Welcome to Fear City, page 25
Most of the buildings were simple row houses covered in signage and aluminum siding, giving them that postwar, modern feeling. Lintels were chopped, stoops moved or removed, a sprinkling of windows broken and boarded up. People had lived here for generations, and Sylvie could feel it without touching anything. SoHo might feel like that, someday, she thought, but for now the only commonality was the trash and graffiti.
As they waited for traffic to ease or the light to change (whichever came first), Sylvie noticed the shifting form of a brunette girl slipping through the dense clusters of people around her. And then—there, again, with her hair in a ponytail this time, just a flash as she walked over a newer portion of sidewalk and disappeared.
Rynn, as in life, not in the throes of what she probably thought was her death. Sylvie held her breath, unwilling even to blink, then wishing she could shut her eyes and walk without opening them again. It was inevitable that Rynn would run into her, and through her, though it shouldn’t have been. She should have been contained in the brick and mortar of the places she knew, but instead she peppered the street: Rynn as a small girl, Rynn as a lanky pre-teen, Rynn as Sylvie knew her but wearing different clothes. The different clothes were more jarring than she expected. Rynn existed one way and one way only, with a single wardrobe like a cartoon character, and now she was coming back to life.
Except that she wasn’t.
Marybeth and Marz could tell by Sylvie’s face that something was going on. Gary stayed behind them, hands in his pockets, completely oblivious.
“What is it?” Marybeth whispered in Sylvie’s ear.
“She’s all over the place. Rynn is.”
“For real?” Again, Marz looked around them as though she would see something, too.
The activity on Broadway helped mesh Rynn with her surroundings, making her less obvious sometimes, less surprising, but they weren’t on Broadway for more than a couple blocks before they had to turn onto their first cross street.
It was a sunny, sweltering day, though, and everyone was out. A fire hydrant soaked the street, kids screaming and running through the spray in sagging clothes or swimsuits. Every stoop was occupied, every fence a leaning post as people stopped to chat.
Rynn was here, too, flickering in and out of existence, wearing all four seasons’ worth of clothes, talking to an invisible friend or family member, needing her hand held to cross the street or running into it without looking. She went up one stoop—not her house, because this wasn’t Bushwick Avenue where she lived. She was young and wore a little sweater, a frilly dress, and walked right through a man on a rocker. He didn’t stir from his afternoon nap.
Sylvie was almost getting used to the sight of her—almost—after three long blocks.
“The corner, up there—that’s where it used to be,” said Marz, pointing up ahead of them.
Sylvie knew. Not because of some intuition, but because the buildings began to look shabbier and shabbier. Some lots were burnt out completely, others condemned for no visible reason. Most of the ones that ran up against where the demolished house should be were boarded up and left to rot. There were no people on the sidewalks except Rynn, and the only cars on the street sat on blocks and were coated in rust.
All they could see of the corner, as they got nearer, were overgrown grasses and weeds writhing in and around a sagging chain link fence.
“There’s nobody out here,” said Marybeth.
Except for Rynn—Rynn was everywhere. Turning the corner over and over and over again, mostly from the same direction they had come from.
Marybeth looked behind them. No one was looking their way. They might have walked behind a veil.
“This is pretty bleak shit,” said Gary, his face tense, frowning.
Sylvie hoped, desperately, that the whole lot had been turned over and filled in, new houses built, new sidewalks laid, so that nothing Rynn touched was there any longer and she wouldn’t have to witness the shooting from a whole new perspective. But as soon as the rest of the lot crept into view, as soon as they made the turn, Sylvie gasped. She couldn’t help it. Rynn was everywhere. She moved over and through herself, crossing the street, back and forth and back and forth, retracing her steps on the sidewalk until Sylvie thought it was a wonder there was any sidewalk left.
