Underground

I put on the dark wool coat and felt wonderful. The sleeves were long enough to cover my wrist bones and the hem came all the way down onto my thighs, both of which were rare for me. I gave it a suspicious stare, half expecting some Grey gleam, but it was just a coat—a nice coat—and that pleased me even more. Of course, it turned out to be an expensive nice coat, but that wasn’t unusual. I bought it anyway, hoping it wouldn’t go the way of the previous one.

Another fine flurry of snow had started up by the time we left the shop. I thought I had spent enough time feeling bad about my morning and the weather, so I thanked Phoebe and took off, much to her disapproval. I needed to get started on interviewing ghosts before the weather got any worse.

The voice from a coffee shop’s radio assured listeners that the snow wouldn’t last and the temperature would soon be rising, but it didn’t feel that way to me. The kids I’d heard shrieking in the snow that morning were probably hoping he was wrong as much as I hoped and doubted he was right.

The darkening sky seemed bleak and portentous overhead as I headed for work. I’d have to contact Quinton; I needed someone to watch out for me down in the tu

I called Quinton while I waited for the Rovers heater to kick in, and he agreed to meet me outside my office so we could begin hunting for long-dead witnesses to whatever was killing people in the underground. I took off my new coat and re-do

I told him what Fish had discovered about the long pattern of deaths. “So,” I concluded, “we’re looking for something that’s been down there quite a while. Questioning the living hasn’t helped.” I drew a long breath. “So I’m going to start asking the dead.”

“You mean… the ghosts of Go-cart and Je

“No. They don’t seem to have left much trace. I’m going to have to look for ghosts who are aware enough to talk and who also were alive during the periods and in the places the… thing has killed people in the past.” I didn’t want to get used to thinking of the creature as one thing or another and risk closing my mind to clues, but the vision of a giant man-eating spider still flitted through my head and I shuddered. “The area of most activity has been down here in what Fish called the lava beds, south of the old skid road,” I added, pointing at Yesler Way.

“The bricks.”

“Is that the whole area? I never heard the term before you and the undergrounders used it.”

“Yeah, the corridor flanking Occidental a block on either side from Pioneer Square south. The whole place is full of those big, white bricks they used to pave the park and the Square. There’s a lot of stuff under those bricks.”

“Fish said most of the deaths had been south of Yesler, so lets leave the Square for later, when there are fewer people in it—it’s a bit exposed for what I need to do.”

Quinton looked at the sky, as bright as it would get all day, even with the cold white flakes still drifting down. “We’d better start in the alleys.”

We walked around the corner and went down the nearest alley, plodding through the slushy filth of snow, garbage, and urine that had built up between the buildings. I let my hand run along the striations of time that tipped up near the alley wall and felt the edges of years ruffle against my fingertips. I stopped and peered at them, fa

He gave me a curious frown. “What are you doing?”

“Remember I said I can see layers of time?”

“Yeah.”

“Some places they’re slanted up, like broken bits of riverbed—layers and layers of time—and they’re easier to get at. They’re physically displaced, though, so I may not be able to go very far before I run into an obstacle or the bit of time just breaks off.”

He shook his head like a dog irritated by a flea. “You’re implying you can time travel…”

“No. I can wander around in a tiny piece of time associated with this location. Most of it’s just a recording—a kind of persistent memory—of this place. If I’m lucky, I’ll find a ghost who’s awake enough to talk to me, but most won’t even know I’m there. What I need you to do is keep an eye on me and the area so I don’t freak someone out or end up banging into something out here. I don’t know what happens at this end and I wasn’t worrying about it too much the last time I had to do this, but I can’t see this bit of time well while I’m in the other one.”

Quinton narrowed his eyes. “OK… But what if I can’t see you?”

“Let’s find out,” I said, pushing one of the planes of time and sliding onto it.

I slipped sideways into another version of the alley. There were two young men in cloth caps and knee-length trousers who paid me no attention as they sprinted along, darting in and out of doorways and yelling to the proprietors something I couldn’t quite hear. I followed one of them a few feet before I heard a sharp whistle blast behind me.

I whirled and was caught in a flood of policemen who poured into the doorways just as a lot of civilians tried to surge out of those same openings. The noise was deafening and the two groups clashed, yelling. But none noticed me.

I slid back out of the fragment of time and found myself closer to the opposite end of the alley than when I’d started. Quinton was a few steps away, wide-eyed.

“What happened?” I asked. “Are we all right?”

“Yeah, but you were pretty hard to see. If I hadn’t known to look for you, I might have dismissed you as a shadow in this light. Where did you go?”

“When. Looked like sometime during Prohibition. Not the period I need. We may have to go down below.”

“There’s not much access on this block. Some places, the underground’s been cut off or is in use. This is one of those bits. What else can you find up here?”

“Not sure. Let me look around a bit more.”

I reached for the fluttering edges of time and eased into them, pushing and shoving, looking for an indication I’d found the right time period. No luck in that alley. We moved on to another and I tried again.

I found a slab of 1949 that smelled of dust and dry red dirt, and I stepped into a street still littered with debris from the earthquake. The silvery shape of the hotel across from my office had rained ghost bricks onto the sidewalk and a handful of workmen’s shadows were shoving them into piles with what looked like bristleless push brooms. A lighted sign from another business lay where it had crashed from its moorings. I started forward, feeling a sort of push against my body as if I was walking against the current of a river. Time was intractable there and I knew it would resist any efforts by me to do anything.

I walked past the workmen, who didn’t acknowledge me, and looked around. The street was busy enough with the memories of people cleaning up, but I doubted any of them would be much help even if they could see me. I went on toward Occidental, looking for the ghost of one of the street people who might be more aware of me than the shades of solid citizens. A building stood where most of Occidental Park was in my time—rather it slumped there, decrepit and broken backed, clearly destined for demolition. I stopped, startled to see the old place.