Stories: All-New Tales

I’d spent some time in the various abandoned catacombs beneath the city. I’ve hunted there and spent some relaxing days deep under the ground, away from the sounds of the city.

“How big are we talking?”

“Big.”

Mahey carried a large white bag that looked to be made of some kind of naked flesh. From the sack she took a blue velvet roll, maybe a foot and a half in length. This she handed to me.

I unfurled the cloth, revealing a simple black knife, somewhat less than a foot long. The handle was part and parcel of the metal blade.

“Carry this with you,” she said.

“I didn’t say I was taking the job.”

“Don’t let’s be coy, Mr. Nyx.”

I wanted to argue further, but instead I rolled the dark metal blade back up and stood.

“I guess I better be getting to work then.”

“You can see me to my car downstairs,” she said, a little less formal than she had been.

When we got into the close quarters of the elevator, I was assailed by the odor of deep woods. It wasn’t a sweet smell, but there was lightness and dark, decay and new growth. It was almost overpowering.

On the street there was a cherry red Lincoln Town Car parked at the front door. A short, porcine man in a bright green suit stood at the ready, waiting for Ms. Demola.

As we approached him, someone shouted, “Hey, Nyx!”

He was jogging across the street, coming right at me. It was Tarver Lamone wearing white exercise pants and a gray sweatshirt. He was moving pretty quickly when he pulled a pistol out of the pouch of the sweatshirt. I was so surprised that I didn’t move immediately. The chauffeur was taken off guard also, but Mahey was anything but slow. She reached out and put four fingers on the forearm of Tarver’s gun hand. The whole arm turned to spaghetti and hung down, lifeless.

“He is not yours to kill,” she said in an almost matter-of-fact tone. “Not tonight.”

Tarver dropped the pistol and screamed. He turned and ran away. His gait was odd because the right arm was still hanging loosely at his side.

I turned away from him to stare at my Amazonian client.

“What was that?” I asked.

“You were not made for love, Mr. Nyx,” she said. “Its spikes and spines will stake you as certainly as Reynard’s great teeth.”

With those words she moved toward the car door, now held open by the piggish driver.

I watched them drive away and wondered, for the first time, if this rebellion against my nature was a good thing.

GRAND CENTRAL STATION WAS pretty much empty at one in the morning. I moved to the entrance of the IRT and made it to the downtown platform, populated with a few midnight commuters: young lovers and drunks, street punks and the homeless. A local train came and almost everyone got on.

I went to the far end of the platform and jumped down to the track. I was moving pretty fast, and so even if anyone saw anything, they wouldn’t have been able to stop me.

Half a mile north there was a metal ladder that led down to a network of sub-subterranean tunnels and corridors. One of these led to a crawl space that took me even farther down, to another set of passageways and access tunnels. Some of these paths led to offices and utility stockrooms used by subway workers for storage and relaxation. There were forgotten conduits also, some of which brought underground travelers to places that made up a city below the city.

I had been walking down a completely darkened tunnel for half an hour when a sudden stench almost brought me to my knees. I lit a match. Usually I can move in the dark with no light at all. It’s one of the abilities I developed after meeting Julia. But though I can move without bumping into things, I can’t really see.

The match revealed a rotting, decimated corpse. It had been human, but I couldn’t tell if it was man or woman. The groin, belly, and chest had been ripped out and the face was chewed off completely. Much of the flesh was gone. Only the hands were somewhat intact, but they were gnarled and filthy.

Whoever it was, they hadn’t been dead for long, but down under the subway there was lots of life that sought out dead flesh. Roaches, rats, and flies swarmed around the corpse. I staggered away wondering about Mahey X. Demola’s pet.

Along the path I discovered six more corpses. The odor was cloying. The scuttling sounds in the darkness were upsetting, even for me.

I was headed for the underground commune called the City of Light, named for the electric hookup a man named Nathan Charles had connected years before. There were lamps, fans, video players, and even computers in the cavern down under East Seventy-Third Street. I had been down here before during my nocturnal wanderings, had gotten to know some of the people who inhabited this strange place.

As I made my way toward the underground cooperative, I feared that there would be more bodies—many more.

“Who’s there?” a man asked and a bright light shone in my night eyes.

All my senses were temporarily blinded by the glare, but I’d recognized the voice.

“It’s me, Lester, Juvenal.”

“Juvy?” The light moved away. “What you doin’ down here, son?”