But the empty lot was the worst of it, really, because her actions weren’t so uniform. She started and stopped, short circuiting like a wire in a storm, appearing here, and there, clearly interacting with people and objects and rooms that no longer existed. Floors that no longer existed. The sight of her hovering, running, laughing, talking was disorienting. Her voice fluttered like an echo around them. Sylvie had never heard her speak before, but it was no different than standing in a crowd—every word blended together into noise.
Sylvie didn’t even notice that the block was empty, because she couldn’t. To her, it was teeming, overburdened with the brief life of one girl.
Sylvie forgot that her brother was there, that he didn’t know.
“She’s everywhere,” she wailed. “My God.”
“I wish I could see it,” said Marz.
“No, you don’t.”
“What do you mean, she?” asked Gary. “Who do you see?” He looked pale, afraid, and grabbed Sylvie by the arm as though he was going to run off with her.
Sylvie then realized what he was probably thinking, at least a little, and she stammered out, “It’s not—it’s not what you saw.”
Marz started walking toward the property first, and Marybeth gave Sylvie a meaningful look. “You still wanna do this?”
“No, but I have to.”
The only consolation was how, from this distance, Sylvie couldn’t really pick out one moment from another, and that Rynn’s presence around the ghost of the house was fragmented, like the scene in Hell’s Kitchen. She was always alone, even when it was clear she wasn’t.
It felt awful, walking through the palimpsest of Rynn. Not that Sylvie could feel or touch anything, and not that her view of the past was as solid as watching a movie, either, but she kept flinching, anyway, and tried to concentrate, tried to do what she could to make it go, like she did with other buildings and their people. She even stopped and touched the sidewalk. Nothing happened.
“What do you see, Sylvie?” Gary asked, his voice tight, ready to crack.
“It’s complicated!” she repeated.
“I told you about—you can tell me what’s happening,” he insisted.
“Just—just give me a minute, okay? I—” Could she do that? Could she tell him? “I’ll explain it after we’re done. But I promise it won’t hurt you.”
“Why won’t you tell me?”
Sylvie moved away from him. “I have told you! I’ve told you and told you! All my life I’ve told you!”
The block had the usual turn-of-the-century row houses and a couple of two-floor standalones that must have gone up during or after the war. The sidewalks were covered in loose paper and trash that blew in from every place else. The only car on the street was parked in a short driveway overrun now with weeds. From the look of it, twenty years ago someone left it there and never came back.
These would have been prime canvases for skilled kids across the neighborhood and beyond, but there wasn’t a mark on any surface.
Marilyn had been right to say it felt like this place didn’t exist, that people didn’t notice it, or didn’t want to notice it, even if they couldn’t avoid walking past. Whatever happened on this block, it was nobody’s business but the Lord’s, and the Lord had turned His back.
“It’s so quiet,” said Marybeth, and Sylvie wished she could hear that silence.
If she could, she would know it was not a peaceful, pastoral quiet. None of the city noise carried on the wind. No distant sound of the train along Broadway. No elderly Brooklynites sitting on their stoops or front porches. No kids making a playground out of the street. No stray cats. No barking dogs. No birds, not even a pigeon. No cars passing through or pausing with the windows down and music up. Latin and Funk had no place here. Nor any barbecues, nor laughter. It was like stepping into a vacuum.
The double lot that the old house once occupied still had more of the house than Sylvie was expecting. She had imagined a hole, or a pile of rubble, like so many empty lots in her city, but the remains of the fieldstone mansion looked down on her from a steep incline, and the demolition was crude. In fact, several walls around the first floor hadn’t been completely razed, and they crumbled now due to the elements. The front steps still stood, leading down into a foundation filled with the detritus of the upper floors.
Slightly to the back of it was a giant, barren, old growth tree, which had a large gash across its bark, like the demolition was supposed to take that, too, and failed just as efficiently. The gash ran through a gaping hole big enough to swallow a person. It was a wonder no storm had ever felled it. It was as tall as a church spire and completely dead.
Marybeth and Sylvie, with Gary walking a funeral march right behind them, stopped alongside Marz at the fence.
