Reliquary

= 36 =

BILL TRUMBULL felt great. The market was up sixteen points for the day, nearly a hundred for the week, with no end in sight. At twenty-five, he was already pulling down a hundred large a year. Wouldn’t his classmates at Babson shit when they heard that at the reunion next week. Most of them had gone on to crummy management jobs, lucky to be making fifty.

Trumbull and his friends pushed through the turnstiles and entered the platform of the Fulton Street subway station, chattering and hooting. It was past midnight, and they’d put away a fine dinner at the Seaport, as well as a lot of microbrewed beer, and had talked endlessly about how rich they were all becoming. Now they were in an uproarious mood, chortling about the dork who had just joined the training program and wouldn’t last a month.

Trumbull felt a puff of stale wind and heard the familiar distant rumble as two tiny headlights appeared on the track. He would be home in half an hour. He felt a momentary annoyance at how far uptown he lived—98th Street and Third Avenue—and at how long it took to get home from Wall Street. Maybe it was time to move, get a loft downtown, or a nice two-bedroom in the low Sixties. While a Soho address wasn’t too bad, an East Side address was still better. Balcony on a high floor, king-sized bed, cream carpeting, chrome and glass.

“…So she says, ‘Honey, can I borrow seventy dollars?’ ” Everyone roared salaciously as the punch line was delivered, and instinctively Trumbull laughed along with them.

The rumble grew into a deafening roar as the express train pulled into the station. One of the group nudged Trumbull playfully toward the edge of the platform, and he leaned back out of the way of the approaching train. It came to a halt with a great shriek of brakes, and they piled into one of the cars.

Trumbull lurched into a seat as they pulled out of the station, looking around in annoyance. The car’s air-conditioning wasn’t working and all the windows were open, letting in the stale, damp smell of the tracks and the deafening noise of the train. It was hot as hell. He loosened his tie further. He was beginning to feel logy, and a mild but persistent pain was gathering at his temples. He glanced at his watch: they had to be back at the office in six hours. He sighed and leaned back. The train rocketed through the tunnel, swaying, making so much noise it was impossible to speak. Trumbull closed his eyes.

At 14th Street, several of the guys got off to catch trains for Penn Station. They grasped his hand, punched his shoulder, and were gone. More got off at Grand Central, leaving only Trumbull and Jim Kolb, a bond trader who worked one floor below. Trumbull didn’t particularly like Kolb. He closed his eyes again, exhaling wearily as the train dove deeper into the earth, following the express track.

Vaguely, Trumbull was aware of the train pulling into the 59th Street station, the doors opening, closing, the express plunging back into the darkness, gathering speed for the thirty-block run to 86th. One more stop, he thought drowsily.

Suddenly, the train lurched, then slowed, screeching to a halt. A long moment passed. Jostled awake, Trumbull sat in gathering irritation, listening to the tickings and creakings of the motionless car.

“Screw it,” said Kolb loudly. “Screw the Lexington Avenue Number Four.” He looked around for a response, getting none from the two other half-asleep riders. Then he elbowed Trumbull, who managed a wan smile as he thought about what a loser Kolb was.

Trumbull glanced down the car. He saw a cute-looking waitress and one black kid, wearing a bulky overcoat and knitted cap despite the hundred-degree interior of the train. Although the youth appeared to be sleeping, Trumbull eyed him warily. Probably coming back from a hard night’s mugging, he thought. He felt in his pocket for his penknife. Nobody was going to take his wallet, even if there was no money left in it.

There was a sudden crackle of static and a raspy voice came over the PA system: Attention passengzweesh therlalignal problem reshorkwix hortly.

“Yeah, right, tell me another one,” Kolb said disgustedly.

“Huh?”

“It’s what they always say. A signal problem. We should be moving shortly. In their dreams.”

Trumbull crossed his arms, closing his eyes again. His headache was getting worse, and the heat felt like a suffocating blanket.

“To think they charge a buck fifty to make us sit in this sweatshop,” Kolb said. “Maybe next time we should hire a limo.”

Trumbull nodded vaguely and checked his watch. Twelve forty-five.

“No wonder people jump the turnstile,” Kolb was saying.

