Underground (21 page)
“You guys seeing more of those creeps down here?” Quinton asked.
“The bad ones? Not more’n normal.”
“Anything else? Critters? Walkers?”
One of the shapes rocked back and forth. “I seen a . . . a crawling thing, long as a snake, hairy like a yak.”
“A yak!” one of the other shapes said. “You ain’t never seen no yak.”
“Then hairy like a musk ox—I seen plenty musk ox when I was home in Alaska at that qiviut farm.”
“And a buncha rats,” another said. “We saw ’em. Rats running through here last night.”
They began chattering, throwing in comments in a flurry, and I couldn’t keep track of which lump of filthy cloth was talking when.
“Bugs. Been a lotta bugs for winter time.”
“And the shadow people.”
“Lotta rats, yeah. Big ’uns!”
“That’s trouble—rats. Something’s stirred ’em up.”
“It’s the cold.”
“Maybe they’s scared of the yak!”
“And the crows,” said Jay.
They got quiet and stared at Blue Jay.
“No birds down here, Jay.”
“I know that. But I seen a crow with Jenny last night and this morning she was killed. You saw it, too, Grandpa Dan. It was an omen.”
“Why didn’t you see no crow when Go-cart died?”
“I ain’t no medicine man. I just seen the one crow.”
“Do crows come out when people die?” I asked in a low voice. I didn’t like the clutching feeling that rasped up my spine as I thought of those big crows and Go-cart or of the gleaming eyes of creatures in the tunnels, watching Jenny from the darkness.
There was a glimmer in the Grey around them and one of the other lumps spoke in a slow, old voice, the voice of Grandpa Dan. “Sometimes. Crows are the messengers of gods and the spirits of our ancestors. They speak of death and magic. They say crows flew all day over Battleground back during the last days of the People—before the reservations. I did see Jay’s crow, but it said nothing I understood. Maybe it was a raven though. Ravens intercede for us in the world of the spirits—maybe that’s why it came here, to fight for Jenny, and it lost.”
There was an uncomfortable silence before one of the others added, “My old grandma said the animals used to talk to us long ago, but now they’re afraid and they lose their power with all these white men around. You hardly see real animals anymore in the cities. ’Cepting rats and dogs and mangy cats and they don’t talk so much.”
Grandpa Dan nodded. “Down here near the mud where we used to fish, maybe they talk more. . . . Maybe they remember more what it was like to be real animals.” Then he looked directly at me and something atavistic in me stirred and quailed at his fierce glance. “These mudflats, they were the life of our people. It is still ours, even if it is only a ghost place now, buried under this city. We can’t leave it. We’d do anything to protect it, if we could. We will do so when the need is on us.” Then he turned his filmed eyes back to Jay, releasing me to shiver a moment. “That’s why the animals and our ancestor spirits still come here—to keep the land safe. Maybe that’s why your raven came down here, Blue Jay.”
“Maybe that’s why Frank’s yak come here—to talk,” another voice bantered.
“Was a musk ox and musk ox don’t talk.”
“Do you remember what happened in 1949?” I asked Dan.
“When was that?” Dan asked. “That was after the war—the Second World War. I was just a boy then.”
The people around the circle watched with suspicion. I’d come with a friend, but that didn’t guarantee they’d trust me, especially interrogating an old man they respected. I pushed on, but I chose my questions with care.
“Did you live here in Seattle?”
Dan shook his head and shrugged, growing tiny and bent before my eyes. It seemed as if the wise old man had vanished with the movement, leaving a smaller, weaker substitute behind who mumbled in a quavering voice, “Nah, I lived on the rez. I never lived here then.” He seemed befuddled and I wasn’t sure it was an act.
“Did you hear about the earthquake here in April of 1949?”
“Oh, sure!” another piped up. “Buildings fell down. That’s why they torn down the old hotel and built that parking lot.”
“You suppose that’s where all them ghosts the medicine man drove away come from?” another asked.
“What ghosts?” old Dan asked.
“Them old ’skins. You remember. Back in . . . what, ’ninety-four? They used to raise hell up ‘n’ down the tunnels here. Scared the tourists. Then they got some shaman down from Marysville to come and send ’em on their way.”
The old man shook his head, deep in its blankets. “I don’t remember that.”
“Well, they did it. And he danced and chanted and burned some nasty-ass stuff and sent ’em on their way.”
“Where was that?” I asked.
“First and Yesler. That’s the baddest corner. There’s an old dance hall girl there and her boyfriend. He was a bank clerk at the old bank there. Sometimes y’see ’em there. And down Oxy. There’s a lotta ghosts down Oxy.”
That I could attest to myself. But that was about as far as we got. No matter how we asked—or who, when we moved on to the next group and the next—no one had any useful information about 1949 or the ghosts of natives or of zombies or monsters that ate people and set the dead to walking. The natives had a strange sense of proprietorship for the place; several talked about it as Grandpa Dan had, saying it was the closest you could get to the “old land.”
“Do you know what we called this place before your people came?” one had asked.
