Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and now living in Milford, Ontario, Tanya Huff is one of the new crop of writers creating a strong Northern presence in the field of dark fantasy. Her first three published novels were set in traditional mythological lands; but, beginning with Gate of Darkness, Circle of Light, she has utilized a distinctly homegrown background for her fiction. Blood Price, her Toronto-based vampire novel, was number seven on the Locus bestseller list in 1991. Its sequel, Blood Trail, featured Canada’s most endangered wildlife species—the werewolf. Since then she has sold two more books to DAW. Blood Lines and Blood Pact, featuring the same cast of characters: private detective Vicki Nelson and 450-year-old vampire Henry Fitzroy. Her story “Underground” is based on a little-known but real disaster that occurred during the construction of the Toronto subway system.
He always preferred being under things—under the covers, under the bed, under the porch in the cool damp hollow that smelled of earth and wood and secrets. When on his fourteenth birthday an uncle took him spelunking, he slid down through the narrow entrance to the first cave as if he was going home. Not once did he worry about the weight of rock pressing down from above, not once did he think that there might be dangers in the caverns. It took threats of violence to get him to leave.
Had his parents lived in the right place, or had he received the right kind of encouragement, he would have been a miner, going joyfully into the embrace of the earth, coming topside reluctantly at the end of his shift. Unfortunately, his parents lived in Scarborough, a suburb engulfed by the urban sprawl of Toronto, and there wasn’t a high school guidance counsellor in the country who’d consider mining an intelligent career choice.
He found the next best thing.
“Pick up your feet, kid. Trip down here and the next thing you know one of the old red rockets comes by and slices, dices, makes julienne fries—whatever the hell they are—and your career in subway maintenance ends real fast. You know what I mean?”
He shrugged. “Yeah. I guess.”
“You guess?” Carl Reed rolled his eyes and pounded gently on the wall with one massive fist as he walked. “No guessing down here, kid. You gotta know. Know when it’s safe to move, when to stay out of the way. Mostly we work the tunnels after the system shuts down and all the trains have been put to bed, but since tonight’s your first night, well, I thought I ought to let you in on the first lesson a subway man learns if he’s gonna survive.”
He wet his lips. The air stirred. The roar of a thousand pounds of machinery blew into his face, filling his nose and throat with the smell and taste of iron and oil and ozone. “Uh, Carl, isn’t that . . . ?”
“The train? Yeah. Come on, it hasn’t even hit the curve yet, we’ve got plenty of time.”
“But . . . ?”
“Kid, I’ve been doing this for almost fifteen years; goin’ down under the ground at night, resurrecting myself every morning.” Carl turned and waggled busy eyebrows, the motion barely visible under the edge of his hard hat. “Trust me.” Up ahead, the outside wall of the curve lit up. Carl calmly stepped over the single rail to his right and leaned back against the wall. “Tuck up tight,” he bellowed, “turn your feet sideways. And it might help if you held your breath.”
Then the train was there.
Impossibly large, impossibly loud, the rims of the great edged wheels just below eye level going around and around and around—although the movement couldn’t really be seen. The train became the world. The world became the train. The urge to reach out and touch the passing monster fought with the urge to press back into the concrete farther than either concrete or bone would allow. Everything shook and screamed and swallowed him up and spit him out.
Then the train was gone.
“Jesus Christ, Carl, you’re gonna get fuckin’ fired, union or not, if the supervisors find out you’re sandwiching your apprentices with the trains again.”
“Hey!” Carl protested, shoving his hard hat onto the narrow shelf of his locker. “After I finish with ’em, my boys know they got nothin’ to fear in the tunnels. They keep their heads, don’t panic, and everything’s okay. That kinda confidence means more than some pussy rules. Besides, what’ve they got to complain about, I haven’t lost one yet.”
“What about Hispecki?”
Carl looked hurt. “How was I supposed to know he had a weak heart?”
“Well, you wouldn’t have found out if you hadn’t sandwiched him!”
“Yeah? Well just remember, I turn out some of the best tunnel men in the system.” Carl reached over and clapped his newest apprentice on one thin shoulder. “Right, kid?”
