 
## **Contents**

Crude Sunlight

Copyright

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Other Books by Phil Tucker
Crude Sunlight

CRUDE SUNLIGHT 1

by Phil Tucker

Copyright

Crude Sunlight 1

Phil Tucker

Published by Phil Tucker at Smashwords

Copyright 2011 Phil Tucker

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments

To my first draft reading crew, fearless and honest, and to Jeff Vandermeer for the encouraging words.

Many thanks to Lukasz Kapa for allowing me to use his photograph for the cover.

Chapter 1

Dusk was falling by the time Thomas arrived in Buffalo and parked his Mercedes outside his missing brother's building, the sky a deep shade of blue that darkened to cobalt toward the east. He got out and slammed the door, invigorated by the cold, pausing to look up at the sky, at the ragged, collapsing castles of cloud that were fading to darker shades of gray. He felt good. He felt energized by the drive, by the aggressive way he'd handled the car on the way up from New York, the manner in which he'd courted the cops, daring them to pull him over. Escaping the problems at home, cauterizing frustration with speed. It was a near miracle that he hadn't been stopped.

His brother's apartment complex was grim, hunched and sullen looking like a pair of crossed arms, rising some six stories into the air. Spatterings of snow crusted the window ledges, were scraped into low drifts lining the approach to the glass lobby doors. A vague attempt at an ornamental garden had been made and then abandoned before the entrance, leaving a circular swathe of withered grass around a bare gravel pit. It was his second time out here, the first having been August last year when he'd helped Henry moved in for his Junior year. He'd never found the time to come back to visit. Ah well. He'd been busy. Missing Henry could ask missing Michelle if he didn't believe him.

Suddenly chilled, Thomas hunched his shoulders and stepped up onto the curb, crossed the wide cement pavement and up to the doors. They were locked. A small steel panel with an LCD screen emitted a dull green glow to his left, and leaning down he squinted at the blocky text and pressed the pound key several times till he came to a list of names. Scrolling, he searched and found and then buzzed Materday, the superintendent.

A long pause. Finally the panel crackled to life. "Yello?"

"Mr. Materday, this is Thomas Verkraft. I've come about Unit 457?"

"Oh... the missing kid. I see." Thomas pursed his lips and waited as the super processed this information. Materday had been the first to notice Henry's disappearance, calling Thomas when the second month's rent had gone unpaid. A chill wind picked up suddenly, blowing through the parking lot, lifting his collar. Thomas checked his watch--almost 7pm. The stock market would soon be opening in China, and things would be picking up at the office in New York. Nothing else seemed forthcoming from the panel. Suddenly annoyed, he opened his mouth to say something sarcastic but the door buzzed before he could so. "Come on in, then. I'll meetcha in the lobby."

Materday backed out of a service door next to the elevator and turned to stare at Thomas. He hadn't improved since the last time they had met. Short, fat, and swarthy, the superintendent had small eyes and a large, splayed nose that must have been broken several times over the course of his life. His chin was practically nonexistent, giving him the appearance of a sly frog in a hunter's cap with the ear flaps down.

"Verkraft?" Thomas nodded, and the super looked down at a massive ring of keys he held in one hand. After a few nervous, darting gestures he finally removed one and gave it to Thomas. "Here's the spare. When are you gonna be done?"

Thomas took it, impressed by the man's indifference. No questions, no concern over the tenant that had been missing for three months now. "Probably by tomorrow afternoon. I'm going to see how much there is tonight, and call the moving guys tomorrow morning."

Materday sniffed loudly, pointedly, and nodded. "All right, good. Have the key back to me tomorrow by 8pm at the latest. Anything left behind gets chucked out on Monday. Got it?"

Thomas looked down at the man and struggled to stay calm. Don't get upset with this little turd, he thought. Just ignore him. He nodded, and something about his stare unnerved the super, who turned and bustled back through the service door. Left alone in the lobby, Thomas glanced at the key and then turned to summon the elevator. Entering, he hit the button for the fourth floor and let his eyes unfocus. He'd filed a missing persons report when Materday has called him a month ago, but nothing had come of it. Just disappeared, had been the cop's verdict, like thousands of others across the country. The legion of the vanished. They had interviewed Henry's friends, spoken to his professors, given his apartment a cursory search, but the police had come up with no reason to suspect foul play. Their conclusion: that Henry had simply taken off, another kid inspired by On The Road or Into The Wild. Materday had called yesterday to see if Thomas as the co-signer would pay Henry's rent. He'd agonized over the decision all night long, and when he'd finally called to say no it had felt like telling a doctor to pull the plug.

The elevator shuddered to a stop, the doors rattled open, and Thomas stepped out. The hall reeked of wet dog, and was the kind of place that roaming site locators for zombie movies would die for, sending back copious photographs and floor plans with adjectives like "creepy!" and "moody-esque!" written all over them. It was poorly lit, the ceiling lights placed a little too far from each other, the carpet a dull, neutral vomit color somewhere between brown and beige. Each end terminated in a fire door, large and ponderous, the iron looking like it had been beaten with hammers. Behind each small, wire-meshed window flickered the lights of the stairwells, and Thomas easily imagined a bloody hand suddenly smacking against the glass.

Henry had lived but two doors down from the elevator, and Thomas quickly unlocked the door and escaped the fetid stench into the dark apartment. Which, Thomas noticed immediately, still had a faint, lingering smell of incense in the air. Henry hadn't been a fan of the dog stench either, it seemed.

The grey light of dusk came in from the broad window on the far side of the living room, illuminating the small apartment with clear, wintry hues. The last time he'd seen it the place had been almost empty. Henry had brought a few boxes of books, a closet full of clothing, a mattress, and little else. Thomas stood in the tiny entrance hallway and remembered the fierce pleasure that Henry had felt for his new apartment, how he had stood with his hands on his hips gazing out through the window as if surveying his kingdom. The sunlight then had been golden, autumnal. Now the light was cold and hard, and nobody stood framed in its pale radiance.

Taking a deep breath, wishing Michelle were here to help, to make a wry comment or simply give his arm a squeeze, he stepped forward, past the small kitchen on the right, cramped and dark, a mess of dirty plates and glasses in the sink. Henry had acquired some furniture, the kind of items you might pick off the curb or buy cheap on the internet. A battered blue couch was set against one wall, facing an ancient, bloated TV set on a short, wide bookcase against the other. A desk was set under the window, its surface dominated by a computer.

Turning, Thomas poked his head through the bedroom door. A rumpled single bed under the window, the sheets littered with large print photographs, casually shaken out of a manila envelope. An open closet door filled with what looked like mostly monochromatic clothing. A bookcase, a bedside table.

Bare basics. Reaching out, he flicked on the lights and fluorescent bulbs bathed everything in an immediate wash of stark, sterile white light, the dust suddenly visible and ubiquitous, lying thickly on the table top and photographs, on the barren length of the window sill, on the framed picture of their parents. It covered everything in sight.

Melancholia took him by the throat. He'd never been very close to Henry; seven years his senior, and preoccupied with his career, he'd paid little attention to his strange and introverted younger brother. When was the last time he'd seen him? Six months now, perhaps, since Henry had come through New York en route to beginning his junior year. Thomas and Michelle had taken him out to a fancy restaurant--D'Orsia--and then dropped him off to go meet up with some of his friends. Thomas had had an early meeting for the next day which had dragged until late afternoon, and by the time he'd managed to escape he'd only had time to take Henry to the airport.

Still musing, distracted, he wandered over to Henry's bed. Thick, slightly curved glossy prints in atmospheric black and white lay over the rumpled sheets like strange autumn leaves. Had the cops gone through them? Reaching down, he picked one up at random and examined it. At first it was hard to determine the subject matter. And then, like a ship emerging from the fog, he saw it. It was a large tunnel, smooth-sided with an iron ladder affixed to the left wall. The flash had caused the water running along the tunnel's bottom to shine like a river of mercury, and in the distance a vague figure could be seen running away into the darkness.

Frowning, he turned it over, and saw a note scribbled in Henry's spider crawl in the lower right corner: Nov. 17, 3:43am, Steam tunnels under State Hospital. Thomas turned the photo over again and examined the fleeing figure, holding the photograph to the light. It was small, a smudge of arms and legs, a pale face turned over its shoulder as it ran away from Henry. How odd.

Dropping the print, he lifted a second one. It was much more morbid, a close up of a dead, withered bird, its little spine twisted into a vicious arch so that its beak nearly touched its tail. Bones and dust on a filthy floor. Pulling a face, looking quickly away from the empty eye sockets, Thomas flipped the photograph over and read: Oct. 3, 6.47pm, Dead pigeon #3 in Radley Hotel. Thomas clicked his teeth together and dropped the print onto the others. Avoid the Radley Hotel, he thought, and picked up a third.

This one was very different from the first two. It showed a naked girl lying on a bed, a long white thigh in the foreground, filling most of the bottom and left of the print, the rest of her body extending away into the depths of the photograph, shadowed declivities, pale breasts and a laughing face almost drowned in gloom. Thomas stared, mildly shocked, taken aback at once by how attractive the girl was and that his brother had been taking nude photographs. He felt suddenly like a prude, an old man; after all, Henry was twenty. Flipping the photograph, he read: Nov. 12, 1.28am, Julia.

Thomas let the photograph fall onto the bed and gazed down abstractedly at it. There must have been at least fifty or so such photographs lying on the bed, most of them showing dark rooms, more tunnels, views of overgrown gardens through mullioned windows. They were dark, evocative, strangely disturbing. Turning, Thomas looked about the bedroom. Where had he developed these photographs? At school? Had he been taking a photography class?

Frustration reared within him. He knew so little about his brother. So little about his life, his interests. He hadn't even known he'd had a girlfriend until the he'd read the police report. Julia. A very attractive girlfriend, at that. He debated searching the photographs for more prints of her, and paused. Pervert, he chided himself, and snorted. Just keeping it in the family. What had this Julia told the cops? Had she told them everything she knew?

He drifted out into the living room, and over to the computer, where he sat down and looked about the desk's surface. There was a pile of blank CDs spitted on a central spoke, and a number of papers scattered over the keyboard. Stacking them off to one side, Thomas leaned down and pushed the computer's power button. The tower hummed to life and he leaned back in the chair. A sheet of type caught his eye and he picked it up. Sunday, August 3rd, 2009, read the first line. Leaning back, crossing one arm over his chest, Thomas began to read.

When I was young, my family would often picnic at the edge of the Hume Reservoir, driving off the dirt road that encircled it onto a shallow spit of land that fanned out some thirty meters into the water. The reservoir was vast, the still surface a soft and sullen green. As my parents extracted the collapsible garden table from the trunk, and my older brother remained in the car listening to the radio, I would shed my shirt and sandals and tentatively enter the water. Arms crossed over my chest, I would gaze at a massive and solitary tree that grew in the center of the lake, emerging directly from the water, and dream of swimming out to it. The ground beneath the water was rough, the reservoir's edge flooding and ebbing regularly over the stiff grass that grew in irregular tussocks from the mulchy mud. I would wade out till the water had passed over my hips and stand gazing at the tree, too scared to swim out that far, till my parents called me back to land.

We went only once to the reservoir during that last summer before my parents' divorce. I remember the tension in the car, my gaze fixed on the shoulders of land that would slide into the reservoir's surface as we rounded them to reach our promontory. It had been a dry summer and the sparse grass was bleached to a brittle brown, the dirt gray and soft where the water had receded. As always, I shucked my shirt and sandals and stepped out to the water's edge where the ripples lapped at the dirt. My parents were arguing quietly in flat voices behind the car, and Thomas had walked away along the water's edge, listening to his CD player.

The tree still stood, closer perhaps than it had ever been, a heavy looking branch emerging ponderously from its trunk, close enough to the surface that I could have surged up and grabbed it if I had been treading water beneath. I stepped out into the water, arms crossed over my chest, resisting the cold that goose-pimpled my skin. Pale sunlight broke through the cloud cover to occasionally warm me, to transfigure the water around me from a dull gray green to warmer tones of brown.

When the water reached my ribs I let myself fall forwards and began to swim with tense, rapid breast strokes, heart pounding, losing contact with the muddy floor. I ducked my head under the surface and swam like a frog through the green murk. My head broke surface, I gasped for air and saw that I was still far from my goal. Experimentally, I straightened and tried to touch bottom; my foot penetrated a zone of numbing cold, as distinct from the warm layer above as if drawn with a razor. I yanked my foot up with a gasp, and ducked under once more, to gaze into the depths.

The sun broke free as I did so, so that the water near the surface blazed from dull to emerald green, vivid and dusty, gradating softly down into darkness. I hung suspended, and stared into the velvet black that massed below, a void without light, without warmth, depthless and old, conscious of my presence as I hung before it. I sensed something within it, something looking up at me from the bottom of the reservoir, something inimical to me and mine, and all thought of reaching the tree fled my mind as I turned and surged back towards the shore in a blind panic.

When my feet once more found purchase in the tusseted muck, I rose, breathing heavily, and saw that nobody had noticed my frantic swim towards the shore. My father was rooting around in the cooler with stiff, annoyed motions, while my mother sat in the car, smoking a cigarette and gazing away. I stood shivering, knee deep in water, and realized that I couldn't talk to either of them about the darkness. Instead, I emerged and took up my towel, wrapped myself in it and sat down on the grass, water running down my face, gazing out at the tree that stood miraculously alone in the reservoir's center.

Thomas sat back and closed his eyes, reached up to pinch the brow of his nose. Of course he remembered those summers. The stupid trips their parents had insisted they take to spend time together, which, as far as he could remember, hadn't been particularly fun for anybody. He tried to remember Henry, tried to remember this tree that seemed to have been so important to him, and drew only a blank. It had been so long ago.

A couple of chirpy beeps announced that the computer was ready. A password prompt. Thomas paused, fingers frozen an inch above the keys. Password. Hesitating, he moved the mouse over to the question mark button and clicked it. A little beige box opened up, saying, Hint: I am.

I am? What sort of hint was that? He'd hoped for something like date of birth or mother's maiden name, but no luck. Clicking on the password box, he typed Therefore I think. He pressed Enter. Nothing. He typed Henry. Again, nothing. He stared at the hint. I am. He had no idea.

He knew that he should be thinking about how much storage space he would need, but he couldn't rouse the enthusiasm. He opened the desk drawers and rifled through their contents. Textbooks, folders, wads of paper, random pens, loose change, a pair of shades, CDs and more. Perhaps he should go through it methodically, sniff out more information, but he felt restless. With a pang he regretted not having brought Buck; he would have attacked this problem with an energy and enthusiasm, which in turn would have galvanized Thomas. As it was, he felt uneasy, listless, subdued. What was Michelle up to, he wondered. Was she thinking of him?

He could feel a large and all-consuming funk coming on, the sort of hellishly introspective mindset that could swallow him for the rest of the night, so instead he stood and walked over to the couch. He sat down heavily. It was comfortable, he decided, despite the metal framework that he could feel through the cushions. Leaning forward, he picked up the remote control and turned on the television.

A blue screen snapped into life. What, another password? he wondered in annoyance, and then realized that it was the video channel. Curious, he shifted around and dug out another controller. VCR. He examined it quickly, then pointed it at the Video Player and pressed Play.

The blue screen vanished, replaced by something that had obviously been shot on a handheld camcorder. It was dark, nighttime, outside some massive building that loomed vaguely in the near distance before the camera. The sound of nervous breathing filled the apartment with a hoarse roar, and Thomas jackknifed forward to lower the volume as Henry spoke, "C'mon, hurry up!"
Chapter 2

Henry. He was holding the camera. The voice had come as if from behind Thomas' shoulder, and before he could help it he was on the edge of the couch. Several people dressed in black were leaning a massive ladder against a tall wire fence. Someone muttered something, and another laughed. The chain link fence sagged under the ladder's weight, and then somebody was going up, scaling it like a monkey. Henry turned the camera quickly, showing some trees looming up in the darkness, the lights of the city all around, tall buildings, all of it blurred in this quick check before he focused once more on the ladder.

The first guy had reached the top, swung his legs over, and was now dropping down, grabbing handholds of the diamonds in the wire mesh, the fence chattering and clinking till he dropped from halfway to the grass below. The second figure was already at the top and the third was at the base of the ladder, looking up.

"Okay, here we go," whispered Henry, and stepped up to the ladder. The angle swung up, and suddenly Thomas was looking up at the third person's ass as they climbed up quietly.

"Nice ass," said Henry, eliciting an amused chuckle from above. Julia, he thought. Then Henry was going up, mounting each rung quickly. The screen whipped around violently as he reached the top and dropped the camera to the waiting hands of someone below. It was caught, steadying, fumbled around and then aimed at Henry as he dropped down onto the grass.

Henry's face, right there, staring out of the TV screen at Thomas. He looked excited, eyes wide, a black hood falling back off his head, exposing his tousled mop of black hair. He reached up, pulled the hood down and then grabbed the camera. The point of view swung around, and then they were running, ladder abandoned. The massive building loomed high above them, looking like a fort, a castle, something improbably old and European. The terse, quick breathing of people running. Someone made a joke, people laughed, were hushed. Finally they reached the building's base, lined up against the wall, and the camera panned up and across.

It truly was huge. Made of brick, thick-walled with tall, narrow windows that were choked full of broken glass behind the wire mesh that covered them. Two huge towers rose into the night like the horns of a gazelle, their points capped with verdigrised copper, gleaming eerily in the moonlight.

"C'mon, it's around here somewhere," somebody said, quiet and authoritative. The group moved along the base of the building, walking quietly in single file for about a minute till they rounded a corner and stopped before a huge crack in the wall. It was as if someone had pulled a seam apart, had burst open the bricks so that it gaped, empty and dark like a wound in the side of the building.

The camera focused on the interior but it was too dark within to make anything out. Quiet whisperings, and then everybody drew flashlights. One by one they slipped inside and one of the guys whispered a warning about pigeon shit, something about gas. Henry went last, and then the flashlights were switched on, their broad bright discs swarming across the walls, ceiling, floor. The room was large, empty, the wallpaper bulging with fist sized cysts, the pattern long faded and leached of color by washes of filthy water that had stained it to brown. Crown moldings topped off the walls, giving the place an air of regal desolation.

There were more excited whispers, and then one of them turned to the camera, holding the light beneath her chin, illuminating her face from below as if she were around a campfire and about to tell a ghost story.

Julia, thought Thomas again, definitely. Her face was brilliantly lit, the base of her chin, the underside of her nose, the under swellings of her cheeks, her brow and forehead glowing an incandescent whitepink. The rest dimmed to darkness, but her lips were pulled back in an ironic smile, and Thomas saw that she wasn't beautiful, not exactly, but instead incredibly striking, her hair cut short almost like a boy's, her features sharp and betraying a certain harshness. She smiled and then turned back to the darkness.

They moved through the room, shoes crackling on the detritus strewn across the floor, and out into a large hallway. It had the look of a hospital, the corridor wide and box shaped, long and lined with doors. An old hospital, from the looks of it, with the moldings around the doors artfully done in dark wood. It looked damned spooky, Thomas decided, sitting back and shaking his head. There was no way that he'd ever go in there.

Some of this must have been felt by Henry and his companions, for they quieted and began to file down the corridor, the sound of their feet loud in the echoing silence. There were a few old leather and wood wheelchairs abandoned in the hallway, large clunky devices that must have been at least fifty years old. They paused before them and whispered comments to each other, snapped off a few photographs. They paused before each door, flashing their lights inside, seeing little more than broken glass, random pieces of furniture knocked down and destroyed, the walls covered by mostly obscene or drug-related suggestions in spray painted letters.

