The Night Tourist (4 page)

Jack scurried across the two-by-four. When he turned around, Euri was standing behind him. The beggar, however, had disappeared. “Where did he go?” Jack asked.

“Probably to bother someone else. That wasn’t so bad though, was it?”

Euri flashed him a new teacher’s slightly too enthusiastic grin. Jack could tell that she was hiding something. He looked around, wondering exactly where he was. Again, the echoing cries poured down from the ceiling. “Where are those voices coming from?”

“We’re at the bottom of the whispering gallery,” Euri said. She pointed to the pillars. “The voices travel down here, and then they boomerang back up. Want to see more?”

But before he could answer, she held up her hand and cocked her ear. Jack listened too. Loud barks were echoing toward them from a passageway behind. “I thought you said there weren’t dogs down here,” Jack said.

“There’s just one,” said Euri. “We’d better go.”

The barking sounded like it was coming from a chorus of dogs rather than just one, and it was growing louder. Jack looked at his watch. He was certain he had missed the next train and probably the one after that. But according to the watch, it was just 4:29 p.m., only fifteen minutes later than it had been when he had checked it in the whispering gallery. Jack tapped the watch’s face, but the second hand failed to move. He pulled the cell phone his father had given him out of his backpack, but it also was dead. “Maybe I should go,” Jack said. He turned back to the canal, and his stomach flip-flopped. The bridge was gone.

“You don’t understand, do you?” Euri said in a tense whisper. “The guards will be here in seconds with that disgusting dog. If they think you’re one of us trying to escape ... We’d better ...”

“Wait a second,” Jack interrupted. “What do you mean,‘one of us’?”

Euri’s eyes darted around the room.

“What are you?’” Jack demanded.

Euri pursed her lips and stared him straight in the face. “What am I?” she repeated, her voice rising. “How about
who
am I? Who! Just because I’m dead doesn’t mean I’ve become a
what
!”

“Right,” said Jack with a smile, “you’re dead.” But Euri’s sullen expression didn’t change. He suddenly noticed how pale she was, how her uniform, with its prim-collared blouse and faded plaid skirt, looked outdated. The girl in front of him was dead. He took a step backward and nearly fell. No wonder she hadn’t been afraid of being hit by the train—she was already in her grave. But it was hard to think of Euri as dead when she was standing in front of him with her arms crossed in front of her chest, looking just as alive as he did.

“Wait!” Jack said. “I’m not dead too, am I? A few days ago I was hit by a car, and then I woke up in the hospital. . . .”

Euri dismissively waved her hand. “That doctor said you were perfectly fine. And anyway, if you were dead you wouldn’t wake up in a hospital. You’d wake up on the Circle Line.” She looked away from him before quietly adding, “And you would be absolutely certain how you died.”

“The Circle Line?”

“The ferry. If you were dead, you wouldn’t cross over by bridge.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you were . . .” He paused, wondering if Euri would find the word polite. “A ghost?”

A particularly fierce-sounding bark made them both turn in the direction of the passageway. “It’s not exactly an icebreaker, okay?” Euri whispered. “‘Hi, I’m dead. Want to hang out?’ I thought we’d get to know each other first. Ease into it. But, listen, we can talk more about it later. The guards are coming, and if they find out you’re alive . . . we’ve got to hide.”

Jack studied Euri’s wan face. It was hard to believe she was lying. “Okay. Where do we go?”

Euri ran into the passageway. “This way.”

“But that’s going toward them!”

“Just trust me!”

Jack didn’t seem to have a choice. Euri ran ahead of him through the narrow dirt-walled passageway, and he followed close behind her. A rank animal smell drifted through. “What is that?” Jack whispered.

But instead of answering, Euri flung herself on her hands and knees. She pointed to a cranny in the wall. “In here!” she ordered. She slithered into it headfirst and disappeared.

Jack was suddenly alone. He looked at the hole, no bigger than an animal’s burrow.

“Jack!” Euri whispered.

With a loud snarl, something bounded toward him.

Jack dove into the tiny tunnel. Euri held her finger to her lips. Jack nodded and didn’t make a sound.

