23
Bay 23 Bay 23 Bay
All I was in
for, originally, was the Lost Subway Station. That
I wanted to see. It appealed to me as a kind of urban
Atlantis, disappearing beneath our consciousness and leaving
a dizzying swirl of rumour and mystery in its wake. Well,
that's a little romantic, but how many hard headed rationalists
would be tromping through a grimy tunnel in the wee hours
of the morning?
"All I hope
is that they don't turn off the lights after it closes,"
Kevin grumbled. He was mad we had waited till the trains
stopped. I had hunkered down in the alcove beside the
tracks and refused to move until the 1:10am train had
passed. It didn't make sense to risk getting smushed
since it was just a case of waiting for a half an hour.
Not that
any of this made sense, but I had the tendency to temper
my irrational acts with careful logic. It bugged the
hell out of Kevin.
"Watch out
for the third rail," I said, to razz him. In my best
teacherly voice, I elucidated: "The Third Rail provides
electricity that allows the subway to run -- but it
delivers quite a zap."
Kevin snorted
in the darkness. "Hey, you remember that bird that was
always getting zapped to hell off some powerline or
some shit?"
"Waa?"
"The bird,
man, in the educational commercials -- OK, here it is."
We had come
to a part of the tunnel where we could see the southbound
track between the mammoth supports. A change in the
light that I at first processed as a visual mistake,
suddenly coalesced into headlights. My body seemed intent
at forcing as much blood through my heart as was physically
possible.
Kevin threw
himself against the wall, the light-dark whipping across
his body, and I swear I saw him grin.
A
train passed on the far track with unnatural shortness.
"Garbage train," Kevin said.
"What are
you smiling for," I said, breathless and dizzy
and light-headed. "You-fucking-maniac?"
"I wasn't
smiling," he said, smiling. He stepped down onto the
space between the supports and hopped down onto the
other side.
I followed,
and found myself on a parallel set of tracks, Ahead
of us, unlike the level tracks to the right and left,
they dipped downwards. "Wow," I mouthed.
The tunnel,
if anything, was just as grimy if not more grimy than
the others. More a dust-grime than a grease-grime. The
spaces between the concrete supports grew further and
further apart as we moved on and down. Another garbage
train passed by, this time on the tracks we had just
left. I shot Kevin a dark look.
"No accounting
for danger, eh, Mr. Safety?" he said lightly. "True
adventurers -- seekers -- can't avoid it." Then, almost
as a peace offering, he added, "The third rail's live
here, too, so watch it."
We were once
again in an enclosed tunnel, lit by a chain of lights
along the wall. Every so often there was a door marked
with a name so bureaucratic that it may as well have
been Sanskrit: East Holdings Vestibule.
I started
to see graffiti along the walls, not your sophisticated
hiphop pieces but more your rocker scrawls: Motorhead,
Iron Maiden, and the like. It deflated me a little bit
-- we weren't exactly the first ones through here --
but it also made me feel a little safer that we were
walking along a beaten path.
My feeling
of safety dissipated a little as the cheesy metal band
graffiti gave way to more heavy-duty shit. Names I recognized
from reading Lovecraft, runes, less dismissible markings.
Kevin was walking ahead, silently, his head not noticeably
turning to look at the walls -- he'd seen it before,
I guess. He stopped when he came to the altar, though.
I would have
missed it. In the wall of the tunnel, there was a half
circle carved out, about eight feet high. Kevin pulled
a zippo out of his pocket and leant down, lighting stubs
of candles I didn't realize were there. His movements
were smooth and serious and he stood up and watched
the flame for a moment. I couldn't crack a joke, which
is what every amazed bone in my body wanted to do, so
I tore my eyes away from Kevin's shadowed face and looked
at the candles myself.
Continuing
from the carved alcove was a line that closed the circle.
Within the circle was -- of course -- a pentagram. It
looked like it was actually carved into the concrete,
but I couldn't imagine how or why.
