The Dead Room (36 page)

Grayson put through a call to a man in charge of the Metropolitan Transit Authority, and then Joe was on his way with three uniformed officers in tow. In a few minutes they were met at the functioning subway entrance nearest Hastings House by an MTA employee named Gregory Breen.

He offered Joe a map. “How good this is, I don't really know. Once you leave the main system, you're in no man's land. No one has used a lot of the old tunnels since…hell, the twenties, maybe.”

Breen took them down, leading them through an employee route to a tiny station somewhere below Broadway, where they came to a locked door. He unlocked and opened it, and they came face-to-face with a wooden barricade.

“Told you,” Breen said. “These tunnels have been blocked off for decades.”

Joe reached toward the wooden barricade, which collapsed at his touch, the wood rotted and soft.

“Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle!” Breen exploded.

 

“Do we really need candles?” Leslie asked.

“Why not set the mood?” Adam replied cheerfully.

“Got any good wine?” Leslie asked dryly.

“Sit,” Nikki told her.

They'd brought a table into the servants' pantry, and set three candles on it. Some light still filtered in from the main kitchen, but the small room itself was shrouded in shadow.

“What now?” Leslie asked.

“We hold hands,” Adam said.

“And then…?”

“Leave it to Nikki.”

As they sat there, Leslie closed her eyes. Somehow it seemed like the right thing to do.

She waited, wondering what words Nikki would say to try to conjure the spirits. But there was no hoopla.

“Matt,” Nikki said softly. “If you're there, we need help. We know that you've been trying to reach Leslie, that you
have
reached her, but we need more help from you. Please, if you can…”

Nikki was still speaking when Leslie first felt him. Somehow she knew he was by her side.

And when she turned, she could see him.

He was there, and yet he wasn't there. He was only the merest suggestion of a form in the air, but at the same time he was the man she had known, tall, handsome and, at that moment, serious. She forgot that Nikki and Adam were present and stood, slipping into his arms. He wasn't real, but somehow she could feel him, feel his touch on her hair, his strength as he pulled her against him. And she could hear him.
“Leslie, you've got to get out of here, all of you. He came in by the front door. He knows the combination.”

“Who?” Nikki's question was Leslie's first indication that she wasn't the only one hearing Matt.

“I don't know, but I know he's close. I fought him last time, but I couldn't stop him. Please…get out.”

Suddenly the house was pitched into blackness, only the candles offering a respite from the all-encompassing darkness

“Someone's here,” Adam said.

And Leslie felt suddenly cold.

Matt had left her.

 

“What exactly are we looking for?” Officer Dale Nelson was young, just out of the academy. Joe didn't mind that fact. Nelson was willing and adventurous. He was just uncertain. Whether Nelson or O'Hara and Myers, the two older cops, believed in their quest or not, they had been told to listen to him and give him their best. He'd sent the two veteran cops down a northeastern tunnel, while he had chosen the more westerly one for himself and Nelson.

Closest to the prostitutes' street, Hastings House, the dig—and the site where they had found the body earlier. If Leslie really had heard sobbing from inside Hastings House, he had to be going in the right direction. If only the remains of the system didn't add up to such a labyrinth. Progress had left behind a bone structure that was now sad and dilapidated.

And dark.

“We're looking for a room of some kind. A room that might be used as a cell,” Joe explained. “Look for anything that might be a door.”

“Gotcha,” Nelson said. Suddenly he let out a hoarse cry.

“What?” Joe demanded.

“Rat,” Nelson said apologetically. “Sorry.”

“Right.”

They kept on trudging.

 

“Douse those,” Adam said, and Nikki quickly put out the candles. They stood in the pitch dark, and Leslie nearly jumped a mile when she felt a hand on her shoulder. It was Adam. “I'm going for the gun.”

“Upstairs?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“No!”

“I have to.”

“Adam—”

“I'll be careful.”

He disappeared, but Leslie could hear Nikki breathing at her side. “We can't just stay here,” she whispered.

“Do you have a better suggestion?” Nikki asked.

She did. Down in the basement. There were tools down there. Weapons with which they could fight back.

“Hey!” They heard a sudden cry from the parlor. “What's going on in here?”

Brad! Leslie didn't know whether to trust him or not. Had he cut off the electricity to take them by surprise? Or was someone else in the house, too?

She didn't know the answers to any of those questions.

She dragged the table aside and moved the braided rug.

“Come on,” she whispered urgently to Nikki.

“No…you go down there. No one knows anything about me. You hide, and I'll cover the floor with the rug. Go!”

“Nikki, I can't leave you in danger.”

“I'm not the one in danger. I'll hide, too, but if I don't put the rug back, it will be obvious where you are. Now get down there!”

Leslie did. She moved down the stairs blindly, trying to remember where she had left a lantern. She groped her way around the various boxes, until her fingers curled around a lantern at last. After more exploration she also found a scraping knife. Then she hesitated, listening, trying to see the room in her mind's eyes. A stack of boxes was piled to the right of the hearth. She slipped behind them, against the wall, the knife in one hand, the lantern in the other. She waited. And waited.

