by David Wood
Rose found photos and drone footage of the island as it was now. Crumbling and derelict institutional buildings, including a lunatic asylum, a tuberculosis hospital, a boys’ reformatory, slowly decaying around the open ground being reserved for ever more mass grave trenches, filled with forgotten bodies buried three deep, row after row after row.
Rose stood and moved away from her research, amazed at the stories, and deeply saddened by the seeming inhumanity that such dense populations triggered. And besides, the research was moving her away from finding more about Washington Square Park and the fresh bodies they had discovered there. While learning about Hart Island gave her a greater insight into what happened historically at Washington State Park, it didn’t move her forward with new information.
She decided to change tack. Jake had said about the uniformity of holes in the skulls of all the bodies he had seen in that newly disturbed underground chamber. That had to be relevant, it had to mean something, but she couldn’t decide what. When Rose closed her eyes and pictured the scene, she knew he was right. It took some time, a whole different approach to the angle of her search, but Rose was in her element, the historian in her reveling at the challenge. Why would someone put holes in skulls like that? What sort of practice might they be pursuing? Pre-death or post?
She had no idea how long she’d been at it, learning all kinds of things, when one particular article caught her attention. She paused, staring hard at the piece for several seconds before whispering to herself, “That is not possible.”
Chapter 10
Jazz Richards rubbed her tired eyes and sat back to look over what she had gathered so far. It wasn’t a lot, but like a shark that’s able to sense a tiny drop of blood in a vast ocean, Jazz could sniff out a juicy story in a morass of mundanity. Fresh bodies in a crypt that had been undisturbed for decades, maybe even centuries, was the kind of hook an investigative journalist lived for, after all.
“Okay, Jazz,” she whispered to herself. “Let’s do this.”
She collected up her work and headed to LaGuerta’s office. She tapped on the door, and her editor’s voice came through right away. “Yep?”
Jazz went in, shut the door behind herself. “Okay, I’ve been doing as much research as I can, and I need a bit more budget and time to do more, but I’m onto something here. Something big, I know it!”
LaGuerta held up one hand, frowning. “Wait, what are we talking about?”
Jazz gestured with the folders in her hand. “The follow-up to my story about the bodies in Washington Square Park? We ran the short piece about the discovery, but I’ve been looking into–”
LaGuerta interrupted again. “You didn’t get my message? Have you even checked your messages?”
“What message?”
“I killed that story. It’s done.”
Jazz deflated, stunned. “What? Why?”
“Your sources wouldn’t confirm. In fact, the archaeologist from the university flat out denies it even happened. Said he had no idea what you were talking about and they should probably sue for what we already printed. He denied you were even there, that you’d talked or anything. I challenged him on that, and he backed down, of course, but still. He refused to confirm anything else, said it was all a mistake, the gloomy crypt played tricks on your eyes or something. Regardless, we’ve got no source now and no further access. It’s dead in the water.”
“There were fresh corpses,” Jazz said, aghast. “There were dozens of skeletons with matching holes in their skulls, and a lot of them were a lot newer than the chamber next door. Dozens of bodies from recent decades, Elena! This is huge!”
LaGuerta shrugged. “So you said, but we have no access and no sources.”
“But I’ve got photos!” Jazz protested.
LaGuerta smiled ruefully, shook her head. “But no permission to use them. And your photos have no context. Disturbing images inside a dark room. So what? It could be a haunted house. If the authorities involved deny the shots are real, we’ll look like idiots.”
“Elena, you know me better than that! This is something, why are you canning it so easily?”
“The story is dead, Jazz. Your photos don’t matter. No sources willing to confirm, so no story. I imagine there’s probably a mob angle or something, this city is corrupt as hell, we all know it. But there’s nothing we can do about this and the Sentinel won’t be dragged into legal hassles over it. It’s not worth it.”
Jazz stood dumbfounded for a moment, then said, “Who’s pressuring you? It’s not like you to let anyone gag you.”
