The Worm and His Kings

by Hailey Piper

  It would be her fault if Gray Hill got away.

  Freedom Tunnel’s mouth was clean by comparison to its throat. Though garbage drifted outside, frequent foot traffic through the shantytown kept dust from settling too much, and what rust corroded the rails made it feel lived-in rather than decaying. Since the freight line’s shutdown, the rest of the tunnel had become a largely untraveled stretch of underground, and the rails wore dust like a skin. Doubtful that those who disappeared would ever be found.

  Monique would be the same if caught.

  She’d wondered over the past three months if Donna might have vanished on purpose, resentful over losing her position at the law offices of Marigold & Cohen. Her colleagues’ discovery of her relationship with Monique had murdered all aspirations for becoming a partner someday, years of hard work down the gutter. Donna had every right to throw blame wherever she pleased.

  Yet she never did. “It’s for the best,” she’d said, almost chipper when they’d carried two cardboard boxes out the lobby doors. “Thirteen years and I never found my purpose here. Maybe now, I will.”

  She hadn’t found it in her nice apartment either. Without the high-end job, she eventually couldn’t afford high-end rent and had to move into Monique’s tiny Brooklyn apartment. A poor choice since Monique didn’t have the best track record with homes. A rent hike soon put her, Donna, and twenty other tenants on the street. The pizza place where Monique worked then closed down. Life was a series of shutting doors, their outsides knob-free, the buildings themselves packing up and running away from her fast as they could.

  Monique had speculated that Donna was the same and couldn’t blame her. But now there was this creature.

  Gray Hill slowed ahead, forcing Monique to squirm back into the shadows. There wasn’t much noise from the street above, but they were under River Side; there would be hustle and bustle soon. A narrow ceiling grate cast faint light across Gray Hill’s hand, where a silhouette of limp limbs dangled between lengthy fingers. The unconscious woman’s red coat could easily swap for a red beanie if Monique wasn’t careful.

  Gray Hill swerved from the tracks toward a shadow-covered wall. A scraping sound filled the tunnel, like cloth being rubbed across a rough surface.

  Monique watched the darkness, urging her eyes to adjust.

  Gray Hill was shrinking. Layers of cloth squeezed against her gargantuan yet narrow limbs and folded her into a fissure in Freedom Tunnel’s wall. Graffiti whispered chartreuse letters to either side. Hopefully the artist had foregone exploring this slender opening, or else Monique expected to step over a derelict can of spray paint.

  She waited a minute after the wall had swallowed Gray Hill and then ran up to the crevice. Concrete teeth rubbed her palms as she felt at the edges, but they didn’t chomp down. She slipped inside.

  Rough scraping led her through the black passage. She took careful steps not to kick up debris. Gray Hill was doing plenty of that herself as she squeezed along, building a thick dust cloud in her wake. Monique pulled a scarf over her mouth not to breathe it in. One cough, and the jig was up. She felt at the cold plastic handle up her left sleeve, but against a monster with hands the size of manhole covers, her switchblade was little better than a security blanket.

  Her only advantage was the passage’s narrowness. While Gray Hill had to shimmy forward in uncomfortable bursts, Monique walked free. Keeping up became easy.

  Faint light soon cut Gray Hill’s ten-foot silhouette from the blackness. She made one more forceful push and then snapped loose from the passageway. Her captive’s red coat shimmered to life just as she veered left.

  Monique crept toward the jagged exit, waited to be sure Gray Hill had kept moving—sounded like it—and then poked her head out.

  A subway tunnel opened to the right and left. Rainbows of graffiti colored the concrete walls between small round lights. Their glow reflected in the tunnel’s steel tracks. These weren’t the harmless freight rails of Freedom Tunnel; a third rail spit electricity up and down the subway line between Monique and the far wall. One wrong step and the chase would end in merciless lightning.

  Though only wide enough for single-tracking, the subway tunnel was spacious compared to the narrow path within the walls. Gray Hill walked in stride here and would soon leave Monique in the dust.

