The Night Tourist (15 page)

They floated above the promenade in front of the Seventy-ninth Street Boat Basin, looking out at the snow-encrusted fleet of yachts and motorboats moored in the Hudson River. The wind had picked up and the snow was driving hard in the predawn darkness—masts were clanking and boats rocked up and down on the river’s white-tipped waves. “A dinghy,” Jack said, “a little boat. That’s all we need.”

“You still haven’t explained what we’re doing here.” Euri shouted over the storm.

“There was something that mattered more than the meaning of the line,” Jack shouted back.

“What do you mean?”

“The number. The lines are numbered in most Latin texts. The number of that line is ninety-six.”

Euri furled her eyebrows. “So?”

He pulled the map out of his pocket and shielded it with his arm from the wind. “We knew it had something to do with water. Now look where Ninety-sixth Street is.” He pointed to a blue-colored V-shaped channel into Manhattan at West Ninety-sixth Street. “It looks like a channel from the river. There’s nothing else like it.”

Euri traced the V with her finger. “So you think that’s the way out?”

“It must be. It’s the only thing that makes sense.” Jack looked at Thomas’s pocket watch. “Come on. It’s 6:43. We have only a half hour left.”

Euri grabbed his arm. “You’ve got to be sure about this, Jack. If we leave now, we can still get you back to a fountain and to track sixty-one....”

“No,” he shouted. “I want to do this.”

A low growl made them both jump. “Stop it, Zoe,” said a rough-looking man wearing a cap that read
HARBORMASTER
as he stepped out of a white shack perched atop the dock. He pulled on the collar of a large Doberman that stared at them with beady, black eyes. “There’s no one there.”

Jack flew over the wrought-iron fence and down one of the rocking wooden docks, beckoning Euri to follow. It was hard to see through the whipping snow, but he finally spotted a small dinghy fastened to a yacht named the
Cumba
. He grabbed the
Cumba
’s metal railings and hauled himself aboard. He stumbled across her slippery deck to the bow and clawed at the rope that connected the
Cumba
to its dinghy. “We can’t fly over water,” he shouted, “so we’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way.”

He lurched back across the
Cumba
’s deck, pulling the dinghy around. “Sit behind me,” he said as he clambered back onto the dock.

Euri looked uncertainly at the flimsy boat. “Why?”

“My mother said we have one chance and not to look back. If this works like the Orpheus story, that means you need to be behind me and I’m not allowed to look back at you till we reach the living world. Come on,” he said, taking her hand. “We don’t have much time.”

Euri stepped onto the boat and clutched its sides as it rocked violently back and forth in the waves. “Relax!” Jack said. “You’re the one who’s already dead.”

Euri rolled her eyes. “Very funny.”

He studied her face one last time—the wisps of dirty-blond hair, the small mouth, the weary blue eyes—and then jumped in himself. As the
Cumba
dinghy drifted away from the dock, he sat down on the center seat and faced the stern. The curving green lights of the George Washington Bridge were faintly visible to the north in the whirling snow. That was the direction he needed to go. “You know how you feel about dogs?” Euri shouted from behind him. “That’s how I feel about water.”

“Yeah, and I’ve had to put up with a pretty scary one. You’ll be okay.”

A battery of curses issued from the direction of the dock. “I told him this nor’easter was coming,” the harbor-master shouted. “I told him to tie that boat down!”

Jack checked his pocket watch. It was 6:51 a.m. He picked up the dinghy’s wooden oars, set them in the oarlocks, and began to row in the direction of the bridge. At first he could only make the oars slap against the water, and the boat pitched up and down at a sickening pace. “You’re not exactly Olympic material, are you?” Euri shouted from behind him.

“Don’t be a backseat driver,” Jack said.

Euri laughed, and he was surprised that at a moment like this they were able to joke. But it seemed better than thinking about dying or, in Euri’s case, remaining dead.

Gradually, Jack figured out how to angle the oars so they caught the water, and he was able to put his back into each pull. The dinghy began to buck over the waves. “Keep it close to shore!” Euri shouted. “We’re not going to New Jersey.”

“I’m trying,” said Jack. He braced his feet against the seat in front of him and put his legs into each stroke. He began to recite poems in his head, trying to keep his mind off the growing ache in his arms. Soon his arms pulled the oars mechanically, almost as if they weren’t attached to the rest of him. His entire face felt numb. Euri had grown quiet, and Jack was suddenly tempted to sneak a peek over his shoulder to make sure she was still there.

“I’m rowing better now,” he shouted back at her.

“Huh?”

“I’m rowing better—”

“I’m going to live again, aren’t I, Jack?” she interrupted.

“Yes,” he said. “I promised you would.”

“I can’t wait to get out of this stupid uniform and buy some new clothes. And sit out in the sun—I don’t even care how cold it is!”

“Euri?”

“What?”

“Just so you know, your parents do miss you.”

From behind him, Jack could hear an exasperated sigh. “How do you know?”

“They put up your ornament. The angel. With the macaroni hair.”

