The Hollow Ones(82)
On the ground, she quickly crossed a plaza of crumbled asphalt to the entrance of the structure, ducking under plastic tarp billowing in the breeze. The door contained another warning sign, but a window to the right of it was missing a long, vertical glass pane, and she stepped right inside.
She did not see Blackwood, and decided against calling his name. She started down a wide stone staircase that split into two staircases doubling back. She got to the bottom and brought out her phone, turning on the flashlight, looking for more stairs. The modern-day island of Manhattan was built on the shoulders of previous centuries. She knew that the rule of thumb of Manhattan landfill was: Ten feet below ground level took you to about the beginning of the 1900s, where you might find poured concrete from the turn of the century; another five or so feet below that took you to roughly 1800, with walls of brick and mortar, where you might find surviving pieces of ceramic and domestic artifacts; twenty to twenty-five feet below street level, you were in the 1700s.
She ran out of stairs with Blackwood nowhere to be seen. Then her phone found a hole in the temporary wood floor, a ladder sticking out. She climbed down quickly, shining her light around.
“Put that thing away.”
It was Blackwood, directly below her. She descended the last few rungs into a passageway floored by craggy rock.
He was shielding his eyes. “I need stealth. And you are ruining my night vision.”
She killed her phone light, returning it to her pocket. Now her eyesight was shot. She relied on Blackwood, following him closely as she waited for her vision to adjust. Blackwood appeared to be following a trail of some kind.
“This has to do with the grave robbing?” said Odessa, her voice low.
“Slave graves are hallowed ground,” said Blackwood, “as places of great pain always are. Their innocent spirits are a repository for great suffering, trapped in limbo for centuries. Harnessed and released into the city, they could wield a potent malevolent force.”
Past some excavating tools, Blackwood slowed at an exposed stone support. Odessa’s eyesight had recovered enough that she was able to discern a geometric pattern carved into the rock. It was no mere directional symbol. It was a sigil.
Blackwood stopped, looking ahead. He mumbled some words to himself in Latin, Odessa realizing it was another spell of protection. When he finished, he turned to her.
“You must leave.”
“What?” she said.
“You should go no farther.”
“You let me come all the way down here to tell me to leave?”
“There is nothing you can do here. You could only be used against me.”
“Against you…?” She saw Blackwood staring into the darkness ahead. “You’re going to need help with Solomon.” Then she realized: “Are you sending me away because of what happened to him?”
Blackwood did not answer.
“Look,” she said, “I don’t know what to do down here. All I know is, we can’t let that Hollow get at you. If it jumped into an immortal being…or at least a person who can never be maimed, murdered, destroyed…it could run wild forever. And that’s after releasing the other three Hollows into the world. You would be the ultimate being for one of those things to possess.”
Blackwood said, “That is why I cannot allow that to happen.”
“But you know this is a trap.”
“Yes.”
“Then why walk into it?” she said. “Never mind walk into it alone?”
“There is another presence here,” Blackwood said. “Another fiend. One I must face. An adversary I have faced many times before.”
Odessa was bewildered. Two entities? “Who?” she asked.
Blackwood straightened out his suit jacket. “My wife,” he answered.
Blackwood walked on into the dark underground. Odessa remained behind, thrown by his comment, and unsure what to do. He was right, she had little to offer against any otherworldly being, but going into this alone seemed foolhardy. She did not know what to do.
As she stood there, she heard a familiar voice call to her.
“Odessa,” the voice said.
Hugo Blackwood followed the low-ceilinged stone cavern around a blind turn, emptying into a chamber that presaged a wider, airier vault. He heard an accented female voice incanting in Caribbean Spanish, her voice amplified by the ancient acoustics into a forceful, mesmerizing drone. A dim but luminescent violet glow was apparent in the stirred motes of centuries-old dust and soot.
He heard also a sharp snarl and the snapping of jaws. An onrush of animal paws; he could not tell from which direction they were coming. He imagined massive beasts, the exaggerated volume indicating a monster many times the dimensions of the chamber, an impossibility.
They slowed and rounded the corner, two pit bull canines, their faces contorted with ferocity. Inhabited beings, vicious hounds. Blackwood remembered the botanica owner’s house, the grave robber saying that their two pit bulls had run off.
Here was where they had run to. Blackwood knew their owner was very near.
They advanced, stalking him, all shoulders and sinewy muscle, ravenous drool spilling from their gnashing fangs.
Blackwood extended his empty hand, palm forward, muttering a spell of compulsion. His eyes met theirs, and as he slowly rotated his open hand, as though adjusting a large dial, the beasts’ eyes softened, their lips eased back over their black gums, and their bristling fur lay down flat.