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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 in 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.
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.