Bad Glass

smart, and full of answers, but really, I didn’t know him at all.

As I watched, his shoulders started to shake, trembling like branches caught in a swirling wind.

Taylor took over. She sprinted past me to Charlie’s side and wrapped her arms around him, scaring up a hitching, breathless sob.

“I can’t find her,” Charlie groaned, expelling breathless words against Taylor’s shoulder. “She was here, in the picture. She was here, but now she’s gone … and I can’t find her!”

“We’ll help,” Taylor said, her voice soothing and calm. “If you want, we’ll help you look.”

Taylor lifted her hand from Charlie’s back and gestured Amanda, Mac, and me toward the surrounding buildings, using a little twirl of her finger. Trying to get rid of us, I realized. And I felt relief—then guilt at that relief—as I retreated back down the street, away from Charlie and all that raw emotion. Both Amanda and Mac kept their faces down as they moved away, disappearing into the nearest doorway on the south side of the street.

I glanced from the bent sign toward the surrounding buildings. There was nothing there, no signs of life. There were street-level stores with shuttered windows; a couple of stairways leading down to substreet levels— cafes, a shoe store, some second-rate restaurants; and, looming overhead, a cluster of old run-down office buildings.

In the picture, Charlie’s mother had been facing down the length of Second Avenue, looking back over her shoulder. Her body had been turned toward the line of buildings on the north side of the street. Not much of a lead, but it was something. A place to start, at least. I headed toward that side of the road and opened the first door I came to.

On the other side of the door, I found a small alcove lined with metal mailboxes. An apartment building, then. Judging from the number of blank name tags on the mail slots, I guessed that most of these apartments had been vacant before the evacuation. There was a narrow stairway at the end of the alcove, leading up to the housing overhead.

“Hello?” I called. My voice was tentative, weak. “Anyone home?”

I waited for a response, but none came.

I started up the stairs, and a gamy, spoiled-meat smell greeted me on the second-floor landing. Not decomposing flesh or dead animal, more like deli-style roast beef left out in the sun. A thick, damp smell. Almost musty.

There were six apartments on this level, and four of the doors stood wide open. Each of these tiny two-room dwellings was completely bare—nothing but frayed carpeting stained a uniform dingy brown. The bathroom doors stood open, revealing tiny sinks and coffin-size showers.

The door to the fifth apartment was closed but unlocked. I eased it open, and the creaking hinge started my heart thudding a quick bass rhythm inside my chest. The room was dark, but I could see immediately that there was no one hiding inside. The only piece of furniture was a stripped mattress laid out in the far corner. The window here had been covered up with cardboard and uneven strips of duct tape, and someone’s works lay spread out near the head of the mattress: a black-charred spoon, a lighter, a length of bungee cord, shredded cigarettes. There were empty Baggies and vials sitting on the windowsill.

The room smelled of stale sweat and fever dreams. But no trace of spoiled meat.

The final door was flanked on both sides by stacks of newspaper. One of the stacks had tipped over, clogging the width of the corridor with a jumble of yellowing newsprint, a mad collage of text and black-and-white photographs. Smiling politicians. Crowded cityscapes. I bent down and read the date off the nearest sheet: June 15, 2002.

The smell was stronger here. It was coming from inside the apartment.

I reached for the doorknob, hesitated, and decided to knock. There was a sound of movement on the other side of the door—the groaning of mattress springs, followed by the sound of a foot hitting the floor—then abrupt silence.

I knocked again and cleared my throat. “Hello? I don’t mean you any harm. Really. I’m just looking for somebody—my friend’s mother. Have you seen anyone? Do you think you could help?”

There was no response. I tried to turn the doorknob, but the door was locked.

I waited for nearly a minute, keeping my head cocked next to the door, but there was no sound of movement inside the room. There was nothing. The sound of held breath, maybe, I thought. Held breath and paralysis. I retreated back to the stairwell and continued up to the third floor.

There was nothing on the third floor, and again, nothing on the fourth. Just empty, abandoned rooms, the refuse of long-gone squatters.

A sound greeted me on the fifth-floor landing, a scramble of movement coming from the far end of the corridor. It was a faint, small sound, like a horsehair brush sliding back and forth over wood. But different— something foreign, alien—nothing I could place. Charlie’s mother? Doing what? I quickly made my way past the other apartments on the floor, noting the empty, unremarkable rooms as they swam past the corners of my eyes. As I drew near, the sound didn’t seem to get any louder. It stayed a quiet, unearthly whisper—the shhhhhh of a record player hitting blank grooves, maybe—and I was afraid it would peter out entirely, disappearing before I could reach that last apartment.

I rounded the open doorway and found an empty room.

My lungs were working hard now, and I stopped with my hand on the doorjamb, trying to hear over my panting breath. The sound was still there, coming from somewhere inside the room.

I stepped forward and noticed a hole in the left-hand wall. It was a ragged oval, about three feet wide and two feet tall, punched through the drywall and plaster. No, not punched, I realized. The edges of the hole jutted outward, into the room, as if scrabbling, frantic hands had pulled at the opening, trying to make it wider. Or, I thought, as if something had pushed its way through from the other side.

The hole didn’t go all the way through to the neighboring room; there was no hint of light on the other side, just darkness. Darkness and sound. It was a little bit louder now. Definitely coming from the hole.

I approached the hole and paused for a handful of seconds, trying to gather the courage to peer inside. Finally, I took a deep breath and moved forward, easing my head through the opening.

The gap between the walls was about a foot wide, and I could see plumbing snaking down toward the lower floors. A tiny breeze, cool and damp, trickled up from the basement. I glanced down and saw blue light five or six floors down. At first, I wasn’t sure if it was actually there; my eyes were treacherous, swimming with afterimages as they adjusted to the dark. But the light solidified, becoming a line in the distance.

Something underground, I realized. Beneath the building.

I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye and glanced to my left. There was a mass sprouting from the neighboring wall, about five feet down. At first, it wouldn’t register, this thing that I was seeing. I just couldn’t comprehend it. A flesh-colored mound fringed with dark fluff. Then I noticed movement on its surface, a quivering blotch of white.

An eye. A face.

I sucked breath in through my teeth—it got trapped there, in my throat and lungs. I couldn’t move, not for at least half a minute.

What is it? It wasn’t a body, wasn’t a person. It wasn’t even a head. It was half a head, trapped between the walls. A face, bisected. And the eye was trembling, moving in tiny, uncoordinated bursts.

A mirror! I grasped at the possibility. It explained what I was seeing: my own face—half in the hole, half out—reflected in something down below.

I reached in and ran my hand across my cheek, moving it in front of my teeth, but there was no corresponding movement on the face. The teeth and lips, sheared in two, remained clear, unobstructed.

I felt dizzy, the blood in my head rushing and pounding behind my temples. No, I chided myself. None of that fainting shit!

I scrabbled for my camera, slinging my backpack off my shoulder and digging through it one-handed. I did this blind, keeping my head in the hole. I just couldn’t look away—I couldn’t—afraid that if I took my eye off that face, it would disappear. Just some transitory phantom, caught, for a moment, in the fragile juncture between eye and world. I flicked the lens cap off my wide-angle zoom and brought the camera up to my face. The light was horrible here; almost nothing made its way in through the hole. I cranked open the aperture and