George Right: D

Dear Reader,

Thank you for your interest in my book. If you haven’t heard about me before, it required some courage from you to buy a book by a new author, and I really appreciate it. However, you will need more courage to read my stories. Forget the Twilight Zone. Twilight is left behind. You are entering total darkness.

Some stories here are supernatural, some are not. You decide which ones are more frightening. Anyway, you won’t be the same after reading this book. You will be telling yourself: “Well, that’s only fiction… or maybe not?”

If you like (or hate) this book, please don’t keep it a secret. Share your feelings with your friends, write a review in your social network or even in printed media. Also, your feedback is welcome at my e-mail etsenberg@gmail.com. I have more horror, SF and fantasy stories to offer, so if you are an agent or publisher interested in cooperation, please contact me using the aforementioned address.

I wish to thank my editors George Lohmann ( Despair ) and Joanne McClurg (all other stories). Without their generous help, this book would have never appeared.

In different places it has different names. Metro. Underground. Tube. Subway.

Some stations look like magnificent palaces. Others more resemble a tile-revetted public toilet. Some, with many platforms and levels, bound by a network of passageways, corridors, staircases and escalators, are a real labyrinth. Others have only one entrance, which is an exit as well. The car designs, fares, personnel uniforms—all these can differ. Only one thing is invariable: the subway grows into the flesh of big cities, the network of its tunnels penetrates them from the center to the most remote blocks, like a blood system—and plays the same role. Any clot that corks a separate blood vessel leads to a paralysis of the whole area. If the subway stops completely, life in a city becomes impossible. And millions of people who daily descend under the earth through the opened mouths of stations in order to become a part of streams flowing through tunnels, got used to it long ago and take it in stride. At least, the majority of them.

Some, however, feel an uprush of fear.

What is the reason of this fear? Claustrophobia? But is a subway car more close and confined than a bus aisle, office space, or an apartment room? Tabloid press rumors about mutant rats, runaway maniacs or monsters hiding in tunnels? But does anyone take such rags seriously? Lastly, the idea that hell lies under ground? But, after all, in our time even the most naive believer knows that heaven is not in the physical sky, and it is impossible to reach paradise by a plane or a rocket—so it is impossible to get to an underworld through a mine or a subway tunnel. So what is the reason for the fear?

Employees of the New York subway, as well as of any another, of course, wave such fears aside with irritation. The subway, they will tell you, is the safest form of transportation. Accidents, especially with those with casualties, are extremely rare here, in contrast to the roads above where cars crash every day. As for the crime level, it is not the 1980s now, thank God, and the subway was put in order long ago. And even if something extreme were to happen, there are detailed schemes and mechanisms for helping and evacuating passengers. And as to ostensibly strange and inexplicable cases—that is a pile of crap, and you should not addle your brain with superstitious bullshit, but familiarize yourself with the real facts.

These facts are presented in the New York Transit Museum at the corner of Schermerhorn Street and Boerum Place, or you can find them yourself on the Internet. The New York subway has 468 stations in operation and 24 routes. The total length of the routes is 842 miles, approximately equal to the distance from New York to Jacksonville, Fla. a whole, it is a rather complex enterprise which can easily confuse a newcomer. The modern subway is the result of unifying three previously independent railway systems, so it operates two different types of trains. Some routes are designated by letters, while others are designated by numbers. Trains of different routes can travel the same lines, while trains of one route can go by different railways, depending on the day of the week and the time of day. On average, the New York subway transports more than four million people daily. So its employees are busy enough doing important work and annoying them with silly questions is a waste of time.

Especially since the absolute majority of those millions of passengers who daily go down under the earth safely comes back to the surface.

The absolute majority, yes.

When Tony Logan descended to the 42nd Street station, it was almost 1 a.m. already. Tony’s mood was extremely foul. To have to stay at office till midnight is not too pleasant by itself, and moreover, when it appears to be in vain… The buggy computer destroyed the work of several days (oh yes, all of us learned to make regular backups, and all of us remember it too late), and all attempts to restore information had also failed. Now the project will surely not meet the deadline, and then… “And then it probably won’t be necessary to work late any more,” Logan thought gloomily. “There simply will be no work.”

The weather wasn’t pleasing either. Since the September morning sun had been warm, Tony had thoughtlessly left home having put on nothing warmer than a shirt. But the evening dragged clouds in, and by night it became so cold that Logan almost had to run to warm himself. His office was nearly on the bank of Hudson, and in Manhattan south of Central Park and west of Eighth Avenue, there are no subway stations. Tony needed route Q, and usually in good weather he went on foot to Times Square along the surface, and in bad weather waited for a bus under a bus stop roof—but now both options were unattractive, so Logan was glad to dive into the subway heat near Port Authority, though it meant walking underground a whole block, and navigating by numerous signs. The 42nd Street station, where as many as ten routes meet, is a good example of a station, or, perhaps, a cluster of stations, forming a real labyrinth where, without signs, it is easy to lose one’s way.

Logan, being upset, missed necessary turns and exits several times. At one point he was bewildered to find himself at a dead end. He turned back, looked around, and noticed two familiar signs “Uptown & Bronx” and “Downtown & Brooklyn.” For some reason, there were no designations of routes. Logan, who lived in Brooklyn, turned left.

Having walked a little farther, he reached a staircase leading downwards, and began to descend absentmindedly. Mentally he was still far from his surroundings. Nevertheless, when something crackled unpleasantly under his foot, he noticed that the staircase looked dusty and dirty… as if it had not been in use for a long time. Tony even had a momentary thought of climbing back and checking whether he had passed, without having noticed, any sign announcing that that portion of the station was closed. However, as much as he remembered, in such cases there was always something more solid than just a sign which can be easily missed—namely, the tense yellow tape, a steel or wooden fence or other barrier. Since the New York subway, as well as the whole city, never sleeps, any maintenance or construction work is carried out on the fly. Sometimes it’s necessary to close a whole station for awhile. So, considered Tony, here probably was a recent repair, and there was not enough time to clean away the trash—though this staircase did not look newly repaired in any way… Well, then, perhaps this passageway had been closed for a long time and now it is open because some other passageway was closed for maintenance.