by David Wood
She was fairly certain the freshest two corpses would have been taken to the coroner’s office already. They had looked almost brand new, surely not dead more than a week or two. But the older ones, and the bones in various states of decay, would surely have been left in-situ until further study had been done. She had done some research and also learned that whenever old burial grounds like this were discovered in the city, which was surprisingly often, the dead were left in place rather than be disturbed. That seemed to Jazz and incredibly morbid secret of New York, but perhaps not surprising given the size of the city and the number of ancient interred citizens. If at all possible, the city simply continued to be built around them. Jazz wondered how often she’d leaned against the wall in a subway station unaware of a pile of corpses just on the other side of the tiles. Or how often she might have been below street level, with dozens of dead bodies lying just over her head. It was macabre, but also a kind of thrill to consider. Besides all that, these bodies, at least a large number of them, were not ancient dead. This was altogether more modern and current.
Jazz moved towards the area where they had discovered the entrance, expecting to see police tape, cones, maybe even solid temporary fencing. But there was nothing there. She stopped, staring. Everything looked entirely normal, even the works that had been started cleared up as though they had never been. There was the maintenance cover on the ground, but nothing else. The only evidence at all were a few scuff marks on the ground, but even those showed evidence of having been brushed over, as though someone had tried to hide them.
Icy fingers crept up Jazz’s spine, and she tensed. Taking her eyes from the ground, she turned slowly, looked all around. She had the distinct impression someone was watching her, she could almost feel their gaze pressing into her flesh. Ignoring the trembling that started in her hands, she turned slowly again, trying to look everywhere at once. Someone was there, she knew it. Like a soft breeze tickling her skin, she couldn’t discern the source but knew beyond a doubt that someone watched her.
As she slowly turned a third time, a large man loomed up behind her. She shrieked, leapt back, bringing her hands up in front of her face in a defensive gesture, the short tire iron she carried raising too, now held in a tight grip. The man’s odor reached her, rancid and sour. His pale skin bore a layer of black grime, his hair matted and thick. He wore several layers of ragged, filthy clothing and his eyes were wild.
“Calm down, lady, calm down!” His voice was gravel and tar. He raised his hands and edged crabwise around her, never taking his eyes off hers. “Just passing through, okay?”
Jazz gasped quick breaths, tried to calm her hammering heart as he moved by. She wasn’t sure which of them had scared the other more. She watched him move away into the shadows between lampposts and took another deep breath.
“Keep it together, Jasmine,” she chided herself.
She turned back to the maintenance cover, keen now to move more quickly. The tire iron she held was partly for personal protection, but also because she had anticipated needing to lift the cement cover again. She hadn’t anticipated it being out in the open like this, but she had no choice now. Working quickly, she jammed the flat end of the bar into a small hole at one end of the cover and leaned her weight into it. Having been moved recently, it offered little resistance. Hooking the tire iron through a belt loop on her jeans, she took out a small flashlight and flicked it on, then went down the ladder into the curved tunnel. Some quick answers, some more photographs, maybe even a sample of... well, she didn’t know. Something. She had some plastic sandwich bags stuffed into one pocket in case. Whatever, she intended to get anything she could and get out again quickly.
She moved through the section of tumbled down wall and stopped, mouth falling open.
“No!” she breathed. “This can’t be.”
She shined the flashlight up and down, left and right, unable to believe her eyes. Everything was gone. Every bone, every scrap of clothing, every bit of debris, every speck of dust. The space was entirely empty, like nothing had ever been there.
Chapter 13
Crowley followed Rose through the corridors of Bellevue Hospital. Rose had told him it was the oldest public hospital in the US, so on the way he’d done more research. It had been founded in March of 1736, and traced its origins to the city’s first permanent almshouse, a two-story brick building on the city common, an area now known as City Hall Park. Then, in 1798, authorities purchased a property near the East River several miles north of the settled city, called Belle Vue Farm. The farm had been used to quarantine the sick during a series of yellow fever outbreaks. Apparently, First Avenue was so named because when the city grid was established, the hospital and its location had to be accounted for, so that’s where they started. The place was then formally named Bellevue Hospital in 1824. Now it handled nearly half a million outpatients and over a hundred-thousand emergency visits every year. Crowley marveled at the stories that would have been told inside its walls.
As they walked, he smiled to himself. So much for enjoying a quiet holiday, a few days off. He and Rose were more alike than he would care to admit, he supposed, both absolute workaholics, driven to be active. He tried to imagine lying on sun loungers in some tropical idyll, sipping cocktails and reading trashy novels. The picture was so incongruous he laughed out loud.
Rose looked back, frowning. “You okay?”
“Yeah, just thinking dumb thoughts. Look.” He pointed to a door marked Records Office, which is what the front desk had told them to seek out.
Rose knocked on the door and went in, Crowley close behind. Behind an old scratched desk sat an equally old woman. She had deep brown skin, wrinkled like a walnut, and a cloud of bright white hair. Her eyes were tired, but her smile was wide and genuine.
“Good morning. How can I help you, my dear?” she greeted in a heavy, nasal voice.
