A Bridge of Years (28 page)

"I'll
make coffee," she said. "I guess we don't sleep tonight."

"I
guess we don't," Tom said.

She
held the cup in both hands as if it were anchoring her to the earth.

"Tell
me again," she said. "Tell me how you came here." He
rubbed his eyes. "Again?" "Again. Slower."

He
took a deep breath and began.

By
the time he finished it was past two
a.m
.
The street outside was quiet, the light of the room seemed
strange and sterile. He was dazed, sleepy, hung over. Joyce, however,
was wide awake.

"It
doesn't make sense," she said. "Why a tunnel between here
and—what's it called? Bellfountain?"

"Belltower,"
Tom said. "I don't know. I didn't build it, Joyce. I found it."

"Anybody
could have found it?"

"I
suppose so."

"And
no one else used it?"

"Someone
must have. At least once. Used it and, I guess, abandoned it. But I
don't know that for a fact."

She
shook her head firmly. "I don't believe it."

He
felt helpless. He had shown her all the evidence he possessed,
explained it as calmly as possible—

"No,
I mean—I know it's
true.
The
cards, the money, the watch—maybe somebody could fake all that, but
I doubt it. It's true, Tom, but I don't
believe
it.
You understand what I'm saying? It's hard to look at you and tell
myself this is a guy from the year 1989."

"What
more can I do?"

"Show
me," Joyce said. "Show me the tunnel." This wasn't the
way he had meant it to happen.

He
walked with her—it wasn't far—to the building near Tompkins
Square.

"This
place?" Joyce said. Meaning: a miracle—here? He nodded.

The
street was silent and empty. Tom took his watch out of his pocket and
checked it: three-fifteen, and he was dizzy with fatigue, already
regretting this decision.

Later
Tom would decide that the visit to the tunnel marked a dividing line;
it was here that events had begun to spiral out of control. Maybe he
sensed it already—an echo of his own future leaking through zones
of fractured time.

He
was reluctant to take her inside, suddenly certain it was a mistake
to have brought her here at all. If he hadn't been drunk . . . and
then weary beyond resistance . . .

She
tugged his hand. "Show me."

And
there was no plausible way to turn back. He took one more look at the
bulk of the building, all those rooms and corridors he had never
explored, a single window illuminated in the darkness.

He
led her inside. The lobby was vacant, silent except for the buzzing
of a defective fluorescent lamp. He grasped the handle of the door
that led to the basement.

It
wouldn't turn.

"Trouble?"
Joyce inquired.

He
nodded, frowning. "It wasn't locked before. I don't think it
had
a
lock." He bent over the mechanism. "This looks new."

"Somebody
installed a new lock?" "I think so."

"What
does that mean?"

"I
don't know. Could mean somebody knows I've been here. Could mean the
janitor found some kids in the basement and decided it was time
for new hardware."

“
Is
there a janitor?"

He
shrugged.

She
said, "But somebody must own the building. It's a matter of
record, right? You could look it up at City Hall."

"I
suppose so." It hadn't occurred to him. "Might be
dangerous. This isn't a Nancy Drew mystery. I don't think we
should draw attention to ourselves."

"If
we don't open that door," Joyce pointed out, "you can never
go home again."

"If
we
do
open
it, maybe they'll put in a better lock next time. Or post a guard."
This was a chilling thought and he couldn't help looking past her,
through the cracked glass of the outer door. But the street was
empty.

"Maybe
we can open it without being too obvious," Joyce said.

"We
shouldn't even try. We should get the fuck out of here."

"Hey,
no! I'm not backing out now." Her grip on his hand tightened.
"If this is true ...
I
want to
see."

Tom
looked at the lock more closely. Cheap lock. He took out his Visa
card and slipped it between the door and the jamb. This worked on
television but apparently not in real life; the card bumped into the
bolt but failed to move it. "Give me your keys," he said.

Joyce
handed him her key ring.

He
tried several of the keys until he found one that slid into the lock.
By twisting it until it caught some of the tumblers he was able
to edge the bolt fractionally inward; then he forced the card up
until the door sprang open an inch.

A
gust of cool, dank air spilled through the opening.

He
felt the change in Joyce as they descended. She had been cocky and
reckless, daring him on; now she was silent, both hands clamped on
his arm.

In
the first sub-basement he tugged the cord attached to the naked
forty-watt bulb overhead—it cast a cheerless pale circle across the
floor. "We should have brought a flashlight."

"We
probably should have brought an elephant gun. It's scary down here."
She frowned at him. "This is real, isn't it?"

"As
real as it gets."

The
second lock, on the wooden door in the lowest sub-basement, had also
been replaced. Joyce lit a series of matches while Tom examined the
mechanism. Whoever had installed the lock had been in a hurry; the
padlock was new and sturdy but the hasp was not. It was attached with
three wood screws to the framing of the door; Tom levered the screws
out with the edge of a dime and put them in his pocket.

