Beauty and the Beast (5 page)

The origins of the tunnels were numerous. In the beginning there had been natural caves and passageways. Around one-hundred years before Father founded his community, the Chinese immigrants had honeycombed this cave network with hundreds of miles of additional tunnels Father’s people were now occupying. The Chinese had done this to escape the hatred and intolerance of their new foreign home. They abandoned the tunnels they had built, after they had established a strong community in

Manhattan’s Chinatown. Many of the adjoining tunnels and passageways were left over from abandoned storm drains, subway stations, steam conduits, and other subterranean tunnels resulting from changes in the city planning. When Diana first began looking for Vincent during her investigation into Catherine’s death, she had even gone to the New York City Hall of Records to try to find maps of the tunnels under Catherine’s building. She had been told about the many hundreds of miles of unmapped tunnels resulting from such changes in the city’s plans and in the subway system in particular.

Father’s community had taken advantage of every natural resource they had discovered. They had located underground rivers, waterfalls, springs, and even hot springs for bathing chambers. They took advantage of all of the electrical lights abandoned by the city, and they carefully maintained the electrical lines, water pipes, sewer lines, and gas mains running through their community for the world above, so no workers would need to be sent down for repairs. That way they stayed hidden, and they performed a vital service for the city which unknowingly housed them. To complete their lighting needs, they supplemented the limited electrical lighting with candles they made and with oil lamps and torches. Their engineers had seen to it that there were ventilation shafts for sufficient air circulation to safely burn the lamps and candles.

Since a good number of Father’s community members

were elderly, death was inevitable. The tunnels were mainly rock, so traditional burial below was impossible. Fortunately, Father still had friends in the medical community above, and they understood the desire these people had for privacy and secrecy. With the help of the community engineers, tunnel access to the city morgue was built in order to transport the dead covertly above for whatever was desired in the way of autopsies, death certificates, cremation, or embalming before being returned below for funeral services. Father’s community had discovered a series of small caverns far below their community in which they constructed burial catacombs.

About five years after Father founded this community below, a new reason for secrecy came into their lives. Vincent was found abandoned as a tiny infant in the bitter cold of winter. Father knew that if anyone in the world above ever saw him, he would be hunted and caged, made an object to study, and would die in captivity, or he would be killed outright as a result of ignorance and fear. Father adopted Vincent as his own son. Vincent’s joyful acceptance of everything life had to offer, even though he had every reason to curse fate, became a symbol of hope for Father’s community. Vincent drew them closer together as they protected him, and he eventually protected them.

The dire danger that the world above posed for Vincent was tragically realized when he was captured, while he was above one night, by a biologist and his graduate

student assistant from a local university. They caged Vincent to study him, and they were about to reveal him to the world. Catherine managed to track Vincent down from the serial numbers on the tranquilizer darts she found outside the drainage tunnel in Central Park. She appealed to the biologist’s humanity, warning him that Vincent was dying in captivity. When the biologist resolved to release Vincent, his assistant stabbed him to death in his greed for acclaim, and then Vincent had to kill the assistant to protect Catherine. Their secret was still safe, but it was at a terrible price.

The only other dark cloud hanging over this nearly perfect world had been a brilliant chemist named John Pater. At first he seemed to share Father’s high ideals and was a strong supporter in helping to build their community. He even invented their communication system which involved tapping on the underground pipes in a unique variation of Morse code. Gradually though, John’s true agenda became apparent, and he evolved into a sinister threat to the community. He referred to himself as “Paracelsus, The Alchemist.” His desire was not to lead and guide, like Father, but rather to conquer and rule over those he viewed as lesser beings: the uneducated, the disillusioned, and the emotionally vulnerable who were desperately seeking leadership. Father successfully thwarted every attempt Paracelsus made to take advantage of weakness, and he grew to hate Father. After Paracelsus murdered his own wife with poison, and the community was forced to exile him, his evil actions continued to cause great harm to Father’s world and to Vincent in particular, until his death at Vincent’s hands.