It never ceased to amuse Crowley that a New Yorker could take a simple word like “dear,” drop the consonant at the end, and still manage to turn it into a two-syllable word.
“Hi,” Rose said. “I was wondering if you could help us look into something from a long time ago.” She gestured vaguely back over her shoulder. “At the front desk, they said you might be able to look up some records for us.”
“Now what kind of accent is that?” the old woman asked.
“English. I’m Rose, and this is Jake. We’re both from England.”
Crowley waved.
“I’m Marion, good to meet you. You don’t look English!”
“My mother is Chinese.”
“Oh? Have you visited Chinatown yet?”
“No,” Rose said flatly.
Crowley wasn’t sure if she was bothered more by the stereotypical question or the thought of all the knockoff watches and handbags that were sold there. Rose found those sorts of cheap imitations highly offensive.
After a moment more, the old woman let her smile out again. “English. Well, isn’t that just fine? You’re a gorgeous girl.” She looked over at Crowley. “In fact, you’re quite the handsome pair. Just imagine the beautiful babies you’ll make.”
Color rose swiftly into Rose’s cheeks, and Crowley laughed. He stepped up next to Rose, thinking maybe he should push the conversation back into some kind of useful direction. “We’re working on a story and wondered if you could tell us about the situation in the early 1900s, when a doctor was fired for questionable medical practices. The doctor’s name was Michael Prince.”
Marion pursed her lips, doubling the wrinkles and adding to their depth. “I know a little about that. Even before my time, of course, and I’m older than the hills.” She laughed, but it was brittle, and Crowley hoped she wouldn’t break right there at the old, scarred desk. Then he thought perhaps he ought to give her credit for being tougher than she looked. She still came here to work every day, after all. “Just a minute,” Marion said.
She stood, moving with more energy than her frame implied, and disappeared into t
he shadows between the racks of shelving behind her. She re-emerged a couple of minutes later, carrying a manila folder. “There’s not much, I’m afraid.”
Crowley and Rose opened the folder, held it between them to skim through the contents. It listed Doctor Michael Prince, his term of service at Bellevue, an address not far from the hospital. It also listed his termination and cited “Unsound medical practice” and “Bringing the Bellevue Hospital into disrepute” as the reasons. That was largely it.
Rose handed the envelope back. “Thank you, Marion.”
“Sorry there isn’t more.”
“Anyone on staff who might know more about it? Or someone else who might have a more detailed knowledge of the hospital’s history?”
Marion shook her head. “You’re talking about over a century ago. A whole lot can happen when we’re talking about that much time. I’ll tell you what though, there is one person here even older than me and he hears all kinds of gossip. That’s pretty much his job description.”
“Really?” Crowley asked, trying to think who might fit that description.
“That’s right. Father Damien Jessup. He’s the chaplain here and has been since the 1950s. He’s not a hundred years old, but I’m guessing he’s not far from it!”
Rose smiled warmly, her eyes glittering, presumably with the possibility of another lead instead of a dead end. “Thank you so much for your time.”
“You’re quite welcome, child. You have a lovely day.”
The Bellevue Hospital Chapel was a small, but warmly inviting space. A floor of small square tiles led between two rows of dark wooden pews to a basic altar. Behind it, three arched windows let in diffuse sunlight. On the right-hand side, a large wooden cabinet reached almost to the ceiling, a board listing the hymns of the day hung on the side. Fleur de Lis wallpaper circled the room high on the walls, while dark wooden vertical boards covered the lower halves.
As Crowley and Rose entered, they saw two people sitting with their heads bowed in prayer or contemplation, one on either side, a man near the front left and a woman halfway back on the right. An old man, presumably Father Damien Jessup, saw them enter and came up to greet them. He was indeed ancient, like a withered branch, bent and knobbly with age. His skin was pale, thin blue veins tracing maps across the back of his hands in between dark liver spots. His head was almost entirely bald, just a few defiant white wisps of hair around the backs of his large, pendulous ears. A small man, but with a confident presence nonetheless, his blue eyes rheumy but friendly.
“Good afternoon,” he said softly.
“Do you have a moment to chat about some of this hospital’s history?” Crowley asked. “We were chatting to Marion over in the records department, and she suggested you were the man to know such stuff.”
Jessup inclined his head and gestured back out the door. In the corridor outside there was a recessed area with several armchairs and small tables covered in tatty magazines, probably almost as old as Jessup himself. The three of them sat.
“I think dear old Marion and myself are the last of the old guard at this place,” Jessup said. “It’s all different nowadays, but I can try to help you. What would you like to know?”
Crowley was pleased the old man didn’t seem to care why they were asking. He was probably just happy to chat about anything.
“Back in the early 1900s there was a doctor fired from his position here,” Rose said. “Unsound medical practice, among other things.”
Jessup smiled, nodded. “Doctor Prince. Yes, Michael Prince. Quite a story, that one.”
“Do you know his story?” Rose asked.