Trumbull nodded again, wondering how he could make Kolb shut up. He heard a noise outside the car and glanced idly at the window. There was a dim form in the humid darkness, approaching up the adjoining track. Some MTA repairman, no doubt. Maybe he’s just doing late night track repairs, Trumbull thought, watching idly as the figure came closer. Hope swelled, then ebbed. But if there’s something wrong with the train, shit, we could be down here until—

Suddenly it passed by his window, soundlessly, a figure in white. Trumbull sat up like a shot. It was no track worker, but a woman: a woman in a long dress, running and stumbling down the tracks. He watched her retreating back through the open windows. Just as she disappeared into the gloom, he noticed that the woman’s back was splattered with something that glistened black in the reflected light of the stalled train.

“Did you see that?” he asked Kolb.

Kolb glanced up. “See what?”

“A woman running along the tracks.”

Kolb grinned. “One too many, Billy boy?”

Trumbull stood up and thrust his head out the window, squinting down the tracks in the direction the figure had gone. Nothing. As he ducked back into the car, he realized nobody else had noticed anything.

What was going on here? A mugging? He looked back out the window but the woman was gone, the tunnel once again quiet and empty.

“This is getting to be a lot longer than ‘shortly,’ ” Kolb groused, tapping his two-toned Rolex.

Trumbull’s head was pounding now. God knows he’d had enough to drink to be seeing things. Third time this week he’d gotten hammered. Maybe he shouldn’t go out so much. He must have seen a track worker carrying something on his back. Or her back. Some of them were women these days, after all. He glanced through the coupling doors into the next car, but it was equally peaceful, its sole occupant staring vacantly into space. If anything had happened, it would have been announced on the PA.

He sat down, closed his eyes, and concentrated on making the pain in his head go away. Most of the time, he didn’t mind riding the subway. It was a fast trip, and the clattering tracks and flashing lights kept a person distracted. But at times like this—idled without explanation, in the overheated darkness—it was hard not to think about just how deep under the earth the express track ran, or the mile of blackness that lay between him and the next stop…

At first, it sounded like a distant train, screeching into a station. But then, as Trumbull listened, he realized what the sound was: a distant, drawn-out scream, strangely distorted by the echoing tunnel, wafting faintly through the windows.

“What the hell—?” Kolb said, sitting forward. The youth’s eyes popped open, and the late-night waitress suddenly became alert.

There was an electric silence while everyone waited, listening. No other sound came.

“Christ, Bill, you hear that?” Kolb asked.

Trumbull said nothing. There had been a robbery, maybe a murder. Or—perhaps worse—a gang, working its way down the stalled train. It was every subway rider’s worst nightmare.

“They never tell you anything,” Kolb said, glancing nervously at the loudspeaker. “Maybe someone should check it out.”

“Be my guest,” Trumbull said.

“A man’s scream,” Kolb added. “It was a man screaming, I swear it.”

Trumbull glanced out the window again. This time he could make out another figure moving along the far track, walking with a strange rolling motion, almost a limp, as it approached them.

“There’s somebody coming,” he said.

“Ask him what’s going on.”

Trumbull moved to the window. “Hey! Hey, you!”

In the dimness beyond the train, he saw the figure stop.

“What’s going on?” Trumbull called out. “Did someone get hurt?”

The figure began moving forward again. Trumbull watched as it went to the head of the next car forward, then climbed up onto the coupling and disappeared.

“I hate these TA assholes,” Kolb said. “Bastards make forty grand a year and don’t do shit.”

Trumbull walked to the front, looking through the window into the next car forward. Its lone occupant was still there, now reading a paperback book. Everything was quiet once more.

“What do you see?” Kolb whined.

Trumbull returned to his seat. “Nothing,” he said. “Maybe it was just some transit worker yelling to a buddy.”

“I wish they’d just get moving,”the waitress suddenly said, her voice tight with nerves. The youth in the heavy coat was slumped motionless in his seat, hands shoved in pockets. I’ll bet he’s got his hand on a gun, thought Trumbull, uncertain whether the thought made him anxious or relieved.

The lights blinked out in the forward car.

“Oh, shit,” Kolb said.

A loud thump came from the darkened car, causing the train to shudder as if something heavy had been slammed against it. The thump was followed by a strange sighing sound. Trumbull thought of air being released from a wet balloon.

“What was that?” the waitress asked.