LaGuerta stood, slammed her palms down on the desk. “That’s enough! Who do you think you are to talk to me like that? I’ve told you the story is dead, which you’d know if you checked your messages. And also in those messages you’ll find your new assignment. Now get back to work!”
Jazz stared at her boss, a thousand retorts flying through her mind. Her clenched hands trembled in rage and impotence, one crushing the folder she held. Seeing the steely defiance in LaGuerta’s eyes, Jazz swallowed any response and stormed out.
Chapter 11
Rose stood outside the Empire State Building entrance on West 34th Street enjoying the live action show of humanity cruising past. New York City was vibrant, unlike any other place in the world. She’d been to plenty of big cities, densely populated in so many different ways. Trips to Guangzhou and her mother’s birthplace outdid NYC when it came to people crammed into urban spaces, after all. But nothing had the feel of this place. She had long ago decided that cities had personalities, whether the people made the city or the city made the people she had yet to determine. But nowhere else on Earth was like New York, just like nowhere else was like Guangzhou or London or Paris.
Jake came along the sidewalk, waving to catch her attention. They hugged and kissed, and she was pleased to feel genuine warmth there. The tension from earlier, his jealousy over Jazz and her concerns about Price, had maybe eased, at least a little.
“How was lunch?”
He smiled. “It was really good. Nice food, I’ll take you there before we leave, I think you’ll like it.”
“You and Price best buds now?”
“Yeah, we’re like brothers. We sliced our palms and made a blood pact.”
She slapped his arm. “You’re an idiot.”
“That’s why you love me.”
She looked at him for a moment, eyebrows raised. For all their intimacy now, neither of them had yet said I love you to the other and they were swimming in that shallow water where it had to happen soon. Was Jake fishing? She decided to let it pass this time. “Seriously, though,” she pressed. “He was okay? You still think he’s a good guy?”
Jake smiled crookedly. “He’s a weird one, I’ll grant you that. But so far he seems decent enough. I’m not foolish enough to just instantly trust anyone, and my aunt’s best interests are my first concern. So I’ll proceed with caution. But so far, I think he’s okay.”
Rose was slightly annoyed by that, still inclined to trust her own assessment, but she needed to respect Crowley’s feelings too. Despite her words moments ago, he wasn’t an idiot. Not that kind of idiot anyway. “Fair enough,” she said. “Wanna go up?”
“For sure.”
They made their way in and lined up with all the other tourists to buy a ticket, then lined up again for the elevator.
“Holidays seem to be ninety percent standing in queues,” Rose said, smiling.
Crowley looked around them. “Isn’t it weird? The way we all want this experience, we all go to the same places and see the same sights, take the same photos. I mean, there’s a million pictures online, from every possible angle, of all there is to see from the top of this building. And yet there’s still a compelling urge to experience it ourselves directly, to feel it, smell it, know we’ve actually done it rather than simply see a picture.”
“Your lunch was very philosophical, was it?”
Crowley laughed. “Not especially! But there is
something about Price that brings out the... I don’t know, the contemplative in me. He gives me pause for thought.”
Rose considered that for a moment, recognizing a deep truth to it. “Perhaps that’s why I don’t trust him,” she said. “He puts me on edge for some reason, and I can’t define why.”
“And I don’t deny that.” Crowley squeezed her hand and then relaxed his grip but didn’t let go. She enjoyed the warmth of his touch. “I trust your instincts, and I am on my guard. But I like the guy. I don’t get the same discomfort.”
Rose shrugged. She appreciated his honesty. “I hope I don’t have to tell you I told you so at some future point.”
“I hope so too!”
The took their turn in the elevator, packed in like sardines, watching the information movie it played on the ceiling as the car shot swiftly up through the middle of New York’s most iconic skyscraper. When they reached the top, they walked around the balcony in bright sunshine, the views across the city truly breathtaking. All the way across Central Park, the Hudson, the Statue of Liberty tiny in the distance just off the tip of Manhattan. Crowley pointed out Ground Zero.