The end of the corridor opened into a shoebox-shaped hall with a staircase on one end and a large arched entrance leading out into a dark room beyond. They paused, discussed options and as one turned toward the steps. They stopped at the head of the stairs and flashed their lights down into the depths, examining the dim corridor visible far below.

"Eric, what do you think?" asked Henry.

A young man with curly hair the color of beaten bronze turned to look at the camera. "We go down. That's where the steam tunnels are; they lead out under the other wings."

"Well, all right then. Saddle up, guys." Eric nodded and turned to stare down the stairwell. He seemed about to say something further when a loud shuddering sound echoed up from below, like a heavy object being jerked across the floor, something ponderous like a wardrobe or desk. They froze, looked at each other.

"What the hell was that?" Julia, tense, but not frightened.

"A bear?" The third guy, face as-yet unseen. The camera suddenly yawned, whipped around, and the guy let out a yelp of protest as Henry did something to him, the others laughing uneasily, tension broken. The camera swung up to show Eric moving slowly down the stairs, straining to see what might be moving below.

"Hold on guys," said Henry. "I'm going to put in a new tape." Eric looked up, face serious, pensive, and then the film crackled and cut to the blue screen of the video channel.

Thomas blinked and rose to his feet. His heart was beating strongly and without thinking he raised the remote and pressed Rewind. For a second nothing, and then, as if in protest, the whirring sound of the tape rewinding, picking up speed. Thomas waited for five seconds and then pressed Play. A clunk from the VCR, and the image kicked back in. They emerged once more into the shoebox-shaped hall, panned around, focused on the steps. Dialogue, and then as they prepared to go down, that sound.

Thomas paused the tape, causing the image to freeze, two bands of white crinkly chaos appearing across the screen, frozen in overlay. He rewound, pressed play, listened to it again. What was that? Had there been somebody else down there? Henry must have made it back out if the tape were here in the VCR. What had they found below? Had they made it into the other wings? Thomas suddenly wished Michelle were there with him, wondered what she would have made of the tape. Standing, Thomas rounded the low table and crouched before the VCR. There were a number of blank tapes in a shoebox to one side of the TV, each of them numbered in red pen. Ejecting the tape, Thomas saw that it was number 7. A quick rummage of the tapes in the box showed that there was no number 8.

Rising to his feet, Thomas walked into the bedroom and looked down at the photographs. Rustling through them, he picked up the one taken in the tunnel and flipped it over. Steam tunnels under State Hospital. He turned it again and stared at the figure in the distance that was running away into the darkness. Was that Eric? Julia? Somebody else they had found down there? He set the photograph aside, and sat on the edge of the bed, pushing photographs back as they began to slide down the indentation his weight had made in the mattress, and picked one up at random.

A view of a mist-wreathed garden through a broken window. A quick flip showed that it wasn't the Hospital. A second: an ornate staircase curving around a hallway, filled with weeds and plants that had grown up the steps and the floor of the hall to the height of a man's chest. Checked, Thomas stared. An interior garden? Then he saw the broken windows. No, a ruin. Another: A dark hallway, a wheelchair sitting by itself against a background of splotchy, scabrous wallpaper. Thomas flipped it: Nov. 17, 2:52am, Ground floor of State Hospital.

Frowning, Thomas compared the times of that and the tunnel shot. The photograph of the figure fleeing had been taken nearly fifty minutes after. It had taken the crew about five minutes after the wheelchairs to reach the stairwell and go down. That meant they were in the tunnels or wherever they led for over an hour. Thomas made a face and sat back. An hour down there. He shook his head slowly in amazement.

More photographs, his impatience causing him to flick quickly through them. A stairwell viewed from above that looked like the curve of a nautilus shell. A factory shot from the distance. A control panel covered in dust and filth. An abandoned pair of boots in a locker. A wall covered in graffiti depicting a rotting head. An empty room in which a chandelier had crashed to the floor. A side shot of Julia, arms crossed, head to one side, gazing seriously at the camera.

Thomas dropped the other photographs and examined it. She was wearing a white oxford shirt under a gray sweater, the sleeves pulled up her forearms. He turned it around, and saw Sept. 29, 3.42pm, Julia Morrow.

Julia Morrow. Reaching into his pocket, he drew out his cell phone and dialed 411.

The phone rang twice, and then he quickly navigated the options to reach the operator. A bored woman's voice, rich with cadences and the sound of gum being chewed asked him which listing he desired.

"Julia Morrow, Buffalo, New York."

"Thank you," said the operator, clearly not meaning it. Thomas listened to the sound of keys being typed, and then the woman came back, "All right, connecting you."

Thomas started--connecting him? He stood up, took a step, froze, holding the photograph, staring down into her unequivocal gaze. The phone rang, and rang, and then--

"Hello?"

"Hi--Julia? Julia Morrow?"

"Yeah? Who is this?"

"Hi. This is Thomas Verkraft. Henry's older brother."

She hung up. Thomas took the phone away from his head and stared at it. He looked at her photograph, and then dropped both it and the phone on the bed. Well.

Scratching his head, he walked out and into the kitchen, took a glass from the sink and filled it with tap water. Lifting the glass, he saw that it was filled with dried crud, stained with what looked like strawberry jam, thick and clotted. Frowning, he set it aside, and pulled out a mug that was stained with dry tea, which he easily cleaned and then filled.

Moving back to the couch, he sat down and tried to think, to focus, but his thoughts kept coming back to Julia. She had to know something. Otherwise, why hang up on him so promptly?

His cell phone rang. Thomas set the mug aside and strode back into the bedroom, where he snatched it up and answered.

"Hello?"

"So--" her voice was strangely guarded and tentative at the same time. "You're the brother."

Thomas let out a sigh and nodded, "Yes. His older brother. I'm in town taking care of his belongings."

"What do you want?" She sounded half resigned, as if she were asking a rhetorical question.

"I've got some questions."

"I'm sure you do."

"I'd like some answers."

"Are you trying to sound like an FBI agent, or do you just naturally pull it off?"

"I..." Thomas had no idea how to reply. "I'm about as far from the FBI as you can get," he said, "I'm an emerging market manager for a hedge fund." There was silence on the other end. "Look, can we meet? I'd like to talk to you."

There was a long pause on the other end of the line, and he tried to picture her, her lips pursed, her brows furrowed as she weighed factors he couldn't imagine. "Fine. The Campus Center coffee house, eleven o'clock."

"All right, great. Listen, I really--"

She hung up. Nonplussed, Thomas stared at the phone again, and then slipped it into his pocket. Well then. It was a start. Fatigue washed over him, and he looked at all the photographs with a suddenly melancholy indifference. What game had Henry been playing? The tapes, the pictures, the disappearance--what had he gotten himself into? Thomas felt worn out. He'd deal with it tomorrow. He'd meet with Julia and then call the movers. But right now all he wanted to do was to get out of this apartment, this building, and go to his hotel room and sleep. Turning off the lights one by one, he paused by the front door and looked over his brother's stuff. Then, with a deep breath, he opened the door and stepped back out into the dog stench.
Chapter 3

Thomas awoke, sunlight filtering in through the curtains. He lay in bed, enjoying the warmth beneath the comforter, a sharp contrast to the chill he had slipped into the previous night, after showering.

But now it was luxuriously warm, so soft he felt as if he were floating. The lack of an alarm clock was delightful, as was the sunshine across his face. Years of climbing numbly from his bed at four in the morning, Michelle yet asleep and coffee the only aphrodisiac that could awake him to the day's pleasures, had made such mornings a rarity. To be appreciated. Enjoyed. He stretched, rolled onto his side and arched his back, groaning and grimacing with pleasure. He relaxed and turned back to look up at the ceiling, and then suddenly, terribly, missed Michelle.

It was a near physical ache, acute and numbing in its power. She should be lying next to him, her black hair a web of interwoven darkness against the pale of the pillow. Her eyes half closed, her smile present in the deepening laugh lines around her mouth, betraying her amusement at his overdone stretch, awaiting his smile in response, for him to take her hand and ask how she had slept.

He looked at the empty pillow. Michelle. Was she lying in her childhood bed, gazing at the ceiling, feeling, thinking the same things? That feeling of helplessness washed over him again, provoked by an image of her face from that night, battered, one eye nearly closed from the swelling. How she had been unable to cry when he held her. Could he just call her and tell her he loved her, sweep aside all the arguments and misunderstandings and inability to connect in one clear clarion call of love, as pure as the sunlight, as beautiful as her eyes and her lips? In the morning light it seemed possible, simple, and he almost reached for the telephone right there and then.

But no. It wasn't so simple. Not after she had left with such finality for her parent's home yesterday evening, a departure following on the heels of yet another argument, one that had prompted his own drive to Buffalo in order to avoid their empty apartment. She'd been going to her parent's home a lot since he'd taken the promotion last summer, but the amount had nearly doubled since the incident. Heading out there "to think," to recover. To ride her father's old motorbike up and down the back roads, wearing those ridiculous aviator goggles she loved. Running with Mags in the morning along the tidal wrack, the dog too old now to really keep up. Sitting on the porch with a mug of tea and a book as the sun set, enjoying the stillness. The solitude. A quiet certainty suffused him: things weren't going to last much longer. Change was coming, an end. He could practically hear the ice that had built up between them groaning and cracking under the strain. Back in college she had always said she wanted to do pro bono work. Since the incident, her desire to do so had caught fire once more. Maybe now she was finally going to make the jump.

He frowned, and the image of Michelle faded from the far side of the bed. Nothing was simple anymore. He sat up with a groan, rubbed his face, and decided to shower again before reviewing last night's stocks and heading out.

The Campus Center wasn't hard to find. The early morning sun had been beaten back by a battalion of sullen clouds that had drifted in from the west as if summoned by his dour desire. They hung oppressively low in the sky, the color of dishwater. The air felt close and the snow that lay everywhere failed to gleam or glitter. Driving up toward the University, Thomas had seen a massive building rearing up like a fist of brick from behind a screen of trees: the building from Henry's video. He had slowed down, looked at the twin stocky towers, at the verdigrised caps, old and stern and baleful. A chill had washed over him, and he'd accelerated faster than he had strictly needed to.

Ten minutes later he had entered the large and modern looking Campus Center, a light butter yellow on the outside and looking like a minimalist mall within. Three floors, accessible by elevator and hosting innumerable meeting rooms, auditoriums and the like. Young men and women walked to and fro, holding books, shouldering back packs, talking animatedly or simply striding forward through the open spaces, heads bowed, intent on their destinations. Thomas felt old. He pressed on.

The coffee shop was located on the ground floor with a small fan of tables and chairs spread before it. Most of the tables were empty, and Thomas quickly spotted Julia sitting by herself, chewing gum and reading a magazine set on the table before her. She was slouched to one side, base of her palm was pressed against her left temple, skewing the side of her face so that her left eye and cheek were pulled up. But it was her, unmistakably her, wearing a thin black sweater under a bright red and puffy sleeveless vest, something that looked to Thomas like a fashionable life jacket.

He walked over and stopped before her table. It took her a moment to register his presence, and then, using her palm as a pivot, she swiveled her head up to look at him. Her eyes were hard and stared at him with unabashed appraisal that discomfited him. In the harsh light of the campus center he saw that her hair held red highlights within its auburn depths.

"Julia?" He placed his hand on the back of the chair across from her, waiting for a nod before pulling it out and sitting down. She stared at him in silence, chewing her gum slowly. After a moment he cleared his throat and continued, "I'm Thomas. It's nice to meet you."

She raised an eyebrow at this, as if openly disbelieving him. Tough customer, decided Thomas.

"I wanted to talk to you about Henry. You guys were dating?"

At this she straightened up, closed her magazine and slid it aside, and leaned back in her chair to gaze at him levelly. "We weren't dating. We were fucking."

"Oh," said Thomas. "How adult."

She snorted and looked away, the muscle over the joint of her jaw leaping into relief and then subsiding and then appearing once more.

"When did you last see Henry?" asked Thomas, leaning forward. He felt almost amused; her tough act might fluster boys her age, but it left him feeling paternal. Almost.

"Listen, how about we cut to the chase, all right?" Her voice was cold, controlled, and when she looked back at him, her expression verged on the furious. "I don't know where he is. I don't know why he left. I've got nothing to tell you that I didn't tell the cops. If you're looking to learn about his life, you should have asked him while he was still around. Got it?"

Thomas pursed his lips and nodded slowly, digesting that. She glared at him, daring him to drop his gaze. He didn't, so she eventually looked away again.

"Why are you so upset? Did I offend you somehow?"

She didn't react at first, simply continued chewing and staring out at nothing. Thomas waited, letting her figure out what she wanted to say. Clearly she hadn't expected him to remain so calm. To not rise to her provocations. She looked down, a certain tension left her shoulders, and when she spoke it was with a great weariness.

"Listen. Thomas. I told you. I don't know where Henry is. I haven't seen him in over four months. We weren't close toward the end. I don't know who told you I could help you, but they were wrong. I wish I could help." She looked up and met his gaze, and he saw her eyes suddenly tear up. This girl's wrung out, he realized. "But I can't. Okay? I'm sorry, but I can't."

Thomas stood. She followed him with her eyes, and he looked down at her, expression neutral, compassion welling up within him. "I'm going to get an espresso and some sort of sandwich. Maybe a slice of cake. Can I get you something?"

Something fragile hung in the air. Something tenuous and brittle, and for a second he thought it would break, and that Julia Morrow would stand up, her eyes raw, her face hard, and walk away. He held her gaze, and finally she looked away and said, "A hot chocolate would be great, thanks." Thomas nodded and stepped over to the cafe counter where he examined the contents within the glass display case while waiting for the serving lady to notice him. She turned, took his order, and then busied herself preparing it.

Thomas turned and looked at where Julia sat facing away from him. She was sitting still, slightly slumped, gazing out at nothing in particular. Thomas was struck by a sense of tenuous fragility. It was so at odds with her athletic frame, with the confident and sensuous smile of that intimate photograph. She must have been hit much harder by Henry's disappearance than she was letting on.

"Seven-fifty," said the woman behind him, and Thomas turned to see the drinks and cake set out on the counter. The espresso smelled amazing. Smiling, he handed her a ten dollar bill and took the change with a nod. He debated carrying all three items at once, and then simply took the drinks over first, smiled politely as he set Julia's hot chocolate before her, and returned soon after with the cake and two forks.

He sat and fished a handful of sugar packets free of the little well in the center of the table, and then ripped off their heads and shook them into his coffee. A quick glance showed that Julia was holding her hot chocolate, not drinking it but simply holding it with both hands, absorbing its heat into her palms and fingers. He studied her face for a moment, and then looked back down at his espresso. A quick stir, then a sip, cautious of the heat. Perfect.

Setting the little cup down, he leaned back and, gauging her still unready to tell him what she knew, began to talk. "I accompanied Henry when he first enrolled here back in 2004. He had to attend a whole bunch of orientation meetings with the other students, and I had to go to a series of meetings with all the other parents and professors. Everybody else was in their fifties or so, and there I was looking like a kid. I got some funny looks." He smiled and shook his head slowly. "You could see the mothers gauging me, wondering if I was possibly old enough to be his dad, and how scandalous that would be. Anyway." He forked some cake into his mouth, and washed it down with some more espresso.

"The President gave a speech. I think he was trying to be funny, but he told us that all the kids were going to be treated like adults. Which meant attendance would not be taken. Nobody would check to make sure they were eating their salads. Nobody would notice if they decided to take a week off to go to Mexico, or New York City. It was up to them to invest in their futures."

Julia was looking at him over the brim of her hot chocolate. It was like being stared at by a cat. "I thought that was great at the time; Henry could get into all sorts of trouble with girls and whatever without having people yelling at him. I didn't realize how bad it could be till the landlord contacted me over the missing rent."

"Why did he call you?" Her voice was controlled, almost disinterested. He took another sip and sat forward, as if she had asked a very interesting question. It was like coaxing a recalcitrant investor into becoming engaged with the deal, encouraging their gestures and participation.

"I was the co-signer on the lease. When Henry failed to pay the first month, Materday simply billed him for both months on the second. When that didn't come, he called me. That's when we all realized that Henry had been gone for some time. I couldn't get hold of him or anybody who knew where he was, and when I called the school they told me he'd stopped coming to class in mid-December. Just before finals."

He stopped speaking, and slowly sat back, taking his espresso with him. This is where he'd wait, go quiet and let the silence build till Julia spoke, even if only to fill it. He sipped his espresso.

"I don't know what to tell you," she said at last. "I wasn't lying when I said I don't know where Henry is. I haven't seen him in ages. Since the end of last November. We had a fight, and that was the last I saw of him."

Thomas nodded, "All right. Can you tell me what you guys fought about?"

Julia finally sipped her hot chocolate, and then set the mug down before her. "Eric. It was--it was complicated. I don't even know how things got to where they did, but things moved quickly and then Henry was demanding I pick between them. He was always so dramatic." She shook her head, her gaze focused on something internal, some memory. "I told him I didn't want either of them, and he left."

"Were you dating--involved--with both of them?"

"No. Well, yes. I was seeing Eric at the time. We'd been dating off and on since the end of our junior year. I got involved with Henry in late October. We fought in late November, and I broke up with Eric a few days later."

Thomas nodded again, and realized that he had finished his espresso. College kids and their relationships. He remembered how intense and important his own romances had seemed back then, running across the campus in the middle of the night to confront or explain or declare something absolutely vital.

"What about your late-night hobby?"

Julia didn't start. "What about it?"

"What's up with that? What were you guys doing?"

She fixed him with a neutral gaze. "It was an art project. Just school work."

"Uh huh," said Thomas. "An art project. Is that what you told the cops? Sorry, but I'm not buying it. I've seen some of the videos Henry shot. Let's try again. What were you guys doing?"

Julia glared at him, annoyed, and then raised an eyebrow. "Breaking into buildings late at night to explore them."

Thomas smiled and shifted in his seat, "No, see, it's not that simple. You can make it sound simple, but it's not. Come on. How did Henry get involved?"

It was her turn to gauge him. "You going to tell the cops?" She was half joking.

"Of course. I'm wearing a wire. There's a team of FBI agents in an unmarked van outside listening in right now."

She snorted, "Fine. Henry got involved through me. It's hard to hide a late-night hobby from someone you're sleeping with. So I told him. He said he wanted to try it out, so I introduced him to Eric."

"Did he know you were dating Eric?"

"Yep."

"Did Eric know you were sleeping with Henry?" Thomas was having trouble fathoming all this.

"Not at first. Anyways, this was all Eric's idea. He picked the buildings, told us what to do and bring and so forth. He and Henry really got along. He let Henry come with us a couple of times, and then made him a full time member. Henry was going to put up a website where we'd document our trips."

"A website? Wouldn't that be a bad idea?"

"Not if you kept it anonymous. Look online. There are tons of them." She leaned forward and forked a chunk of cake, and sat back, chewing slowly on it. "So Henry explored with us from... the end of October onward. I stopped going when I broke up with them both, but I think they kept it up. I haven't really spoken to Eric since we broke up though, so I can't tell you any more than that."

"And you didn't think to come forward and tell anybody about all this?" She met his gaze and held it, and then shook her head.

"What was I going to say? That he might be somewhere in the city in any number of the hundreds of abandoned buildings? As of last November? Or December? What good would that do? I decided to talk to Eric instead."

"Yeah? And?"

"When I tried to find him I found out that he hadn't come back this semester. I had trouble finding him. He'd moved out of the dorms." She saw Thomas' expression, and quickly shook her head, "No, he hadn't disappeared. He's still in Buffalo. I left a bunch of messages on his cell, but he never called back. I was going to go over to his new place and talk to him, but..." She trailed off.

