The Secret Runners of New York Read online

  Red’s description of the door hadn’t done it justice.

  It wasn’t just scary. It was terrifying.

  It looked ancient and cruel, like the mouth of a snarling snake.

  It yawned wide, a perfectly square stone doorway in the otherwise rocky and uneven cavern. The only break in its symmetry was the squat black pyramid on the ground in its centre.

  As Red had said, the chamber was lit by two tripod-mounted arc lights, powered by a generator. If anything, the harsh glare of the lights made the doorway look even more sinister.

  Looking through the stone portal, I saw the tunnel beyond it, ominous, long and inky black.

  I kept up my act. ‘O-kay. So this is genuinely creepy. What is it? A Lenape tomb or something?’

  ‘It’s a tunnel,’ Bo answered. ‘I think it’s Mayan. I did some research. It matches their stonework and there is evidence that the Mayans ventured as far north as Canada.’

  In my mind, I loved that he’d analysed the place, thought about it, and then looked into it. He was inquisitive and I liked that about him.

  But I didn’t dare say it, not in front of everyone.

  Instead, I just gave Bo some serious side-eye and said, ‘Where does it go? Across the park?’

  ‘All the way, yeah,’ Bo said.

  I indicated the ancient inscriptions carved into the lintel of the door. ‘What about those? What do they mean?’

  ‘No idea,’ he said. ‘I wish I knew.’

  Misty stepped forward, unzipping her parka to reveal her necklace.

  She unclipped the amber gem from it, held it up, and turned to face me.

  ‘Now, Skye. This is our little secret. If you tell a single soul about it, we will ruin your life, okay? Ruin it. Never to be restored. Ever. Understood?’

  I nodded quickly. I got the impression that what I had gone through in Memphis was nothing compared to the reputational vengeance Misty could unleash.

  ‘Understood,’ I said.

  Then Misty reached down and placed her gem in the slot in the apex of the little pyramid, and the incandescent curtain of purple-black light that Red had so vividly described to me apparated into place in the mouth of the portal, evidently coming from the pyramid.

  I didn’t need to fake my astonishment anymore.

  It was dazzling, hypnotic, mesmerising. It was chiefly purple and black, but there were other colours in there, too: wisps of violet and thin ribbons of green that slithered and twisted between the dominant patches of light.

  I stared at it in awe for a full ten seconds.

  ‘My God . . .’

  ‘I’m not sure even He knows about this,’ Misty said. ‘Come on, let’s take you on your virgin run.’

  And without any further ado she jumped through the curtain of light and disappeared from view.

  Red came up beside me.

  ‘Pretty trippy, huh?’ he said.

  ‘That’s one way of putting it.’

  He took my hand. ‘Here. Come with me. I’ll take you through.’

  And with those words, my twin brother led me toward the rippling screen of purple light filling the ancient doorway.

  I gripped his hand tighter as we came near the barrier of light. Standing this close to it, I could see that it was made up of thousands of luminescent particles all swaying and swirling, spinning and curling. It reminded me of the northern lights, the Aurora Borealis, with its swaying ribbons of ethereal luminescence, only this aurora was trapped in a doorway.

  I shut my eyes and, for some reason, held my breath as I jumped through the shimmering curtain of light.

  VIRGIN RUN

  It’s funny how hearing about something is never the same as seeing it for yourself.

  My mental image of the tunnel, taken from Red’s description of it, had not even come close to describing it.

  Yes, it was trapezoidal in shape, but it was only when I was standing inside it that I saw how dramatically its slanting walls closed in over my head, creating a very claustrophobic effect.

  Red had mentioned carvings in the walls, but he hadn’t mentioned that most of the carvings were of skulls.

  Row upon row of crumbling stone skulls stared at me from the sloping walls, their mouths open in eternal screams.

  Each skull, I saw, was unique. This wasn’t mass-produced ancient skull-carving. This was precise stuff. Each skull had its own distinct characteristics: a narrow chin, larger eyes, broken teeth or a wider screaming mouth.

  My skin crawled.

  A few primitive paintings of running men were interspersed between the many skulls. In a few of those images, the running men appeared to be fleeing from large dogs of some kind.

  In a few images, men dressed in priestly garments held coloured baubles or gems high above their heads: yellow gems, red gems and green gems.

  Without warning, I was shoved roughly from behind and my face was pushed up against a particularly gruesome stone skull.

  It was Verity.