“It is something else to be here, huh?” Rose said, looking down on the forest of buildings crammed shoulder to shoulder that from street level would have towered over them.
“Perspective is a trippy thing,” Crowley agreed. Leaning on their elbows side by side, mesmerized by the bird’s eye vista south across the city, Crowley said, “So did you meet Jazz for lunch?”
He was casual enough, but Rose caught the hint of discomfort in the question. She sighed but couldn’t resist a slight smile. Men could be so fragile sometimes. “No, she was busy, I guess. Didn’t answer my call. But I did make myself useful. I went to the library, which is amazing enough in itself!”
Crowley nodded. “Yes, I’ve been there before. Incredible place.”
“Well, I lost myself for a few hours falling into a research rabbit hole.” She told him all about the myriad dead at Washington State Park, the whole concept of a potter’s field, and how the park paled into almost insignificance next to Hart Island, still filling up with corpses every day. “But then I started looking into other details, trying to think laterally. I was thinking about the holes in the skulls, you know? All so uniform? You know what trepanning is?”
Crowley looked at her with a slight frown. “Drilling a hole in the skull to let the demons out?”
“Partly, yeah. It’s a weird thing, it’s been going on forever. They found a burial site dated about 6,500 BCE with evidence of trepanning. The medieval thinking is that it was done to let out bad spirits, but a slightly more evidence-based practice was to reduce pressure from a blood build-up in the skull, sometimes from blunt weapon trauma, that sort of thing. Sometimes people would subsequently wear the disc of removed skull as a ward against evil, which is a pretty bizarre concept.”
“That would be a strange one to explain,” Crowley said. “Kind of cool though, if you think about it. But where are you going with this? I can see that all those bodies were possibly trepanned, but as you’ve said, it could be for any number of reasons.”
“Don’t forget how recent some of them were though. Not just the two fresh ones, but others there from recent years, not hundreds of years ago, or even decades. Anyway, to answer your question, I learned that certain witch covens used to cut holes in skulls.”
“Witches? Really?”
“It’s as much a possibility as anything else you and I have encountered recently. But here’s the thing, check this out.” She took out her phone and pulled a picture she’d taken of a book in the New York library. “This is from a very old book on witchcraft, and how it pervades modern society. Obviously, this book is a bit sensationalist, and modern society, according to this book, was back in the nineteen fifties. But look at this.” She handed over the phone and watched as Crowley zoomed in the image of the grainy photograph she’d snapped.
“It’s not very clear,” he said, frowning.
“The picture in the book is pretty grainy. But why have you zoomed in on that particular bit?”
He grinned crookedly and handed the phone back. “You know why.”
“Well?” She really wanted him to agree with her, but the implications were too much to consider possible. “It looks just like Matthew Price, doesn’t it?”
Crowley nodded, lips pursed. “It really does. But it looks like Price now, and that photo is more than sixty years old if it’s from the fifties. I guess it could be a distant relative or something.”
“Jake, it looks just like him!”
“Nah, Price isn’t that blurry in real life.”
She gave him a withering look and decided to let it drop. Give him time to ruminate on what she’d shown him and see if he came around at all. And besides, it was a grainy photo, and the likeness could easily be entirely coincidental. But it only added to her underlying concerns about the enigmatic old man. To change the subject, she said, “I learned other stuff too, and this might be worth following up. I copied the relevant sections you can read later, but in short, there was a scandalous experiment conducted at Bellevue Hospital back in the early 1900s. Bellevue is the oldest hospital in NYC. Anyway, a doctor was fired for conducting experiments on patients and covering up several deaths. There weren’t a lot of details on the crimes, but the term “trepanning” came up quite a few times.”
Crowley turned to look at her again, the constant breeze this high up riffling through his hair. “Really? Okay, now you’ve got my interest. But you’re talking about more than a hundred years ago.”