“I’m getting the hell out of here,” Kolb said. “Come on, Trumbull. The Fifty-ninth Street station can’t be more than a couple blocks back.”

“I’m staying right here.”

“Then you’re an idiot,” said Kolb. “You think I’m just gonna wait here for some gang to come busting through that door?”

Trumbull shook his aching head. The thing to do was stay put and stay calm. If you got up and called attention to yourself, the only thing you did was make yourself a mark.

There was another sound from the dark car, like rain pelting against metal.

Cautiously, Trumbull leaned forward, looking ahead toward the darkened car. Immediately, he saw that the window was splattered from the inside with something like paint. Thick paint, running down the window in black clots.

“What is it?” Kolb cried.

Some kids were vandalizing the car, splashing paint around. At least, it looked like paint, red paint. Maybe it was time to get the hell out, and before he had even articulated the thought he was up and running for the rear door of the car.

“Billy!” Kolb was on his feet following.

Behind him, Trumbull heard something slamming against the forward door, the shuffling patter of many feet, and then the sudden screaming of the waitress. Without stopping or looking back, he grabbed the handle and twisted it, throwing the sliding door open. He jumped across the coupling and wrenched open the door to the rearward car, Kolb right behind him, muttering “shit, shit, shit,” in a dull monody.

Trumbull had just enough time to notice that the last car was empty before the lights went out in the entire train. He glanced about wildly. The only illumination came from the faint, infrequent lights of the tunnel, and the distant yellow glow of the 59th Street station.

He stopped and turned to Kolb. “Let’s pry open the rear door.”

At that moment the sound of a gunshot echoed crazily from the car they’d just left. As the shot died away, Trumbull thought he could hear the faint sobbing of the waitress end abruptly.

“They cut his throat!” Kolb screamed, glancing over his shoulder.

“Shut up,” Trumbull hissed. No matter what sound reached his ears, he wasn’t looking back. He ran to the far door and grasped the rubber flanges, trying to pry them apart. “Help me!” he cried.

Kolb grabbed the other flange, the tears streaming down his face.

“Pull, for Chrissakes!”

There was a sigh of air and the door gave way, flooding the car with a suffocating, earthy odor. Before he could move Trumbull felt himself shoved aside by Kolb, who jammed through the opening and leapt onto the tracks. Trumbull tensed himself for the leap, then froze. Several figures were coming into focus out of the darkness of the tunnel ahead of them, shambling toward Kolb. Trumbull opened his mouth, then closed it again, swaying weakly in disbelief. There was something horribly wrong, something unutterably foreign, about the way the figures moved. He watched as Kolb was surrounded. One of the figures grabbed Kolb’s hair, jerking his head back, while a second pinioned his arms. Kolb struggled soundlessly in jerky pantomime. A third stepped forward from the dim shadows, and, with a strangely delicate movement, flicked his hand across Kolb’s throat. Immediately, a hose of blood jetted in the direction of the train.

Trumbull shrank back in terror, falling to the floor and then scrambling to his knees, momentarily disoriented. He glanced back desperately at the car from which they’d run. In the darkness, he could see two figures crouched over the prone body of the waitress, working busily around her head…

Trumbull felt an indescribable desperation suddenly pierce his gut. He turned and leapt out of the emergency door, stumbling onto the tracks, running past the figures hovering over Kolb, racing for the dim far light of the station. Dinner and beer came up together in a rush, decorating his legs as he ran. He heard sounds of pursuit starting up behind him, crunching and thudding footfalls. A sob escaped his lips.

Then two more figures stepped out ahead of him on the tracks, cloaked and hooded, silhouetted against the distant light of the station. Trumbull stopped short as they began to move, loping toward him with a terrible speed. Behind him, the sounds of pursuit grew closer. A strange lethargy was turning his limbs to stone, and he felt his reason begin to give way. In a few seconds he’d be caught, just like Kolb…

And then, in the brief flash of a signal light, he caught a glimpse of one of the faces.

A single thought, clear and quite unmistakable, came to him through the haze of a night which had suddenly turned to nightmare. He realized what he had to do. Quickly, he scanned the tracks beneath him, located the yellow warning stripes and the bright clean rail, and thrust his foot beneath the shoe guard as the world dissolved in a flash of miraculous brilliance.