Anton Strout - Dead Matter

I tapped at the screen. “If you zoom in there…”

Godfrey’s hand shot out and grabbed mine, pulling it away from the monitor.

“Please don’t touch it,” he said. “I brought it in from home.”

I looked at him, perplexed. “This isn’t Department issued?”

Godfrey let out a bitter laugh. “Are you kidding me? With the budget cuts around here from downtown? No. This is mine. It fell off of a truck that almost hit me and it survived so… I helped myself.”

I knew all too well the strange knack Godfrey experienced that made him a divining rod for luck. I also knew the guilt I still felt for having used him for it in the past, so

I remained silent on it.

“Sorry,” I said.

Godfrey shook it off and turned back to the monitor. “So what are we looking at?”

“It’s the blueprints for the Gibson-Case Center,” I said. “It’s that new place that’s been going up on Columbus Circle. Jane and I chased a guy right up to the doors and got turned away like we were trying to gain entry into a foreign consulate.”

“These look like whiteprints to me,” Godfrey said, and I cringed. Was he channeling her?

“Whatever they are,” I said, “there’s a problem.” I pointed toward the empty block of space at the center of the whiteprint, this time making sure not to touch the monitor. “It appears that there’s a dead zone that can’t be accounted for.”

Godfrey flipped to the next picture and then the next.

“They’re all the same,” I said.

Godfrey cocked his head and continued flipping over and over through them all.

“Well, not exactly the same,” he corrected. “I mean, yes, they are all technical drawings of the same building area, but look… There are both blue- and whiteprints of the location.” Godfrey flipped through a few to show me the difference.

“So?”

“Blueprints came about in the forties,” he said, “but whiteprints replaced them in more recent years. We shouldn’t be seeing a mix of blue and white ones together for one project given the spread of time.”

I was still confused. “Meaning what exactly?” “Meaning someone’s been working on whatever’s going on there for a long time, longer than any development cycle for most high-rises in this city. That hidden area seems to have been earmarked private for years.” He stood up, grabbing a flashlight off of his desk. “Come with me.”

Seeing the flashlight in his hand worried me. Every part of the cavernlike Gauntlet I had ever been in had been strung with at least the bare minimum of electric bulbs. I wanted to ask where we were going that we needed the flashlight, but Godfrey was already hustling through the shelves and shelves of record books.

I ran to catch up. Already we had moved past the modern metallic bookshelves into an area filled with older, crafted cabinets and storage units. The last string of electric lights ended shortly after that and Godfrey clicked on the flashlight.

“We’re not funded to string more electric lines or bulbs until next quarter,” he said. “So I’m afraid we’re going to have to rough it.”

We continued on and the area actually started to feel more cavelike as we went. With only a tiny pool of light to guide me, a bit of claustrophobia kicked in.

“Are we going spelunking?” I asked, calming my nerves with a little humor. “Jesus, Godfrey, where are we?”

“Deep storage,” he said, searching the sides of the path with his light as we went. “A lot of old New York documentation is stored back here… Our archives are slowly being backed up to digital formats, but we didn’t want to discard anything until we could confirm or deny any paranormal connections to all this. We’re terribly backlogged. It’s going to take us years to get back to this point digitally. So for now it all lives back here.” Godfrey fell silent for a moment, then spoke again. “I should warn you… there are a few creatures that roam around back here that we’ve been working to get rid of.”

I reached for my bat and pulled it out. I hit the button and it sprung to its full size. “I’m sorry… creatures?”

Godfrey gave me a sheepish look. “I’m afraid even I haven’t fully been through all the sections down here yet. No one’s quite sure where all this leads to or what lives down here. There have been the occasional… altercations.”

“Great,” I said, peering off into the darkness. “Good to know. You do your thing and I’ll do mine if it comes down to it.”

Godfrey stopped in front of one row of old-fashioned drawers and started moving along them. “I appreciate it.”

Halfway down the row he stopped and pulled open a drawer about waist high. It was then that I realized that these were an ancient equivalent of the type of record cabinet that Jane and I had rifled through downtown.

Godfrey gently pulled a sheaf of old parchment paper out of it.

“Careful,” he warned and I stepped back. He laid them out on top of the old wooden file cabinet. He reached for the corner of the pile and started flipping down lower into it, all of them showing more and more signs of age and deterioration the deeper he went.

“Fascinating,” he said.

“What is?”

“Your ‘dead space’ on the whiteprints is older than it seems.” He pointed down at one of the older, more fragile-looking sheets of parchment. “Look. The buildings concerning that block have changed over the years, but this blank space of yours has been filed since the American Revolution.”

“The American Revolution?”

Godfrey nodded. He moved his finger to a single signature that ran along the old drawings of the empty area.

“David Matthews,” he said.

I raised one eyebrow. “Please don’t tell me the Dave Matthews Band is immortal or something… although that would explain why they play so well together.”

Godfrey shook his head and laughed out loud. It echoed off into the chamber. “Wrong Dave Matthews. We’re talking mayor of New York around the time of Franklin and Jefferson.”

I let out a silent “phew.” “So this land has been zoned for some hidden purpose for over two hundred years?”

Godfrey started to put the sheets back in the drawer, closing it. “It looks like mayor after mayor just grandfathered it forward every time the surroundings changed… but who and why?”

Somewhere off in the dark distance, the sound of something moving became apparent. Godfrey nearly jumped out of his skin, but I put a reassuring hand on his shoulder.

“Easy,” I whispered.

“Maybe we should get out of here,” he said.

“If you’re done,” I said, pausing to listen again to the distant sound of something dragging along the stone flooring. “I don’t think we have to hurry, though. Sounds like we’re dealing with something as slow as zombies.”

Godfrey just stared at me.

“What?” I said.

“Zombies,” he said. “You say it so nonchalantly. The idea of them down here doesn’t scare you?”

I thought about it for a second, then answered. “Not really. First of all, I don’t have to work down here, and from what you’ve told me, whatever still lurks down here likes to stay out of your well-lit areas.”

“But we’re not in a well-lit area,” Godfrey said, a little hysteria creeping into his voice.

“You didn’t let me get to my ‘second of all.’ ”

“Sorry,” Godfrey said, looking with morbid anticipation out into the surrounding darkness. “Continue.”

“Second of all,” I said, holding up my bat, “I have this.”

“We don’t really carry weapons down here,” Godfrey said. “Too much potential to damage the archives. I usually rely on running away.”

The poor guy looked embarrassed to admit it.