  The third rail taunted. Monique could almost hear its hum. It wasn’t high, easy to step over as any other track, but she couldn’t trust it not to reach for her when she tried. This city had been trying to kill her for the longest time. She followed along with an eye on her gray prize.

  If she couldn’t handle crossing the third rail, how would she handle Gray Hill once they reached her lair? Monique tensed her body and took a breath. One shoe scraped across concrete. She rushed forward and jumped.

  Both shoes landed on the far side of the third rail without touching it. The city would have to try to kill her another day.

  “Ooh?” Gray Hill croaked something between a guttural frog’s call and a deep whale song.

  It echoed down the subway tunnel and through Monique’s nerves. She dropped flat on her stomach. Her hands splayed, and her arms knotted against the concrete floor in case she needed to bounce up and run. Her only chance then would be the passage back to Freedom Tunnel. Out in the subway, Gray Hill could grab her with a free hand and squeeze until every bone snapped and organ popped, leaving a puddle for transit workers to find with a red beanie sitting like a cherry on top of melted ice cream.

  Monique shook the idea away; terror would only make her make mistakes. She had to hold still and pretend she wasn’t here, not imagine what Gray Hill would do if she found her. Imagination always got the best of people. Monique blamed Doctor Sam for the steady strain of paranoia she’d been living with since this past winter, when last she and Donna faced a monster.

  By the time life put them on the street, they had already met Samuel Reinhart, good old Doctor Sam, and paid him in advance to operate on Monique. They couldn’t get the money back after their eviction. Even living rough, it only made sense to go ahead with his sketchy surgery.

  Monique blamed herself for not seeing through his promises and smiles. He would’ve taken their money and run, leaving them confused and heartbroken in a gray city snowbank, had he not planned to pull greater riches from beneath her skin and muscle.

  Donna had been wary of him from the start. If not for her, Monique wouldn’t still be walking with two kidneys. She was unconscious when the good doctor showed his true colors and only heard scant details later from Donna over how they got out of there, events involving a scalpel and teeth. Doctor Sam didn’t bear Monique’s scars, but he hadn’t walked away entirely unscathed.

  That was all Donna’s doing. Monique would not be useless this time, and she wasn’t going to quit, no matter the silvery talons or sickle claws.

  Click, click. Gray Hill was on the move. She had to suspect she wasn’t alone here. With every heavy footstep, the chance to find Donna slipped farther away.

  Monique hopped to her feet and darted up the tracks. No, no, Gray Hill couldn’t escape now.

  The tunnel curved. Ahead and to the right, concrete walls first gave way to steel columns and then to an open platform. Light spilled from its ceiling, casting commuter shadows across the tracks. Within minutes, a train would come plowing from the darkness, its horn warning everyone to keep the hell out of its way.

  At the light’s edge, Gray Hill reached for the ceiling and popped open a rectangular grate. She placed her unconscious prisoner inside and then dragged herself up the wall and into the ceiling. The opening seemed narrow, but her clothing squeezed against her body, almost like a bird’s feathers, and she made it through. For all Monique knew, plumage might have hidden beneath those billowing clothes.

  The grate clanged shut, and Gray Hill disappeared. Whether that grate led to another layer of the underground or a discreet alleyway, she was getting away.

  Monique dashed for the platform. An unseen busker san
g “Fortunate Son” in a grizzled voice, fighting commuter chatter and rumbling subway cars for attention. Monique hoped the crowd would be too focused on themselves to notice her scrabbling at the platform’s corner. If there was a ladder to make climbing up easier, she didn’t see it, but she managed to climb up. She took a second to breathe and then took off, her weary limbs complaining. Her body didn’t understand that Gray Hill wouldn’t wait up.

  Behind scattered commuters, a parallel set of tracks welcomed a screeching train. Its arrival blew hot wind and paper debris at Monique’s face. The commuters who slipped out its doors next funneled toward ascending concrete stairs. Monique followed them to another underground subway level, where she slid past a row of turnstiles and began to push through a thickening crowd.