"But what?" Thomas looked at her, and then understood, "But you're not sure you want to know, do you?" She nodded reluctantly. "What was it you guys found down there? In those tunnels?"

Her mouth tightened and she looked away. He sighed. "All right. I have to leave tonight to go back to New York, but I need to talk to Eric. If he's the last person that saw Henry, I've got to find out what he knows. Can you tell me where he lives?"

"Eric wouldn't have done anything to Henry," said Julia. "There's no way."

"That's what I need to know," said Thomas. "I should probably just have the cops go over and talk to him, but maybe he'll be more willing to talk to me. What do you think--can you help me out?"

She hesitated, her eyes moving from side to side as she frowned at nothing, and when she looked back at him he could tell she'd reached a decision. "All right. Come on. I'll take you myself."
Chapter 4

Eric lived in a bad part of town. As Thomas drove he saw the quality of the neighborhood deteriorate. Empty lots grew more frequent, filled with hard, knotty little bushes and trash, the occasional abandoned car. Buildings became increasingly dilapidated, windows broken or covered with wooden boards. The road grew potholed, cracked and worn, and people moved about like angry ghosts, forgotten and vengeful.

The earlier bout of communication within the cafeteria had dried up, and Julia sat still and silent in the passenger seat, elbow propped on the window sill, chin resting on the base of her palm as she gazed out at the streets and buildings. Occasionally Thomas would glance at her, trying to think of a way to break the silence, but inevitably he looked back at the road. It was as if she had come to regret a moment of weakness, and was now determined to present as indifferent and silent a front as she could.

Finally, they reached the right street, a wide and desolate space that crept miserably between two rows of clapboard houses, a withered island of dead grass and stunted trees dividing the lanes. Julia frowned and straightened, looking at the building fronts for numbers. Thomas shifted in his seat, tightened his grip on the steering wheel and slowed the pace of the car.

"There," said Julia, her raised hand nearly engulfed by the cuff of her black sweater to point at a building as they drove past it. She turned around to watch it recede behind them, and then sat back and looked at Thomas. "That white building. Number 72."

Thomas nodded and made a U-turn at the next light. The streets were silent, seemingly deserted but for the occasional brown Cadillac or the like crossing an intersection in the distance. Thomas pulled the Mercedes up against the curb across from the house and killed the engine.

It was a two story house, the front done in the New England style of overlapping slats, now bleached by the years to a brittle old bone gray. The window frames were split and cracked and the blinds behind them were drawn. It seemed abandoned, the ghost of a forgotten building on a desolate street.

Julia got out of the car and closed the door. Thomas frowned and did the same, closing his door carefully as he breathed in the cold air. The sky was slate gray above, and though there seemed no promise of rain he shivered and pulled closed the collar of his coat. Julia struck out across the road without waiting and after a glance up and down the street, unsure for the safety of his Mercedes, Thomas followed suit, jogging forward to catch up with her.

"What," he asked, "would Eric be living around here for?" Julia shot him a glance, shrugged, and walked up the steps to the miniature porch. Thomas remained at the base of the steps, hands in his pockets, feeling cold and bemused and slightly frustrated. He watched as Julia knocked once, twice, and then stepped back to wait. Nothing happened. Thomas began to feel watched, and scanned the windows for any sign of a face. Nothing.

After a minute, Julia knocked again, and turned to Thomas. Her resolution had depended on momentum, and now that they were met with an impasse she seemed hesitant. Thomas studied her face, her nose and ears tinged pink by the chill, and then nodded to the side of the house.

"Let's take a look around back."

Julia nodded and joined him as he walked along the pavement and then to the chain gate which hung askew from a waist high fence. It opened with a screech, and Thomas paused, expecting somebody to yell out in protest. No one did.

Pressing forward, they walked around the house, shoes crunching on frozen dirt covered with a patina of ice. He scanned the warped boards and blind windows. The path was nearly overgrown by weeds and thorny bushes, and the back opened up into a bald and depressing little yard. There was a larger porch before a screen door whose meshing was torn and puckered outwards, as if something had burst out from within.

Julia stepped up onto the porch and pulled it open so as to pound on the back door. The thuds echoed within the house.

"Eric!" Julia looked up at the windows on the second floor, stepping back so as to see them better. "Eric, it's Julia! Open up!" Nothing happened. She turned and looked at Thomas, frowning. "Maybe he's just not home."

Thomas stepped past her and tried the back door. To his surprise, it opened. Pushing it wide, he stepped into a kitchen. It was hard to discern details in the dusty half-light, but Thomas could make out piles of filthy dishes in the sink, empty pizza boxes stacked drunkenly on the counter tops, cabinet doors yawning wide and dark and empty. There was no drone of circling flies, but Thomas felt as if there should be.

Moving forward, his heart beginning to thud in his chest, he wondered if they had the right house. If an irate man might not suddenly burst out from behind a door, gun in hand, yelling incoherently about trespassing. If they might not stumble onto dead bodies seated on old couches, preserved by the cold, eyes mute and sunken in their sockets.

Julia stepped in behind him, and he walked through a doorway into an entrance hall. The air was thick, still, and Thomas could see that the rooms that led off from the hallway were empty and dark.

"I don't think this is the right place," he said, turning to face Julia. She frowned and looked about, face intent, and Thomas was about to suggest they return to the car when a voice spoke out from the darkness above him, nearly giving Thomas a heart attack.

"Technically," it said, "I could have you arrested for breaking and entering." It was a sardonic voice, that of a young man, wary and tired.

"Eric!" Julia turned to face the stairs that led up to the second floor, where Thomas could now see a figure standing in a bathrobe and looking down at them. "Why the hell didn't you answer the door? What are you doing living here?"

Eric didn't answer at first, and Thomas could tell he was being stared at, measured for the second time that day. The silence became a question, so he stepped forward to stand next to Julia and look up at the dim shape above them.

"I'm Thomas Verkraft. Henry's older brother." His voice sounded strained in his ears, falsely calm and mature. "I'd like to talk to you, if you don't mind."

Eric shifted his weight on the landing above them, reaching out with his left hand to take hold of the banister. He seemed to be deliberating, and then finally took a step back, half-turning away. "Well, come on up then." Again that mocking undertone. With that, he stepped out of sight. Julia frowned and shot Thomas a warning glance before taking the steps two at a time, each one creaking wearily beneath her feet. Thomas waited a moment, and then followed.

The second floor had a different feel to it, a more lived-in air, and Thomas followed Julia into a large room at the end of the landing that was lit with a soft, amber light. It seemed to be a bedroom and study both, dominated equally by a large bed shoved roughly against the wall to the left and a heavy desk set under a shuttered window directly across from the door. A musty smell hung in the air, and piles of books rose dangerously in the corners, tottered in senile columns on the desk. A large pile of clothing stood at the foot of the bed, and the light came from a desk lamp, the bulb hidden within a mint green glass cover in the fashion of those found in old libraries.

Eric had sat himself down at his desk, sinking into a rotating wooden chair and turning to gaze at them as they entered. He had an intense gaze, eyes fever bright, and he sat with an easy languor that verged on indolence. Twisted locks of beaten bronze gleamed in the lamp light, and his skin was pale and as fine as china.

"You know," said Eric, looking up at Thomas, "I had expected you sooner."

Thomas slipped his hands into his pockets and nodded slowly. A cold anger flared within him, but just as quickly it ashed. He once again felt older, worn, and suddenly the dark house seemed not impressive and desolate but sad, pathetic.

Julia stepped out around him, picking her way carefully over the detritus of socks and plates that littered the floor, and sat on the edge of the bed, only to frown and stand again.

"Why didn't you contact me, Eric?" asked Thomas.

"I didn't see the point, to be honest," said Eric, and smiled sadly. "I guessed you were too busy in New York, and wouldn't believe anything I had to tell you. So I didn't waste my time, or yours."

"Talking to me about Henry would not have been a waste of my time," said Thomas, and then paused, suddenly bitterly furious at himself. He should have had this conversation with Eric months ago. "Do you know where he is?"

Eric slowly spun himself from side to side, using his feet as anchor points. He leaned back and studied Thomas, who was surprised to see that he had the beginnings of a paunch.

"Listen, I think it's very touching for you to be doing the whole concerned brother thing, but it's a little late. Maybe back in October, you know, while Henry was still around. That might have been a good time to come down here and talk. But now?" Eric shook his head.

Thomas stared at Eric, who met his gaze easily with haunted gray eyes. He's trying to provoke me, Thomas thought. Relax.

"Look," he said. "I'd appreciate your telling me what you know. But I understand if you don't want to talk to me. If that's the case, I'll leave, but you can count on my calling the cops and asking them to come pay you a visit. Then you can try to explain to them why you dropped out of school right after Henry disappeared, which happened, what, shortly after your girlfriend broke up with you over him?"

Eric frowned, his mock amusement vanishing, and leaned back in his chair like some petty bureaucratic official seeking to deny a reasonable request. Thomas watched him, strove to keep his face neutral, and waited while Eric attempted to figure out a response.

"You won't believe me," said Eric, and Thomas knew that he had won. He moved over to the bed and lowered himself onto its edge. Feeling suddenly like the FBI agent Julia had accused him of being earlier, he leaned forward, elbows on knees.

"Try me," he said, and glanced up at Julia as she lowered herself to sit next to him. Eric frowned, and Thomas saw that he was desperately tired. Purple ringed his eyes and his face was gaunt with strain. Something was eating away at this him, Thomas realized, something awful. The silence stretched out, and Eric kept looking at Thomas and then the floor and then back and then away again, till finally he simply stood up, springing from his chair to stride out of the room.

Thomas turned to Julia, eyebrows raised in surprise, but she was staring after Eric.

"Should we follow him?"

Julia slowly shook her head. "No, I don't think so." Her voice was subdued, the previous fire gone, sounding sad, worn. "He's changed." Julia turned to face Thomas, and he was suddenly aware of how close they were sitting. "He used to be... different." She shook her head and looked back at the empty door.

A few moments later Eric walked back in, a large green bottle tucked under one arm, three dusty wine glasses in hand. He looked at neither Julia nor Thomas but instead busied himself with setting the glasses down and uncorking the bottle. It was sealed with thick red wax, Thomas saw, as if homemade. When the cork finally popped out, Eric turned and showed it to the two of them.

"Fermented banana wine," said Eric, who then turned back to pour an inch or so in each glass.

"Are you still brewing that crap?" asked Julia, but there was no aggression in her voice, merely a sad fondness.

"It's not crap," said Eric, his response automatic, hollow. He turned and extended a glass to Julia, who took it. Eric studied her face, and then turned to hand a glass to Thomas. The yellow liquid was pungent, and smelled strangely sweet and acrid at the same time.

Eric lowered himself back into his chair and took his own glass, swirling the liquid around and around the inner curvature of the glass, gazing down into its depths with abstracted concentration. Julia was watching him closely, and Thomas, seeing a conflicted look cross her face, was struck by the fresh realization that these two had once been lovers.

"Well," began Eric, finally looking up at Thomas, "I don't know how much Julia's told you." He glanced over at her, but she was looking down at her wine now and missed the look. "We had a big falling out, the three of us, back in November. We... well, it doesn't matter. Julia stopped spending time with us. With both of us. I guess I don't blame her."

Julia looked up again. Her expression was reserved now, hard. Her eyes were bright, and Eric meet her gaze for a few seconds before ducking his head and then looking back at Thomas. "Anyway, Henry and I were getting pretty involved with this urban exploration thing. It became... a competition between us. After Julia left it became a way to prove who was the better of the two. Who would dare more, go where the other wouldn't." Eric paused, looked down at his wine. "I guess you could say we weren't really friends by that point. It didn't make sense even then. But we were trying to... I don't know.

"That was late November. We had a couple of run-ins with the cops. We were going into some pretty restricted places, and without agreeing on it, started going back to places we had almost been caught in order to risk more. I was grabbed once, and Henry took off, staring at me over his shoulder as he ran. I managed to wrestle free, but, well. Things got pretty bad after that. We'd only meet to plan the next run, and wouldn't talk much. That was about finals time, though neither of us were really studying much."

Thomas nodded, and lifted the glass to his lips. It smelled strong, and he tilted the glass so as to just take a sip. It was sweet, similar to liqueur.

"Well, we decided around mid-December to head back to the State Hospital." Eric looked at Julia, "Try and go down all the way."

Thomas sat forward, setting the wine glass aside. "The State Hospital?" He felt his pulse quicken. Remembered the dark photographs. The fleeing figure. "What was down there? What did you guys find?" He looked from Julia to Eric, who were sharing a complicit stare, till Julia broke it by shaking her head and leaning back.

"I don't know what we found," said Eric quietly. "How do you know about the State Hospital?"

Thomas shrugged, "I saw some photographs on Henry's bed--" He paused and felt his face flush. Could distinctly feel Julia's presence by his side. Could remember with exquisite detail the photograph of her lying on the bed, in the near darkness, naked and pale and smiling at the camera. At Henry. He cleared his throat, "There were some shots of the tunnels below the hospital. And one of somebody running in the distance, I think, though I couldn't quite make it out."

"That was a photograph Henry took of Jimmy," Eric finally said, "The first time we went in November. We heard some strange noises as we went in, but Jimmy heard something down there at the end that scared the hell out of him, and he took off. Henry snapped a picture of him and then ran after him. Julia and I tried to keep up, but we almost lost them. Then something freaked Henry out, freaked him out bad, and he ran past us, and up the stairs and out of the Hospital. We found him outside, and when we calmed him down, he insisted on leaving straight away. So we headed out."

"And you guys don't know what he saw?"

"He told me a little about it later," said Julia. "He said something about a woman. About a woman, and some kind of darkness under a tree. It didn't make any sense, and he started getting upset, so I changed the subject." Both Thomas and Eric stared at Julia, who shrugged and crossed her arms over her chest. "That's all he said. I decided he had simply had a panic attack of some kind and dropped it."

"Well, it was his idea to go back," said Eric. "He was acting very strange toward the end. Manic, almost. We went back, broke in again. Went the same way we went the first time. Down those stairs, and into the first level of basement rooms, and then down and down."

Eric paused and drained his glass of banana wine in one swallow, biting his lower lip as he turned to pour himself a second glass. His hands were shaking.

Thomas felt a sudden flare of impatience. "All right, can you just jump to the end and tell me what happened?" Thomas felt them both stare at him, and realized that he had spoken more sharply than he had intended. "Just," he said, sitting back, forcing himself to relax, "Just tell me what happened to Henry. Please."

Eric shook his head. "I don't know, Mr. Verkraft. We went down there, into the lower basements. We were together right till the very end, when Henry started hearing whispers, or something. He was very afraid, and I finally had enough and told him we should get out of there. It had stopped being about proving ourselves and just become, well, really disturbing. Henry started acting really strange, started yelling out. I tried to grab him, but he shook me off and started running again like the first time. I ran after him, thinking he was having another panic attack, but I lost him."

Eric stared down at his wine, raised the glass to take a drink only to set it down heavily on the table next to him. His pale face had grown waxen, and he stared down at his thighs.

Thomas shook his head slowly, not understanding. "Then... then why didn't you tell the cops? A search could have been mounted. They could have found him. Why didn't you go to the police?"

Eric looked up, and Thomas saw desperation in his face. "Because I heard things too, all right?" His voice was suddenly raw, wounded. "Because I could still hear Henry at the very end, and he was like, he was begging, just begging to be left alone, and this voice kept responding, just sort of whispering back, saying things in this funny accent, sort of crooning at him and reassuring him, and then Henry just started sobbing, and I ran the fuck out. I ran the fuck out, and I--I just kept running, and--shit, all right? Fucking shit."

Eric's eyes were wounded holes, and he stared at Thomas, challenging him, his whole frame shivering. Julia rose to her feet, hesitated, hung back, began to move forward, but then Eric turned savagely away. "Look, I know it sounds crazy, fine, so just, I don't know, go tell the cops, or whatever, but just leave, all right?"

Thomas rose slowly, "Eric, listen, I think--"

"Just get out, all right? Really, get the hell out."

Julia stepped forward, causing a dish to rattle as she kicked it in the gloom, and Eric jerked away from her, shaking. There was something feral in his face at that moment that caused Julia to recoil. After a frozen moment she shook her head and walked out the door.

"All right, we're leaving. We're leaving. Okay?" Thomas stood and stepped back and out through the door. He watching Eric cautiously as the other stood up, mouth open, breathing heavily, and then with three quick strides he reached the door and slammed it shut.

The darkness of the landing was sudden, and Thomas remained still, shocked.

"Let's get out of here," said Julia, her voice numb, and Thomas heard her turn toward the stairs. He turned and followed.

Julia strode through the kitchen and shoved the kitchen door open. It rebounded jerkily off the wall and slammed her forearm as she blew past it, leaving it to judder and shake on its hinges.

"Julia!" Thomas stepped out into the yard after her, but she didn't stop. He glanced up at the filthy windows that looked down upon the yard, and thought he saw the suggestion of a pale face watching them, but then it was gone and he broke into a jog, rounding the corner and trying to catch up with the girl. She was crossing the street, and then to his surprise he saw her stride past the parked car and keep going.

"Julia!" he yelled again, running after her. She was moving fast, not running but stretching her long legs, and when he reached out to grab her elbow she spun around and shoved him hard in the chest with both hands. Thomas staggered back and stared at her. Her face was pale, her eyes wide.

"Get the fuck away, all right?" Her voice sharp, furious, wild.

"Hey! Hey, what the hell? Julia!" She stood tightly coiled before him, fists clenched by her side, and then he saw tears gathering in her eyes and she spun away again and took a half dozen steps away before faltering and coming to a stop.

"Julia, hey. It's okay. Come on, let's... let's just get out of here. I'll buy you a coffee or something. Hey." He took a tentative step forward.

"Just... just leave me alone, okay?" Flashbacks to Eric's room, his wounded eyes, his bloodless lips. But where he had been frenzied, Julia sounded desolate.

"At least let me give you a ride home." Thomas straightened, took a step back. He coughed, cleared his throat, and turned to glance at the façade of the white house across the street. "I'm not leaving you here in this neighborhood."

She stood still, fists balled by her side, looking down and to the side, the tension palpable in her frame. Then, slowly, as if letting something go, she relaxed her hands. She passed her sleeve across her eyes and then ran her fingers through her short hair, holding her head for a moment as if seeking to clamp down a headache before turning and looking at him.

"Yeah, okay." Her voice was drained, and she followed him numbly to the car, waiting distractedly by the passenger door while he unlocked the doors. Thomas felt a tangible sense of relief as he slid back into the Mercedes, onto the light gray leather seats, into the familiar smell and comfort of the car. The dark halls, the poorly illuminated bedroom and Eric's manic revelations seemed suddenly distant, manageable, faintly ridiculous. Thomas gunned the engine and felt the car thrum into life. He waited for Julia to put on her seatbelt, then slid away from the curb and back toward the city.

They drove in silence for a few minutes, Julia staring out the passenger window and biting at the corner of her thumb, Thomas steering with one hand, the other resting on the gear stick. He glanced over at her occasionally, but she seemed oblivious to him, and he decided not to press her until she was ready.

The city passed by slowly. Dilapidated buildings, ruinous lots, pawnshops and Laundromats. Everything in a slow state of decay. The sky was bleak and white above them, and the light seemed sterile and dead.

"He didn't used to be like that," she finally said. Thomas looked at her. She was still gazing out the window, but had lowered her hands to her lap. "He's changed."

"It sounds like he's been through some rough times," said Thomas.

"Yeah. You're telling me."

"What did you make of... the stuff he said about that last night?"

Julia remained still, unresponsive, and Thomas was about to prompt her again when she spoke. "I don't know. It sounded pretty crazy to me."