“Yes, but what if the hospital, or people associated with that doctor, might have secretly continued the experiments? And the mass grave at Washington State Park was a secret dumping ground for the corpses? They might have a means of ingress to that area that is otherwise unknown, so those water workers assumed they had uncovered a new, previously undisturbed crypt. But what if it has actually been in use fairly consistently since the early 1900s, or even before? It would explain the layer upon layer of increasingly recent bodies in there, all with signs of trepanation.”
Crowley’s expression was skeptical. “You’re drawing a long bow here.”
“Sure, but it would be fun to dig around a bit, wouldn’t it?”
“Sounds to me like you’ve got the amateur sleuth bug after our recent adventures.”
“Maybe. Haven’t you?”
Crowley laughed. “I’ve always had it! But aren’t we supposed to be on holiday?”
“Sure, but weren’t you only just saying about how it’s strange that everyone on holiday always lines up for the same things. This would make for a pretty unique New York City experience.”
“And you can maybe help your mate Jazz out with her story along the way?”
Rose watched Crowley’s eyes closely as he said that, but she saw no malice or real jealousy there. Maybe a touch of amusement was all. Perhaps he was finally getting over himself. “Sure,” she said. “It would be kind of cool to be an investigative journalist for a while too.”
Crowley rolled his eyes, but his smile was genuine. “All right then, Sherlette Holmes. Where to?”
Chapter 12
Jazz walked the night-time streets of Manhattan, doing her best to not let guilt or fear show. She had long since hardened to the sharp edges of living in New York City and refused to be cowed by it, but just like every woman, her life was one of constant threat assessment. It was also a life of risk mitigation, though she railed at anyone who questioned how a woman dressed or whether she’d been drinking whenever a case of assault came up. After all, a woman wearing what she liked or enjoying a drink was no crime and every woman’s right, and perhaps guys should just stop raping people. But the world was a messed up place and walking the streets of the greatest city on Earth at night had its own incipient risks. Especially walking those streets at 3am. For safety, she carried a short tire, single bar iron, up the sleeve of her jacket, one flat end cradled i
n her cupped palm. She could straighten her arm and drop it into her grip in an instant should the need arise. Jazz Richards was no pushover.
Given that NYC hardly really slept, finding a quiet time to be out and about was difficult. But now, in the depths of the dead hours between midnight and dawn, it was as quiet as it ever got.
As Jazz entered Washington Square Park, she was briefly lit by the bright white lights shining up at the arch, then plunged back into gloom once inside. Her eyes quickly adjusted again. Nowhere was really dark in the city at night. Black metal lampposts, each topped with four round, white balls, made pools of brightness on the grass and paths. But there was no one else to be seen walking through. She stopped, suddenly startled by movement near low scrubby bushes on the grass to her left, then relaxed. A homeless person, rolled up in blankets with a collection of large bags beside them, had turned over in their sleep, nothing more. Jazz watched for a moment longer, but the person didn’t move again, almost completely hidden in the shadows of the foliage. She shook her head, feeling a deep sympathy for anyone forced into a life of sleeping in parks, but alongside it was a complete impotence. What could she do to help, short of charity? The city itself, the country itself, needed to do better by its lost, its broken, and its poorest. Jazz crept on nervous feet across the grass and tucked a ten dollar note securely into a strap on the nearest bag. As she backed up, she made sure it wasn’t visible from the path. Satisfied that it was the best she could do, she moved on.
Her alertness ratcheting up a notch, Jazz quickly headed towards the site of the crypt. She couldn’t let the story drop, despite LaGuerta’s insistence. Maybe even because of it. LaGuerta’s resistance bore all the hallmarks of being actively shut down by someone higher up. Jazz had thought better of her editor, but then again, she had no idea of the kind of pressures that might be being applied. It made her think less of LaGuerta, and that annoyed her. She didn’t need to think less of anyone. Everyone needed more people to look up to these days. Regardless, she had decided to return to the site of the burials, determined to get some proof of what she’d seen, some incontrovertible proof of the location and its secrets. Perhaps even a new angle to follow up. She didn’t need to tell LaGuerta anything, at least until she had something more concrete.