Down
into darkness.

They
climbed over rubble. Joyce continued striking matches until Tom told
her to stop; the fight was too feeble to be useful and he was worried
about the flammable debris underfoot. She let the last match flicker
out but flinched when the darkness closed over them. She said, "Are
you sure—?

But
then they were in the tunnel itself. A sourceless light illuminated
the slow, precise curve of the walls ahead.

Joyce
took a few steps forward. Tom hung back.

"It's
really all true," she said. "My God, Tom! We could walk
into the future, couldn't we? Just stroll a few decades down the
road." She faced him. "Will you take me sometime?"
Her cheeks were flushed. She looked fragile and feverish against
these blunt white walls.

"I
don't know if I can promise that. We're playing with something
dangerous and we don't know how it works. I can't guarantee we're
safe even just standing here. Maybe we're exposed to radiation. Maybe
the air is toxic."

"None
of that stopped you from coming here."

But
that was before, Tom thought. When I had nothing to lose.

She
touched the walls—smooth, slightly resilient, utterly seamless. "I
wonder who built it? Haven't you thought about it?"

"Often,"
he said. "It must have been here at least ten years. Maybe
longer." Maybe since the Indians occupied Manhattan. Maybe since
Wouter van Twiller operated the Bossen Bouwerie in this district.
Maybe Wouter had had a tunnel under his cowshed hereabouts. Maybe he
knew it and maybe he didn't.

"People
from the future," Joyce said. "Or Martians or something
like that. It's like a 'Twilight Zone' episode, isn't it?" She
drew a line in the dust with the point of her shoe. "How come
it's broken at this end?"

"I
don't know."

She
said, "Maybe it was hijacked."

He
blinked at the idea. Joyce went on, "The people who are supposed
to use it aren't here. So somebody used it who
wasn't
supposed
to . . . maybe fixed it so nobody could find him."

Tom
considered it. "I suppose that's possible."

"There
must be other tunnels. Otherwise it doesn't make sense. So maybe this
one used to be connected somewhere— a junction. But somebody
hijacked it, somebody sealed it off."

This
was plausible; he couldn't formulate a better explanation. "But
we don't really know."

"Hey,"
she said. "Nancy Drew is on the case."

Maybe,
Tom thought, this would turn out all right. He had convinced her to
turn around and go back—but then the strange thing happened.

Joyce
saw it first.

"Look,"
she said. "Tom? What
is
that?"

He
turned where she was pointing, already afraid.

What
he saw was only a vague blur of luminescence against the uniform
brightness of the tunnel, far away. He thought at first it might be
some malfunction of the lights. Then Joyce squeezed his hand. "It's
moving," she said.

Slowly
but perceptibly, it was. It was moving toward them.

He
guessed it might be a hundred yards away—maybe more.

He
turned back to the rubble at the near end of the tunnel. They had
wandered maybe thirty feet from it. Sprinting distance, Tom
thought.

Joyce
repeated, "What
is
that?"
There was only a tremor of uncertainty in her voice—she wasn't
frightened yet.

"I've
never seen anything like it," Tom said. "Maybe we should
get out while we can."

What
he felt was not quite awe, not yet fear. The luminescence was
bright and had taken on the suggestion of a shape. Tom hustled Joyce
toward the exit, aware that he was in the presence of something he
didn't understand, something akin to the tunnel itself: strange,
powerful, beyond his comprehension.

This
was the tunnel under the world, where demons and angels lived.

He
paused at the place where the broken brick and old lathing and
plaster had collapsed, because it was impossible to resist the urge
to turn and look. Joyce did the same.

But
the phenomenon had moved much faster than he'd guessed. It was almost
on top of them.

He
drew a breath, stepped back instinctively—and caught his heel on a
brick, and fell. Joyce said, "Tom!" and tried to drag him
up. The creature hovered over them both.

Tom
couldn't find a word for the thing suspended in the air above him,
almost close enough now to touch. Briefly, his fear was crowded out
by a kind of abject wonder.

The
shape of the apparition was indistinct—blurred at the edges—but
approximately human.

Later,
Tom reviewed his memory of the event and tried to reconstruct the
creature in his mind. If you took a map of the human nervous system,
he thought, modeled it in blue neon and surrounded it with a halo of
opalescent light—that might come close.

It
was translucent but not ghostly. There was no mistaking its physical
presence. He felt the heat of it on his face. Joyce crouched beside
him.

The
creature had stopped moving. It was watching them, he thought—perhaps
with the two opaque spots which occupied the position of eyes;
perhaps in some other fashion.

This
was terrifying—bearable only because the creature was utterly
motionless.