"Yeah," agreed Thomas, tightening his grip on the steering wheel. "But it's still information. I'm going to tell the police. Perhaps they can find... something... down there."

Julia turned and looked at him, her eyes hard and bright, her expression malicious. "After three months?"

He frowned and looked back at the road, and this time it was him that opted for silence. She watched him for a moment longer and then looked back out the window.

"Where am I dropping you off?" he asked.

"The Campus Center's fine."

"You have homework to do?" His own spike of maliciousness.

She stared at him before answering, her voice curt, disdainful. "Yeah. I got homework to do."

The car pulled up before the campus center, and Julia undid her seatbelt. "Well, I hope you got something out of all this."

Thomas stared at the steering wheel, and a sense of futility rose up within him. What had he learned? What would he do now? Tell the cops, he supposed, and head back to New York.

"Yeah. Hey, thanks for your help. Really, I appreciate it."

"No sweat." She opened the door and climbed out. Turning, she looked down at him, hesitating.

Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his business card holder and slipped a card free. "Here, take this. In case you need to get in touch with me in New York."

She took it, glanced at it, looked at him. "I've already got your cell number."

"Well, now you have my office number too. Call me if anything comes up, okay?"

"Sure." She stepped back, pushed the door closed, and walked away.
Chapter 5

Thomas sat down at the café table and leaned back, feeling washed out, troubled, restless. The waitress came by, saw his distracted look, and walked right on by. Trying to at least look engaged, he picked up the lunch menu and stared through it, the words and images blurring out into nothing as he tried to figure out what to do.

He had to get back to New York. He could feel the weight of the unread emails in his Blackberry, the dour anger and lecture his boss had stored up for him, the leaden and enervating steps he had to take to resolve this crisis with Michelle. The thought of his empty apartment drained him. He wished he could just sit here, in this cheerful little café, listening to Nina Simone play over the tinny speakers and enjoy the warmth. Forever.

Thomas sifted slowly through Eric's tale, trying to imagine those final weeks as the two boys dared each other to further extremes. The darkness beneath those buildings, the run in with the cops. Jesus. Henry had been in much worse shape than he'd ever imagined. And what to make of Eric's account of that last expedition? The voice in the darkness. Henry sobbing. Eric's flight out of that building, and subsequent dropping out of school? Whatever had happened had severely scarred the boy. Three months ago. He was so late. If only he'd done more than just assume Henry had gone on a road trip somewhere. If he'd come down here himself and discovered all this information back in January.

The waitress made a second pass. This one had an air of warning to it, her meaningful glance intimating that he'd better order something soon. A quick scan of the menu resulted in his choosing coffee and a club sandwich and he flagged the waitress down and placed his order. She took it silently and stalked off.

He still had to clear out Henry's apartment. There was not enough time left today to oversee it himself, so he'd have to ask that creep Materday to let in some guys from the moving company tomorrow morning. Thomas frowned. How long would he hold Henry's stuff in storage? What was the moratorium on hope for his brother's return? Coffee and sandwich were set before him, and he sat up, momentarily setting such questions aside.

* * *

"Hi, Julia?" Thomas was standing outside Henry's building, coat zipped up against the evening cold. The sky was growing dark and soon he would have to hit the road. But before he left, there was one thing he had to take care of.

"Yeah?" Her voice was surprised, wary.

"I'm about to head out. Go back down to the city. I'm over at Henry's place, and was cleaning up his belongings. Anyways, I found some stuff I think you should have."

"What kind of stuff?" Still wary, but curious now.

"Well," said Thomas, suddenly awkward, "Just, well, personal stuff that I'm sure Henry would want you to have."

There was a long silence, and Thomas looked out over the dismal parking lot at the windows of a small high rise that were catching the rays of the setting sun.

"All right. I'll be there in ten minutes."

"Great. I'll be waiting outside." Thomas hung up, feeling at once relieved and troubled. Shaking his head, he dialed his mother's number, too tired to care about the international rates. The phone rang, and then, as usual, her voicemail picked up.

"Hi, Mom," he said, rubbing the base of his palm against his eye, "Just calling to let you know that I'm in Buffalo at Henry's place. Nothing much has turned up, though I've met an ex-girlfriend of his and some other friends. I don't know if anything will come of it, but I'm doing my best to make sense of things." He paused and looked up at the dark sky. The answering machine continued recording. He imagined his mother listening to his words in the near future, listening to this moment of silence. "Things aren't going well between Michelle and me. I don't know what to do. I don't know how things are going to turn out. Give me a call when you get the chance, okay?"

He paused once more and then hung up. A sense of futility and weariness descend upon him. He turned and entered the building and made his way back up to Henry's apartment. He'd spent the past hour or so sorting through Henry's possessions, and had decided to take his computer, videos and other personal affects back with him to New York. The rest would be boxed by Alliance Moving Company tomorrow morning.

Standing in the living room, he gazed at the photographs of Julia and wondered if he should have simply mailed them. Or thrown them away. Or perhaps, he thought, flicking through them, kept them. With a sigh, he slid them all into a manila office folder and sealed it. No, best to simply give them back.

*

She pulled up in a dirty gray Volvo that looked like it was being held together by little more than wire and luck. The front grill was missing, as was the passenger side mirror. A large dent was battered into the car's hood and a long crack spidered its way down the windshield. She got out and slammed the door hard behind her. It creaked back open, so she slammed it again. This time it held. She rounded the car to step up to where Thomas stood.

"So. You got the photographs?" She stood before him, hands slipped into her the back pockets of her jeans, chin raised.

"Yes. Actually." Thomas extended the envelope, and she took it. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to look at them, but--"

"Don't worry," she said, opening the envelope to flick through the photographs, walking her fingers through them as she looked at the top of each one. "I was curious to see if you'd give them to me."

"Oh," said Thomas, his face flushing. "Of course. So you knew that Henry had them--well, of course." He felt a fool.

"Yeah." She closed the envelope and let it hang by her side. In the dusk, her face was all shadows and raised, pale surfaces. She examined him with sardonic amusement. "I knew you'd seen them when you mentioned them back at Eric's."

"Oh," said Thomas again, "Well, yes. I was planning on giving them back. That had always been my intention."

She grinned lazily up at him. "How very adult of you." Turning, she stepped off the curb and walked back around to her car. "Have a safe drive home," she said, and got back in.

Thomas watched her start her car, bemused and annoyed, and raised a hand in parting when she drove off. A wind sprang up and blew across the parking lot, sending leaves sweeping and curling about him and making him shiver. Hunching his shoulders and lowering his chin, he took a deep breath and looked to his car. Time to go back to New York.
Chapter 6

It was raining. A dismal drizzle seeped down from the sky. The tops of the skyscrapers evanesced into gray haze and the streets and avenues were covered with iridescent smears where the headlights and traffic lights reflected off the black top. Thomas sat under the copious awning of the Boathouse, set next to the Central Park Lake, whose surface shimmered under the falling rain. The Boathouse had been an old favorite of theirs; he had reserved a table here in the hopes that old memories might ameliorate the current problems. Looking out over the rain-sheeted lake, he sighed. No such luck.

A week had passed since he had returned to New York. Upon arriving he had gone straight to the office and worked late into Sunday night. Jormusch had been absent, but tension had hung in the air like the scent of some dangerous animal's passing. Buck had brought him up to speed on recent developments on their client's file. Things had taken a turn for the worse, and it was past four in the morning when he had finally dragged himself home, inured by exhaustion to the gelid silence of the apartment to collapse in their bed and sleep for a few hours.

The rest of the week had passed in a blur. It had been too easy to spend every waking hour toiling at the office, a sacrifice he made willingly in lieu of spending idle hours contemplating his imploding marriage. Buck had dragged him to his favorite sports bar and forced him to recount his experiences in Buffalo. His guffaws over Eric's madness had proved reassuring; later that night, however, looking out over the city, alone in his apartment and in the dark, all of his misgivings had come stealing back and robbed him of his certainty.

And Michelle. The aching void in his life. Though his routine remained mostly unchanged, her continued absence had changed the tenor and tone of his days, each passing night making it harder for him to pretend that she was only taking an extended vacation.

She had awaited his attempt at reconciliation. When it hadn't come, her fury had flared. A cutting message on the answering machine on Tuesday. A cold, restrained conversation on Wednesday. An encounter set for Thursday afternoon, on neutral ground, a time for them to meet as emissaries from their personal armies of grievances. Michelle. His wife. Thomas repeated those words over and over in his mind, but the surreal air they had acquired did not abate.

Leaning back in his chair, a bottle of beer between his listless fingers, he watched the rain fall, listened to the scrape and clack of chairs and tables being drawn in under the awning by the waiters, tracked the occasional passage of a determined jogger as they circled the curvature of the lake.

Michelle rounded the gentle rising curve of the path and strode into view. Thomas straightened in his seat. She was wearing a black raincoat, belted tight about her waist, a burgundy umbrella protecting her from the rain. Tension entered his shoulders, the dull base beat of blood in his temples. She had her hair pulled back into a ponytail, her square chin raised, a flush of color spread unevenly across her pale cheeks. Again as always that sense of double vision, attraction and repulsion, mild panic at the sight of her. She reached the awning and lowered her umbrella, collapsing it expertly and holding it down and to the side like a sword as she sighted him and approached.

She wasn't beautiful, but he had always been attracted to her, to the strength of personality and fierce intelligence that had set her apart from the first moment he had met her. Over the past few years laugh lines had appeared like perfect parentheses around the corners of her generous mouth, had begun to give her eyes an expressive cast that she hadn't had when he had met her, years and years before. Hers was a face capable of such warmth, such depth of feeling and emotion. But it was as if a pane of glass stood between them, preventing him from reaching out and connecting with her. Holding him back. He'd never seen her look at him so coldly.

"Thomas." She stopped before his table, and propped the umbrella against one of the chairs. "Nice day to pick an outdoor restaurant."

He rose to his feet and wondered if he should circle the table, kiss her cheek. He decided not to. "Michelle. Glad you came."

"You are?" She arched a brow at him, then shrugged out of her coat. "Really. That's a surprise." This was going to be harder than he had anticipated. She sat down, crossed one leg over the other, and gazed enquiringly at him. "So. How have you been?"

He ground a knuckle into his eye. Her anger from Tuesday hadn't abated, it seemed, but rather had been driven below the surface, where it simmered now, lighting up her dark eyes.

"All right, I guess. Working hard."

"Well, I can't say I'm shocked." She straightened and smiled brittlely toward the waiter who was hovering to one side, unsure as to whether he should intrude. "A glass of orange juice, please. Thanks." The man nodded and walked away quickly. "So. Where were we?" She took a deep breath, and her smile became acidic. "Ah yes. Your work. Do tell me about China. How's the market?"

"Michelle," said Thomas, "Please."

"No, seriously. What have you been working on?" Something overly bright and cheerful had entered her tone. "What has kept you so busy since I left? I mean, it must have been pretty fucking important to keep you from calling me. Worrying about me. Really. I'm all ears."

"I went to Buffalo," he said. "I went to pack away Henry's belongings and try and find out what happened to him." A curveball, of sorts. Neutral ground.

"Oh?" She paused, and the hardness in her face softened. Mild guilt prickled him over having used Henry to disarm her. "How did that go?"

"Strange." He shook his head. "I ran into some of his friends, and learned a bit about what he had been up to before he disappeared. I think he was in bad shape. He joined some sort of urban exploration group, and was breaking into abandoned buildings."

"Breaking into abandoned buildings? Really? What for?"

"Just exploring, I think. The thrill of being where they weren't supposed to be."

Michelle shook her head slowly. "And you think that's connected to his disappearance?"

"Looks like it. Apparently he disappeared while searching the basement of some state hospital. I told the police, but the officers they sent to look around down there didn't find anything."

Michelle frowned and slowly shook her head, "How strange." She reached out to place her hand on his. "I'm sorry, Thomas. This has to be so hard. But trust me. In a week or two he'll give you a call from Mexico or right here in the city, and be all surprised at how upset you've become. He's only, what, twenty? He's having an adventure. That's what college kids do. Especially Henry. You know how independent he is."

He glanced down at her hand. "Yeah, I guess so. Maybe. Though this video... there's something more going on. Either way, I feel like an idiot for having taken so long to get up there." Thomas turned his hand over so as to interlace their fingers, but she drew hers back, as if growing suddenly aware of a line inadvertently crossed. The waiter arrived and set down a slender flute of orange juice, nodded, and stepped away. Glad for the distraction, Michelle lifted the glass and leaned back, taking a sip as she watched Thomas from over its rim.

It was coming. He watched her face, trying to think of a way to forestall her, divert the oncoming words. His mind was a blank. He had nothing to say.

"Well, I didn't come here to talk about Henry or his misadventures. We can't avoid this any longer. Thomas, this isn't working." She spoke carefully. "I can't do this anymore." He averted his eyes, unable to meet her gaze. And as if this inability strengthened her resolve, her voice grew calmer, more certain. "Look, after what... happened, I just can't stay in New York any longer, but you don't take my wanting to leave seriously. It's like you're just waiting for me to calm down or get over it. I don't expect you to understand what I've been going through, but I had hoped you would show more concern. More love." She reached up to smooth back her cheeks, and then smiled bitterly at him. "But we've got money, we've paid off our debts, we can leave. Before I get any worse. Before things get any worse between us."

This wasn't the attack he had expected. He had been prepared for recriminations, to soothe her anger and ignore her jibes. This openness, this vulnerability, was different. It reached back to a kind of communication they hadn't shared in months.

Michelle leaned forward. "I mean, look at us. It's like I finally opened my eyes this past week and saw how bad things have become. Now that you're working nights I never see you anymore. Thomas, quit your job, let's sell the apartment, move to Boston, or anywhere--get a place with a garden, something, but let's get out of here before we lose our marriage altogether."

His heart was hammering in his chest. "Just like that? Do you know how large my performance bonus is shaping up to be this year?" He sounded like a tool even in his own ears, but he couldn't stop. "Do you honestly expect me to walk away from that after how much I've worked to earn it?"

"Yes, Thomas, just like that. I don't care about your bonuses, your promotions, I mean, come on. I just can't stand being here anymore. I haven't taken the subway in months, I'm cabbing it everywhere, I don't even want to go out at night. You know how hard this is for me. Why are you acting like this?"

"I'm not acting, I really am surprised. I mean, I know I can't understand how hard this is for you, but you have no appreciation for how I've killed myself to get where I am." His voice sounded flat, unconvincing. He was talking faster than he could think. As if he were reading from a script he was barely familiar with. "I mean, do you think it was easy to get this close to this promotion you hate so much?" He reached desperately for anger, found it. "And what will we do in Boston? Go help people? Get a garden? Volunteer at shelters, and, what, save the world? Those weren't plans, Michelle. Those are naïve daydreams, escapist fantasies. I mean, get real. Am I the only one who's interested in keeping our lives grounded here?"

The shock and anger on her face was clear, and it registered in him like a splash of cold water, quelling his sudden anger, turning it into resentment. It wasn't fair, wasn't fair that she could act so innocent and hurt and force him to be the responsible one. "Look, Michelle, think." He stared down at the table top, gathering his words. "You can volunteer from here. If you want to quit your job at the firm and do pro bono work, then I can support you while you do it. You should get a therapist, work through these issues, not run away from them. They're not going to disappear if we move to Boston. Face them, here where we have a home, where I can support us if you decide to take some time off. I'm not saying you can't change your situation. I'm just saying that it doesn't make sense for me to throw everything I've been working on these past few years down the drain."

"I don't. Fucking. See you. Anymore," she said. Each word was carefully articulated and stabbed at him. "During the week I see you perhaps for half an hour in the morning before I go to work. I'm asleep by the time you get in. You work weekends. You're exhausted. And when we're together? You can't even seem to look me in the eyes." She was trembling with pent up emotion, "You call this a marriage?"

He looked past her. A flash of her face, beaten and bruised, the doctor talking to him, the world spinning. He forced it away. Spoke woodenly, "We will be all right if we just calm down. We just need to get through this tough phase. I'll work less when I'm promoted."

She stared at him, shook her head, eyes burning with frustration. "I keep saying this but you don't listen. I don't want this life, Thomas. I can't pretend like you that nothing happened. I can't go back to the way things were. So here are your options. Quit your job, leave this all behind and come with me to save our marriage, or stay here by yourself and hope you find more happiness in your cubicle then you did with me."

Thomas felt his stomach knot up as if a pair of constrictors were trying to crush each other to death. "What would I do, Michelle?" His voice soft now, matching hers in intensity. "Say I quit my job. Then what? What do I do while you do your pro bono work? But what about me?"

She stared at him.

Thomas shifted his weight in his chair and looked down at his hands. He studied them, the whorls around his knuckles, the black hairs. Arguments arose within him like great waves, compelling and nuanced and outraged and defensive, but with a sigh he let them crash, explode soundlessly within his mind, unvoiced.

"Okay, Michelle. I'll think about it. I really will." He looked up, caught her expression. She was watching him carefully, as if searching for a lie. "I wish I could give you an answer right now. But... I'll think about it."

Michelle stood up. "I'll try not to gauge how much you love me by how long you take. Call me when you've figured out your priorities."

Thomas stood up, pushing the chair away with the back of his knees, the metal grinding against the stone floor. "I'll call you soon," he said. Michelle shrugged back into her coat, and picked up her umbrella. "I just need to figure some things out. I'm sorry."

"I love you, Thomas," she said, as if stating a fact, as if one could say such a thing dispassionately. They stared at each other, and then she looked away, turned, and left.
Chapter 7

Thomas spent that evening in the office, hunched over his desk, staring at the graphs and spreadsheets without really seeing them. The hubbub of his co-workers seemed to come from behind a glass wall, and occasionally he would catch himself simply staring out at the cubicles, watching people walk by, almost failing to return nods and greetings. He stared and could hear Michelle's voice asking, is this more important? More important than our marriage? He felt empty, hollow. Head stuffed full of straw. Michelle didn't appreciate how good it felt to be a top player in his department. To be respected, to be relied on by his friends and peers. She derided it all as "corporate bullshit," but some of his greatest victories had been played out in these halls, amongst the men and women who were seated in the cubicles and offices about him. He felt safe here. Protected. He knew what to do and when to do it. With Michelle these days... things were no longer clear. He no longer understood his role. No longer understood on an intuitive level how to interact with her, how to simply... be.

One by one his co-workers left, and the dimness of dusk fell over the city, which lit up its windows and lights in defiance of the night. Streets flickered and filled with headlights and the sky glowed into a wan orange of reflected light pollution. Soon only the gentle whir of the air conditioning could be heard, along with the rare creak of a solitary and hidden worker leaning back in their leather chair to assess, ponder, reflect. Standing in his office doorway, Thomas saw a few pools of clean white light emanating from some cubicles, indicating little hubs of ongoing productivity, but for the most part it was dark, silent. A sudden uncertainty gripped him--what time was it? What day? Looking at his watch he saw that it was past eleven. Thursday night. Time, he thought, to go home.

Coat draped over his arm, he selected a path to the elevators that would take him past Buck's desk. The large man was frowning at his computer screen, arms crossed over his chest as he sat back and stared the data. At Thomas' approach, he glanced up, grinned ruefully and shook his head.

"Want to finish off this analysis for me before you go?"

Thomas smiled. "No thanks. I think I'm done."

Buck paused, on the verge of saying something lighthearted, and then frowned. "You all right?"

"Yeah, sure. I guess." Thomas looked out over the tops of the dark cubicles, at the far windows, and then back. "I don't know."