“No,” I replied.
“Duwamps. Funny word, huh? But it means ‘good fishing’ and it was good for clams and collecting driftwood for fires. It was our life. Before the rez.”
Another said something in a coughing, lilting language and the speaker answered back the same way. Then they laughed and the bottles passed again. And it was the same in every group that talked about the mudflats: a slightly drunken declaration of protectiveness and pride even as they huddled in the hollows of the ground, in the face of the amnesia and disdain of society that drew a pall over everyone down below and everything that crept there, consigning it to Lethe.
We had been up and down hidden stairs and through obscure doors, dragged or dropped or slid or crawled through holes and grates, and when Quinton and I finally reemerged at the end of our exploration, I was as ragged and filthy as any of the homeless. And as tired. I tripped over a rough section of cobble and felt the heel of my dress boot snap off with a stabbing pain to my knee.
“Oh, well,” I muttered as Quinton caught me. “I didn’t really like these shoes.” I did feel bad about my coat, though, since I’d torn one of the sleeves and it was so dirty that I doubted dry cleaning would save it.
Quinton held me upright for a second longer than he needed to, and I didn’t mind it at all. “You OK?” he asked, his voice a little husky.
I pulled my gaze from his before anything could get out of hand. “You keep asking me that. I’m not exactly a fragile flower of femininity,” I said, looking down at myself. I didn’t have the athletic, whipcord body I’d had as a dancer, but I didn’t think I’d lost much by adding a little padding over the muscles and trading in my jazz shoes for something more practical—if a bit clunky. And, of course, I now carried a gun as well.
“I know, but . . . I like the excuse to hold your hand.” Then he diffused the moment with a forced grin. “I’m a guy who lives in a bunker, remember? I don’t get to paw that many attractive women—any women, actually.”
“Well, that makes me feel special,” I answered back.
“I do my best.” Then he frowned. “But, damn, you need to get home.”
“Are you sick of my company already?”
“No, but you’re barely keeping on your feet—I got you up pretty early today. And you could really use a shower. You smell like basements and alleys.”
I wrinkled my nose. “I do. And my knee hurts and I’m too tired to tell you how utterly lousy it is of you to say so.”
“Then I’m glad you’re tired, because I’d hate you to have to tell me I’m lousy. I bathe regularly! No lice on me.”
I caught myself giggling and pulled myself up. “I need to go home.”
“Can you drive?”
“I can,” I said, and I was sure it was true. I could make it that far, but if I’d had to go much farther than West Seattle I might have had to say no and I didn’t want to know where that might lead. It was inappropriate—wasn’t it?
Quinton walked me back to my car and handed me in. Before I could close the door, he leaned in and kissed me on the cheek. “Drive safe.”
Then he walked off and left me to it.
Wow. Not a brotherly kiss, but not a pushy kiss. . . . My thoughts bogged down in wondering what that meant, getting tangled in the mess of bits and pieces we’d uncovered, and wandering back again to the press of his lips against my cheek. I mean, it was nice, but . . . wow.
This was ridiculous, I chided myself. It was just a friendly kiss. A good night. Maybe. I was so tired and achy my mind couldn’t seem to sort anything. No one had had any real clues to the monster or to the events of 1949. The only things I could think of to do now were to look for the threads I’d seen before, try to physically stalk the thing, and start talking to ghosts. And not think about that kiss.
TEN
Sunday carillons and children’s shouts welcomed another fall of feathery snow outside my windows. This lot was thick enough to stick, and the rare white stuff turned the thin morning sunlight into a diffused glow suitable for the instant holiday. I rolled out of bed, shivering, and turned up the heater while I took a shower and did some and turned up the heater while I took a shower and did some stretches to loosen up my cranky knee and shoulder.
I’d stayed up too long after I’d come home, petting Chaos and thinking things I shouldn’t have, and now I was paying for it under the barrage of morning sanctity. Next time I moved, I swore I’d check for bell towers before I signed anything.
I just couldn’t get my mind into job mode—besides which, I’d worked Nan Grover’s cases on Saturday and knew where to find a couple of her wayward witnesses pretty much whenever I wanted. There wasn’t much else to do on that score, so going to the office was pointless. I didn’t want to moon around the condo all day, but all I could think of to do was replace my coat and I hate shopping. With a choice between hated activity or idle speculations and idle hands, I figured I’d be better off shopping.
I ended up in Fremont, lurking in the back office of Old Possum’s Books ‘n’ Beans, wearing out my friend Phoebe’s ears with tales of woe and wrath over Will until she decided I needed to eat and dragged me to the nearest restaurant.
I poked at my breakfast and Phoebe frowned at me. “If Poppy saw you treat good food that way, he’d talk you blue.” Phoebe’s family owned a restaurant and food was taken very seriously, especially by her parents, who considered my rangy frame a personal challenge to their aesthetic sense. “You know you better off without that man.” Phoebe’s mild Jamaican accent rendered it as “wheat-oudt dat mahn.”
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