"What --"
was all I was able to stammer out. I wasn't frightened
as much as amazed. How cliche! I mean, would the hooded
dudes be coming out with the virginal sacrifice now?
"Just something
we did as kids," Kevin said as he leant over to blow
out the flames. (I was just glad he didn't extinguish
them with his fingers.) "I'm superstitious, I admit
it. That's why midnight would have been better."
He waggled his finger at me as he said it.
I shrugged
and looked away, and my eyes fell across a piece of
graffiti on the opposite wall. It was a scrawled pentagram
with a women's symbol attached, the words SATANIC FEMINISM
beneath it.
I laughed,
a little nervously, and pointed.
Kevin walked
over to it and lifted a foot, smudging it. It had been
written in chalk. "There's no respect left in this ironic
age," he said in a musing tone, obliterating the chalk
scuff by deliberate scuff.
###
When I tell
people this story, this is the part where they break
in with "Where did you find this freak?!"
So I'll assume you're thinking the same thing.
It was on
a rooftop a month previous. The highest building on
campus, to be specific. I was in the habit, after my
Thursday class, of checking the door to the roof. It
was just an extra floor up, so I would just go up, check,
then go two flights down and take the elevator from
there.
And one fine
June day it was open.
There is
nothing quite like the smooth turn of a usually locked
knob. I checked to confirm that it was unlocked on both
sides before I let it click close behind me.
The rooftop
was as glorious as I had imagined. A great view of the
York University campus below, a terrifically blue sky
above, and, straight ahead, a guy striding purposefully
towards me.
Shit.
I quelled
the primordial fight-flee instinct. Nothing screams
guilty as loudly as running.
"You're not
supposed to be in this area," he said in clipped tones.
"Oh," I said.
"The door was unlocked... I guess I went up an extra
flight. I have a class on the 25th floor."
"Not bad,
not bad..." Kevin said, smiling. "Good eye contact,
calm and assured, plausible reason." He stuck out his
hand and we did a one-pump that felt like a secret handshake.
I was a dilettante
next to him, a dabbler -- he'd actually learned to pick
locks, and was to blame for the rooftop door being open.
He wanted an acolyte, someone with the same strange
sensibility of wonder and curiosity, someone to buy
him beer.
In the bar
after a foray into some abandoned wing of a hospital,
I welded the friendship with a random observation.
I lifted
the fifth mug of draft to my lips and pulled it away,
overcoming my self-consciousness. "In a way, the places
we're going -- they're like these grey husks that bureaucracy
sheds. These huge... insect skins."
I could actually
see it in his eyes that it made a sudden and complete
sense to him. I smiled, giddy with the pleasure of something
well said. I had been rolling it around in my head since
the second beer, but it took a while to break the sound
barrier.
He stood
and lifted his beer. "To the insectile husks of the
system," he said grandly to the bar at large, and there
was a dull roar of approval and clinking.
###
So I had
followed this guy, who I knew nothing about other than
that I had a dim reflection of his obsession, up into
to the heights of skyscrapers and down into the bowels
of the earth.
Now, as we
entered the fabled Lower Bay Station, it was a bit of
a letdown. The lettering on the wall read CHARON.
"What," I
intoned campily, "Have you led me into the pits of hell?"
I had to say something to break the weird tension.
"That's from
when they were filming a movie down here," he explained.
"There's the real lettering." It read BAY, not even
LOWER BAY, I was disappointed to see. I had heard whispers
of this ghost station for years, and wanted it to come
complete with hordes of treasure, or at least a secret
library. But instead, it was just a dirtier than average
station.
"I'm gonna
take a look around," I said, and Kevin nodded absently.
I almost said I hoped he wouldn't start any black masses
when I was away, but I was still too tense to joke around.
There was
a big fence on the platform around a storage area. Mostly
what was in there were stairs for escalators in various
states of disrepair. I wondered how many tax dollars
were lost when plans for the route which were to use
this station were abandoned. I stared at the underside
of an escalator stair for the pure joy of seeing the
underside of anything usually upright.