  Commuters waiting in line at the ticket booth glanced or stared at her. She was used to being a shadow creature, but now she was in a hurry and making onlookers curious. They might report her to a transit worker if they thought she’d hopped the turnstiles or picked a pocket. Serious trouble or not, any delay would help Gray Hill vanish into the night.

  Monique slowed beside one man who wore a suit and tie. “Spare change?” she asked. “Every bit helps.”

  He slapped the pockets of his designer pants in an exaggerated gesture and gave a wan smile. “Sorry, nothing on me,” he said, and hurried toward a magazine stand.

  She slapped her thighs too. “Me neither.” She didn’t believe him—men who dressed like that counted every penny when they bought their morning coffee—but she didn’t mind for once. No one looked at her now, lest she ask them for a nickel next. Invisible again, she hurried up the next stunted flight of steps.

  She emerged at an intersection. Orderly streetlights dotted the sidewalks; pedestrians stepped briskly beneath them and crossed the streets wherever they pleased. Gray office buildings and brickwork apartments formed lines down each block. Colorful lights dotted windows to mark a deli or corner store. Adjacent from the subway exit stood Empire Music Hall, an elegant Greek revival of white columns and dark glass. It seemed like the one place that wasn’t selling something, but only because it was closed for the evening.

  No sign of Gray Hill. Two subway grates broke up the sidewalk nearby, but that didn’t mean she had climbed through either of them.

  Monique darted along dark windows, her beanie’s reflection becoming a grim red blur. That monster was her one lead, and even then it was a long shot. Now Gray Hill was gone. She would have heard a noisy leap in the subway and wouldn’t be so careless next time. She could pop up in Central Park, Morningside Park, grab someone off any Harlem subway platform, maybe venture farther south, and abandon Freedom Tunnel for all time. Monique might never find her again.

  She should’ve tried to get the monster’s attention beside the empty place and let herself be snatched. Now she’d lost Donna. Forever.

  “Ooh.”

  The sound might’ve been a busted car horn, but Monique didn’t think so. The chase wasn’t over yet. She darted across Morningside Avenue toward the foot of Empire Music Hall’s broad steps, where its white columns towered skyward. From the top, she’d have a decent vantage point.

  “Ooh.” The sound came more muffled this time, as if still underground. Monique almost felt it through her feet as she crested the steps. She was close.

  Her heart banged a snare drum rhythm as she reached the top step, where a corpse waited for her behind the black glass double doors. It stood on two legs, moving in sync with her steps and pausing when she paused.

  Her heart settled and she felt ridiculous. That was no walking corpse; it was only her reflection. No one stood behind Empire Music Hall’s double doors.

  Yet her reflection didn’t look like she did right now, wide-eyed and panting and shaking. It looked dead, its gaze hollow, its skin chalky. She tried not to stare, but her eyes wouldn’t turn away. It put the thought in her head that if she stepped inside this place, the reflection would become premonition. There would be no Donna in her future then. There would be no future at all.

  Streetlight glinted in the reflection’s eyes. As Monique retreated backward down the steps to the sidewalk, the reflection seemed to sink into the earth. The image stuck with her as she stepped toward a broad alley, where the music hall faced an office building’s gray plaster.

  The alley scared her less. There was nothing special here, just one more Manhattan route of grimy asphalt. And Empire Music Hall was nothing special either, even if Gray Hill made her lair underneath. People worked here, cleaned up the place, and took the garbage out. There had to be a service door. It likely hid between buildings.

  But as she walked alongside the music hall, the outer wall seemed to grasp for her, its acoustics resonant with lost souls. People had died here—she hadn’t heard that anywhere, but it was her gut feeling. Maybe by Gray Hill’s enormous hands or by others. Even if there had been no corpse illusion in the entrance’s glass doors, this place seemed the type where Monique would fall asleep and wake up to find a maniac tearing out her kidney.

  Never again.

  A frail light flashed in the alley, and a throat cleared behind it. “Trying to break in, aren’t you?”

  Beside a dull green dumpster stood a woman wearing a dark jacket and black pants. One hand clutched a smoldering cigarette that reflected in her maroon nail polish; the other stroked her short gray-white hair. She didn’t look like security.