Buck leaned back in his chair, the hinges squealing in protest, his belly straining out over his belt, lowering his chin to his chest as he stared thoughtfully at Thomas. "What's up? Did you get in touch with Michelle?"

"Yeah, well, she got in touch with me, actually."

"Ouch," said Buck, wincing. "Not good."

"No, not good at all." Thomas tried to recall the anger, the outrage, the arguments he had used, something with which he could explain what had happened. But nothing came. Just sadness, a deep melancholy that promised at best numbness and sleep. "It didn't go well. She wants me to quit work. Leave New York."

Buck's eyebrows shot up. "Really? What did you say?"

"I told her I'd think about it."

"I bet she liked hearing that."

Thomas took a deep breath, and passed his hand over his brow. "I don't know, man. I was pissed. She put me on the spot..." Buck nodded, but said nothing. "It's just that she's so naïve. It kills me. Like she doesn't understand how lucky we are to have what we have. And it's always about what she wants, what she thinks is best for our marriage, what..." He couldn't do it. Couldn't come up with the argument. Buck continued to watch him, waiting. "Fuck it," said Thomas. He couldn't explain to Buck. He didn't even know how to explain it to himself.

Buck nodded slowly, his expression grave. "If you give me five minutes I can wrap up here. Want to go get a beer?"

"No, I'm fine, thanks. I should probably just get home. Sleep. Think things over, you know?"

Buck looked dubious. "You need to get that stuff off your chest, man. No good lurking around in your apartment like some ghost. Come on. First beer's on me. We'll get some hot food and figure something out. What do you say?"

Thomas smiled, but shook his head again. "Negative, Captain. I'm done. Thanks for the offer though."

Buck's smile died, and he nodded. "Well, okay. I understand. But you know I'm here if you need somebody to talk to right? I mean, we don't have to go for a beer, we can just--"

Thomas laughed, "Buck! Please, no, I understand, and really, I appreciate it. Maybe next time okay? I'm off. Take care."

Buck nodded, and Thomas turned and walked over to the elevator. He'd go home, have a hot shower, put on some clean clothing and maybe order some food. Watch television till he passed out, and then come right back to the office to work some more. Watching the numbers illuminate in order as the elevator ascended toward his floor, Thomas felt bone-weary. He'd work out this problem with Michelle. Somehow, he'd figure it out.

Walking into his building, Thomas was stopped by the concierge, who emerged with quick nervous steps from behind his desk to cough quickly and wave at him as he passed. Thomas paused, turned, and raised an eyebrow. Jose bobbed his head and took a sidling step closer, reaching up to adjust his immaculately poised cap.

"Mr. Verkraft, hello. Sorry to stop you, but you have a package."

"Oh? Okay."

Jose nodded again, paused as if waiting for more, and then quickly stepped back behind his desk, ducked out of view and came up with a bulky manila envelope. Handing it over carefully, he peered down with avid interest as Thomas turned the envelope around to inspect the writing on the front.

"It is from Buffalo," said Jose helpfully, reaching out to point at the return address. "From a Julia Morrow?" His inquiring look was met by a cool glance. Jose frowned, realizing that he had perhaps overstepped his bounds, and sat down at his desk to begin chewing on the inside corner of his lips nervously.

"Thank you, Jose." Thomas turned before the man could find another opportunity to dart out once more, if only perhaps to pump his hand and tell him that it had been his pleasure, and strode quickly toward the elevators.

She had sent him a large envelope with a bulky object in the middle. A book? It wasn't overly heavy, but what on earth could it be? Something of Henry's? Resisting the impulse to open it immediately, he instead tucked it under his arm and rode the elevator up this floor.

Opening his door, he dumped his briefcase on the couch and set the envelope on the kitchen counter, moving past it to the fridge where he poured himself a glass of orange juice. He stood eyeing the package as if it might contain some sort of dangerous animal. He decided to finish his glass first, but halfway through he stepped forward, set the glass down and tore the envelope open.

A video cassette slipped out with "#8" written in Henry's writing on the label. "Huh," said Thomas. He turned it over slowly in his hands, his mouth suddenly dry. Henry, Julia, Eric, and the other kid about to go down into that dark stairwell. That sound. That photograph of somebody running away into the far reaches of a tunnel. Cut off, truncated, and here was tape #8. Setting it carefully aside, he reached into the envelope and pulled out a sheet of paper. A letter. Moving over to a stool, he sat down and began to read.

Hey Thomas,

I've spoken with Eric. Or, more accurately, he got back in touch with me. He is very serious about proving that he's not crazy. I was skeptical, but then he gave me this tape and told me to watch it. I don't know what to think now. Please watch this, and then give me a call.

Julia

Thomas frowned and reread the note. He finished his glass of orange juice and then rose and took the tape over to his television, where he leant down and slid it into the VCR. He stepped back, sidestepped the coffee table, and he lowered himself onto his leather couch and took up the remote control. He ran the tip of his finger over the plastic buttons, unsure. Did he really want to watch this? A premonition arose within him that bade him set the control down and think things over. To not act rashly. To not follow Eric's story further. He felt as if he stood on the cusp of something terrible, and thinking of Eric's sepulchral eyes, he was unsure if wanted to proceed. For a moment he hesitated, and then he took a breath and pressed Play.
Chapter 8

The television screen went black, and then showed the stairwell descending like a gullet into darkness. Several figures were walking down it, flashlight beams wandering before them. Thomas recognized Julia, Eric, the third kid. Henry was still holding the camera, it seemed, and then after a moment he began to descend after them, going quickly so as to catch up, the shot on the screen jerking up and down as the camera hiccuped in his hand.

The stairwell let out onto a corridor similar to those they had traversed above. Wallpaper blistered and peeling, empty doorways yawning into existence as their flashlights played over them. The floor was covered with curls of paint that had fallen from the ceiling, and their steps crackled and crunched faintly as they crept forward. Eric took the lead, moving cautiously, with Julia and their friend in the center. A flash of white as Julia turned to Henry, her gaze focusing on a point to the side of the camera, her face now devoid of humor, slightly tense.

They walked on, peering into rooms and opening the occasional door. Thomas thought of turning on his own lights to offset the creepiness he felt from the environs they were exploring, but then actually shook his head in irritation. It was just a video tape.

Eric paused, turned down a side corridor. A second turn, all of them moving in silence now. Then Eric stopped before a heavy iron door and turned to the camera.

"This should be the entrance to the boiler room. If we can open this up..." he turned and tried the handle, but it was stuck. He placed his shoulder to it and shoved hard. A horrid scraping sound filled the air, and the door budged. Eric tried again, and then a third time, and finally it shuddered open, revealing a large dark space beyond. Henry swung the camera around to check out the empty corridor behind them, and then back to the door. Eric had already stepped in, and the others followed.

"Goddamn," said the third kid. Jimmy. "This place is out of control." A massive boiler sat in one corner, a huge iron monstrosity buried under layers of rust, thick umbilical tubing emerging from it to plug into the walls and ceiling. It looked large enough to immolate a Cadillac inside, and there was a squat malevolence to it, to the almost organic curves and tubes that emerged from its ancient iron sides. The group fanned into the room, pausing to examine details, and Henry snapped off a few shots, the video swaying out of control during those moments to focus on the floor or strange angles of the wall.

"Okay, there should be another door back here," said Eric, stepping around a bank of what looked like warped high school lockers. Julia and Henry stepped after him, but then Henry paused to turn and gaze at where the third kid stood irresolute in the center of the room.

"Jimmy, you coming?" asked Henry. Jimmy's face was a pale smear. He turned and flashed his light back at the door through which they had entered and then nodded.

"Yeah, course I'm coming."

Henry panned back around and focused on where Eric was opening a heavy door that led into a narrow corridor.

"Here we go." Satisfaction in his voice. "This is one of the main steam tunnels. If we follow this thing, we should be able to get access to the other buildings. Even," he said, turning to look somberly at Julia, "the insane ward in Building Three that's been closed off since 1877."

"Get lost, Eric." Julia sounded at once amused and annoyed. "Insane ward, my ass."

"Insane ward?" asked Jimmy. "What insane ward?"

"Ignore him," said Julia. "He's just messing with us. Let's go already."

Eric grinned and stepped through into the tunnel, Julia following close behind. Henry's arm reached into the screen and clapped Jimmy on the shoulder as the other walked in after, and then the camera followed and they were in.

The steam tunnel was cramped and filled with large pipes painted in faded yellows and reds that ran through the center. There was enough room for them to walk along, but barely, and they had to duck so as to not hit their heads. Eric set off to the left, paused, and then made them all turn around and go to the right. Henry took the lead, his flashlight dancing along the crumbling cement walls, stopping occasionally to peer into small side tunnels down which random pipes would disappear.

They walked on in silence and stopped when the tunnel opened up into a large room. The pipes continued out into the room's center and then took a ninety-degree turn to extend down another tunnel.

Moving forward carefully, Henry panned the camera over the debris that covered the floor. Broken desks, staved in wooden boxes, rotten sackcloth and unidentifiable machine parts. All was dark and silent, disturbed only by the sound of their breathing.

"What is this place, Eric?" Henry flashed his light about until he discovered a door set at the top of a short stoop.

"Must be a basement of some sort. We should be below... building two, I think. I'm pretty sure if we can just open this door..." Eric began to wade forward, placing his feet carefully and picking his path around the detritus with confidence. How different, mused Thomas, was this Eric from the nervous, manic guy he had met in that white boarded house.

Eric reached the door, tried it, and found it locked. After a couple of futile shoves, he turned to the camera and gave a shrug. "Looks like a no go. Let's keep exploring."

"I don't know," said Jimmy. The camera swung onto him, flashlights causing him to close his eyes and bring his hand up to block the beams. "I mean, maybe we should just get out of here, you know? We've come pretty far, right? We can just call it quits and go to the Diner or something."

"Ah, come on Jimmy. Don't be a chicken shit." Eric didn't seem to consider Jimmy's suggestion worth considering; he was already picking his way toward a third tunnel he'd discovered in the left wall. "Listen, if you want, you can stay here and we'll pick you up on our way out." There was something malicious in Eric's tone, mild and slightly mocking.

"No, I mean, okay, I'll come." Jimmy glumly picked his way after Eric, frowning and staring morosely at the tunnel before them. "This place freaks me out, is all."

"Okay, this should lead us out under Building Four. That's the huge one that's all barred up on the west side, right? So if we follow this, we should be able to get in there, and we should be set."

"Yeah, okay, Eric," said Julia. She didn't seem to be enjoying herself any longer, but rather simply determined to see this through. "Let's just get going, yeah?"

Eric turned and shot her a strange look, his eyes glittering in the peripheral radiance of their flashlights, and then stepped into the tunnel. It was wider, had more pipes, and they scrambled and walked quickly along its length, Henry pausing occasionally to take more photographs. After a couple of minutes a handful of the larger pipes plunged into a cement wall, while the others continued along a now-much-smaller tunnel. Muttering, Henry turned sideways and began to follow the others, squeezing their way along until it opened up once more into a long chamber the end of which disappeared off into the darkness.

"Okay, we should be here." Eric turned to the group, face pensive as he gazed about. The room was large enough to cause his voice to echo slightly. "All we need to do now is find a door or something that'll lead us up. Let's look around."

This room was empty but for the pipes, which frayed and split like the strands at the end of an old knotted rope, each going into their own recess or nook. Henry and Julia walked along one wall, flashlight beams dancing before them, and then ducked behind a corner and the camera skewed off, wavering and pointing at the floor as the sound of their breathing mingled and they held each other. After a few moments Eric's voice called out from the distance and they stepped apart. Henry raised the camera and trained it on her face, and Thomas saw Julia's face heated with desire, her eyes heavy lidded and lips parted in an amused smile that curled into mock annoyance as she batted the camera aside and stepped in again for another kiss.

Thomas pressed Pause and rose to his feet. He stood irresolute for a moment, and then moved to the kitchen where he refilled the glass of juice. He raised the glass to his lips, and then set it down before he could take a sip. Where was Henry? Was he alive? Was he out there in Buffalo somewhere, or what? What had happened? Thomas felt a pang, a physical sensation in his chest as he stared down at his glass, and a feeling of utter guilt arose within him. God, he thought, pinching the bridge of his nose and closing his eyes.

After a few moments he lowered his hand and looked back at the frozen image on the television screen. Later was better than never. He could still act, could still move and take control of the situation. Turn things around and stop hiding at work. A sense of grim determination filled him. He could track Henry down. He could salvage his relationship with Michelle. He could take control, face all the uncomfortable truths and realities. All he had to do was start.

Walking back to the couch, he sat down and pressed Play. The sound of heavy breathing and desire filled his apartment, and then Eric called out once more and Julia pulled away and Henry followed after, trailing her through the darkness and murk to where Eric stood in one corner with the clearly unhappy Jimmy. They were staring down a stairwell that circled down into the depths.

"Hey, look at this. Where do you guys think it goes?" Eric's excitement seemed to have prevented him from noticing anything amiss; his eyes were lit up, his expression animated and enthused. "Let's go down and check it out, yeah?"

"I'm down if you are," said Henry, his voice game but with an undercurrent of confident challenge. "There are few places you've been that I'm not excited to go."

Eric paused and stared at Henry, his expression suddenly confused, suspicious. "What...?" He was prevented from completing his sentence by Julia's stepping between the two of them and making her way down the stairs.

"Let's go," she said. "Unless you guys would rather stay up here and make out?"

Eric looked down at where she was disappearing, even more confused, "What?" Henry laughed and pushed by, Jimmy close in tow, and then they were all moving quickly down the box stairwell, turning once, twice, three times and stepping out into a cement corridor that extended off in three directions.

"Huh," said Henry. "Looks like some sort of... connecting network, or..."

Thomas sat up. These corridors were similar to the one in the photograph. Of the person fleeing. Something was imminent.

"Let's check out this way," said Eric, taking the lead once more and stepping past Henry. "See if we can come out under Building Four." He strode past, and the others fell in step. Eric walked alongside Julia, speaking to her in a low, angry undertone. The camera remained trained on them, Henry's interest clearly more focused on their conversation than the tunnel, and then a loud sound caused them all to freeze. A harsh scraping sound, like a wedged door being forced open, or a heavy object being drawn roughly over hard ground. It was loud, distinct, and the four of them stopped cold, flashlights whirring about in the dark like lost lights.

"What the hell was that? What the hell was that?" asked Jimmy.

"Easy, Jimmy, easy," said Eric, looking around. Silence followed, pouring in like dark water, seeming to prevent them from being able to speak further. For long seconds they simply stared anxiously about themselves. Eric broke the silence. "These old places make a lot of noises, yeah? We probably just heard something, you know, like completely normal or whatever. Don't get all spooked out, okay?"

"Fuck that, man," said Jimmy, his voice quavering. "Let's just go, all right? I'm serious, let's get out of here."

"Maybe we should leave," said Julia, stepping up to look at Henry.

"I don't think there's--"

The loud scraping noise sounded again, echoing deep within the corridors, harsh and grating. It seemed to well up from the very shadows, and hung resonating in the air long after the actual sound had faded away.

"Fuck this man, fuck this," said Jimmy, and broke into a run, heading back down the corridor toward the stairwell.

"Jimmy!" yelled Eric, "Jimmy, get back here! Jimmy!"

Henry raised his camera and took a shot of Jimmy as he ran away down the tunnel, the flash as sudden and terrible as lightning, then he began to run after him, the video camera swinging violently back and forth, image blurring in the dark, nothing visible. Thomas sat on the edge of his seat, frowning at the television screen, trying desperately to discern something, to make out what was going on. Pounding footsteps sounded over the speakers, and Henry's voice calling out for Jimmy.

Henry ran for perhaps thirty seconds and then slowed to a stop. The image was upside down on the screen, swaying slightly and directed at a nearly black wall. He must be letting the camera hang by his side, thought Thomas.

"Jimmy!" Henry's call echoed in the tunnel, but with no response. Turning, the camera panned over the corridor behind, and two flashlight beams could be seen approaching from down it. "Jimmy, where are you?"

The scraping sound shuddered again, bruising the air, but loud, much louder this time, and Henry jumped back, suddenly gasping for air. The sound was followed by something almost inaudible, a voice, and then Henry let out a cry and began to run, the image on the camera again swinging violently, Henry's grunts of exertion filling the apartment with terrible intensity.

In the background Thomas could hear voices calling for Henry, but they were distant, growing fainter. Henry ran, the camera jerking in the darkness, until he suddenly let out a cry and the camera view span in circles and came to a stop, showing the cool white length of the flash light's beam. Henry groaned and then a voice sounded again, whispery and thin, plaintive, unintelligible. Henry let out a second yell and then stood and ran into the darkness, leaving the camera and flashlight behind, his footsteps receding as he sprinted down the corridor.

Thomas' heart was pounding. He stared at the screen, straining to hear something, anything. Distant calls, a few shouts. The television showed the angle where floor met wall, both made of cement, stained and dusty. A stretch of a few feet at best. Silence. And then a gentle croon, sung again in that whispery voice. Snatching up the remote, Thomas ran the volume up all the way so that the apartment filled with the hiss of the speakers and that vague song. The disembodied humming filled the apartment, and then something like a shadow passed through the beam of the flashlight, a flash of perhaps a skirt that, while not black in color, seemed nearly so as if the shadows clung to it. A flash of cloth, which seemed to melt into the wall, or to merge with the shadows--and then it was gone.

Thomas pressed Pause, stared at the frozen image, and then rewound. He pressed Play, and watched again till that shadowed shape passed before the screen, at which point he pressed Pause once more and stared carefully. A skirt? The hem of a skirt? Drab and indistinct. But then--pressing play, he watched again as the object--the person?--moved at an angle impossible to accommodate within the confines of the corridor, and merged with the wall and shadows to disappear.

Pausing the video again, Thomas frowned. An unnoticed door, perhaps? A smaller side tunnel? Pressing Play, he watched the darkness unspool for a few minutes before flashlights played about the hall, and a hand reached down to take the camera up. Eric's nonplussed face filled the screen as he scrutinized it, and then flipped it off. The television screen went to blue.

Thomas stopped the tape and sat back on the couch. He sat still for a moment, and then dug his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed Julia's number. It ran three times, and then clicked and she picked up, her voice husky with sleep.

"Thomas?"

"I just saw the video." Silence yawned, implications apparent, and he could tell she was waiting for him to continue. "That is one fucked up video."

"Yeah," she said, "It is."

"And you didn't see any of this stuff while you were down there? What was that thing which crossed in front of the camera at the end? Did you even know this tape existed?"

"No, hey, hold up." He could hear her shifting in what might be her bed, sitting up, forcing herself to awaken. "I didn't know about this tape till Eric gave it to me, like, on Wednesday. I mean, I knew Henry was taping that night, but he never showed it to me. Eric said he only saw it when Henry showed it to him at the very end when they were doing their competition thing. And I've got no clue as to what's going on at the end of the tape, but Eric said that it showed the same woman that took Henry away."

"The same woman? Eric knows who has Henry?"

"Well, kind of. I mean, this is some more crazy sounding stuff. I don't think you're going to be able to go to the cops with this. Eric said... well. He said that this woman down there in the tunnels came to Henry and took him away. The same woman Henry saw the first time he was down there. Or at least, that's what Eric thinks happened. He wasn't making too much sense."

Thomas ran his hand through his hair. She was right. The cops would laugh him right out of the station. "Well, great." He passed his hand over his face, and shook his head. "What exactly am I supposed to do with all this? I mean, seriously. Am I supposed to believe that Henry was grabbed by--what--something? Down there? Or--I mean, you tell me, Julia. What exactly am I supposed to do with this?"

"Hey, I don't know," she said, "You're the one who's all interested in finding your brother. I was just trying to help."

