Squirreclass="underline" 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?
Squirreclass="underline" 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?
Squirreclass="underline" There’s tunnels under the street. Sewer, subway, gas, water, electric lines. You see any of that?
Me: No.
Squirreclass="underline" 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.
Squirreclass="underline" 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.
Squirreclass="underline" Thought this was all gone. I wouldn’t have set foot down here if I knew it was still…
Me: Still what?
Squirreclass="underline" Forget it. Come on, you saw what you came to see.
Let’s blow.
Me: Cool it, Squirrel. We want to check this out.
Squirreclass="underline" 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.
We set foot on a cobble-stoned surface in a scene so outlandish, the impossibility of it froze me in place. The ladder emerged from a hatch in the underside of the second-floor balcony of a Georgian Revival house, the kind tucked away here and there in the Village. A second alley intersected the one in which we stood and wound into a city lit by gaslight streetlamps. Above us, stars dappled the sky — the open sky — where clouds drifted across a bright half-moon encircled in blue haze.
Maggie: Are we…outside? What…?
Me: How the hell did we get…? Where are we?
Scuffling as Maggie climbs the ladder, pokes her head up through the balcony hatch.
Maggie: Oh God, Richie. The basement is, like, what, inside the balcony? How’s this possible?
Me: I…I don’t know.
Maggie: It’s like an Escher drawing. I hate those things. They give me a headache.
The recording catches a nearby scream, plaintive and frightened.
Me: What was that?
Maggie: We should split.
Me: Maybe, but…
Maggie: But what?
Me: What if Redcap’s here?
Maggie: Where is here? How do we climb down an underground ladder and come out on an open street?
Me: We’re…hey, look where the moonlight reflects on the water. That’s the East River, isn’t it? It’s okay.
Maggie: It’s ten in the morning, and the moon is up. There are streetlamps out of a Henry James story. Fifty buildings should block our view to the river from here. Nothing’s okay! Nothing!
All of Maggie’s points hit home, but I had no explanations.
The connecting alley revealed more of the city’s rudimentary geography. A rough sketch of the Big Apple we knew, delineated in cobblestone, low buildings, and flickering gaslight. The antique seed of modern New York, yet to grow and bloom.
Even the air tasted different, free of fuel exhaust and street food aromas but richer with smoke scents and animal musk I couldn’t name.
A second horrible scream curtailed our amazement.
Maggie gripped my arm. In a courtyard at the far end of the adjoining alley stood a man in Georgian high socks and breeches, a frock coat, and a tricorne hat. He paced and checked a pocket watch repeatedly, each time changing direction. The quality of his clothing and the shine in his silver shoe-buckles suggested great wealth and status. His posture telegraphed impatience. I inched closer to hear what he muttered to himself, but then he sensed my presence and looked at Maggie and me with a terrified expression before stamping off out of the courtyard.
A second man appeared, hurrying after him.
A man in worn denim bell-bottoms and a tie-dyed Uriah Heep t-shirt.
A man with unruly dark hair and a close, shaggy beard.
A man I knew.
Dennis.
Maggie saw him too.
At that moment, I forgot our bizarre and inexplicable circumstances and chased after my brother. Maggie, my true friend always and in all things, ran right along behind me.
From the courtyard, we faced the mouths of several dark alleys.
Along one, I glimpsed the bright spray of Dennis’s shirt and cried his name. We spilled into another courtyard, the hub for more openings onto narrow pathways into blackness.
Dennis gaped at us when we caught up to him.
I couldn’t help myself. Overjoyed to find my big brother, I seized him in a rough hug.