Robert Walker - Shadows in the White City

When Gabby learned that Ransom had come to the hospital earlier in the day to see Christian, she joined Jane in pursuing Dr. Fenger over the matter of Alastair’s whereabouts. It took some hard talk, but eventually Fenger told them of Alastair’s interest in the passageways below the World’s Fair.

“Why would he go there alone? Is he mad?” Jane asked.

“Well, as I understand it, he took Behan and Logan along with him. Besides, it’s just a suspicion that may or may not come to-”

“But why not flood the area with an army of police?”

“Because a bloody army of police are moonlighting these days to control the crowds at the fair!”

“Alastair should have backup,” said Gabby, “and I think I know how to get it.”

Jane turned to her daughter, asking, “What’ve you in mind?”

“A call box near the fair. That is an automatic guarantee of twenty-four men and a wagon.”

“But you need a key to open a call booth,” countered Jane. “Don’t you?”

“Mother, I know people on the force now.” Gabby tore her medical frock away while going for the door.

“But what if Alastair is in no danger, and you call out a squad of cops for no reason?” asked Fenger.

“I am willing to take that chance,” said Jane.

“And pay the fine?” he asked.

“And pay the fine, yes!”

“You might just anger Alastair. I suggest you two give this more thought!” Dr. Fenger shouted as they rushed out of the morgue for the nearest cab. “Damn,” he cursed, tore off his medical frock and rushed out after them.

Alastair pushed on through the black void, determined to gain as many footsteps in this underworld as possible before having to return to his starting point. In the semi-dark near the vent, he’d read his clock, opening it on its chime-the music being “Green Sleeves.” The time read 8:44 p.m. Complete darkness in the storm outside only made the passageway he stood in blacker as he’d continued on.

Silence here proved complete save for the gay sounds of the fair overhead, noises filtering in through the same vents as the light. “Light…sound…OK…water not so good,” he said to himself, trying to dispel the gloom. His own voice seemed the only warmth here, the only tie with a world outside of this place. If these tunnels were built for a purpose, he could not tell; he imagined they must’ve been useful during the winter months of preparation for the fair to move goods, lumber, and materials to work sites.

He had only thirteen minutes to be back at the sub-basement door. Having decided to keep the lantern turned off, he now held it in his cane hand, thus freeing up his gun hand, should he need it.

His eyes had grown more accustomed to the dark, and he could make out the shape of the walls as he moved through the passageway, going toward the next vent, where a smidge more light filtered into this dungeon.

The downward slope on the floor had steadily increased, and now he stood in water up to his ankles.

“What the hell else?” he asked of the problems he faced here. “Pour on the misery.”

Ahead of him, he saw a slick shiny surface of what looked to be black ice. Not so, more water…deeper. Deep enough to have a current.

“Shit,” he muttered. “Time to turn around. Nothing here to see.”

Alastair was in midturn, prepared to go back the way he’d come, when something floating in the water caught his peripheral vision. At first he thought it trash, perhaps washed in from the drains, perhaps Thom Carmichael’s Herald-and a fitting place for it too , he inwardly laughed.

He took a step toward leaving when something in his brain said, No, that’s not a newspaper floating there but clothing, a coat, perhaps. He moved in for a closer look, and he relit the lantern, opening it full. The light created huge black swaths of darkness and shadow, the biggest being his own. It also illuminated the bloody clothing floating by from a secondary passageway.

Alastair waded into the water here, up to his thigh, and using his cane, he pulled in the clothing. It did not look like something long in the water, and in fact, it appeared a somewhat expensive tweed coat and there were snatches of linen from a shirt. As he examined the ripped coat, he smelled the blood even as his hands became painted with it. His reflex was to drop it but one hand had hit a hard metal object that pricked his finger-a badge.

Under the grim light, Alastair studied the badge number: CPD-1438. Jedidiah’s badge, his coat, his bloodied shirt.

He immediately doused the light, and he carefully waded his way toward the direction from which the bloody clothes had drifted. The blood had been fresh, coming off in his hands. Whoever had killed Logan could not be far away.

Ransom knew he must proceed with great caution and haste at once.

Even the noise of wading through the water was too great, as it could alert someone waiting in the shadows ahead.

He recalled telling the guard to send for help after twenty minutes if he should not return by then. Time had already run beyond that, so someone would be alerted. He prayed backup was on the way.

More rats went past, swimming this time.

As Alastair continued on, the incline here was going uphill, the water subsiding behind him as a result. Overhead, out in the larger world, he could hear claps of thunder that the humorist Mark Twain would call a real sock-dollopper! Nature’s riotous calamity. Most certainly the clouds had burst.

Whoever was in the passageway ahead of him, they- for there was whispering now -must be aware of the storm overhead as well, and that the passages here could become a deathtrap if Lake Michigan swelled beyond her breakers. The resounding splash of waves slapping into the bowl-vents clearly announced this danger as a growing threat.

Ransom could not let whoever had killed Logan find their way to the nearest vent or to an open entryway into the museum exhibits. He must act quickly.

Another sound came to his ears as he inched closer to the whispering voices. It was the sound of feeding as of rabid animals devouring a carcass. Ransom feared the worst. The family he had been tracking all this time were here en masse, and they had descended on Logan, killed him many times over, and were now feeding on his remains like a pack of hyenas.

The thought infuriated Ransom almost as much as it terrified him.

He had come out of the water and feared that he could be seen by these rabid animals whose eyes surely, even supernaturally, worked more efficiently in pitch than in light, like the eyes of a pack of unholy dogs. He rested his cane against the wall, careful not to allow it to fall or clatter. He then took out his flint box lighter, and opening the lantern, he lit it.

Five pairs of eyes met his at once. They were some twenty yards off, the entire coven, all situated over Logan’s nude, mutilated corpse, some off to the side, nursing hunks of flesh cut from Jedidiah’s flanks and backside.

Ransom felt as if he’d gotten a glimpse into the last rung of Dante’s Inferno, but there was not a moment to think. He hurled the lantern at the enemy, and it hit the woman hunched over Logan’s flanks, its contents spilling over her and setting her aflame. Two of the children leapt back into shadow, while the oldest struggled to save its mother only to catch its own clothes afire.

The father hurled himself at Ransom, his huge knife extended like a lance, his mouth bloody with feeding on raw flesh. Ransom raised his blue gun and fired at the same instant the inhuman creature fell atop him, sending him into the water. Ransom went under with the dead weight of the man he’d shot threatening to drown him even in death, but in fact, the monster was yet alive, stabbing at him with the knife to the end. Just as the hyena-man had held on to the knife, Ransom had held firm to his weapon. The knife came down, tearing into Alastair’s left shoulder, as the fiend was going for his heart. At the same time, Ransom fired twice more, and the second and third shot ended any movement in the madman. Only three bullets remained in his weapon.