"Yeah." Thomas stared bleakly at the carpet. "Yeah, you're right. I'm sorry. This is just a lot to absorb."

"Don't sweat it."

Thomas tried to figure out the next step. Call the cops to register the information? Go back to Buffalo and talk to Eric again, try and wrest some straight answers from him? His mind returned to those final moments on the tape. The swish of the skirt's hem. The impossible merging with the wall. The deep shadows that cast everything into doubt. The sound of his brother gasping as he ran, panicked, terrified, down there in the dark, where he had disappeared a few months later. Down there in those tunnels, alone. He had to go back. He had to go back and find Henry, had to go down into those tunnels with a huge flashlight and search for him, because if that's the last place his brother was ever seen then he owed it to him, owed it to try anything he could.

"Julia, thanks. I mean it. You've been really helpful. I--I think I'm going to come back to Buffalo. I need to take a look down there. I need to see those tunnels myself. I'm going to talk to Eric, and then--well." The thought of entering the steam tunnels, walking past those pipes, into those dark rooms filled with trash and then going deeper--it all filled him with a sense of distant dread, an unreality he had no wish to enter but which here, in his high-rise apartment over New York City, seemed manageable, intangible.

"You're going to go down there?" Incredulity. "Are you serious?"

"Yes. I've got to try. I know it sounds stupid. But I have to find Henry."

"Shit." A contemplative silence. "That's a bad idea."

"Probably." Thomas smiled mirthlessly. "But unless something else comes up, I need to go take a look."

"Well, okay. Let me know when you get into town. I'd like to be there when you talk to Eric."

"Will do. Thanks again for sending the tape."

"Not a problem. Good night."

"'Night, Julia." Thomas hung up, and then turned to stare at the blue television screen. Go back to Buffalo. Confront Eric. Drive down past those old abandoned houses, up to that State Hospital and down into its cold, black fastness. The thought filled him with a bleak, flat feeling. He didn't want to go. He didn't want to go alone. Raising his phone, he stared at it for a moment, and then scrolled through his address book and dialed.

It rang twice, and then, "Thomas?"

"Buck. Hey. What are you doing this weekend?"
Chapter 9

Friday passed quickly. The morning was dank and gray and filled with pointless meetings. Thomas watched the clients from his leather chair near the head of the table next to Jormusch and found himself unable to stop gazing through them. All he could think about was Buffalo. Driving up that long northern road with Buck by his side, to reach down into the dark gullet of that building and wring that soiled and filthy darkness of its secrets.

Finally he escaped, running late for a planned lunch with Buck. He jogged down the block to the deli where Buck routinely consumed massive pastrami sandwiches with a bottle of beer. Pushing open the glass door, he glanced over the crowd packed in at the counter, at the scattering of plastic tables and the short aisles of specialty goods before pinpointing Buck by the back next to a window, carefully layering mustard over his lunch.

"Sorry I'm late," said Thomas, lowering himself into the seat across from Buck. "I swear, sometimes I feel like my clients are going to ask me to hold their dicks when they go to take their next piss. Amazing."

Buck grinned toothily and set the mustard bottle aside. An oozing river of yellow was slowly sinking into the rippling folds of meat and lettuce. "Sounds like fun. Everything work out all right in the end?"

"Yeah, sure. We reviewed our previous summary of our last review, and assured them about seven times that we were well on schedule. You all set to leave at six?"

"I should be good to go. This'll be the earliest I get off work in just about forever. My being at my desk when you called was a good reality check. Hoo-whee. I'm just about the busiest little bee in this flower patch."

Buck leaned back and took up his sandwich, gingerly handling it as he leveraged a good quarter into his mouth. Mustard swelled out as he bit down; several thick drops splattered onto the plate. Putting the sandwich aside, Buck wiped his mouth with a napkin, then scrunched it up and dropped it on the table. By the end of the meal there would be a small pyramid of them.

"Well, I've already reserved a room at the Hilton for tonight and tomorrow night. I'm thinking we get in late, crash, and then get up early to go talk to Eric. Try and be done by lunch, and get into the building while the sun is still up. Be done by evening, and then, well, I don't know."

"I see several severe flaws with your plan," said Buck. He leaned forward, and frowned at Thomas. "First, tonight, we do not crash when we arrive at the hotel. We check out the hotel bar, and if the hotel bar is lacking in amenities we check out other bars till we are suitably attended to." Thomas opened his mouth but was forestalled by a raised, meaty palm. "Second--well, I don't know what the second problem is, but I'm sure it's in there. We'll deal with the first problem first, and face the second when it inevitably rears its ugly head." That said, he took another bite of his sandwich and sat back, trying to grin and chew at the same time.

"Ah. So. A bar crawl. Perfect. Just what I need before heading into the bowels of the earth in search of my missing brother. A Buck-induced hangover. Brilliant."

"You question my methods, young grasshopper, but shall soon see the wisdom of my ways. Trust me. In all my long years I've discovered that there's no better way to prepare for a shitty day underground then a bracing night at the bars. It'll stiffen your courage. You'll see."

Thomas couldn't help but smile. "Sure. How about we see how we feel when get there? Let's take it one step at a time, starting with my getting lunch before I have to run back and make sure my clients know how to flush?"

Buck waved a hand, shooing Thomas away, and took a third huge bite, crunching down contentedly as he watched his friend rise and join the line before the cashier.

* * *

The hotel bar in Buffalo proved cheerless and abandoned, so Buck went off to accost a bellhop and learn the location of the closest and best bar to be had. Thomas stood in the lobby, hands in the pockets of his pea coat, feeling subdued, pensive. The car ride up had alternated between jocularity--initial bouts of enthusiastic conversation--and islands of silences, which had grown and became total toward the end. Buck's energy had revived upon their arrival at the Hilton, his desire to hit a good bar deriving as much from a need to salvage the initial momentum of the trip as to drink alcohol.

Unsure as to why he did so, Thomas pulled out his cell phone and dialed Julia's number. She's probably asleep, he thought, and immediately wanted to hang up even as it began to ring.

"Hello? Thomas?" A lot of background noise, loud music perhaps, her voice pitched to carry.

"Hey!" said Thomas, turning as if unsure as to how stand, awkward and surprised. "I'm in Buffalo. We're in Buffalo, I mean."

"What? I can't hear you!"

"It's nothing," said Thomas loudly, shooting an embarrassed look at the concierge. "I just called to let you know--"

"Hang on, I'm going outside," she said. Thomas frowned, staring at his shoes as he waited for the noise to fade. "There," she said. "Is that better?"

"Yes, much better. Where are you?"

"At Briar's. It's one of the oldest bar in Buffalo. What were you saying? You're in town?"

"Yes, with my friend Buck. I was just calling to make sure you were still up for meeting with Eric tomorrow." As if summoned, Buck stepped out from a corridor and began walking over, eyebrows raised in question.

"Oh, sure. What time tomorrow?"

"Who are you talking to?" whispered Buck. "Michelle?"

Thomas frowned and shook his head. "Julia," he whispered back. "Just confirming tomorrow."

"What?" asked Julia.

"Nothing. Want to meet at ten?"

"See if she wants to go to the bar with us," said Buck, causing Thomas to turn away in annoyance.

"Ten works. What are you guys up to tonight?"

"I..." said Thomas, watching Buck as he edged around and back into sight. "Well, we were going to head out, actually, and find a place to get a drink." Buck nodded encouragingly.

"Where you guys going?"

"I don't know. Where are we going, Buck?"

"Where is she?" Buck asked. "Tell her we can meet up wherever she's at."

Thomas covered the base of his cell with his hand. "She's barely twenty, man. Come on."

"Hey," grinned Buck. "I'm not saying anything here. But if there's grass on the field..."

Thomas rolled his eyes and uncovered the cell. "Actually, we're probably just going to turn in for the night."

"Really?" Julia sounded skeptical. "It's like ten-thirty."

Buck made a grab for the phone, but Thomas turned away sharply again. "Yeah, well you know, it was a long drive and all."

"Aw, hell man, what are you saying?" Buck stepped back and shook his head. "A long drive? Forget that. Come on, let's go."

Thomas covered the cell phone again with his palm, "Buck, I'm not going out if you're planning to get drunk and hit on college girls."

Buck sighed, "All right, all right, I'll behave. Now can we just--"

"Hello?" asked Julia.

"\--go somewhere?"

Thomas frowned. "Fine. Fine. Julia? Hey, we're going out after all. Can we meet you at Briar's?"

"Yeah," she laughed. "But make up your mind already. If you show up, I'll be in by the dartboards." She hung up.

"Are you going to behave?"

Buck tried to look hurt. "Man, you're acting like I'm a five-year-old."

"You are a five-year-old."

"A five year old who's going to get some pussy. Ha!" Buck danced back as Thomas made to shove him, and strode out the front door.

"Jesus," said Thomas, shaking his head, and then followed him out into the cold night.

* * *

Briar's turned out to be an old wooden house, peak gabled and with neon lights glowing luridly in the pane glass windows. The parking lot was full, a small crowd braving the cold and standing outside on the porch, beers and cigarettes in hand. Buck and Thomas climbed out of the cab and turned to face the bar. A small sign modestly proclaimed the bar's claim to fame.

Buck clapped Thomas on the shoulder and walked up the steps and toward the front door, pulling it open to step into the darkness within. Thomas scanned the faces of the people standing on the porch and was surprised to see that most of them were in their thirties. Not a college bar, it seemed.

The inside was subtly lit, all dark wood and memorabilia on the walls. After a quick scan Thomas saw Julia laughing into her beer as she watched a guy with incredibly curly black hair pull darts from the wall around a dart board. Buck was already standing at the bar, large hands resting flat on the surface, smiling with pleasant determination at the bartender who was busily filling five glasses with ice.

Thomas took a deep breath and willed himself to relax. Maybe things would work out. Moving up to stand behind Buck, he watched Julia as she set her beer aside and stepped up, accepting the darts from her opponent and edging her foot up to the line. She gazed intently for a few seconds, motionless, and then threw the darts with quick, efficient flicks of her wrist. When the last hit home, she let out a cry of delight and took up her beer while her opponent just shook his head.

"Here you go, amigo," said Buck, shoving a glass of dark beer into his hand. "Steel Rail Ale. Or something. Bartender's recommendation."

"Thanks." They clinked glasses, drank, and Buck let out a contended sigh before slowly turning to survey the crowd. "She's over there," said Thomas, motioning with his beer to where Julia stood watching her opponent erase the scoreboard.

"That's Julia? Huh." Buck studied her approvingly, and then turned to face Thomas. "And Henry was messing around with her? Kudos to your brother."

"Yeah," said Thomas, and took a slow sip of his beer. "Kudos to Henry." They stood in silence until Buck nodded in the direction of the boards.

"Come on. Let's show them how they play darts in New York."

"They don't play darts in New York," said Thomas, following reluctantly. "They pay people to play darts for them in New Jersey."

Buck ignored him and strode through the crowd. Rounding a pool table, he set the glass down and stepped up to where Julia stood. "Forty bucks says I beat you easily," he said jovially.

Julia turned to stare at him, "Excuse me?"

Buck shifted his weight, bravado rapidly sluicing away under her frank stare. "Darts. I'll play you."

Thomas stepped up, shaking his head. "Hey Julia. This is Buck."

"Oh," she said, "And you want to play a game for forty dollars? How about we play for the next round instead?"

"Sure," said Buck, trying to recover, "Sounds good."

"Ladies first," said Julia, taking the darts and stepping up to the line. Turning her head, she looked at Thomas. "I didn't think you were going to come."

"To Buffalo?"

"No," she said, turning back to face the board, "To Wolski's. I heard it was a long drive." She threw the first dart, and it thunked into the 1 slice.

"Oh," said Thomas, not knowing what to say. "No, Buck convinced me."

Julia threw the second dart. It thunked into the 20. She nodded slightly to herself, and glanced over at Buck before throwing the last dart and scoring a second 20. "You should have stayed home, Buck. You would have saved yourself some money."

"Ha," said Buck, stepping forward to pull the darts free. "You don't know who you're talking to. Wait for it. And I'm drinking Steel Rail Ale, for your information."

Julia didn't respond, leaning back against a column to watch as Buck tried to score a bull's eye, and got an assorted score of random points as he missed each time.

"Steel Rail, eh?" She took the darts and gave him an amused look. "Got it." She threw, and racked up another impressive score. Buck frowned, and she smiled sweetly in response, "Should I go order that now, or...?"

Thomas snorted, and pulled up a stool on which to perch. Julia demolished Buck quickly and efficiently, leaving the large man shaking his head as he stomped off to the bar. Julia turned to where Thomas had sat silently for most of the game, slipping her hands into her back pockets and shrugging with a sly grin.

"What can I say? I'm good with my hands."

Thomas snorted and shook his head in amusement. "Is that supposed to be cute?"

Julia smiled, and took a step back to lean her shoulder against the column. "No, I'm not shooting for cute." She held his gaze and Thomas felt his face begin to burn. Completely unsure as to what to say next, he returned her smile stiffly and stared down at his empty glass of beer.

"All right, here we go, beer for Julia, beer for me, warm milk for Thomas. Who's up next?" Buck set the drinks down and rubbed his hands on the seat of his pants.

"Thomas gets to take on the winner," said Julia, stepping forward to pull the darts from the board.

"Show her how it's done," said Buck, sitting down on a stool to inhale half his beer. Thomas frowned, and watched Julia throw another volley of lethal darts at the crumbling cork board. The noise in the bar seemed to wash over him, to blend in with the lurid neon signs that adorned the walls and promoted different brands of beer. People were laughing, talking loudly over the music, and it all seemed at once distant, unreal, and yet incredibly immediate.

Taking the darts, he took careful aim, feeling the beveled sides of the metal cylinder between his thumb and forefinger, and then flicked it forward. A double 17, followed by a 9, and then a double 20.

"Not bad," said Julia, "For an old timer." Thomas winked at Buck, who raised his beer and inhaled the other half. They played mostly in silence, each intent on the game, on the score, on beating the other. Mostly Thomas would watch the board, but a few times he found himself watching Julia as she stepped up to throw, as she slowly rolled the dart between her fingers and sighted down its length at the old board. At how she eased her weight from her back leg to her front, at the way the lights seemed to catch her dark hair and bring out the red highlights.

Julia won, and Buck let out a loud groan of disappointment. "Jee-sus, so much for New York City showing the yokels how it's done. Next round's on you, T-Dog."

"T-Dog? Seriously?" Thomas replied. Buck grinned happily in response and Thomas was forced to laugh. He drained his beer and shook his head at Julia's wide smile. Not bothering to throw a comment her way, he threaded his way through the now-thicker crowd, waiting for a good minute or two before getting the bartender's attention and ordered another round. Standing still between the other customers, a small island of silence amidst their chatter, he thought of how normal this all seemed, how nobody here would be able to guess that tomorrow he was be going to talk to a cracked up kid and then delve into the depths of an abandoned building after his stolen brother.

The beers were cold. Thomas paid, and when he turned he saw that Buck and Julia had abandoned the darts for a booth. Walking over, beers triangulated between his hands, he slid in next to Julia, the old leather soft and smooth beneath his thighs, and passed the out the drinks.

"A toast," said Buck, raising his green bottle up on high. "To losing graciously like gentlemen, and to conquering new bars and beers."

Julia paused and half lowered her drink. She looked dubiously at Buck, and then flashed a look at Thomas. "How about... to strange coincidences leading to unexpected meetings?"

Thomas shook his head. "To Henry," he said, and clinked his bottle against theirs before they could protest. "To my brother, wherever he is." The other two nodded, and Thomas watched Julia as she drank. Setting his bottle down, he relaxed into the seat and gazed out over the bar.

"So how'd Thomas rope you into this?" Julia asked Buck.

"Well, I wouldn't say 'roped' is the right word," said Buck. "I was all up for a road trip and getting out of the office. I didn't have anything planned for this weekend other than some work, and hell, Thomas promised beer and adventure. How could a good friend say no?"

"No plans but work?" asked Julia, "Really?" She smiled at him, but he lowered his eyes to his beer, going red once more.

"Yeah, well, you know. I do go out--plenty. Just didn't have anything planned for this weekend in particular."

"Oh," said Julia, aware of having inadvertently strayed onto thin ice, "Yeah, sure."

Thomas leaned forward, elbows on the table, and smiled at Buck. "The man hasn't quite fallen on his feet since he left his fraternity."

"You were a frat boy?" asked Julia.

"Hells yeah," he said, looking up and smiling again. "Man. The stories I could tell you."

"I bet most of them involved your getting paddled by your older brothers," said Julia.

"What? No! It wasn't like that--the movies completely--"

"Buck," said Thomas, "She's winding you up."

"Oh," said Buck, looking blankly from one to the other. "Oh, okay."

Nobody spoke, each taking a drink from their beer, and then Julia shifted around to look at Thomas, a strange little smile playing on her face. "So you're married?"

Thomas was in the middle of drinking from his beer, and looked from her to Buck without lowering the bottle. Buck raised an eyebrow and leaned back.

"Yes," said Thomas, lowering the bottle. "I'm married."

"How long have you been married?"

"About three years now."

"Huh. Three years." Julia nodded slowly as if absorbing this fact, and then began to push her bottle from one hand to the other, sliding it slowly across the table. "You guys weren't too close to Henry, were you?" It didn't sound so much like a question, but more of an opening gambit.

"No," said Thomas, "I guess we weren't." The silence hung in the air between them, palpable despite the noise in the bar. Thomas waited for her to speak, and when she didn't, he continued. "Henry was a lot younger. Is a lot younger." He frowned and stared at his bottle, focusing on the way the light refracted through it onto the table surface. "He's a lot younger, and I guess we didn't spend too much time together growing up. I was out and in college by the time he was hitting middle school, and then I moved to New York to start work when he hit high school. Not much overlap."

"Yeah," said Julia. She glanced up at him. "That's too bad."

"Yes," said Thomas. He continued to frown at the bottle. "It is."

"We'll find him," said Buck with what sounded like trembling bravado. "If anybody can find that brother of yours, it's us. We'll just buy some cowboy hats and six shooters, and go down there and give 'em hell. Talking about giving them hell, who's up for another round?"

"I don't know. I'm thinking I should start taking it easy."

"I'm game," said Julia, nodding to Buck. "Hit me up."

Buck edged his way awkwardly around the table to stand up, and then looked down at the two of them. "Beer for me, beer for Julia, and as promised, warm milk for Tommy boy. Got it." Grinning, he turned and waded into the crowd.

"Great. He's going to get me a shot of tequila." Thomas upended his beer and drained it, setting it down hard enough that it spun out from his hand in erratic circles before settling down and coming to a stop. "What are we doing, Julia? What are you doing? I thought you weren't interested in finding Henry. I thought that's why you didn't go after Eric."

"Yeah, well." She looked at Thomas, and then past him at the crowd. "I don't know. I wasn't going to. Well, more like I wasn't going to think about it, you know? Like, just let it slide. But then you showed up, and... well." She broke off, and frowned. "I don't know. It made me think. About... well, friends. And family. About... stuff. And I decided that maybe..."

"Maybe what?" asked Thomas.

"Maybe I shouldn't have let it slide. Like maybe I owed Henry better than that. Maybe we all did." She looked at him then, and her eyes were hard and suddenly fierce, like when he had first met her in the campus cafeteria. "Maybe somebody out there should have gone after him. I don't know. He was... really nice, your brother. Funny, strange, but nice. Maybe I should have done more." She began to peel the label off the beer, tearing it away in ragged strips. "No, I should have done more. Not maybe. So this is a chance to do right by him, you know? To try and go back and... yeah."