I rounded
the storage space and noticed that between the fence
and the wall there was a four foot gap littered with
debris. A garage sale painting, a few inexplicable photos
-- one of a beaming guy behind the wheel of his/a car
-- not enough artefacts to form any sort of profile
of the person who left them. A subway worker (I imagined
the proud auto owner in uniform) may have decided to
cheer the place up, perhaps. Kevin approached while
I savoured the mystery.
"Whattaya
figure?" I gestured at the photo where it lay.
Kevin picked
it up. "Car isn't new. This isn't one of them check-out-me-in-my-new-wheel
shots."
"Might be
used." I scanned the face for signs of shock, Blue eyes,
bristle-balding cut, big-ass grin, no shock. "Doesn't
look like a caught-unawares shot either."
"Whatever,"
Kevin said, slipping it into his back pocket. "It's
an odd souvenir." Kevin used odd as a synonym for good,
and I had seen his collection of exploration mementoes.
"Got something
to show ya," he said, jerking his head in the direction.
I followed. He was in the habit of doing that silently
in more sensitive areas. Made me feel a little like
a horse, but I got over the indignity -- where we went
usually made up for it.
He pushed
through a grey door ("picked it" in an answer to my
unasked question) and closed it behind us. The darkness
lasted just long enough to make me wonder why I get
involved with people I hardly know who are into satanic
rites-- and then the florescents noisily sputtered to
life.
The room
we were in was small but uncluttered -- practically
empty, really, except for the control board and microphone.
The control board was spotted with buttons, which (I
was relieved to see) were unmarked. Any marking, I was
sure, would be a temptation impossible for Kevin to
resist.
We were kindred
souls in many ways in regards to urban adventuring.
Kevin, however, was far more interactive than I. He
had pulled a fire alarm ("I knew it was dead," he almost
convinced me, "I just dig how it feels.") and another
time--
Kevin right
then, snapped the control board to life. I opened my
mouth to protest, but Kevin lifted a tense finger. With
his other hand he adjusted the microphone and I could
tell from the echoey metallic scrunching that it was
on.
"23 Bay 23
Bay 23 Bay," is what he said, and his soft voice bounced
around the room with a slight edge of feedback. Or what
I thought he said. He made a clicking sound with his
throat and, just when I was waiting for his rendition
of Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It," he shut
everything down.
I was so
scared my stomach was clenching. Kevin stared silently
at the board, his hand still touching the mike, and
I tried to form words. None of it made sense. Why would
he do something so ludicrously dangerous as speak over
the system-wide intercom? Why was he standing there
so frozen and creepy? Why did he choose to send out
a code that meant nothing?
###
Kevin had
taught me the Toronto Transit Commission's subway codes.
I had always wondered what those mysterious messages
had meant, and over lunch Kevin told them to me as if
passing on some kind of oral tradition.
"Repeat after
me: 99 Finch 99 Finch 99 Finch."
I humoured
him. "99 Finch 99 Finch 99 Finch."
"That means
they need a mechanic at Finch station," he said, finally
extricating his peanut butter sandwich from the saran
wrap. "506 Kennedy 506 Kennedy 506 Kennedy."
I waited,
but finally repeated it. "506 Kennedy 506 Kennedy 506
Kennedy."
"They need
a custodial crew at Kennedy."
I nodded.
"Huh."
"77 College
77 College 77 College."
"77 College
77 College 77 College."
"A jumper."
"What?"
Kevin had
finished his sandwich and was palming his wrap into
a ball. "Someone's jumped in front of a train. A suicide."
I rolled
my eyes. "Bullshit. How often would they need that?"
"I've heard
77 four times so far. Gives me a chill each time."
"I can't
even remember hearing about subway suicides. Your info
is wrong, man."
