Shadows Out of Time

It sounded like lyrics from the psychedelic music he loved. I pictured the other worlds as scenes from the album covers in his record collection. Colorful, wild, bright. Unreal. Imagined. Desirable.

How wrong I was.

When we finished in the apartment, Squirrel took us to the cellar.

Most of the tenants had removed their stored belongings after the murder investigation, and the super discouraged newcomers from using the dank, musty space. A furnace occupied a large chunk of it, but the owner had never rebuilt the wall that had hidden the dead child, leaving plumbing and electrical conduit exposed. Scraps of old mortar on the floor showed where it had once stood, the outline of a desecrated grave.

Squirrel: Cops picked this place over with the finest of fine-toothed combs, my man.

Me: It looks like just…a cellar. Maggie: Hoping for a body?

Me: No. I don’t know, hoping for something, I guess.

Maggie: Hey, what direction are we facing? East 4th Street is that way, right?

Me: Yeah, should be.

Maggie: Does the basement extend under the street? There’s an awful lot of space over there.

Me: Where?

Maggie: Come by me. You can’t see it from there. Stand here. Look into the corner, by the pipes, past where the wall used to be.

Me: Whoa, another room. Weird. Maggie: I know, right?

Squirrel: Hey, leave it. You don’t want to go back there. That’s where they found the dead kid.

Me: Do you know what this space is, Squirrel? Is it out under the street?

Squirrel: There’s tunnels under the street. Sewer, subway, gas, water, electric lines. You see any of that?

Me: No.

Squirrel: Then you ain’t under the street, man. But don’t go over there.

Footsteps, scraping dusty concrete.

Maggie: I can’t see the room anymore. It’s not visible from anywhere else in the basement except where you’re standing, Richie.

Squirrel: Hey, let it alone, already, would’ya?

Me: No, man, this is what we’re looking for. Maybe there’s stuff in there from Redcap.

Squirrel: Thought this was all gone. I wouldn’t have set foot down here if I knew it was still…

Me: Still what?

Squirrel: Forget it. Come on, you saw what you came to see.

Let’s blow.

Me: Cool it, Squirrel. We want to check this out.

Squirrel: Yeah? Do it without me, man. I got no skin in this. I’ve done what I came to do.

Footsteps pounding up the stairs, receding.

Me: Squirrel! Hey! Come back here, dude!

Maggie: Aw, let him go.

Me: He took off without the rest of his money.

Maggie: Then lunch is on Squirrel. Hey, look, there’s a light back there.

Me: It’s a reflection, off something metal.

Only visible from one spot in the cellar, the space widened as we entered it, creating the illusion of the cellar expanding around us. A trap door sat in the floor in the back corner. Its steel handle glinted in the dim light. An iron chain looped through floor-mounted rings at each corner of the door held it shut, secured with a heavy padlock.

Maggie and I deliberated the wisdom of opening it. Squirrel ditching unsettled us, but we figured he didn’t want to be around if we dug up any dirt that brought the police. And we’d come here precisely to dig up dirt, not look away when secrets presented themselves.

I scrounged a pry bar from an old toolbox by the furnace. Levering it under the chain and applying my weight, I snapped a rusty link. The chain rattled loose. Maggie reached for the handle then stopped and offered me the honor. “All yours, Richie-Rich,” she said.

The iron burned cold in my hand as I opened the door.

Unexpectedly fresh, warm air, redolent of burning wood and animal dung, drifted across my face. Hazy, flickering light came from the opening.

The faint illumination cast the shadows of rough grooves in the cement and revealed occult markings carved there. Geometric patterns and inscriptions like those from the apartment floor but denser and more complex, the difference between multiplication tables and calculus. The light seemed to ooze through them and lend them a wispy aura. A low murmur followed the illumination, a rhythmic sound like a subway rolling by on the other side of the wall. I snapped photos. My camera’s flash exposed more markings on the walls and ceiling. Weird symbols and diagrams covered the space around us. In my pictures, the opening to the main cellar appeared dead black and much narrower than it seemed by eye, like the narrow neck of a balloon opening into a space forced wide by air and liable to pop out of existence the moment its skin broke.

Beneath the trap door, ladder rungs descended into twilight.

Mustering my resolve with thoughts of Dennis, I climbed down.

Maggie came after me.