BRICK.
Stenciled letters, faded and chipped.
I inched the light along, forcing my addled brain to fill in the blanks, form words, derive meaning,
ALEX DRE DE S VE ET DU PAR L FONT INE
Street names.
Rue Alexandre-de-Seve Rue du parc Lafontaine.
An intersection.
Dear God, that corner was just blocks from the lab!
The brackish water. The stench.
The tunnel had to be a sewer. Did it underlie one of those streets?
But I’d awakened in a tomb.
It made no sense.
The bitter cold was jumbling my newly emerging cognition.
I struggled for a mental map of the terrain overhead.
Veterans Park. The entrance ramp toward the Jacques-Cartier Bridge. Rue Logan. Malo. Avenue Papineau. De Lorimier.
Another flash. Not recent. This synapse came from way, way back. From a written page.
Veterans Park was the site of the Old Military Burying Ground.
Had I been sealed in a tomb built for dead soldiers?
No way. Those graves were exhumed and moved in the forties.
Had some been missed? Raines was an urban archaeologist. He’d know about cemeteries. Tombs. Sewers.
My abductor had to be Raines.
I was starting to feel dizzy.
How much time had passed since I’d left the tomb? How long until I succumbed to hypothermia?
I tried to think clearly.
My brain screamed one word.
Move!
Jaw clamped against the tremors, I resumed hunchbacking forward, palm skimming the wall.
The downhill slope sharpened.
The murmuring-gurgling-slapping grew louder.
Water now lapped my ankles.
I slogged on, beam reduced to one strip of amber filament.
Another ten feet and I came to an opening, round, the lower half filled with broken brick and debris. From beyond came the unmistakable rush of moving water.
I pointed the beam through the gap.
The sewer I occupied was joining another. A main collector? Water ran through the larger shaft, a knee-deep river of swirling black sludge.
My eyes squinted for detail the light couldn’t find. Saw only a collision of shadows.
My ears told me the current was swift, strong enough to sweep my feet from under me.
My only choice lay behind me.
The tomb. The silent dead.
Don’t be stupid. You’ll never get back into it. The opening is too high.
It was then that the beam died altogether.
Desperate, I shook the flashlight.
The bulb sputtered to life, wavered, went out for good.
Using the cadence of my hammering heart, I hypnotized myself calm. You’re OK! You’re OK!
How long since I’d left the tomb? An hour? A minute? Time still meant nothing.
Plan your next move. Think. You have to keep moving.
Then, over the watery snarl, my ears picked out another sound. Grating, like metal scraping concrete.
Craning my head into the junction, I peered in both directions down the main line.
To the left, light seeped from a circular opening in the tunnel’s arched dome.
Had it been there before? Had I missed it?
No.
Then how?
A manhole!
Someone was entering the sewer!
As I stared, two legs appeared. A torso. A human figure began descending a ladder now visible against the curved tunnel wall.
“I’m here.” Pure instinct. Yet the cry was feeble.
The figure continued its downward climb.
“Je suis ici.” Still hoarse, hardly above a whisper.
Two more rungs. The figure gleamed oddly, as though made of satin or plastic.
“Help me!” This time I shouted with all my strength. “Please! ”
The figure froze.
“Over here.” My shout echoed.
The figure scrabbled down the last few rungs, then scuttled into shadow.
I waited, blades of hope and fear windmilling in my chest.
Had I imagined it? Was I hallucinating?
No, the man was real.
Why didn’t he answer?
My stomach curdled at a terrifying thought.
The man was not a city worker.
My abductor had returned to finish me off!
