Naked City: Tales of Urban Fantasy

“Maybe, in their own way, they prayed,” Dora whispers, breathlessly.

And the tall, thin man standing before him, the collier in his overalls and hard hat who wasn’t there just a moment before, hefts his pick and brings it down smartly against the floorboards, which, in the instant steel strikes wood, become the black stone floor of a mine. All light has been extinguished from the gallery now, save that shining dimly from the collier’s carbide lantern. The head of the pick strikes rock, and there’s a spark, and then the ancient shale begins to bleed. And soon thereafter, the dream comes apart, and the professor lies awake and sweating, waiting for sunrise and trying desperately to think about anything but what he’s been told has happened at the bottom of Shaft Seven.

5

After his usual modest breakfast of black coffee with blueberry preserves and biscuits, and after he’s given his staff their instructions for the day and canceled a lecture that he was scheduled to deliver to a league of amateur mineralogists, Jeremiah Ogilvy leaves the museum. He walks north along Kipling to the intersection with West Twentieth Avenue, where he’s arranged to meet Dora Bolshaw. He says good morning, and that he hopes she’s feeling well. But Dora’s far more taciturn than usual, and few obligatory pleasantries are exchanged. Together they take one of the clanking, kidney-jarring public omnibuses south and east to St. Joseph’s Hospital for the Bodily and Mentally Infirm, established only two decades earlier by a group of the Sisters of Charity sent to Cherry Creek from Leavenworth.

Charlie McNamara is waiting for them in the lobby, his long canvas duster so stained with mud and soot that it’s hard to imagine it was ever anything but this variegated riot of black and gray. He’s a small mountain of a man, all beard and muscle, just starting to go soft about the middle. Jeremiah has thought, on more than one occasion, this is what men would look like had they descended not from apes but from grizzly bears.

“Thank you for coming,” Charlie says. “I know that you’re a busy man.” But Jeremiah tells him to think nothing of it, that he’s glad to be of whatever service he can—if, indeed, he can be of service. Charlie and Dora nod to one another then and swap nervous salutations. Jeremiah sees, or only thinks he sees, something wordless pass between them as well, something anxious and wary, spoken with the eyes and not the lips.

“You told him?” Charlie asks, and Dora shrugs.

“I told him the most of it. I told him what murdered them two men.”

“Mulawski and Backstrom,” Charlie says.

Dora shrugs again. “I didn’t recollect their names. But I don’t suppose that much matters.”

Charlie McNamara frowns and tugs at a corner of his mustache. “No.” He nods. “I don’t suppose it does.”

“I hope you’ll understand my skepticism,” Jeremiah says, looking up, speaking to Charlie but watching Dora. “What’s been related to me, regarding the deaths of these two men, and what you’ve brought me here to see, I’d be generous if I were to say it strikes me as a fairy tale. Or perhaps something from the dime novels. It was Hume—David Hume—who said, ‘No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish.’”

Dora glares back at him. “You always did have such a goddamn pretty way of calling a girl a liar,” she says.

“Hell,” Charlie sighs, still tugging at his mustache. “I’d be concerned, Dora, if he weren’t dubious. I’ve always thought myself a rational man. That’s been a source of pride to me, out here among the barbarians and them that’s just plain ignorant and don’t know no better. But now, after this business—”

“Yeah, well, so how about we stop the clucking and get to it,” Dora cuts in, and Charlie McNamara frowns at her. But then he stops fussing with his whiskers and nods again.

“Yeah,” he says. “Guess I’m just stalling. Doesn’t precisely fill me with joy, the thought of seeing her again. If you’ll just follow me, Jeremiah, they got her stashed away up on the second floor.” He points to the stairs. “The sisters ain’t none too pleased about her being here. I think they’re of the general notion that there’s more proper places than hospitals for demons.”

“Demons,” Jeremiah says, and Dora Bolshaw laughs a dry, humorless laugh.

“That’s what they’re calling her,” Dora tells him. “The nuns, I mean. You might as well know that. Got a priest from Annunciation sitting vigil outside the cell, reading Latin and whatnot. There’s talk of an exorcism.”

At this pronouncement, Charlie McNamara makes a gruff dismissive noise and motions more forcefully toward the stairwell. He mutters something rude about popery and superstition and lady engine jockeys who can’t keep their damn pieholes shut.

“Charlie, you know I’m not saying anything that isn’t true,” Dora protests, but Jeremiah Ogilvy thinks he’s already heard far too much and seen far too little. He steps past them, walking quickly and with purpose to the stairs, and the geologist and the mechanic follow close on his heels.

6

“I would like to speak with her,” he says. “I would like to speak with her alone.” And Jeremiah takes his face away from the tiny barred window set into the door of the cell where they’ve confined the woman from the bottom of Shaft Seven. For a moment, he stares at the company geologist, and then his eyes drift toward Dora.

“Maybe you didn’t hear me right,” Charlie McNamara says, and furrows his shaggy eyebrows. “She don’t talk. Leastways, not near as anyone can tell.”

“You’re wasting your breath arguing with him,” Dora mumbles, and glances at the priest, who’s standing not far away, eyeing the locked door and clutching his Bible. “Might as well try to tell the good father here that the Queen of Heaven got herself knocked up by a stable hand.”

Jeremiah turns back to the window, his face gone indignant and bordering now on choleric. “Charlie, I’m neither a physician nor an alienist, but you’ve brought me here to see this woman. Having looked upon her, the reason why continues to escape me. However, that said, if I am to examine her, I cannot possibly hope do so properly from behind a locked door.”

“It’s not safe,” the priest says very softly. “You must know that, Professor Ogilvy. It isn’t safe at all.”

Peering in past the steel bars, Jeremiah shakes his head and sighs. “She’s naked, Father. She’s naked, and can’t weigh more than eighty pounds. What possible threat might she pose to me? And, while we’re at it, why, precisely, is she naked?”

“Oh, they gave her clothes,” Dora chimes in. “Well, what passes for clothes in a place like this. But she tears them off. Won’t have none of it, them white gowns and what have you.”

“She is brazen,” the priest all but whispers.

“Has anyone even tried to bathe her?” Jeremiah asks, and Charlie coughs.

“That ain’t coal dust and mud you’re seeing,” he says. “Near as anyone can tell, that there’s her skin.”

“This is ludicrous, all of it,” Jeremiah grumbles. “This is not the Middle Ages, and you do not have some infernal siren or succubus locked up in there. Whatever else you may believe, she’s a woman, Charlie, and, having sacrificed my very busy day to come all the way out here, I would like now to speak with her.”

“I was only explaining, Jeremiah, how I ain’t of the notion it’s such a good idea, that’s all,” Charlie says, then looks at the priest. “You got the keys, Father?”

The priest nods reluctantly, and then he produces a single tarnished brass key from his cassock. Jeremiah steps aside while he unlocks the door.

“I’m going in with you,” Dora says.

“No, you’re not,” Jeremiah tells her. “I need to speak with this woman alone.”

“But she don’t talk,” Dora says again, beginning to sound exasperated, forcing the