Something Wicked 🏳️‍🌈 (bxb)

19: Tetanus versus pufferfish

Icicles on iron railings shivered and cracked as I brushed past them on my way into Orange Park. A brief pause behind a bush to check I hadn't been followed, then I hurried on toward the dark reservoir beyond.

Underestimating Sylvia as usual, I'd expected her mysterious rendezvous point to be in the forested kingdom of McCloud Manor, but here I was sneaking around downtown in full view of ice-skaters, dog-walkers and bored goth chicks in fingerless gloves toking one last joint before their moms called them home for Christmas Eve dinner.

Sylvia's instructions had been precise: to wait until I was unseen, and then to press the foot of the first statue in the line of Caryatids that stood sentinel over the northern edge of Orange Park. The first statue's sandaled feet were lost in a thick curtain of ivy; a few moments of jabbing at stonework, and I finally hit it.

With a screech that made my ears scream and my teeth grind, the flagstone at the statue's foot shifted. The stone slab finally came to a stop in a clump of frosty ivy, revealing a tight shaft leading into the ground below. A few handholds and ledges cut into the narrow walls were all I had to aid my descent through the trapdoor.

Wasn't gonna lie; I was petrified. Who the fuck would willingly climb into a claustrophobic tunnel to a rendezvous location that may or may not be located twenty meters beneath Orange Park? The flagstone didn't wait for me to deliberate; it began to rumble closed before my eyes.

Fuck it.

I shot down the shaft, just managing to get my flapping jacket tails into the hole before the flagstone clicked into place above me. Phone flashlight held high overhead, the tunnel's narrow twists and turns took me ever deeper. The huge lock-wheel of a hatch greeted me at the end of the winding darkness. It opened onto a brightly lit elevator door. No turning back now.

The moment I stepped inside, the doors zipped shut and the elevator sped up and up, eventually spitting me out in a cavernous room cut into the red-brown earth below Orange Park. Huge display screens hung on struts tethered to the bare rock, each playing video camera footage from various locations around María. A lab of sorts had been assembled in a corner: floodlit benches laden with microscopes, sample fridges and huge banks of equipment racks lined the hewn rock-face.

All around was a musky smell that I couldn't place, until I saw sleepy huddles of them on ledges in the rock. The occasional juvenile member of their tribe scuttled across the path of the cavern's floodlights into red crevices.

Rats.

The entire cave was infested with rats. A closer look, and I realized that the dim corners of the cave were the sources of the musky odor; the entire lower section of the cave was covered in an inch of rat-shit, a few of the steps pebbled with it. It hadn't come as much of a surprise to find that Sylvia was an insane cat-lady, but I'd never have guessed her boyfriend to be the Pied fucking Piper.

A gaunt abuelo in a labcoat was sat labeling samples while Sylvia stood whispering into the ear of a tall man in shirt and slacks. I'd only ever seen him from a distance across a ballroom at Casper Vogel's fundraiser, but I recognized him instantly. The previous owner of my recycled business-casual clothes, and the only person rich enough to construct a secret, albeit rat-shit-infested, lair under the city—Hamish McCloud.

"Jason!" Leaving me no time to collect my thoughts, Hamish McCloud bounded on over and latched onto my hand, slapping me on the back for good measure. "Good to meet you, buddy."

Wisps of gray in his dark beard and temples, Hamish looked around fifty, and was far from the lumbering steroid-head I'd imagined, though he walked with the assured gait of someone who'd trained physically all their life. Under his smile were those same traces of terror I'd seen echoed in Vinnie Russo's expression so many times before. Hamish was terrified for his only child's safety.