Just a few feet away, four enormous paws paced back and forth. Strings of drool pooled to the ground. A huge black head darted into the tunnel entrance, and a pair of red eyes met Jack’s. The dog bared its long, white teeth and began to bark. The smell that issued from its mouth made Jack’s stomach turn. Then another head pushed its way into the entrance and began to bark. And another. Jack gasped. All three heads were attached to the same body. It was Cerberus, the supposedly mythical three-headed dog that guarded the underworld. Luckily, he was too large to fit the rest of his body into the tunnel.

“Heel!” a deep, male voice shouted in a New York accent. “Damned mutt. He’s wedged in there so tight I can’t see past him.”

“Get up,” ordered another voice—this one commanding and cold. “He always thinks he smells something in those little tunnels. There’s no one there.”

Two of the heads yelped, but the third snapped at Jack before it was yanked away.

Jack felt a tug on his jacket. Euri motioned to him to crawl deeper into the tunnel. Long, ropelike roots hung down from the brick walls, and beetles scampered over them. As he edged forward, his backpack scraping the top of the tunnel, he whispered, “Is this the Greek underworld?”

Euri shook her head. “Nah. It’s the New York underworld. The Greek underworld’s in Astoria.”

“Astoria?”

“Yeah, Astoria, Queens. That’s where all the Greeks live.”

“If you’re dead,” said Jack, “how come I can see you?”

“Because you’re in the underworld too now,” Euri said. “The question is how you were able to see me before you crossed over. I’ve been hanging out in that station for seven years, and no one living ever has. You even convinced the old beggar to let you in. I didn’t think he would.”

“Charon,” said Jack.

“Who?”

“The old beggar. His name is Charon. In Greek mythology, he’s the gatekeeper to the underworld. He ferries the dead across the River Styx in exchange for coins.

That’s why the ancient Greeks put coins in people’s mouths after they died.”

Euri shrugged. “You’re in New York, not ancient Greece.”

“Well, subway tokens, then. Are you sure I’m not dead?”

“You didn’t find that token in your mouth, did you?”

She started to crawl forward, but Jack didn’t follow her. “Are all the dead here?”

Euri turned around. “Not all the dead. Mostly just the ones who died in New York.”

“My mother died in New York.”

“I know. You told me.”

Jack thought about his accident, how it had led him to New York, and to Euri. Maybe following her to track 61 hadn’t been a mistake. Maybe it was meant to happen, so he could find his mother. For the first time in years he allowed himself to imagine seeing her again, and his chest tightened. He took a deep breath. “Do you think I could find her?”

“It depends on whether she’s moved on yet.”

Euri began to crawl forward, and this time Jack followed her. “Moved on?”

“Yes, to Elysium.”

Jack knew that Elysium was the region of the underworld where heroes went after they died. It was supposed to be a peaceful place where the dead spent their days hunting and feasting. “Where is Elysium?” he asked.

“Somewhere in the Hamptons,” said Euri. “That’s my guess, anyway. But none of us really know because we haven’t moved on yet. And it’s impossible to contact anyone once they’ve gone there. They’re supposed to be in this state of total peace, and they don’t want ghosts who still have problems disrupting them.”

Jack wanted to ask how the dead moved on to Elysium, but he was distracted by a shuffling sound up ahead. “What’s that?”

“It’s safer for you to hide in a crowd. Hopefully you’ll blend in. So listen up. Here’s your story. You died this morning. You were . . .”

“Hit by a train?” Jack offered.

“Good choice,” said Euri with a snort. “Try not to look anyone in the eye for too long. There’s something creepy about your eyes. They look alive.”

“How do I find out if my mom’s still here?” Jack asked.

“Well, we can start by just looking around,” Euri said. Shoving furiously, she pushed her way out of the end of the tunnel. Jack couldn’t tell what she was pushing against until she pulled him after her, and he found himself in a crowd of shadowy beings jammed into a wide, stone passageway. The ghostly procession slowly shuffled forward, carrying him and Euri along with it. Like Euri, the dead appeared no different from the living, except for their pale faces and their eyes, which were dull and translucent regardless of color. A few murmured to each other, but most were quiet and shared the anxious, preoccupied look of the living commuters eight stories above.

Jack panned their faces, hoping to recognize his mom. There were a number of old people, many of them in nightgowns, but also many younger people in a wide range of dress—knickers and flouncy shirts, police uniforms, Native American headdresses, elegant lace-trimmed gowns, turbans, jeans, tattered coats, saris, mink stoles, heavy black suits and hats, tweed caps, dirty smocks, silk Chinese suits, tuxedoes. There were children too—a few in sailor outfits or dresses, many more in rags.