Now Kevin
rolled his eyes. "You don't hear about it because the
newspapers agree to keep it out. Otherwise people would
do it even more often, just for the publicity."
He tossed
the cellophane ball at my forehead. It bounced off and
rolled to a stop near the salt shaker.
###
Kevin had
taught me all the codes he knew, and 23 wasn't one of
them.
He let go
of the mike and nodded for me to leave the room. I did,
hoping we'd be making a quick getaway. Maybe he knew
some alternate exit...?
At first,
on the platform, I mistook the vibration for shaky legs.
But when I paused to wait for Kevin to close the door,
I was undeceived.
It couldn't
be a response to the call, I thought, not this fast.
I could tell that Kevin felt it too, in the slow way
he turned around.
His eyes
were wide. "It... worked."
I would have
run at that point, I like to think, if I could have
figured out where to run. But the growing sound came
from everywhere, and there were no lights in the tunnel.
I was sure that the one I picked would lead to sudden
death.
I couldn't
bear to look at Kevin. I was sure he'd be grinning,
and I'm sure I would have decked him. As it was, I soon
had other things to look at.
It was the
squeaking that I heard first, then the rumbling. From
the blackness of the tunnel burst a series of harnessed
rats the size of ponies. Dust and grime covered their
coats, and, I saw as they loped past us (amazing the
detail-observance intense fear can inspire) they blinked
constantly with the dust.
I forced
my head to look, past the dozen or so pairs of rats,
down that bizarre train of giant vermin to its burden.
It was a Victorian carriage, wooden but for the giant
wheels of pocked stone. The implausible wheels were
slowing even as I looked upon them.
The figure
holding the reigns was a skeleton. I had a brief moment
of hope then -- this couldn't be real. It had to be
a funhouse horror. Kevin had brought me to an old abandoned
amusement park, and this was a projection. The cameras
were well hidden, probably near the tracks.
The skeleton
stood up, set the reins down and hopped to the platform.
It was the click of his foot bones on the ceramic surface
that caused me to actually shit my pants.
It was a
small squirt, thankfully, but I could feel it there,
warm and cradled in by my underwear elastic. I had a
moment of gratefulness for my briefs before my terror
returned full force.
The skeleton
moved without the jerky edge that animatronic technology
and frame-by-frame animation had taught me to associate
with skeletons. He walked towards us, slowly and with
a slight hunch.
"Somebody
call for a taxi?" he said. He said it jovially, but
I couldn't tell if he was grinning or not.
One of the
rats snorted.
Kevin didn't
reply until the skeleton was standing right in front
of us. "This is a taxi?"
The skeleton's
head tilted up a little as he said. "It's a joke, son."
I imagine he would have rolled his eyes if he had had
any. "I'm more like a bus driver. I got my route. Sometimes
I pick up people, sometimes it's empty."
He looked
around at his carriage. "Lot of the time it's empty."
He touched the back of his skull, as if he forgot he
had no hair to smooth. "Like now, for instance."
I noticed
his bones were worn smooth and yellowed in some areas,
not the bleach white I would expect.
"How much...
is the fare?" Kevin said, breathless but his eyes lucid.
"You've paid
it." The skeleton turned and walked towards the carriage.
"Let's go,"
Kevin said, pulling at my arm. "What's that smell?"
To avoid
the question, I asked him, "Where does it go?"
"To the waylaid
way-stations," he said. "All the lost and unused places
of the world. But it comes back, we can always get back."
The skeleton
was boosting himself back up to his seat. If he had
just leapt back into his seat, I wouldn't have gone.
But it was a struggle, and while climbing up the stone
wheel he got his foot caught in a crevice. There was
a small snap as he yanked it out and a small white bone,
perhaps a toe, fell to the tracks.
"Fuck," the
skeleton sighed, and sat down.
My curiosity
hit a critical mass with that, and my limbs moved towards
the carriage.
#
The tunnel picture
was taken by Ninjalicious.
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