The sound got closer. Right on the other side of the fuckin barricade.

  And a voice saying ... Saying what? What the hell was that? Felipe pressed his ear to the wooden barrier. Those whispers. Those whispers spiraling up from the blackness. The words pushing themselves out. High sounds and low. Cacophonous. Squirming between the cracks. Crawling up into his brain.

  "Kh'dee'lee B'kh'ze'too'khun."

  Felipe recoiled. Whipped around. Covered his ears. A local train on the tracks blared its horn, warning him to get out of the way. Its light stared him down as if it was a giant, metal Cyclopean worm. But the words and the noise were so loud.

  Felipe couldn't think or move.

  Dan grabbed him. Pulled him along to the station platform at 67th with its blue-painted steel I-beams. Got him up and out of the way.

  "The fuck're you doin kid? I was hollering at you for five minutes. What's the matter with you?" Da
n pissed off now.

  Felipe fell backward. Stared up at the ceiling.

  A compulsive, obsessive itch had started in his brain.

  He said, "I need to see that video."

  ***

  Dan snuck it to Felipe like he was handing off a bag of cocaine.

  "It's a copy on DVD. You got a player, right? And if someone finds out you got this, I will sell your ass up the river."

  The kid nodded his head and started home to his shitty studio apartment in Jamaica. A ride north of these well-off Forest Hills folks. It might not have been far in distance, but in money, it was a million miles away.

  He stared out the windows of the F train as it rumbled along. Sometimes at his own reflection in the glass. Sometimes beyond it into the black tunnel, trying to catch a glimpse of ... something. He didn't know.

  He ran his fingers along the edge of the DVD. Caressed it without thinking.

  The lights dimmed. The train jumped as it passed over rough tracks.

  The lights went out and came back in strobes. The train still jumping.

  And the kid just stared out into the dark, not knowing what he was looking for.

  ***

  Home.

  He grabbed a beer from the fridge.

  Walked past the picture of him and his ex-girlfriend taped to the fridge.

  Chick who'd left him. Because she was tired of his shit and his low paying job.

  He'd told her he was doing well. Doing what he could. Trying to move up the ranks. Working all the time. Working when the woman was sleeping, so maybe she didn't see what good he'd done. The job, man, that mattered. And no, getting a shift change wasn't an option. But maybe if he could prove himself on the rails, he could get a promotion. Maybe if he did what they wanted him to for long enough...

  Maybe he could get out. Maybe his life could be turned from grunt into manager without sucking too much dick.

  But she didn't care. She was the kind wanted instant gratification.

  A Polaroid girl.

  Thing is, she listened to him. But never talked to him.

  So she left with the child he'd never know, back to Long Island. As though that shithole of white folk running away from minorities represented anything like goodness. The place white folk went to escape people like him.

  He drank. Pounded two beers. Then he sat on the lumpy bed that doubled as a couch. He didn't bother to take off his shoes or his tool belt. He just sat down hunched forward with a rattle and a clank and waited while his hand-me-down player read the DVD.

  There was a click. A hiss. Jimmy Grant's fat face filled the screen. Felipe watched from a first-person perspective as the rich folk walked along the tracks, happy to see it all shiny. All clean. And oh my yes weren't they all just thrilled to be here. And boy certainly Jimmy was glad such valued citizens were enjoying themselves.

  Quite a thing. Special, for sure. Nobody else got to do this except the workers.

  The dirty, poor, blue-collar workers. But who cares about that.

  Now the tour was over and the camera guy was asking Jimmy about going a little farther.

  Jimmy said something like, "Sure, padre."

  Felipe went to grab a couple more beers.

  Then Jimmy was tumbling and falling in the center of the screen. Just like Dan had said. The fat MTA bigwig went into the subway's side wall. Through it. Jimmy howled. There was a splash. Then a shout from the fallen politician, "Goddamnit – Father O'Hara, I need help."

  A name. The cameraman was Father O'Hara. A priest. Probably for that giant Catholic church in Forest Hills off Austin Street. Plenty of money there.

  Felipe emptied the beer into his mouth and started another.

  On screen, O'Hara's view bobbed toward the new dark hole in the tunnel. A sharp shriek of static sounded. A tear in the video flitted across the bottom edge of the screen as he approached. O'Hara shouted, "Jimmy fell. Down. Under the tracks. We need to get him out."

  Another horrible explosion of static.

  "Lotta water down here," Jimmy said. "Outta nowhere. Fell maybe twenty feet." The sound of him coughing. "Can someone get rope? And first aid or something. I got cut on the way down. Bad, too. God knows what's in this filthy shit."

  More splashing sounds.

  Just outside the camera's view, MTA workers talked. Looked into the hole with their flashlights. One of them over the radio, calling for an ambulance. The other on his radio, asking for someone from the station to find some goddamn rope and find it fast because that idiot board member got his lard ass stuck down a hole. Both guys more annoyed than anything else. Then they left to get help.