The first time Diana had been brought to Vincent’s chamber, she had recognized the two books, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens and The Poems of Dylan Thomas, on Vincent’s night stand. They were displayed together with a conk sea shell, from which was hanging Catherine’s crystal necklace. Great Expectations had been the first book Vincent had read to Catherine, after he found her with her face slashed, left for dead in Central Park. Father had treated her injuries, which also included broken ribs, and Vincent had spent ten days nursing her and reading to her until she was strong enough to go home and undergo plastic surgery to repair the damage to her face. The poem by the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas,

“And Death Shall Have No Dominion,” had become significant during Vincent’s mental illness brought on by Paracelsus’ deception and again later when Catherine had been killed. Diana knew about these things from Catherine’s journals, which she had studied in minute detail when she was first profiling Catherine to try to solve her murder. Catherine had sent the conk shell to Vincent from a California beach when she had to leave him to work there for a few days. Diana had realized at once that the night stand was a shrine to Catherine, the first thing Vincent saw upon arising, and the last thing he looked at before retiring.

Diana had been welcomed warmly by the community below when Vincent brought her here for the baby’s Naming Ceremony, at which time Vincent announced that he had decided to name his child for Father, whose real name was Jacob Wells. “It is comforting to know that I do have a place down here, Vincent, in your world. I wish that I could have had you for my big brother when I was growing up.”

“Were you lonely as a child, Diana?” Vincent asked her.

“I guess I shouldn’t have been. I have a great family, and my sister and I are quite close, but I was lonely. No one in my family thought the way I did. I annoyed everyone with my constant analyzing and profiling.”

Diana replied.

Vincent smiled, “You do have a unique mind.”

Diana smiled back at him. “That’s the difference. To you it is unique. To my family, it was obnoxious. I feel so much more comfortable here.”

“Without your unique mind, my son might have been lost to us forever.” Vincent told her with an expression of gratitude.

Just then, Cullen and Pascal appeared in the doorway carrying a very large and heavy rocking chair. It was almost comical to watch them, because they were such different sized men. Cullen looked like the classic artist. He was tall, and very good looking, with finely chiseled features. He had a relaxed, thoughtful approach to

everything. Pascal, on the other hand, was small, although handsomely proportioned, and very energetic.

He had to be to keep their pipe-tapping system of communication running smoothly.

“Where would you like for us to put this?” asked Cullen.

“Oh, Cullen that is gorgeous! Did you make it?” Diana’s eyes became huge.

“I did. It is my gift for the little one.” Cullen replied.

Vincent stepped forward to help Cullen and Pascal with the rocker, and they set it down by Little Jacob’s bassinet. “You are so talented, Cullen. Thank you! Let us take a good look at this! Look, Diana, the likenesses are perfect!”

“Oh, how beautiful it is!” She stared in disbelief at the exquisite craftsmanship. The high quality style of the brilliantly polished cherry-wood chair itself was unique, with its smooth curves and intricately turned legs. However, what Diana and Vincent were in awe of was the carving at the top of the back of the chair. Cullen had carved in relief a perfect likeness of Vincent, with his arms protectively around Catherine in front of him, holding Little Jacob in her arms. As if that poignant scene wasn’t enough, he had also carved a perfect likeness of Diana in the background, holding a sword and shield, looking like a warrior princess. “Is that really me?” Diana asked.

“That’s the way I see you, little Avenging Angel,” Cullen answered.

“I don’t know what to say! I guess the only thing I can do to thank you for including me is to sit in it.” Diana immediately sat down in the rocker with the baby and began rocking and humming a lullaby to Little Jacob.

“Well, I guess we timed that just right!” Cullen laughed.

Vincent smiled warmly. “You did, Cullen. They make a pretty picture, don’t they?”

“They certainly do. Well, 111 leave you now, so she can put him to sleep.” Cullen walked toward the doorway.

“Good-bye Cullen, and thank you again.” Vincent walked with him to the doorway.

“You are very welcome!” Cullen looked pleased over their admiration of his work.