“Well, he’s one of the more infamous ex-employees here, even after all this time. But I don’t know a lot for certain, I don’t think anyone does really. Even then I imagine it was a need-to-know situation, so only a handful of people in charge would have really had the details. Obviously, I wasn’t around when the experiments were conducted, but I’ve heard a few stories. Probably unreliable, they were handed down for many decades before they reached me, of course. And people do love a story, so it’s no doubt grown in every telling, like a minnow caught in the mountains that’s a giant salmon by the time the yarn reaches town. And a story like his? Well, nothing like a scandal, eh?”
“Can you share some of what you have heard?” Crowley asked.
Jessup pursed his lips, sucking a long breath in through his large nose. He stared up at the ceiling for a moment, presumably gathering his recollections. “There were several different versions,” he said at last. “But they tended to carry a similar theme. People like to inject a little fantasy, I think, when the truth is often entirely more mundane, and the cruelty of men often has no greater reason to it. People always look for some greater truth, but often the folly of men is simply that and nothing more.”
Crowley thought it a little ironic that a priest would suggest truth injected with fantasy was something reserved for cruelty, but he chose not to mention that in this instance. “Go on,” he said instead.
“Well, some say the man fancied himself a new Frankenstein, trying to reanimate the dead. Others that he was a vampire, himself the reanimated dead and that he tried to make more like him. Rather than the Hollywood idea that one vampire bites a person to make another, some stories suggested he was a lonely creature of the night, desperate to make more in his image, to spend eternity with, and he fancied a medical procedure might provide his answers. Other stories still suggest it was some kind of witchcraft, and that he was trying to save a woman he loved through black arts. Details varied, but in all the stories, the man was looking for a way to extend human life, or cheat death, or raise the dead. Or perhaps continue to live even after physical death. Macabre, eh? Back in those days, I think there was a lot more mysticism intertwined with medicine, so these things might seem ridiculous now, medical science advanced as it is, but then? I think it wasn’t so strange. Still, they’re good stories nonetheless.”
Crowley exchanged a glance with Rose and saw she wore an expression that no doubt mirrored his. The stories, while wildly varied at first consideration, did indeed all share a thread of similarity. Based on their previous researches into all kinds of mysteries, Crowley knew not to ignore those kinds of coincidences, especially coupled with the recent discoveries at Washington Square Park.
“Have you heard of any other rumors?” Rose asked. “Similar experiments being conducted since, even in recent decades.”
Crowley knew she was thinking about the bodies in Washington Square Park too, and their freshness, recent decades right up to recent days. He had thought her line of enquiry entirely fruitless at first and was simply humoring her, but now something tingled at the base of his neck. A sense of something serious and dangerous. They were edging into something, and he thought maybe it would turn out to be darker and more dangerous than they had previously considered. Despite himself, he was a little excited by the thought. “Any copycat sort of stuff?” he said, to back up Rose’s question.
“Here?” Jessup said. “Not a chance. Even after all this time, Bellevue has strong observation policies of the activities of its staff. All modern hospitals do, but perhaps this place is more vigilant than most given what happened back then.” He paused, thinking, staring at some distant spot above and behind them. Crowley and Rose both sat quietly, letting the old man have his thoughts. Crowley thought they both probably hoped for something, anything, the old man might recall that would give them something to follow up. The trouble with any kind of investigation was that when leads ran dry, it was over. They couldn’t conjure knowledge from thin air. But the tiniest, however random, might be all they needed, like the one thread that comes loose and unravels the entire garment.
“I did hear of some crazy stuff, though,” Jessup said eventually. “And now you’re asking me these questions, I wonder if it’s not perhaps quite similar to Prince’s madness. I heard about a secret facility on an island in the Hudson River, and some similar scandalous accusations. Sam
e kind of things, like raising the dead or cheating death. Of course, those things are not unusual, people have been trying to crack those secrets as long as there have been people. I don’t recall the name of the island.” He gave them an apologetic smile. “My old brain loses more than it retains these days, I’m afraid. Something about fruit, maybe? Not sure why I think that... But I heard there was a secret lab there, contained in a literal dungeon.”
A LITTLE OVER two hours later, they sat at a small table inside Tom’s Restaurant. The iconic Upper West Side diner at the corner of Broadway and West 112th had provided the exterior shots for Seinfeld’s fictional Monks’ Café. It was now crowded with students from Columbia University.
As they waited for their meals, Crowley and Rose looked at the notes they’d written up between them. Crowley sat back and shrugged. “I guess that’s the best guess then.”
Rose nodded. “Plum Island. The old man remembered fruit!” She laughed, shook her head.
“It does seem the most likely. But it’s a long way away.”
Crowley looked over the notes again. Plum Island was in Gardiners Bay, east of Orient Point, off the eastern end of the North Fork coast of Long Island. That made it more than a two-hour drive just to get to Orient Point, let alone the island some mile or so off that pinnacle of land. The island was quite large, about three miles long and a mile across at its widest point. Now the site of the Plum Island Animal Disease Center, established in 1954, it was also the site of the former U.S. military installation of Fort Terry, built around 1897, and the historic Plum Island Light from around 1869. Now that lighthouse had an automated replacement.