He started. “Yeah. Sure.”
“Jesus, Carl, leave him alone. He’s probably still got that damned train rockin’ and rollin’ between his ears.”
He had almost forgotten the train. It had come and gone and left no lasting impression. Of his first night’s work, only the tunnels remained. Mile after mile of tunnels burrowing under the city. His body might be going through the motions that came with the end of shift but his head was still down there. In the tunnels.
He had a basement apartment just west of Davisville and Yonge. On the short walk home from the subway, he kept his eyes fixed on the concrete under his feet, and tried not to think about how high up the sky went without stopping. He showed up half an hour early for work the next day, and on the days that followed never once complained about long hours or the length of time he went without seeing the sun.
“Carl? What’s that noise?” They were working downtown, east of St. George Station on the lower level where the University line runs under Bloor for a way.
“Wind in the tunnels, kid. You’ve heard it before.”
“No, not that noise.” He cocked his head. “It sounded like moaning.”
“Wind moans in the tunnels, kid.”
“It sounded like people moaning.”
“Oh. People.” Carl straightened, pushed his hard hat back, and grinned.
“Then you’re hearing them.”
“Them . . .”
“Yeah. Two guys. Construction workers. Fell into the wet concrete back when they were buildin’ the system. You know what wet concrete’s like; sucked ’em right in.” After appropriate sound effects, Carl continued. “Nothing the crew could do for them. They’re still in there.”
“No . . .”
“Yup. Trapped for eternity. Sometimes the wind moans in the tunnels, kid. Sometimes it’s them.”
He stood at the edge of the empty platform and listened, blocking out the noise of the train receding into the distance. He couldn’t sleep. So he came back.
Heart pounding, he moved quickly down the half dozen stairs and into the welcoming twilight.
“Hey, Carl? I found the place.”
“What place, kid?”
“The place where those two guys are.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Those two guys you told me about, the ones who moan . . .”
Carl snickered. “That’s just a story, kid. Somethin’ we old timers tell to scare greenies like you.”
“It’s not just a story.”
“Sure it is.” Carl’s shadow reached elongated finders around the curve of the wall.
“No. I found the place. Yesterday.”
“Jesus Christ, kid. You have any idea of the trouble you can get into wandering around down here on your day off? How deep in shit you’ll be if anyone ever finds out?”
He shook his head, not paying attention. “They’ve become a part of the structure, part of what’s holding everything together. They want to leave, but they can’t, not until someone takes their place. That’s why they moan.”
Carl squinted into the young man’s face. “And who told you that?”
“They did.”
“They did . . . Damnit, kid, but you had me going for a second there. They did.” The laugh bounced off the concrete and metal, around the curves, through the tunnels and over any protest that might have been made.
He sat in his basement apartment and stared up at the window. Up at the sky. Up at infinity.
“This is the place.”
“What place?!” Carl considered himself to be a man of infinite good humour, but three days flagging trouble spots on an area that seemed nothing but trouble spots had left him a little short.
“Where they are.”
“Drop it, kid. I’m not in the mood for ghost stories tonight. I wanna get this section done and get my ass out of here and into bed. I wanna hear my old lady snorin’ beside me and I wanna . . .” Carl frowned and fell silent. In almost fifteen years working down in the tunnels, it had never been so quiet. So still. “Kid?”
He laid one hand against the concrete, his arm held straight out before him, drew in a deep breath, and released it slowly. Then he took a step forward. His hand disappeared up to the wrist.
Beside him, a hand emerged.
“Jesus Christ, kid!” Astonishment, terror, something less easy to define, held Carl motionless through a second step and the beginning of a third. Then courage, stupidity, something equally difficult to define, pulled him into motion and had him fling a beefy arm around a skinny chest. “You’re out of your fuckin’ mind, kid! I’m not gonna let you do it!”
He wanted to tell Carl that it was all right, that he was all right, but the wall embraced him the way the world never had and he lost the words.
When the concrete closed around Carl’s arm, he remembered that there had been two men trapped.
Sometimes the wind moans in the tunnels.
Sometimes it shrieks.