  “It looks dead, doesn’t it?” she asked. “Don’t be fooled by the surface. Under its skin, Empire Music Hall is alive.” Her free hand left her hair and stuck out toward Monique. “Corene.”

  Monique became a statue. One foot wanted to turn and run, the other pointed at the music hall’s side. If she didn’t move, she wouldn’t commit to any determined course of action and could pretend all futures remained possible. She’d already taken a big step tonight by following that monster. Trusting a stranger would be like walking into orbit.

  Corene lowered her hand and returned to her cigarette. “No need to be cagey, kid. We’re both in over our heads. You just don’t know it yet.”

  “I know it. I’ve seen—” Monique clapped her jaw shut. She’d sound out of her mind.

  Corene took a drag, the smoke full of hard choices. “A tall lady, isn’t she?”

  She’d seen Gray Hill then, meaning she knew secrets, and yet she seemed to be weathering them with a stern approach.

  There was no reason to trust her, but if Monique gave nothing, she’d get nothing. She swallowed, throat pressing hard against her scarves, and nodded.

  “Then we’re both awake to the wonderful world of weird shit.” Corene blew smoke. “Lovely. And why are you here?”

  Monique stepped closer. “I’ve always wondered that. Why am I here?”

  “Ever get an answer?”

  “Doesn’t matter. I won’t quit being here.”

  Corene recoiled, but her eyes were alight. “The world must’ve thrown you down. Same story around every corner. Did you come here for guidance? That’s what they’re selling.”

  “I don’t even know what this place is. I’m looking for my—” Monique paused. She wasn’t sure how open she should be. “My friend, Donna Ashton. She’s disappeared.”

  “This is a good place for people to disappear.” Corene looked wistful. “I’ve lost someone, same as you. Professor Abraham Clarke, from Queens College.”

  “Are you a professor too?”

  “Do I seem the type?” Corene ran a finger along her sharp cheekbone. Her red nails looked manicured.

  Monique dug her nails into her palms. They’d grown overlong, their ends chipped, but she didn’t often think about them except when scratching at her arms. Now she felt embarrassed, as if it was her fault that she didn’t have a home and job and money and food and Donna.

  “I don’t know what a professor looks like,” Monique said. “But I think you know more than me. How about a way in? I can’t really walk through the front door.”

  “
Abraham did.” Corene smirked. “He strode up in broad daylight and asked their business. Everyone has their shortcomings, even professors. His is that he likes people too much.”

  “Do you love him?” Monique immediately regretted asking. It was a dumb question, imposing her own circumstances onto someone else.

  Corene glanced down the alley. If there were doors, they stood closer to the far end where the alley opened onto another street. “I’m not some doe-eyed grad student chasing a surrogate father figure. Abraham’s my friend. My brilliant, clueless friend, and no one else can find him. No one understands him like I do or knows where to look.”

  Monique stepped closer, into the haze of cigarette smoke. “You’re not looking too hard.”

  “I’m about to quit smoking and I’d like to savor this last one.” Corene took one final drag, dropped the cigarette filter beside a shredded candy wrapper, and stamped out the tiny flame. “There, I’ve quit. Congratulate me.”

  “I’m proud of you.”

  Corene stared hard at the dwindling snake of smoke beneath her sneaker. “You’re used to rolling with the punches, aren’t you? That’ll help.” She started down the alley. “That tall lady is sloppy when she comes up from underground. I’ve seen where she pops out.” She crouched down behind the dumpster. “And where she goes back down.”

  A lengthy grate stretched from beside the dumpster. Its rough edges didn’t look like it was meant to be opened and shut often, and it hadn’t been jammed tight where it belonged. Gray Hill was strong and had probably broken it back when she started her nightly abductions. Why would anyone notice a busted grate? Lots of broken things called the city their home.

  Corene stuck her fingers between iron crosshatching and tugged. Monique squatted beside her and yanked back as hard as she could. Her muscles groaned. So did the grate as it slid across pavement. She and Corene moved it just far enough to clear the way, and then they set it on the ground and peered inside.