Already, over Rynn’s fluttering voice, Sylvie could hear the gunshots—three, this time. Rynn burst out of the house, right at the top of a porch or veranda that was no longer there—there was one hit, to the shoulder, just as Sylvie knew by heart.
Then that invisible hand pulled her backward. The vision fragmented, appearing elsewhere—what must have been interior walls, now outside, giving up their secrets. Two more shots unloaded into Rynn’s chest, blowing it apart, and the memory abruptly stopped. Sylvie was so focused on it that she saw nothing else. How could that girl have survived such a thing?
Over the fence she went.
“Sylvie!” Gary called to her, but he didn’t wait. He and the girls climbed over next, landing in overgrown, dry grass dotted with broken bits of the old mansion.
There were no memories of Rynn’s body being dragged out, or left behind, or anything else after the last two shots. Not at this side of the house, anyway. Sylvie marched up the hill, steady, and walked up the badly damaged marble steps.
“Sylvie, be careful!” everyone called to her, but she didn’t hear.
Through the gap where the doors used to be, she reached in, closed her eyes, and touched the broken interior wall. She concentrated on Rynn, peeling away the other layers of history for this one alone. Her heart beat so hard she could barely stand still.
She heard screaming, first. Not the one she knew by heart, but the screams of multiple people. A woman. A child. Then another. Then an older boy. They were cut off, one by one, until Sylvie heard Rynn and quickly opened her eyes as the first shot hit. It went right through Sylvie’s chest and she gasped, though she felt nothing, and she stepped out of the way, as though it mattered.
A dark-haired man of medium height and thin build grabbed Rynn by the hair and began to drag her back. The size of him belied his apparent strength. He had been there all along, but Sylvie had never seen him before. Rynn hit at his wrist with her good arm, kicking and scrambling and sobbing—the scene in Hell’s Kitchen had cut off by now—and as soon as he threw her back into what was once a foyer instead of a hole in the ground, he shot her four more times, blowing out her chest, exposing bone and tissue through her purple sweater. Sylvie couldn’t help shutting her eyes in the middle of it, and when she opened them, when it was quiet again, Rynn’s body was just lying there. Her eyes were open and unseeing—she had to be dead. The wounds gaped, ribs smiling like bared teeth, and blood pooled beneath her while the man stood above her, breathing hard, laughing or crying or maybe both.
Sylvie waited, her heart beating as hard as Rynn’s wasn’t—because it wasn’t. Because Rynn was dead.
“There!” The sound of his voice startled Sylvie so badly she almost drew her hand back. He looked up and bellowed at nothing and no one in the now empty house. His voice echoed off walls that no longer stood. “Take your pick!”
As he walked away, he had to step over two other bodies, and as he did so he howled in rage or pain or something worse than both, and Sylvie immediately let the other memories of the house pour back in before he ended his life, too.
She took her hand away.
Stepping back, she realized she was shaking. She vaguely noticed her brother standing out in the weeds, watching as Marz and Marybeth investigated the injury to the tree. There were no shadow figures, no whispers carrying in on the breeze.
Through the other piles of rubble, Rynn carried on, laughing and talking with people Sylvie couldn’t see. Sylvie cast one look back as she heard the shot, straight out of Hell’s Kitchen, and noticed Rynn standing in the reconstructed hall—not staring, really, but looking at something. Then she appeared to open something, like a door—and it was difficult to see with so many other versions of Rynn tripping through her, so Sylvie touched her hand back to the wall and saw not just Rynn, but centuries of other people coming in and out of a jib door that Rynn now nudged open, too. Sylvie could watch her progress without touching anything, so she pulled her hand away.
She had to move, though, walking across a pile of boards and rubble to where Gary was standing at the dark maw of the old cellar, staring into it with a look of trepidation. His armpits and collar were damp with sweat.
She decided to walk around to him, because she didn’t want him over there on his own. It gave her a closer view of what Rynn was up to, anyway, and she stood next to her brother and watched.