There was silence. Then…

Sobbing. She turned, staring in the direction of the sound, but the room was pitch black, and she couldn't hear a thing. She remembered the way Joe had been running his hands over the wall the other day. In the dark, she began to do the same thing herself.

She touched a brick, and it gave. Stunned, she paused for a moment. Then she fumbled in the darkness, found the uneven brick again and pushed until it gave even farther. Her hand met something cold and metallic. She felt it with her fingers, trying to picture what it was. Finally she pushed it, and the air itself seemed to fill with a loud, creaking sound.

The entire wall moved. She swallowed, blinked, still in darkness, aware of what had happened only because a gust of stale air struck her. The door, however, had made a sound loud enough to wake the dead. If there were indeed a killer in Hastings House, he had heard it, which meant there was no way she could go back upstairs.

There was only one way to go.

Forward.

 

Someone was in the house. Adam Harrison knew it even before he heard the voice call out from downstairs. When neither Leslie nor Nikki answered that call, he decided to play it safe and made his way along the upstairs hall as silently as possible, reached his gun quickly and started back toward the stairway. Then he heard a whisper in the darkness.

“Adam?”

It was Nikki.

Before he had a chance to reply, there was a commotion from below. He hurried down the stairs. He could just make out a single figure in the entry hall, but it seemed to be fighting with an unseen opponent.

“Stop or I'll shoot!” Adam shouted.

The figure stumbled out of the house, Adam in pursuit. “Stop, Adam!” Nikki called. “We'll call the police!”

“No! He'll be gone before they get here,” Adam shouted without stopping.

As he tore out of the house, he realized that Nikki was right behind him.

 

“Shit!” Nelson yelled.

Joe spun around, wondering if he should have saddled himself with such a rookie.

But this time there was a look of agony on the young man's face.

“What?”

“My fucking ankle. I stepped into some kind of rut…there's a twisted rail here. Hell!”

“I can't walk. I'm sorry.”

“All right. I'll get you out of here.”

“No…hell, no. You go on.”

“You want me to leave you in an abandoned tunnel?”

“I've got a light. My radio is shit down here, but the light is working. Just send help as soon as you can.” He winced. “I'm serious. I'll be all right. Find that girl.”

Joe nodded. “All right. I'll get someone back to you as soon as I can.”

“It's a plan. Go on.”

Joe nodded and left.

 

Leslie turned on the light; there was no reason not to. She could hear footsteps overhead. It could be Nikki or Adam, she supposed.

But maybe it wasn't.

She hurried through the doorway, checking out the door as she passed. It seemed to her that the latch and the hinges should have been far rustier. When the hell had the door been put in?

It must have been during the Civil War, when the house had been part of the Underground Railroad. She wasn't in a subway tunnel. This passage might lead to an old one, but…

She shoved at the door, closing it as best she could. Then she lifted her light. There was only one way to go.

She started walking, and then she froze.

“Leslie? Are you down here? What the hell is going on? The house was pitch dark and the door was open.”

It was Brad, and he sounded truly baffled. But if Brad was in the basement behind her, where the hell were Nikki and Adam?

She kept silent. Then she heard the door opening and started running along the tunnel, quickly turning out the light. She heard the creaking of the door as Brad opened it.

“Leslie, it's me. Brad.” He sounded indignant. “Dammit, Leslie, you've got me scared to death. Where the hell are you?”

She went still, barely daring to breathe. But she had to move, so she inched forward in the darkness, feeling her way along the wall. It was tile here, she thought. Then more brick followed concrete, before it turned to tile again.

“Leslie, it's dark in here!” Brad called.

She heard a cry in the dark, followed by a thud, like something heavy falling.

Brad?

Then nothing.

She hurried along, silent, desperate. Someone was behind her. She was sure of it. And something told her that it was no longer Brad.

Tile…concrete…damp and slick beneath her hand.

Then…wood?

 

There was noise coming from the shaft ahead, but Joe couldn't tell what the hell it was. He drew his gun, holding his lantern high.

It seemed close…yet simultaneously far away.

Swearing, he paused to pull out the map again.

There was a tunnel that ran parallel to the one he was in. Apparently, it had never been part of the subway. There was a notation on it.
Old passageway, unusable, storage.

Storage. That meant there had to be access to it somewhere. He strained to see the tunnel ahead. Was that something in the wall, about fifty feet ahead? He hurried forward to check it out.

 

There were bolts; she could feel them. A door! All too aware that someone was coming up behind her and with no idea how much distance there was between them, she felt for the bolts and began to work at them. She had no choice.

There was a snick as the first bolt gave. She moved faster, heedless of the noise she was making. Without meaning to, she began to scream. “Help!”

The sound came back to her as an echo as she slid the last bolt back and the door gave. Suddenly there was light. She blinked furiously against the abrupt brightness of it. She was in a room, a room that smelled of death. There was a cot in it, and a table by the cot that held a few bottles of water.

There was something piled on the far side of the room.

And there was a woman. She was dark-haired and blue-eyed, thin to the point of emaciation. Her ankles were chained together, but she was on her feet, pale and sickly but ready to do battle. Genevieve O'Brien.

“Get in! I can't believe you've found me, but he's right behind you.”

Leslie turned. She screamed. He was almost on them.

“Get in!” Genevieve implored.