Thomas watched her fingers, long and delicate, slowly turning the bottle and tearing glittering streaks from the glass. She was utterly focused on her task. As if he wasn't even sitting there.

"Yeah," he finally breathed. "I know what you mean." He glanced past her fingers at the brown table top, through it. "I know exactly what you mean." He felt lightheaded, not quite euphoric like he had felt in his apartment the night before, but slightly melancholy, mature beyond words, suddenly on the verge of tears. "How do things get this way? How does life just change on you just when you think you've got it all figured out?"

From the corner of his eye he saw Julia stop staring at the bottle and look up at him. He kept staring at the table. "Each step should be a logical progression from the last, but somewhere along the line it all stops making sense." He smiled, though it hurt to smile. He felt careless, his words seeming at once brilliant and pathetic. "You get a job, you get an apartment, you fall in love, you get married. But then shit happens and suddenly everything's different. You don't even recognize yourself, you blink and your life is sliding through your hands like sand, and you just can't hold on."

Julia sat still, watching him, and he sat looking through the table. The music and hubbub of the bar seemed to be coming from a room far, far away. Finally she spoke. "I... well, I think you're making a change now, you know? I mean, being here. You're trying to find him. That means something. I don't know what's going on in New York, but I know if Henry knew you were out here looking for him, he'd be... pleased, I guess. Right?"

Thomas looked up and met her eyes. They were a strange green, dark but seeming to glitter in the light. He expected her to look away, but she didn't. She hesitated, and then leaned forward.

"My mother left us when I was little--" began Julia, and then stopped abruptly as Buck strode up and suddenly loomed over the table.

"This'll get the party started," he said, and set down three beers and three shot glasses filled with clear liquid.

"Whoa," said Thomas, leaning back. "You serious? What is that?"

"These," said Buck, pushing a shot glass across the table toward Julia and Thomas, "are double shots of tequila. You drink them, and then you chase them with the beers. Understood?"

"What about the limes and salt?" asked Julia.

"We don' need no steenkin' limes," said Buck, grinning. "C'mon. Be glad I didn't get us some prairie fires. Here we go!"

The three of them up-ended the shots, and then grabbed the beers and swallowed quickly. Julia grimaced as she put her beer down, lowering her chin to her chest and pressing the back of her wrist to her mouth, while Buck just smacked his lips and slid in next to them.

"Hoo-whee! Now we're talking." He looked from one to the other. "So what's up, guys? What is up?"

"You," said Thomas, "Are getting drunk."

"Why yes, yes I am." Buck smiled widely, showing a lot of teeth. "But that is the point, my friend. Now, what were you two little love birds talking about?"

"We're not love birds," said Thomas, staring at Buck.

"Hey, whatever man. Give it time. Either that, or slide aside. What do you say, Julia? Want to do another shot with me?"

"No," she said. "I think I'm done." She was still grimacing.

"You okay?" asked Thomas.

"I swallowed it wrong. Excuse me," said Julia, and quickly edged out from the booth to dive into the crowd.

"Eesh. I thought she'd be able to hold her drinks better," said Buck, shaking his head.

Suddenly the whole night seemed wrong to Thomas. The thought of more drinks and staying in this loud bar was intolerable. He thought of Henry, and shook his head. "Man, who knows how many she had before we arrived? She's already had like five beers just with us."

"Oh, yeah. Huh. You think I shouldn't have bought the shots? My bad, amigo. "

"I don't know." Thomas sat back, and closed his eyes. He felt exhausted. "I'm sorry. I'm just not in the right headspace to enjoy this. You mind if we get out of here?"

"Yeah, sure, Thomas, sure. You think we should make sure Julia gets home?"

Thomas nodded. "Yeah. Let's make sure she's okay, then we can call her a cab."

"Yeah, okay. I'll go close the tab, and then we can get out of here."

Thomas nodded. Exhaustion was swallowing him whole, settling over his shoulders like a cape of lead. He felt as if he could go to sleep right there. Just go to sleep, and let all the noise and complications slide away into nothing.
Chapter 10

They were silent the next morning as they rolled down the streets toward Eric's house. Hollow homes filed past, made of broken boards and topped off with rotten roofs, the car moving with velvety smoothness over the potholes and miniature chasms which covered the surface of the road. The sky was overcast, pale and chalky white like the inside of an old iron kettle, and Thomas felt it pushing down on them, a ceiling that would descend and smother them when they weren't watching.

Julia sat upfront, a large cup of coffee clasped between her hands, while Buck snoozed in the back seat, his head lolling from side to side as the car took corners, his mouth agape, his large hands loose and open by his thighs. He'd gone into the hotel bar for a couple of goodnight rounds, leaving Thomas to fall asleep alone in the hotel room, thankful for the absence of his friend's haunting snores.

Cracked windows and dusty lots held back behind swaybacked chain link fences. An abandoned church passed them on the left, the white paint gone to gray and streaked with the red rust of nails sunken into the boards. Storefronts shuttered closed as often as they were open for business, and suspicious gazes from blank faces tracking them as they drove down the street, creeping along behind ancient Cadillacs and Victoria Towncars.

Finally Thomas pulled over before Eric's house. It was as decrepit as he remembered, looming up over the street and the weed-filled yard. Killing the engine, he reached back between the seats to smack Buck on the knee.

"Wake up," he said. Buck snorted, lifted his head, blinked and rubbed his hand across his face, pulling at his cheeks and wiping at the corner of his mouth.

"We here?" Sitting up, he glanced out the windows, frowning as he took in the neighborhood. "Hell, are we in the Bronx?"

Julia shouldered the door open and stepped out, letting it swing closed behind her. Thomas followed suit, and soon the three of them were stepping across the street toward the splayed gate.

"Should we try the front door?" asked Thomas, looking at Julia. She had denied being hung over earlier on, but from her surly attitude he wasn't too sure.

"Yeah. He said he'd be expecting us." Walking stiffly up the steps, she pulled open the punctured and blown-out screen and hammered on the door several times. Buck slipped his hands into his jean pockets, hunching his shoulders and looking up and down the street, while Julia stared at the door, sipping at her coffee. Thomas looked from one to the other, and then stepped back when the door opened.

Eric squinted into the bland daylight, his coppery curls mussed and wild about his pale face. He looked quickly passed Julia and Thomas to Buck, who nodded his head amiably at him.

"Hello Eric," said Thomas. "This is my friend Buck. He works with me back in New York. He's just along for the ride."

Eric nodded slowly, as if considering, and then pushed the door open. "Buck. Hello. Come in."

They stepped into the vestibule. Daylight filtered in gently through the shuttered windows, illuminating furniture covered in white sheets, chairs knocked over onto their sides, a table listing where a leg had snapped. Warped wooden boards reflected the light back brokenly where the varnish was worn away, and shadows hung uncertainly over everything.

Julia followed Eric without hesitation, pausing only to turn and look down at where the two men stood with an arched brow before gaining the landing. Buck clapped Thomas on the shoulder, shook his head and followed, each step causing the worn boards to groan in protest. Thomas took a breath and followed suit.

Eric didn't lead them into his bedroom, but instead into a larger room across the hall. A long table had been shoved into one end, and piles of rotting magazines rose tottering along its length. A clothing line sagged back and forth before it from wall to wall, with large black and white prints clipped to it. A few chairs were shoved in the opposite side of the room near the door, and two large, shuttered windows admitted slatted bars of light onto the floor where they melted into the amber glow of several lamps.

Eric stopped before his photographs, adjusted one or two nervously, as a groom might adjust his tie, and then turned and crossed his arms and moved to stand by a wall. Thomas drifted forward with Julia to examine the photographs, while Buck stayed by the door, frowning and watching their host.

The photographs were stark close-ups of random objects. The base of a lamp. A crack between two flagstones where a clump of weeds rose in sharp focus. A handful of coins scattered across the base of a porcelain sink. A shattered bulb, filament still intact. A portion of a swirling letter, graffitied onto a brick wall. Each was precisely taken, the center in sharp relief against a blurred backdrop. Eric watched them both with a neutral expression, rubbing his thumb along the line of his jaw as he did so.

"Is this what you've been doing with your time?" asked Thomas, turning to regard him.

"Yes," said Eric, pursing his lips and dropping his hands by his side, only to slide them into his pockets and then draw them free once more. "Yes, you could say that."

Thomas nodded, turning to look at an abstract shot of black square shadows on a white surface, too close to discern what they were a part of. He felt like an art critic, come to an impoverished artist's studio to inspect his work.

Julia ducked under the first clothesline, and then a second, to look at some photographs hanging from a third behind them all.

"Those--" said Eric, starting forward and then stopping, stepping back, "Those were the first I took, with, if you look, a small object that is consistent in each. I started using a marble at first, placing it as a common element in each shot, but then realized that I didn't need it. My seeing was the common element, if you will, and that is what unites each shot into a collective whole. They're--they're all things that I have seen, compositions of a world that I have witnessed, and through the witnessing, asserted." He stopped as suddenly as he began, closing his mouth with a snap, and looking warily from one to the next.

"They're all close-ups," said Julia, still moving from one print to the next. "Extreme close-ups." Eric nodded unhappily, opening his mouth as if to say more and then subsiding. Julia stopped and looked through the erratic arrays of photographs to where Eric stood. "Why close-ups, Eric? You used to just do portraits."

Eric chewed on the inside of his cheek before shrugging to examine the windowsill and brush some dust off with quick sweeps of his fingers. "Well. Portraits. People. I'm more interested in the actual now, the real. The basics." He turned his head and glanced at Thomas. "Everything is complex. The more complex the image, the greater the chance to deceive. You keep things basic, you have a chance to get the seeing right. To see what is there. You take shots of people, and you risk--you risk not knowing--well." He frowned and looked down, shook his head.

"So," said Buck pointedly, stepping forward. "Where's Henry? You got any new info?"

Eric shot Buck an annoyed look and moved away from the window toward one of the chairs, where he sat on the thick arm of an armchair and then rose again to his feet as if it were too hot to rest on. "I don't have any new information. Or, rather, no new facts. I gave Julia the tape, and she showed it to you. It's not evidence, it's not proof, but it's enough, isn't it? Enough to make you come back, to come back and take a second look, or to begin asking questions?" His eyes were bright, very wide, and a hesitant, complicit smile hovered over his lips.

"Yes. I have some questions." Thomas nodded slowly. "What do you think happened at the end of that video? What's your interpretation of it?" Julia stepped forward, ducking under the lines to stand next to Thomas.

"My interpretation?" Eric edged toward the wall once more. "I don't know. I've thought about it." His smile cracked, "Oh, I've thought about it. When we found Henry after the first time, when he dropped the camera, when we found him outside, he wouldn't tell us what had happened. And when he showed me that tape, he wouldn't explain it either. He just wanted to show me what we were going down to. To scare me out of going." Eric looked over at Julia, and smiled again, a hurt, brilliant smile. "Oh, and to show me the two of you kissing and laughing, I suppose. But that wasn't even the point, I don't think. I've thought about it a lot, you see, and I think perhaps he wasn't daring me to go down there. Not really, though that's what he was saying. I think he wanted me to pull him out of it, to stop him from going. Because he wanted to go, he was fascinated, or obsessed, or attracted or something. It scared him, scared him shitless, but there was also something about it that made him want to go back. To go back and see. And I think he wanted me to grab him and make him run in the other direction. But saving him would mean my losing, and I couldn't have that, now could I?"

Thomas listened in rapt silence. Eric finished speaking and he began to rub his thumb along his jaw line once more, and then walked past them toward his photographs, to touch one, to adjust a second.

"So, yes, here I am in this old house, and I'm sure you think I'm crazy, I know my mother does, and mother always knows best, but I can't--well, I can't just pretend nothing happened. But I can't do anything either, now can I? What can I do? Go down there again?" He laughed then, a bitter sound, tinged with hysteria. "No, I can't go back down there. So instead I've been trying to think, to find an answer, and in the meantime I've been taking photographs, trying to put things back together, to examine the pieces and by looking at the world so carefully that I can begin to once more understand the basics. Rebuild a reality from the ground up, start from the very beginning and assemble the smallest parts, and understand where to go from there."

Thomas turned to look at Buck, who made a circling gesture next to this temple with a finger and shook his head. Looking back at Eric, he saw that he had lowered his arms to his sides, and bowed his head. Julia took a half step toward him, and Thomas thought that Eric would spin, would lash out, but instead he did nothing, and it was this silence that defeated Julia so that she stopped and stepped back.

"We're going back down there," said Thomas. "We're going to go back there and see what we can find. I don't know if we'll find anything, but we're going to take a look." Eric turned and met Thomas' eyes. "You can come with us if you like, or you can stay here. It's up to you."

For a long moment Eric simply gazed at Thomas with his clear, crystal blue eyes, and then he shook his head. "I can't go back down there. I don't think--I wouldn't be able to--no. I can't go back down there. I understand that you want to find Henry, but I don't think you will. You won't find Henry. I think Henry is gone. You should go back to New York. If you want, I'll let you know if I figure something out. But the answer's not down there. It's not down there in those tunnels. Don't go."

"So, what, we're going to find ghosts or something?" Buck stepped forward and looked from Thomas to Eric. "I just want to get this clear, because this is all a little vague for me. What exactly is the problem?" Something in Eric's eyes caused Buck to frown, open his mouth and then close it again.

"I don't know what we're going to find," said Thomas. "All I know is that Henry disappeared down there. And that I'm going to go see what I can find. And if we find something--else--then, well, I'll deal with that when I get to it."

"Well, okay." Buck broke eye contact with Eric, unsettled. "I'm not scared of the dark, so I'm good to go. Do we need garlic?"

"Fuck you, Buck," said Julia. "This isn't funny. Eric, I'm sorry--"

"No, it's okay." Eric was smiling again. "I don't care. I don't care at all. He can laugh all he wants. Doesn't change anything. It just means he's ignorant. That's all."

"Okay, okay, let's just calm down," said Thomas. It wasn't that he felt a fight about to brew, but rather that he was himself becoming unsettled. Buck shrugged and walked toward the door, Eric watching him with a mocking smile.

"Do you have anything useful you can tell us, Eric?" asked Thomas, "Anything that can help?"

Eric considered Buck for a while longer, and then turned to Thomas. "I heard singing before Henry disappeared. An Irish voice. You can't quite make it out on the video, but the second time it was quite clear. If you hear singing, run."

"Okay, that's more than enough for me," said Buck angrily. "If we hear Irish shanties, we run. Got it. Okay, I'm done up here. I'll see you guys downstairs." So saying, he marched out the door, and began to descend the stairs heavily.

"Thank you," said Julia, "We'll let you know what we find."

Eric shrugged and turned back to a photograph of a cracked plant pot. "Okay. I hope it goes well." He frowned and raised the photograph as if to inspect it closely. Julia gave Thomas a helpless look, and then when he motioned questioningly toward the door, she nodded and walked past him after Buck.

"Take care, Eric," said Thomas. Eric didn't respond, instead continuing to scrutinize the shot. Thomas watched him for a moment longer, and then turned to follow Julia out of the room.

Buck was waiting by the car, arms crossed and staring fixedly at nothing in particular. Julia rounded the trunk and stood by the passenger door, not looking at him, waiting for Thomas. A frozen tableaux plumes of breath rising up from each set of nostrils, mouths tight lipped and expressions frozen. Thomas walked over, bouncing the car keys in the palm of his hand, and decided to simply unlock the doors and deal with it all within the confines of his car.

They drove on up the street, then took the first turn and then the second. Nobody spoke. Each stared fixedly out of a window, wrapped up in their own thoughts, but the silence was heavy with the expectation of being broken, with the questions that would be asked, like storm clouds pregnant with thunder. Thomas knew that both of them were waiting for him to broach the subject, had their lines ready, knew that he would, sooner or later, but delayed asking, delayed as long as he could, letting the tension grow acute until, stopped before a red light, he looked in the rear view mirror at Buck.

"So..." said Thomas. "What was all that about?" Julia glanced away from the poverty beyond her window to Thomas, and then forward, but Buck continued to stare out at the street.

Finally: "Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Yeah, nothing. Why?" Buck's voice was uncharacteristically sharp.

"I don't know. Just asking. You seemed a little... tense in there. Confrontational, you know?" Julia was an active ball of silence, noticeably self-restrained.

"Yeah, well, whatever. That guy was full of shit, is all. I don't have much patience for that kind of stuff."

Green light. Thomas eased the car forward, nodding slowly. "Well, I can see where you're coming from. It sure sounds crazy. But... well. You sure you're okay? It looked like he was hitting a nerve or something."

Buck let loose a sharp bark of laughter, "A nerve? What, like he's reminding me of some childhood memory I've been blocking all these years about basements?"

Thomas frowned and shook his head, trying to keep his expression mild. "No, Buck. Not like that. Come on man. What's going on?"

Buck subsided. He looked back out the window, and they drove on in silence for a few minutes. "I don't know. I guess he creeped me out. All that crap about darkness and Irish singing and his weird ass house and crazy photographs. Just messed up, is all."

"Yeah." Thomas nodded. "It's pretty damn weird. You okay to go through with this? Go down into this building and all? I mean, you don't have to if you don't want to. I'd understand."

"No, I'm fine. I'm sorry if I'm tense. Just... yeah. I wanted to shake that guy, you know? Snap him out of it. All that weird, vague crap he was talking."

"It wasn't crap," said Julia.

"Oh no?" Buck sounded amused. "We supposed to believe that there are Irish ghosts down there, grabbing kids?"

Julia shook her head minutely, and looked back out the window. "You don't know shit, Buck," she said. "Something happened to Henry. Eric was there. He was there when it happened, and whatever it was fucked the hell out of him. I knew him before. When he was... in control. He had plans. He was going places. He had a future." She stared through her reflection at the abandoned houses and rotting strip malls as they filed by. "Now he's broken. He's going nowhere. Something happened to him. You don't know shit, Buck."

"Well, if that ain't the most constructive criticism I've ever heard," said Buck.

"Enough guys. Okay? Enough already. This is strange enough for all of us, so let's just calm down." Thomas looked at Buck again in the rear view mirror, and then at Julia. "I say we get this over with now. We're tense enough as it is without waiting till dark. All right?"

"Fine with me," muttered Buck.

"Sure," said Julia. "You got flashlights and shit?"

"Yes," said Thomas, easing off an on-ramp into traffic. "I do."
Chapter 11

The State Hospital loomed into the washed out sky, massive and heavy. Shattered windows behind wire mesh, the copper copes, the ponderous walls. All fenced off and strangely innocuous in the daylight. Thomas drove slowly around the perimeter, and then parked his Mercedes on the shoulder of the road.

"This isn't where we broke in last time," said Julia.

"I know." Thomas pushed open his door and stepped out of the car. "I've got wire cutters. I'm not jumping over fences."

Buck and Julia climbed out, and Thomas opened the trunk. Reaching in, he pulled out a black duffel bag from which he drew three flashlights which he handed out. A large bolt cutter came next, and glancing both ways along the street, he stepped up to the fence and began to nervously snip at each wire. They gave without any resistance, and soon he had a small crawl hole cut through. Buck stood by, idly clicking the flashlight on and off. When Thomas pulled the wire section free, he stepped up and gazed through at the building. "Can we get arrested for trespassing?"

Thomas walked over to the car and dumped the wire cutters. "I don't know. I wouldn't think so. It's not like murder or anything."

Julia walked up to the hole, and then ducked through. "You get yelled at and escorted off the premises. That's about it. Relax."

Thomas and Buck shared a look, and then followed her through. Thickets of grass stuck up through the crusts of ice and snow. The blades were long and brittle, whispering against their shins as the three of them crossed the wild lawn toward the massive brick building. Thomas remembered the initial invasion, the dark and the ladder, the camera and Henry running along. The almost innocent, adventurous nature of it all. Five months ago?