Rynn had descended a set of (invisible) steps and emerged into the cellar that had hooked Gary’s attention. There wasn’t much there now, only some old, rotting shelves and more rubble from other parts of the house. Whatever was down there back then, though, made Rynn gasp.
Sylvie had to let more history in to see what Rynn did, because there was nothing in the room with her.
The sight was confusing, then it was ugly. The room was a cellar, a larder, shrinking and expanding in size over the years and changes to the house. And there were women down there, dead and alive. Women with and without their heads. Men coming in—one in particular—to do the job. To bury their bodies in the soil—gone now, and history showed their bones uncovered and lifted away by different men in a different time.
But what had stolen Rynn’s breath away was something even more disturbing—a tall, strange woman with long, brown hair that hung lank in her face and down her back. Her skin was mottled gray-green. Her wide-set, glassy eyes didn’t seem fully human, nor did the shape of her face, which seemed like too many ideas for too many faces in one body. Nothing quite sat where you would expect it to be. Sylvie was thankful for all the other activity that passed in front of her and across time, but the woman was more than a head taller than anyone who came down there and impossible to miss. She didn’t seem to notice Rynn, but Rynn noticed her. Sylvie took her hand away and Rynn remained.
This was weird within weird.
Sylvie climbed into the cellar and touched one of the old shelves with one hand. She stuck her other hand into the overturned dirt, until she felt some rotting boards—the woman was there, still unmoved by Rynn. And then a man entered the cellar through Gary, a man too far outside of Rynn’s timeline to have overlapped. Too outside of any of the timelines this house supposedly saw. He wasn’t the same man who slaughtered the women. He would not have ever met him. He reminded Sylvie of witch trials and Pilgrims, but he was dressed informally as he went down a different set of stairs, no longer extant. There was no mansion back when this scene happened. There had been another house beneath it all, and this cellar was once a wooden lean-to with nothing in it but that woman.
The woman noticed the man at once and came forward, and he obediently held out his arm for her.
“Sssamuel,” she said, in the voice that had been knocking around in Sylvie’s head for weeks. Sylvie pulled her hands away, afraid the woman would notice her through time.
“Sylvie, what are you—” Gary was speaking, but Sylvie gulped the air and dug both her hands into the dirt. Something was happening here that she needed to see.
Rynn had a close view of the man—Samuel—and the unnamed woman. Rynn shouldn’t have a view of this at all, but she did, and as the woman leaned down, Rynn covered her mouth and fled. Sylvie covered her mouth for another reason.
Two, really, but one more than the other.
That woman had bitten the man’s arm.
But Rynn could see it.
It was in the forgotten past and Rynn could see it.
Lost in what this might mean, frozen as her whole world suddenly shrank, Sylvie was there as Rynn returned—a different Rynn, a different day. Laughing, covering her mouth in a happier mood, she burst down the steps, and she wasn’t alone. The father—the man who had ruthlessly taken a shotgun to his own family, had rendered Rynn’s chest to pulp and exposed rib—was holding onto her waist, and once they reached the cellar floor, they began to kiss.
Sylvie pulled her hand away and averted her eyes to avoid seeing whatever they were going to do next. Then she backed up and returned to the grass, brushing the dirt from her skin, picking at it from beneath her nails. Gary had moved on, but he was looking at her with as much confusion as Sylvie must have had on her own face.
What the hell went on in this place? The papers said it was mass murder. Marilyn said it was ghosts. They didn’t say anything about a woman feasting on blood. And then there was Rynn.
Sylvie’s eyes followed Rynn everywhere else now. She had to know—she had to see if what she thought was true was true.
Everywhere Rynn paused, Sylvie attempted to see what she was looking at. And every reaction Rynn had, every way her head moved, matched the scene that Sylvie saw unfolding. A German-speaking man pointing at something in the paper, laughing and laughing until a woman came into the room and he showed her whatever it was. She started laughing, too. Rynn smiled at the scene. Sylvie was in shock.
Rynn could see everything Sylvie could. Rynn could see the past.