Jack waited for her to respond, but there was no sound from behind him. “Euri?”

When she finally spoke, her voice was high and strained. “I made that stupid thing in first grade.”

“I figured,” Jack said. “It’s pretty horrible.”

He could hear Euri’s laugh and then her laughter change to sobs. “I ... I ...never noticed her.”

Jack wished he could turn around. He reached back and felt her hand grip his. Jack’s eyes stung with tears, and he suddenly felt relieved that Euri couldn’t see him. He couldn’t imagine living without her. He had to get her back. “We must be getting near Ninety-sixth Street,” he said gruffly. “We’d better start looking.”

“For what?”

“For a stream or a tunnel or a pipe—I’m not sure, exactly. The mouth of that channel.” He put down one of the oars and checked the pocket watch. There were only eight minutes left. He scanned the shore. The waves smacked against a stone retaining wall, but the swirling snow obscured any tunnels or pipes. “See anything unusual?” he asked Euri.

“Yeah, your hands!” she shouted.

They felt numb from the wind, but when Jack glanced at them he realized that something else was wrong. Instead of looking at them, he was looking through them at the wooden oars.

“You’re starting to die,” Euri whimpered.

Jack tried to stay calm. “It’s okay. We still have a few minutes. Just look for the river—”

“Jack!” Euri shouted again. “On your left!”

He swiveled his head. The hull of a large white police boat was bearing down on them. “
Cumba
dinghy,” Clubber’s commanding voice ordered through a bullhorn. “You are not authorized to travel in these waters. Stop and surrender your cargo, or your ship will be destroyed.”

“Is that the Coast Guard?” Jack shouted.

“We repeat.
Cumba
dinghy. Stop and surrender your cargo immediately, or your ship will be destroyed.”

“Jack,” Euri said as the ship continued to bear down on them, “look at the waves around it.”

Jack stared at the whitecaps in front of the boat’s bow, which was now just several feet away. No wonder he hadn’t been alerted to the ship’s approach—it wasn’t cutting through the waves or creating a wake at all.

“We need to get out of here!” Euri shouted.

Jack felt the boat rock precariously as Euri scrambled to her feet.

“No!” he shouted. “Sit down. We can’t fly over water. We need to stay in the boat. We have only a few minutes left to find the way out. Hold on!”

He let go of one of his oars and with both hands tore the other out of the oarlock. He stood up and, with all of his might, shoved the oar against the looming hull of the ghost ship. To his relief, it proved solid. The dinghy shot backward toward the shore, knocking both him, and from the sounds of it, Euri, to the floor of the boat. Again, he was tempted to turn around and see what had happened to her. “Are you all right?” he shouted instead.

He heard her lifting herself up. “I’m fine.”

As he scrambled back to his seat, Jack noticed that his legs and arms had become translucent too.

“I see it! I see it!” Euri suddenly cried from behind him.

Jack looked for the other oar, but it had slipped overboard. His stomach throbbed with panic. With his one remaining oar he paddled the dinghy so that it swung around. About a dozen feet in front of him, built into the stone retaining wall, was a large storm drain. Jack paddled furiously toward it. “Hurry up!” shouted Euri. “They’re behind us! They’re catching up.”

The frenzied barking of Cerberus cut through the wind. “
Cumba
dinghy,” Clubber announced. “You have disobeyed direct orders. You will be destroyed.”

They were just a few feet away from the storm drain when the hull of the ghost ship smashed into the bow of the dinghy where Euri was sitting. As he felt the impact shatter the dinghy, Jack swung his head around and glanced over his shoulder.

Behind him, Euri was clutching the sides of the boat and staring longingly into the storm drain. For a split second their eyes met. “No, Jack!” he heard her cry. And then, before he could even reach out his hand to comfort her, she disappeared.

The battered dinghy quietly drifted into the storm drain. Jack sat motionless inside it, curled up in a ball, his head against his knees. He didn’t even have to open up his eyes and see that his arms or legs were no longer translucent to know he had made it and Euri had not. When he finally did make a noise, it was a whimper.

Euri was gone. He had failed her. He lay in the boat until the image of her face made him open his eyes, just to see something else. In front of him lay the remaining oar. Its paddle had been knocked off, leaving him with only the shaft. He turned around and stared at the empty bench behind him. When his vision began to blur with tears, he forced himself to face forward again. How could he have looked back? Picking up the shaft, he shoved it down into the water, through his own pitiful reflection.

The wind howled through the storm drain, and for the first time in three days Jack realized he was cold. His stomach began to rumble with hunger. Pulling the shaft out of the water, he began to consider where he was. The dinghy had drifted deeper into the storm drain, and it seemed his only choice was to keep going forward. He lowered the shaft into the water until he hit the soft bottom of the storm drain three or four feet down, then pushed off it. Like a gondola, the dinghy sped forward. The scenery around him was as punishing as Jack’s mood—narrow pipe walls, a ceiling cracked by plant roots and dotted with stalactites that grazed his head like mouthfuls of jagged teeth. Jack drove the shaft into the black, still water again and again. He couldn’t believe how much had happened to him over the past three days and nights. But it seemed as if none of it would really change anything in his life.