Julia led them into the shadow of the of the building, and then along the dark wall toward the hole. It gaped as it had in the video, burst open like a cyst in the edifice. Without looking behind, she clambered up and inside. Buck hitched his jeans up around his waist and followed suit, and Thomas did the same after a final glance at the grass, the distant streets and cars.

The room was illuminated by the white light from without, and though Thomas recognized some of the graffiti tags, it seemed distinct from the room he had seen in the video. Smaller, dirtier, devoid of mystery and threat. There was a faint smell of asbestos in the air, and it seemed dingy and dismal. He moved past Julia and toward the door, pushing it open to step out into the hallway.

"It's been awhile since I've been here," said Julia quietly. "It's pretty simple, though. Down the hall and then down the stairs."

Thomas nodded and walked down the dim hallway. Diffuse light filtered in through open doors. Underfoot, flakes of peeled paint crackled and crunched. Snap crackle pop, thought Thomas, snap crackle pop. He saw one of the old wooden wheelchairs in a room to his left, dusty and on its side, and shivered. Henry had walked this very hall. Twice. Dust hung in the air, and everything was still and silent but for their footsteps. He could almost hear the hushed whispers and laughter from the video, feel the tense excitement that had suffused the group. It was as if he walked in the presence of ghosts.

They stepped out into the hall that contained the stairwell. Everything had seemed so much larger on the tape. Thomas walked forward and stood at the head of the stairs. He turned on his flashlight and waited for that horrific scraping noise to sound from below. None came. Julia stopped alongside him and looked down into the darkness where his flashlight's beam played. She flicked hers on, and looked at him.

"You ready?" She sounded nervous, but steady. He studied her face, and then on impulse reached out to squeeze her shoulder.

"Yeah. Thanks for coming."

"No problem," said Buck drolly from behind them. "I'm always here for you, amigo."

Thomas smiled tightly, and began to walk down the steps. The others fell in step, and soon the dim and dusty sunlight was exchanged for shadow and dark. The steps were wide and shallow, and Thomas had to restrain himself from taking them two at a time. From rushing forward and diving into the darkness, racing into the lower depths and yelling out Henry's name, plunging mindlessly down corridors and halls, into the malevolent center of it all.

"So, the boiler room should be up ahead, right?" Thomas stopped and looked questioningly at Julia. She nodded slowly, looking up and down the hall they'd stepped out into, and then turning to the left.

"Eric had all the maps memorized. But I think I remember. This way." She began to walk, her flashlight wavering light from left to right. Buck clapped Thomas on the shoulder and stepped past him, turning his light to examine cracks and stains along the walls as they walked.

They proceeded in silence. Something heavy hung in the air. Not fear, but rather their anticipation of growing afraid. They walked deeper into the darkness, what little daylight that followed them left behind, but everything remained quotidian. The very lack of menacing overtones unnerved them more, as if they were being purposefully misled. Moving in the dark, Thomas found himself growing conscious of every step. Aware of each placing of his feet in the unknown murk beneath, moving tentatively as if expecting to hit a tripwire. Moving forward beyond the comfort of his senses.

Julia's flashlight lit up a heavy door. She paused, and then stepped forward to shove it open. It swung in with a groan, and she turned to face Buck and Thomas.

"Here you go. This is the boiler room. The steam tunnels lie beyond, and then the room with the stairs going down. And that's where, well." She paused. What she had not said hung heavy between them. Thomas could hear Buck's breathing. It sounded coarse, thick. The air felt warm.

"Yeah, Irish ghosts," said Buck. "How about we get a move on?"

Thomas walked through the door and shone the flashlight over the heavy organic machinery of the boiler room. Rust covered the tubes and pipes and bulging plates like a reptilian skin, heavily textured and dark. It must have made this room intolerably hot when it was active, he thought, drifting forward as he took his time to examine the walls and floor. The same room, the same darkness and insinuation of shapes in the corners. A sense of déjà vu suffused him.

"The tunnel entrance is over there around the corner," said Julia, aiming her light in the right direction.

"This place is perfect for shooting a horror movie, eh?" asked Buck, standing in the doorway. "I mean, perfect. All sorts of Freddy Krueger's could be hanging around here, feeling right at home."

"Relax, Buck," said Thomas, moving around the corner and up to a small steel door.

"Relax? I am relaxed. I'm fucking frosty here. I just would rather be at the Ritz Carlton, is all. Is that so weird?"

"No, but just relax. Okay?" Thomas tugged the door open. A corridor beyond filled with pipes. The steam tunnel. "What happened to Jimmy?" he asked, turning to look at Julia.

"Jimmy?"

"The guy who bolted in the video. The third guy who was really nervous. What happened to him?"

"Oh, yeah. Jimmy." Julia shrugged. "He made it out fine. He went up the stairs and out. We found him by the fence. He never came back out with us. I guess he got freaked out."

"Yes," said Thomas, smiling grimly. "I can understand that." Stepping forward, he eased himself into the tunnel, and began to walk carefully alongside the pipes. "Why didn't you guys join, I don't know, band or something? Yearbook? I mean, what's the attraction to these tunnels?" It was a stupid question, but Thomas didn't want silence. He didn't want to walk along in the dark, feeling alone, feeling isolated from the others. Conversation, he realized, was an illusion that could help keep the darkness at bay.

"I don't know. It was fun. It was a little dangerous, and I was bored. Going places we weren't supposed to be was a thrill, is all." Julia walked just behind him, her footsteps echoing alongside his. "I did it more because Eric was so into it. I used to like seeing how excited he'd get. And then I did it because it was fun to be with Henry while Eric was clueless." Thomas could almost hear her shrug.

They shuffled forward till the tunnel opened out into the large room filled with debris. Buck's flashlight beam danced about the room, skittishly moving from side to side as if unable to settle on any one object, and then passed over a stationary figure standing in one corner, watching them. Startled by the sudden pale face, the eyes occluded by shadow, Buck let out a cry and dropped his flashlight. It clacked against the cement floor and rolled away.

"Buck?" said Thomas, "What did you--"

"Jesus fucking Christ," said Buck, "Jesus fucking--"

Julia swung her beam onto Buck, who was reaching down to snatch up his flashlight, who glanced up at her with wild eyes, and then she pointed her light into the corner.

It was Henry. He was standing still, arms by his sides, staring right at her.

Thomas felt his chest constrict. A tightness that made his heart shudder out of rhythm, and as he stared at Henry's gaunt face, a small voice in his mind wondered if he was having a heart attack.

"Henry?" said Thomas. "Henry, that you?"

Henry stood still. He ignored Thomas' question, ignored Buck's hoarse and heavy swearing. He stared solely at Julia, and began to walk quietly toward her. She kept her flashlight trained on him, but there was no evidence that the eyes beneath the shadows blinked or squinted against the bright light.

"Julia," said Henry, and his voice was distant, hollow, a tortured low moan. "Julia."

"Is that your brother?" asked Buck, rounding on Thomas, his voice shaking. "Is that your fucking brother?"

"Yes," said Thomas, though he was shaking his head. "Henry? Hey--Henry, are you okay?" He knew he should feel exultation over finding his brother, should feel a savage joy, a sense of victory. Instead he felt a dull sense of dread. A sense of wrongness. He wanted to turn and run. He wanted to look away, to look away from the piteous need on Henry's face, to not think about how long his brother had been simply standing down here alone in the darkness.

Julia was slowly shaking her head, not with disbelief but a crude desire to negate. Henry moved silently across the room toward her, seeming to pass over the debris without disturbing it, without knocking it aside or needing to walk around the piles of trash. Buck was breathing in rapid, sharp pants, and then he took a deep breath as if preparing to dive and stepped forward and placed a hand on Henry's shoulder.

Buck let out a cry and snatched his hand back as if burned. He cradled it to his chest, and stepped back from Henry who continued to ignore him. Still moaning, Buck, turned and stared at Thomas, and then ran past him and into the steam tunnel toward the boiler room.

"Julia," said Henry, "I need you to make it better, Julia." His voice was barely audible, whispery and thin.

"No," said Julia, but she didn't move, didn't try to walk away. "No."

The echoes of Buck's pounding feet were already fading. Thomas' heart continued to beat in hard, near erratic thuds, and he couldn't talk, couldn't move. It was hard to focus on Henry. Hard to make out his features. As if a shadow hung in the air about him, leaching him of color, blurring the edges of his body, making him seem insubstantial, washed out.

"Julia, please," said Henry. "Let me. Let me show you." He reached a hand toward her as he started to draw close. "There's a dark lake, Julia. There's a dark lake, and it has no end. Julia, please."

Julia was crying silently, her flashlight shaking in her hands. "Henry," she said, "No."

Thomas forced himself to walk forward. It was like walking in a dream, moving in a fever haze, through honey. The shadows in the room were all wrong. "Henry," he choked out. "Stop it. Leave her alone."

Henry reached out to touch Julia, but before he could she suddenly wrenched herself back, paused, poised and trembling, and then turned and ran after Buck, as fleet and silent as a deer slipping away into a forest. Thomas stood still, flashlight trained on his brother, who stopped and watched Julia flee. When she turned the corner and disappeared, he let his hand drop to his side and stood still, his expression one of tortured, mute loss.

"Henry," whispered Thomas, his voice huge in the darkness, his pulse pounding in his ears. "What's happened to you?" The darkness swallowed his words, absorbed them, and Henry turned away from him, turned toward the darker corners, and began to walk away, toward the stairwell. Thomas stood frozen. He wanted to run after Julia, after Buck, to tear down the corridors and halls and up the stairs and out into the air. To escape the suffocating darkness down here with his brother. He watched Henry reach the top of the steps and begin to descend, and before he knew what he was doing he took a step forward and followed him.

The stairwell descended sharply, turning at right angles every ten steps. Thomas' flashlight dimmed as he faltered numbly down after Henry, the bright beam growing diffuse and weak till it did little more than make of his brother a silhouette. His heart was still beating loudly in his ears, thudding in his chest, and his breaths came in shallow rasps. Henry ignored him, a shifting shadow he could barely keep up with, an indistinct patch of motile darkness.

The stairwell gave out into a wide corridor. Darkness was absolute but for Thomas' weak light. Cinderblock walls, a cement floor, hints of yawning shadows on either side that might have been new tunnels or doorways. Henry slipped forward, head bowed. Sweat stung Thomas' eyes, and his feet felt leaden, heavy blocks that caused him to stumble and trip. Somewhere above him were Buck and Julia. His parked car, the streets and lights of Buffalo. It all seemed so impossibly remote. Here there was just a few yards-worth of paltry light, the air choked with dust and dim walls and his brother's form flitting before him. He tried to call out and failed.

Henry took a turn, and then a second. For a moment Thomas thought he had lost him, began to swing his flashlight erratically in the darkness, but then he caught sight of movement down a side corridor and plunged down it, desperate to not lose his brother, to not be left alone. He broke into a stumbling run, feet kicking through old trash on the floor, and saw his brother's hunched back once again receding rapidly before him.

"Henry!" he cried, his voice hoarse, ragged. "Henry, stop!" Turns followed turns. Tunnels grew narrow, grew wide, opened up into rooms and then plunged down into sloping passageways or handfuls of steps. It felt as if he had been chasing his brother for hours. He couldn't breathe, his mouth felt caked with dust, he felt sobs rising within his chest and still he tracked Henry; still he followed him.

Until he turned a corner and came to a dead end. He stood still, wafting his beam of light from side to side, searching for a new tunnel, a side door, something--anything. Cinderblocks faced him, plain and solid and impassable. He stepped forward and reached out to brush his fingertips across the wall.

"Henry?" His voice didn't echo. It was smothered by the air around him. He turned and walked back around the corner. A long corridor extended into the darkness before him. "Henry?" Thomas was having trouble breathing. He wanted to sit down, to rest for a moment, to lower his head and close his eyes. Where was he? For a second Thomas wondered if he had hallucinated everything, and was only now coming back to his senses after running blindly through this labyrinth by himself.

He retraced his steps, fighting for calm. Lose control down here and it was over. Had he missed a side passage? Slowly he checked the walls, ignoring the fact that he was lost, that he had no idea as to how to get back to the surface. How extensive were these tunnels? How hard would it be to get out? He pushed his panic down, ran his sleeve over his forehead, and reached the T-junction at which he had turned left mere minutes before.

Indecisive, Thomas stood still and looked in both directions. He took the other turn, and followed it till he reached another side tunnel. He stopped again. His flashlight glowed ever dimmer, illuminating a mere three yards of space before him, a dull, jaundiced yellow, a sickly lesion of light. If it gave out, he would be down here alone in the dark.

Turning around, he flashed his light back up the corridor. A sensation of being watched caused goose bumps to rise up the length of his arms and the back of his neck. He wasn't alone. He wasn't alone, and something was watching him and it made him want to scream, to call out, but instead he clamped his jaws tight. If he started, he didn't know if he would be able to stop.

What was the logical thing to do? What was the logical way to get out of this mess? He pulled out his cell phone and checked his reception: none. Too far underground. If he was gone long enough, Buck and Julia would surely come for him with a rescue team. The thought of remaining down here for days filled him with panic, and he turned abruptly and began to retrace his steps, striding through the darkness, his weak beam of light serving only to emphasize the darkness before him.

He thought suddenly of Michelle, wished she were here with him, holding his hand. Knew that she would approach this problem with calm and precision. That he would be stronger, braver, in her presence.

Movement. He froze, straining to see deeper into the shadows before him. Something had drawn back, just beyond the radius of his flashlight, but he could see it, a darker form against the black. His heart began to pound again, a heavy thudding in his chest.

"Henry?" There was a slight rustling sound, as of cloth moving against itself, and Thomas forced himself to step forward, another, raising his arm and extending the light before him like a weapon.

A head hung suspended in the air, without body, without any means of support. It was two faced, each face identical, mirror imaged, a beautiful young woman whose features were marked with desolation and sorrow. Black hair hung in dusty wisps and curls, and her eyes were pools of darkness, gazing sightlessly down at the opposite corners of the corridor, both mouths moving slowly as she whispered words to herself.

Thomas stopped and stared with incomprehension. The faint beam of his light played on her pallid skin, reflecting from both brows, the trails of tears that ran from her ebon eyes, the slope of her cheeks and the groove where her jawlines ran together. It was ghastly, impossible, terrifying, and when the eyes flickered and snapped toward him he nearly screamed, nearly dropped his light from nerveless fingers.

A stain of darkness poured down through the air from of her head, and it was from this seam that she pulled herself, twin figures diverging from an invisible central mirror that ran down the center of the corridor. The head split apart, shoulders appeared, clothed in shapeless dark fabric, filthy and torn. A faint keening filled the air, the sound of nails breaking as they were torn down the length of a chalkboard. The woman twinned and divided, each self now complete except for where they touched and melded together, crouched and wretched, looking at him and seeing through him. The shadows writhed as if lashed, as if they had become more than an absence of light, a tangible substance tortured by the figure's very presence.

"Careful," whispered the two women, mouths moving in unison, "They think I'm sleeping." Each moved apart, placing both hands on opposite walls, pressing their cheeks against the cinder blocks, caressing the rough cement with their faces in the manner cats might rub against the leg of a stranger.

Thomas took a step back, legs stiff, disjointed. He moved his flashlight from one to the other.

"I'm never going to go back down," said the women, lowering themselves into a low crouch, shoulders now pressed against the walls, moving forward with a susurrus of their ruined clothing. "Not if I can find a crack to crawl into."

They spoke softly, their voices distant sighs, touched with unmistakable Irish accents. "Why do they hurt me? He tells me he loves me and then leaves me here for Father Timmons to touch."

Thomas staggered back another couple of steps as they advanced toward him. The bunched folds of the archaic dresses filled the corridor, their hair spider-webbed tangles of knots and dust. Skin pulled taut over their skulls, their whispers echoing inside his head.

"What are you?" asked Thomas, voice choking in his throat.

"When I was kind I wanted nothing, but now Stephen is running through my halls and I am no longer dead. He tells me it is not his fault, that it is not his time, but there is no safety. Not from Father Timmons, not for Kitty; not on Canal Street nor here."

They pushed away from the walls, hips merging, arms and legs disappearing into each other. For a moment they formed an impossibly broad single figure, but then they took a further step and blended further so that one woman stood before Thomas, strangely perfect, symmetrical and heinously unnatural. Thomas shook his head and stumbled back further as she moved toward him, picking up speed.

"Where is he?" her one mouth asked, no longer a sigh, growing sharp as if infused with broken glass and flakes of rust. "Where is Stephen? He loves me. I didn't want to come here. I said no."

She was rushing toward him now, fracturing apart and then disappearing into herself, so that at moments her face disappeared entirely and only wisps of cloth and hair and two flailing, claw-tipped arms were coming at him. Thomas let out a cry of fear, turned and began to run, the darkness spinning around him as his feet slapped the cement floor, the light so pale as to be but a ghost.

"Where is he?" cried her voice, tearing through his mind, echoing off the walls. "Where is he?" The need and grief and fury was so intense that it seemed to jelly the darkness, and then there was a rush as something passed through him, past him, a glimpse of a filthy dress, the flash of pale skin receding before him at great speed, and then it was gone.

Thomas ran. Raw panic seized him, laid claim to his mind and he ran, heedless of where he went. He turned corners and sprinted down tunnels, he burst open half-closed doors and ran across rooms. Tubes and pipes and broken chairs and tunnel mouths and his flashlight beam racing and dancing frenetically before him, his breath ragged and thunderous, his heart pounding, his feet barely touching the crude cement. Occasionally he stopped, panting and bent over, sweat running off his brow and soaking his shirt, a burning sensation rising within his chest as he sobbed for air, and then he would straighten and sense eyes on him, hungry and cold and cruel and childlike, and he would run again, run even as his body burned and begged to stop.

He fell, once, twice, and almost failed to rise after the third. Limping and hobbling he moved on, till a distant echo stopped him. He stood still, alert and frozen, sure that he had imagined the sound. It came again, a distant echo from above, his name, and with a cry he tried to run toward it, ascending a spiral staircase and then calling out calling out in a hoarse, wild voice as his flashlight flickered and almost died. He smashed it against his palm and it burst into brilliance once more, powerful and bright.

"Thomas," called a voice. Julia. Then he saw her, standing at the base of a flight of steps, one hand on the rail as if afraid to let go, her flashlight blinding him as he ran toward her. "Thomas, is that you?"

He didn't answer, instead grabbing hold of her arm as he passed and pulling her after him, mounting the steps with trembling legs. He had to get out. He had to get away. Julia was protesting loudly behind him, but he didn't listen. He had a vague impression of peeling wallpaper, of dark doors flitting past him. His feet pounding the floor. Sunlight. Coming in through the rent in the far wall. He stumbled over the littered bricks and then he was out, fresh air and sunlight on his face.

Thomas dropped the flashlight, and walked slowly forward, breathing deeply, inhaling the cold air with powerful gasps. He felt dizzy and disoriented. Henry. Where was Buck? Julia was by his side, her hand on his shoulder, and then he was leaning over, hands on his knees, eyes closed. If he could just catch his breath. If he could just focus, for a moment, on what had to be done. One what the next step should be. But he couldn't.

Available now: Crude Sunlight 2

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Other Books by Phil Tucker

Other Books by Phil Tucker

High-Octane Demon Hunting

The Grind Show

Literary Dystopian

One by One

Psychological Horror

CoffinCam

Dark Fairytale

Throne

The Human Revolt Series

Vampire Miami

Vampire LA

Vampire Redemption
