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Having no better place to start, Crowley led Rose back to Trump Tower. More specifically, to the manhole cover out front. Along the way, they’d each called the police to request that officers conduct a welfare check: Crowley asked for one at Trudy’s address, Rose at Price’s. He held out little hope that Trudy was being held at either place, but no harm in trying.
Upon arriving at the tower, they watched until the guards in the building’s lobby were busy talking to each other, then quickly slipped from the shadows, lifted the maintenance cover, and dropped into the tunnels under the street.
As Crowley pulled the cover back into place, desperately hoping they hadn’t been spotted, Rose said, “It’s nearly 4am. Will these new friends be awake?”
“It’s always nighttime underground. Let’s hope someone is up at least.” Crowley flicked on a penlight and shone its sharp narrow beam left and right. “This way.”
“How do you know which way?”
“Just a hunch.”
They went for a while in silence, Crowley heading vaguely towards the Bellevue hospital where the presumably fake-named Doctor Michael Prince had conducted his experiments and lost his job. Michael Prince. Matthew Price. It wasn’t such a leap.
Crowley froze at the sound of a soft scuff. “Hello?” he called out. “I’d like to talk to Clyde. Do you know where he is? Or Sarah?”
A silhouette emerged cautiously from a side tunnel. “Who are you?”
“My name is Jake Crowley. I’m a friend of Clyde and Sarah, and I’d really like to talk to them.”
“Probably sleeping.”
Crowley ignored Rose’s I told you so look and said, “Do you think you can take me to them anyway? It’s important. Unless you can help me?”
“Depends what you need.”
Crowley took a deep breath, then dove in both feet together. Might as well lay it all out from the start. “A lot of your folk have gone missing over the last year or so, haven’t they?”
The man’s eyes narrowed in his grubby face. “Yes.”
“Right. And I think I might know who’s been abducting them. I aim to stop him. But I need help. Is there any particular place people have been going missing from more than anywhere else?”
The man pursed his lips in thought. “Well, none of us spend much time around East 18th these days.”
“Why not?”
“Because everybody who goes there dies.” Clyde stepped out of the shadows. “I’m glad you’re here.” Crowley introduced Rose. Clyde seemed vaguely surprised by this courteous treatment and managed only a nod. He, in turn, introduced the other mole man as Ted.
“What’s the deal with East 18th?” Rose asked.
“There’s an old abandoned subway station there. A lot of us used to hang out in it, it was a good space. But too many went missing. Any of the tunnels for a few blocks east and north of the old East 18th Street subway station are off-limits. Not by any rule, just my preference. Especially recently.”
Crowley nodded. He had remembered the thing he’d meant to think about further but had forgotten for a while: the old man among the mole people saying, We don’t go near the tunnels under Bellevue anymore.
“I thought so,” Crowley said. “And just north and east of there is Bellevue Hospital, right?”
Rose gave him a sharp glance, and the mole men nodded.
“We don’t come anywhere around there these days for definite. People still disappear though,” Ted said.
Crowley took a deep breath, knowing that everything rested on this roll of the dice. He quickly explained the situation.
“If the two of you can help us, we can rescue my aunt and maybe even put a stop to this Revenant who has been killing your friends. And I’ll pay you for your time.”
“What do you need?” Clyde asked.
“First of all, I really need to get to the tunnels under Bellevue as quickly as possible.”
Ted shook his head, eyes wide. “I’ll take you to this side of the East 18th Street subway, but from there you’re on your own. I can give you directions, though. It’s not much further.”
“Good enough!” Crowley said. “And thank you.:
“What can I do?” Clyde asked.
“If you’re willing to take a small risk, I’ve got one more task that needs seeing to.”
––––––––
IT TOOK A while traversing the undercity of New York, but not as long as Crowley had anticipated. Eventually, Ted stopped and pointed ahead.
“Keep going down there, and you’ll come to the abandoned subway station. From there, cross the tracks, and you’ll find a tunnel leading out from the north end, and a few steps going down. When you get to the bottom, take the first turn each time, left, then right, then left. You’ll be directly under Bellevue.”
Crowley glanced at Rose, and she nodded, confirming she’d memorized Ted’s directions too. She had her phone out and was tapping them into a note to be sure they didn’t forget. “Thank you,” Crowley said and handed Ted a twenty.
He grinned and pocketed the cash. “Be careful on the tracks. Trains still go through East 18th, they just don’t stop there anymore.”
“Got it, thanks.”
Ted turned tail and hurried quickly away. Rose walked alongside Crowley as they headed on.
“You really think she’s here?” Rose asked.
“It’s a gut feeling.” Crowley shook his head slightly, trying to arrange his thoughts. “There are just too many disparate threads floating around this same area. I’m convinced Price has been using the forgotten spaces under the city for decades. And I’m sure he was the doctor sacked from Bellevue. The mole people say their friends are still going missing, mostly from that area, and an increasing amount in the last year, since Price came back to New York. It’s got to be there. He must have some secret area under the hospital, probably set up since he worked there. No longer accessible from above, maybe he closed it off, but still reachable from underneath. From down here.”
“I hope you’re right, Jake. But what if you’re not? What do we do then?”
Crowley paused, looked sidelong at her, then shrugged. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. If we come to it.”