After what felt like hours, the dinghy scraped against concrete. Jack stepped out of the boat, which drifted away from him. His entire body felt heavy and dull. In front of him, at the end of the storm drain, was a staircase, and seeing no other doors or passageways, Jack climbed it. Up and up he went, in endless dizzying spirals, until his legs ached and he was out of breath. Clanking noises filled the air, and the smell of electricity brought a cloying feeling to his stomach. At the top of the stairs, he spotted a door with a padlock and ran the last few steps up to it. Shaking off his stupor, he realized that it was FDR’s secret door. He was back on track 61. He turned around to go down the stairs and find Euri. But the staircase was gone. In its place was a solid wall. Jack pounded it with his fists. “I need to get back in!”

A pair of hands seized his fists and held them back. “You can’t.”

Jack swung around. Behind him stood his father. His face was haggard and there were dark circles under his eyes. He released Jack’s fists and roughly gathered him up in a bear hug. The embrace was unlike anything his father had ever done. Jack relaxed into his arms, exhausted.

“You were gone for so long,” his father said. “I thought I’d lost you.” Then he rested his head against Jack’s and began to cry.

Jack looked up at his father’s tear-streaked face. “It’s okay, Dad,” he said. “I’m okay.”

His father pointed to the solid wall where the staircase had just been. “You tried to take her out, didn’t you?”

Jack wondered how his father knew about Euri. But then he realized that his father was talking about his mother. “No,” he said, shaking his head vigorously. “Not Mom.”

His father looked puzzled.

“I know what really happened to her, though,” Jack said.

A pained look crossed his father’s face. “So you saw her?”

Jack nodded. His father raised a trembling hand. “You don’t have to tell me what she said. I know she must have justified her decision to you, but I don’t need to hear....”

“But you have to hear!” Jack interrupted. “Mom didn’t leave you. She couldn’t come back.”

“What do you mean?” his father asked.

Jack repeated everything his mother had told him. He told his father how she had immediately realized her mistake, how she had tried to come back, how she had watched them until they left the city and mourned them when they were gone. “She didn’t want to go back forever,” he finally explained. “It was an accident.
Occidit
. She perished. But it wasn’t her fault.”

His father sank to the ground. Jack crouched down next to him, but his father seemed unaware of his presence.

“She didn’t leave me?” he finally said.

“No,” Jack said softly. “She didn’t.”

His father turned to him. “Where is she now? Where did you say you found her?”

Jack looked down at the ground. “That’s the thing. After I talked to her, she moved on, or . . .”

“I know what that means,” his father said. He closed his eyes. For a few minutes they were both quiet.

“You were always very important to her,” his father said.

“So were you,” Jack said.

“Thank you for finding her.”

Jack smiled as he realized the one thing he had done right. He had come back.

His father took a deep breath and stood up. “So if you weren’t trying to take out Mom, who were you trying to take out?”

Jack felt his happiness vanish. “Her name was Euri,” he said. “She was a girl my age. She wanted to live again, and she helped me find Mom. But I failed her, Dad. I looked back.”

His father shook his head. “You didn’t fail her. You would have failed her if you’d taken her out like I did. Look at your mother. She was never really happy here.”

“But Euri’s different,” Jack insisted.

“Loving someone makes them seem different.”

Although his father was thinking about his mother, his comment made Jack realize how much he cared about Euri. But even if Euri wasn’t different, Jack’s powers made him special. “If we stay in New York, though, maybe I can still see Euri? At night, I can see ghosts,” he confessed. “Ever since the car hit me—”

“I know,” his father interrupted.

“You do?”

“Before I met your mother, I fell down a shaft. The fall should have killed me, but instead it triggered a form of extrasensory perception. It allowed me to see your mother when she was still a ghost and even before I crossed over into the underworld. That’s why, after your accident, when you started acting strangely, I sent you to Dr. Lyons. He was with me on the dig when the accident happened, and after I brought your mother back to life he became an expert in the paranormal. The photo he took confirmed that the same thing had happened to you.”

Something about his father’s story bothered Jack. He’d never seen him talk to ghosts or do anything unusual. “Do you still have these powers now?”

“That’s the thing,” his father said gently. “They disappeared when I got back to the living world. I never saw another ghost again.”

Three days earlier, Jack would have been relieved to hear this. But now it meant that he would never see Euri again. He stared glumly at the wall where the stairway had once been. His father put his arm around him. “Maybe it’s time for us to go home.”

“When’s the next train?” he asked.

“Not home to New Haven,” his father corrected. “To New York.”

“You mean, move here?”

“Well, why not? I left because of your mother,” his father explained. “But this is our city, Jack. We were drawn back here for a reason.”

He gestured for Jack to walk along the passageway that led back into the station. “Come on. We’ll talk about it more on the train.”

As Jack followed his father out of track 61, he thought about the new life that awaited him. He couldn’t wait to move to New York. In his heart he hoped he would still find Euri.