Pascal stayed behind with Vincent and Diana. He smiled as he watched Diana with the baby. With his finely tuned hearing, Pascal was the hub of this world’s communication system. Born below, and trained by his father on the pipes, he could distinguish precisely where tapping originated, what type of pipe was being used, and then separate and relay simultaneous messages coming in, so they all reached their intended destination. It was hard, demanding work, and he loved it. He was close to the same age as Vincent, and the two had grown up together like siblings.

“Pascal, it is so rarely that we see you anywhere but in the pipe-monitoring chamber! Who is manning the pipes now?” Vincent asked.

“I left Zach in charge. He has learned the code very quickly, and I think he enjoys it almost as much as I do. I just couldn’t resist seeing you get this. Cullen had been working on it ever since we learned that you had a baby with Catherine and were searching for him. Well, this is about as long as I can stand being away from those pipes, so I’m going to head back there now.” Pascal strode toward the door.

“Good-bye, Pascal,” Vincent and Diana spoke simultaneously and laughed. “Thank you for helping Cullen to bring this to us,” Vincent said as he walked with Pascal to the doorway.

After Pascal disappeared down the passageway,

Vincent returned and sat on his bed, lying back against his pillows. Diana watched him take a beautiful white ceramic rose out of the suede pouch around his neck.

She stopped humming. “Vincent that is lovely. Where did you get it?”

“Catherine gave this to me when we celebrated the first anniversary of when I found her. She told me that it had been given to her by her mother when she was little to comfort her whenever she was sad or afraid. She made this pouch necklace herself for it, so I could wear it and have something of hers always near me.”

He picked up Catherine’s crystal necklace from around the conk shell and handed it to Diana to see. It was a two-inch long pillar-shaped crystal with unique angles, coming to a point on the lower end, securely held at the upper end by a finely crafted gold ring with teeth, attached to a delicate gold chain. “I brought the crystal back from the Crystal Cavern far below here, and Mouse shaped it, set it, and made the gold chain for it. That was my anniversary gift to Catherine. I wanted her to have something from our world, and she never took it off. I found it after her death, in the cave where she pulled me back from madness, after Paracelsus kidnapped Father and deceived me. She must have lost it in the struggle with me.” Vincent took the necklace back from Diana, putting it back around the conk shell, and lay back again on his bed as Diana resumed humming. He fell asleep to her humming and the steady soft tapping on the pipes of community members talking with one another in other parts of the tunnels, with the rose still in his hand.

As she hummed to Little Jacob in her arms, Diana’s mind went back over the recent terrifying events, events which nearly claimed the life of Vincent’s child. With one emphatic word, “VINCENTF she had managed to stop him from tearing limb-from-limb the man, Gabriel, who was responsible for Catherine’s death, and who was about to snuff the life out of his baby as well. Vincent had been vastly relieved to see that Diana was alive, because Gabriel had lied and had told him she had been killed on his orders by his men. She had wanted to spare Vincent further psychological devastation which killing Gabriel would have caused.

Gabriel was a master manipulator, and had managed

to goad Elliott Burch, a wealthy architect and real estate developer, into betraying Vincent. Elliott had been in love with Catherine from the moment he first laid eyes on her. Vincent had revealed himself to Elliott after Catherine’s death, in a desperate attempt to find his baby, and Elliott had agreed to help him. In a moment of jealousy over Catherine’s love for Vincent, and in his own greedy desire to have his empire restored by the very man who had destroyed it, Elliott had succumbed to his human weaknesses. He had led Gabriel to Vincent on the boat, the Compass Rose, where he had arranged to meet Vincent with a promise of information about where Gabriel was holding his infant. In the end, though, when Elliott finally understood the depths of Vincent’s love for Catherine and her child, he threw himself in front of a bullet to save Vincent. Then Gabriel blew the boat up. Elliott didn’t survive, but Vincent managed to make it to Catherine’s grave before collapsing, which was where Diana was waiting, knowing he would eventually come there. She knew this because of her careful profiling of Catherine. Catherine had many books given to her by Vincent, with love notes signed by him inside the covers, and references to him were all over her journals. When Diana had found the book of poetry with And Death Shall Have no Dominion by Dylan Thomas marked, she knew Vincent would end up at her grave.