“Even if she is down here, how am I going to find my mom?” he whispered to Euri. “It’s packed!”

“Well, I thought maybe you’d just luck out,” she whispered back. “But you’re right. It’s not so easy to find someone down here.”

Jack frowned and went back to studying the crowd. The array of faces—every age, race, and ethnicity— stretched in every direction. “How do all these people fit down here?” Jack asked.

“They’re spirits. They don’t really take up any room at all.”

Jack noted that Euri didn’t include herself in the description, though she too was a ghost. “Euri?”

“Yes?”

“How’d you die?”

“‘I died for beauty but was scarce/Adjusted in the tomb,’” said a man’s voice in a Scottish brogue behind them.

Jack instantly recognized the lines of the poem and turned around. “‘When one who died for truth was lain/In an adjoining room,’” he continued.

“Emily Dickinson,” said the ghost, who had a white beard and a pipe hanging out of his mouth. “Fine stuff, though I prefer Blake myself.”

The ghost continued to stare at Jack until his pipe sagged to the point of dropping out of his mouth.

“He’s new,” Euri said. “Just died this morning.”

“Hit by a train,” Jack added eagerly.

The man grunted. “Didn’t mean to stare, lad. Thought there was something live about you. Welcome. Todd’s the name, Ruthven—rhymes with livin’ but spelled R-U-TH-V-E-N, mind you, confusing for Americans, I know. I was an author, poet, and editor myself. You may have read my series of children’s books—
Space Cat
,
Space Cat and the Kittens
?”

Jack shook his head. “Sorry.”

“Oh, well,” said Todd, trying to hide his disappointment.

“Not everyone is E. B. White. Anyway, lad, what’s your name?”

“I’m . . .” Jack wondered whether to say his real name. “Jack?”

“Well then, Jack, it’s nice that the young ghosts know some poetry today. We have a club of poets and the like that meets every night at the White Horse Tavern. You should drop by sometime. You might know a few. Two a.m.”

Jack tried not to look confused. The endless expanse of stone passageways seemed unlikely to end in a bar. Two in the morning also seemed on the late side for a meeting.

“We’ll see you later,” Euri said, shoving through the crowd and steering Jack along with her. “Some of the dead can be very chatty,” she remarked when they had left Todd.

“What was he talking about?’ Jack asked as they pushed their way into a new group of ghosts. “Is there a tavern down here?”

“We’ll get to that in a second,” she whispered. “There’s something else we need to worry about first.”

“What?” asked Jack.

The crowd suddenly lurched forward. “Finally!” sniffed a gray-haired woman in a pillbox hat. Jack noticed that some of the ghosts were moving to the left, while others were moving to the right.

“Hold on,” Euri said. “We’ll need to sneak away at the last moment.”

“The last moment before what?” Jack asked. But Euri ignored him and steered him to the left.

A series of barks rose over the shuffling sound. Euri froze. “The guards,” she whispered. She shoved her way across the stream of ghosts to a tunnel that split off to the right. Jack tried to follow her, but several portly men in vests began shoving him in the opposite direction. For spirits that didn’t take up any room at all, they felt surprisingly solid. “What a rabble!” one of them remarked.

Euri grabbed his hand. Hers was cold but surprisingly firm. As she tugged harder, he had to stop himself from crying out as his shoulder pulled in the socket. Finally, he slipped in between two of the portly men, and Euri dragged him into the tunnel. The surging crowd swept them forward. Up ahead, Jack saw tiny circles of pale light filtering down from the ceiling.

“You won’t be able to get out this way,” Euri whispered as she frantically tried to steer him in the opposite direction. “It won’t work. We’ve got to turn back.”

“What’s going on?” Jack whispered. But Euri was too busy trying to pull him out of the flow of spirits to answer. “I can’t . . .” she huffed as they were pushed forward past a red line on the dirt and under the circles of light. A spirit in a Yankees baseball cap counted them with a clicker. “Have a nice trip,” he said mechanically. “See you at dawn.”

Euri’s hand tightened around his own. Before Jack even had a chance to cry out, he felt himself rising toward the tiny circles. His body stretched until it was as thin as a wire and began to spiral up through greenish-gray copper pipes. He felt Euri’s fingers slip away. He opened his mouth and tried to shout, but he couldn’t make a sound.