They came out into a vast open space, and Crowley shone his light around. They stood on the abandoned East 18th Street platform, bright tags of graffiti adorning every inch of wall space. All kinds of trash littered the ground. Steps led up from either end of the platform, presumably the route back up to street level when the station had been operating, but both were blocked off only a dozen or so steps up. Cement columns were regularly spaced between the tracks. A wind picked up, pushing towards them and lifting dust and plastic packets.
“Let’s get out of sight,” Crowley said, and they both ducked into deeper shadows at the back of the platform as lights lit up the tunnel. In a few seconds, a train barreled through, regular rectangles of light framing bored faces, some reading, listening to music, staring into nowhere. The train rattled past for far longer than Crowley would have credited, then it passed, and everything fell into dark silence again.
“Now’s a good time to cross then,” Rose said. “There won’t be another train for at least a few minutes.”
“Right.” Crowley shone his light across to an opening, cement steps going down. “There’s our route.”
They crossed, picking their feet up high and with great care to not touch any metal. On the other side, they quickly entered the tunnel. The steps only went down a little way, then it leveled out. They followed Ted’s directions – to the end, then left, then right, then left.
Crowley and Rose turned in a slow circle, frowns creasing both their faces.
“Have we missed it?” Rose asked.
The tunnel they followed had ended in a slightly wider space that appeared to be a dead end. Two tunnels used to lead away from it, but both were bricked up, the mortar blackened and dusty. The two routes had clearly been closed for years, probably decades.
Crowley didn’t answer but began shining his light more closely at all the walls. Rose shrugged and followed suit. Crowley was growing increasingly frustrated, beginning to think that maybe he’d been keen for a solution that didn’t exist. Perhaps they could retrace their steps if they found nothing here and see if there were another route, a small side tunnel they’d missed or something.
“Here,” Rose said. “I’ve found something.”
Excitement built up again as Crowley hurried over.
“Look.” Rose shone her light at the ground.
There was a distinct arc scraped into the dirt, like a door had been opened through it. But there was only a brick wall there. Crowley crouched, looking closely at the base of the wall where the arc began.
“There’s a small gap here,” he said. “This is a false wall.”
After another minute or two they had found the outline of a door made of bricks, fitting so snugly it would never have been noticed if the marks on the ground hadn’t given it away.
“Price getting lazy about covering his tracks?” Rose mused.
“Looks like it. I guess he figured no one came this way any longer. But how do we open it?”
He began running his fingers over the bricks, pressing here and there. One of the bricks near the edge of the fake door shifted slightly. He pressed harder, and the block went in with a solid click. The door popped open, a one-inch brick façade on a wooden board.
“Et voila!” Crowley said. “Let’s go carefully now.”
On the other side of the fake door, stone steps led up into darkness. Crowley shone his light up and saw another door not far ahead, closed but seemingly not locked. At least, no padlock or keyhole was visible. He crept up, Rose right behind him, and listened at the wood. Nothing. A simple, round brass knob was the only way in. He slowly turned it and opened the door a crack. A soft orange light washed out, almost like candlelight, but too steady. He leaned in and saw a few wall-mounted electric lights with dim orange bulbs. Maybe they were kept on a dimmer switch, or perhaps this was only emergency lighting.
He let his gaze roam the space and the breath caught in his throat.
“It’s a lab,” he whispered back, trying not to let the frustration be too evident in his voice. “But there doesn’t seem to be anyone here.”
He stepped in and looked around. Two metal tables like he’d expect to see in a morgue occupied the center of the room. On one of them lay a young man, clearly dead, as evidenced by the missing top of his skull, with no brain visible in the concave hollow. Workbenches lined the walls, holding all kinds of tools and jars. At least a dozen jars held liquid with human brains suspended like underwater balloons. Other body parts occupied other glass vessels.
Rose gasped. “Oh, this is horrible.”
Crowley nodded. He moved closer to the dead man on the table for a closer look. It wasn’t anyone he recognized. He looked to Rose, and she shrugged, shook her head.
“It’s not the man he killed tonight,” she said.
“How many people have died at this monster’s hands?” Crowley said through gritted teeth.
The man’s eyes were empty black holes. On the end of the mortuary table stood a jar containing the brain, trailing a few inches of brain stem. The man’s missing eyes floated, still attached to the brain by twists of optic nerve.
“Look at this,” Rose said.
She stood by a desk littered with paper and pens and other bits of mundane administrative minutiae. But she pointed to a thick journal, that lay open on the desk’s center, a pen resting in the valley of the spine. The book was thick, the pages scrawled with dense, complicated script. Maybe two-thirds had been filled already. On the open pages were a few small diagrams, some sort of biological shorthand, then at the bottom of the facing page, a phrase in angry block capitals.
DAMN EDGAR! HE TOOK HIS WHOLE BUT DENIED ME MY HALF!
“What do you think that means?” Rose asked. “Edgar? As in Allan Poe? How can he be relevant? Why is his journal so important?”
Crowley stared at the words for a moment, then nodded subtly. “I’m beginning to have my suspicions. But come on. We’ve discovered something macabre and interesting here, but it only confirms things we already know. Trudy is still missing, and we’re running out of time.”