  O'Hara turned the lens to the bright lights of the station. On the platform were all the concerned faces of the rich and elderly. Many of em dismayed, but honestly so. A few scrunched their noses. Such a nice event was coming to such a bad ending and maybe they should just leave and get bagels.

  The NYPD was there a second later, hustling them upstairs. Let's get you folks out of the way and let these gentlemen take care of business.

  Another eruption of static. This time drawn out. High and low frequencies. The screen jumped and shimmered. Tore at the edges. Turned bright white and green like night vision gone haywire.

  The static just going going going. The pulse started. Beat into Felipe's head. He rubbed his hands across his skull. Pulled at his hair. Tried to get the noise out of his brain.

  He realized it wasn't just static.

  It was screaming.

  Jimmy screaming.

  Felipe screaming.

  Neighbors pounded on Felipe's wall because they didn't know what the fuck was going on and turn that shit down.

  Felipe's speakers pounded with that nightmare pulse.

  The video. Staccato flashes of darkness and white and night vision. Epileptic fits of visual madness that showed only brief glimpses of what was happening.

  Flash. Running up to the hole. Flash. Black broken concrete. Flash. The pool below. Flash. Jimmy, flailing, swinging his arms, trying to push something writhing and slender away. Flash. A human form and something else like tendrils. Flash. A ripping sound and flesh coming away from a screaming, palsied shape. Flash.

  The screen caught and stuttered on the lunging form of Jimmy. What remained of his twisted face thrown up to the camera. Played in the same two frames over and over and over again.

  Jimmy's mouth stuck in a scream. Jimmy's eyes glowing unnatural in the night vision. Jimmy's throat open, torn out.

  Behind him, a roiling, throbbing sea of arms and open mouths and blinking eyes.

  Felipe felt the voice inside his headache.

  He listened to the rest of the tape. Audio of the horror still flowing even though the scene was stuck on a couple jittering frames of torment.

  Cries for help cut off.

  Screams bleeding into gurgles.

  Vile pulses echoing.

  Felipe wept and he didn't know why.

  ***

  He didn't remember shit after getting home and putting the DVD in. Not in the sense that he had a coherent understanding of it, anyway. Something he could play back in his head as a-thing-that-had-happened. Instead, he woke up the next morning and felt engaged in a long nightmare.

  He was looking for a priest. Father O'Hara.

  The man who'd filmed the terror.

  He called the Catholic Church. Our Lady Queen of Martyrs. Good name. Pulling on a cigarette, he asked, "Is Father O'Hara there, I'd like to speak with him." Felipe, breathing smoke that burned his lungs, saying, "It's really important that I talk to him."

  The woman on the other side of the line tried to be patient. "Father O'Hara hasn't led the congregation in five years. He stepped down some time ago. Can I ask what this is in regards to?"

  And Felipe thought of his childhood. Crap his mom made him go through. "Well," he said. Lied. "Father O'Hara was the one who baptized me. First communion too." Felipe had received first communion from some fuck below the border. But it sounded
good. "Father O'Hara was a huge part of my upbringing. Always there for me, you know? And it was hard. Puerto Rican kid like me. Poor. We lost touch. My fault really, but I'm in some trouble now and I could use his guidance."

  The woman on the other side let out a sigh of pity, like she understood just what this wayward soul needed. Empathized. "I'm really sorry. I am. But Father O'Hara just ... He doesn't work for the church anymore. He had his own troubles. Would you like to speak with Father Sullivan? He's very good. I'm sure he would make the time."

  "No, thank you though. Maybe you have Father O'Hara's address? I'm sure if I could knock on his door, he'd let me in. We've known each other since I was just a couple feet high."

  "Oh, you are a dear," the lady said. The sound of papers rustling. "I'll tell you what, since you've known him for so long, maybe he wouldn't mind. Father O'Hara was such a kind-hearted soul. Do you have a pen handy? Paper?"

  "Yeah, go ahead."

  ***

  The kid found himself back home. Had trouble remembering again. Tugged on his hair, ran his hands across his skull. Thought: Something happened. Something fuckin happened.

  He didn't know what day it was.

  Time had passed. He'd been here. On the phone. Then he left …

  Blood. There had been blood.

  He knew that because he was looking at his face in the mirror. Saw deep gashes.

  His arms. His chest. Torn up.

  Sure. Something had fuckin happened.

  Hours, lost.

  Hours he counted from when he remembered heading to O'Hara's and then being back in his shit apartment trying to figure out what had happened.

  His mind a total blank

  Erased.

  ***

  He passed out feeling he'd fought back. That he hadn't just been a victim.

  He numbed the pain from the wounds with beer and whiskey until he didn't care. Fell asleep curled up, one leg hanging off the side of the bed.

  There was a knock at the door. Jolted from sleep, he turned over. Sat up. Stared down and saw the crimson stains his cuts had left on the sheets.

  Just bleeding. Residual. Went through the bandages.

  Felipe stumbled to the door. Still drunk as much as tired. He opened it and saw nothing. He scratched his head, wondering was it one of the black kids thinking he was a dumb spic to play ding dong ditch on. He lit a cigarette. Stood in partway in the hall with just boxers on.