  ‘Not scared, are you, Memphis?’ she said tartly, before hustling off down the tunnel.

  Red just shook his head apologetically and followed after her, totally and utterly pussy-whipped.

  ‘Pretty awesome, huh?’ Bo said, coming alongside me.

  ‘You can say that again.’ I shivered. It was cold in here, too, really cold.

  The tunnel stretched away from me in a dead-straight line, disappearing into darkness.

  I turned to look at the curtain of light filling the portal behind me: seen from this side, it glowed a sickly off-yellow, like old stained glass, just as Red had said.

  I reached out to touch it . . .

  . . . and the wall of yellow light bent against my finger like a stretched piece of rubber, but it would not allow my finger to go through.

  Bo appeared beside me. ‘One-way traffic only,’ he said.

  Then Misty crouched and retrieved her gem from the pyramid and the curtain of light vanished. I beheld the entry cave again, only now it was eerily dark and everything in it was covered in dust. The two arc lights and the generator were caked in a long-undisturbed layer of grime and cobwebs, looking old and abandoned. Weird.

  ‘This way,’ Misty said as she headed off down the tunnel. ‘We get out this way.’

  Chastity, Dane, Verity and Red were already running ahead, using the flashlights on their phones to light the way.

  I frowned at Bo.

  He smiled. ‘Come on. The tunnel is about half a mile long. The exit is at the other end.’

  He grabbed my hand and I let him pull me down the dark passageway.

  It’s hard to describe how I felt.

  I could see why Red had been so buzzed when he had first come here.

  There was something monumentally exciting, thrilling, exhilarating about the whole experience—being inside this grim ancient structure with its skulls and cave paintings, cut off from the world, with only one direction to go. It felt dangerous, illicit, like we were trespassing on sacred ground.

  I also had one extra feature to my first run that Red hadn’t: I was doing it with Bo.

  And with all that energy coursing through me, running was all I wanted to do, and gripping Bo’s hand tightly, I ran with him.

  About four hundred yards down the tunnel, we came to the trash heap Red had mentioned.

  This time his description had been accurate.

  It was an eight-foot-high pile of garbage, situated directly underneath a well hole in the ceiling. Given that the ceiling was about ten feet high, the pile almost reached it.

  Bo and I arrived there to find Chastity, Dane, Red and Verity analysing some of the trash while Misty was crouched over by the left-hand wall, leaning in close to a collection of deeply-cut ancient carvings there.

  As Bo and I approached the big rubbish heap, Misty stepp
ed away from the wall and took some photos of the carvings with her phone, every flash strobing like a lightning bolt in the enclosed space.

  Red said to her, ‘Hey, Mis, do you think you should be doing that?’

  Misty shrugged. ‘Why not?’

  ‘How about the screaming dude I saw up the well that time?’ Red said. ‘Someone up there could see.’

  ‘Ooooh . . .’ Misty cooed, mock scared.

  My eyes were drawn to the trash heap and the well above it.

  I saw the random bike wheels, McDonald’s wrappers, old books, broken toys and torn clothing forming the layers of the heap.

  And then I saw a toy at the edge of the pile, half-hidden by the other detritus.

  My blood went cold.

  There, looking particularly forlorn and abandoned, faded and dirty, was a fluffy pink kangaroo toy.

  My fluffy pink kangaroo toy.

  I saw the familiar name stitched across its stomach: HOPPY THE HAPPY KANGAROO.

  What. The. Hell?

  I checked to see if the others were watching me, to see if they were playing a joke on me, but they were busy chatting or examining the walls of the tunnel. None of them had seen my shock.

  I bent down and touched my toy kangaroo, a unique toy purchased by my father in a trashy souvenir store in Australia six or seven years ago.

  How on Earth had it got here? I wondered.

  Then I saw something stuffed inside its pouch. I pulled it out: a yellow Post-It note. Written on it in messy handwriting were the words:

  I dropped both the note and my kangaroo toy as if they were scalding hot.

  Again I looked around myself, and again I saw that no-one was watching me.

  My gaze drifted upward, to the well shaft in the ceiling.

  Curiously and cautiously, I stepped onto the trash pile so that I could peer up the well shaft.

  I saw the night-time sky, half blotted out by a dark round shadow . . . that abruptly moved.

  It was a man, a bald man, his face a black shadow, peering down at me.

  I leapt back out of sight, slipping and sliding down the unstable trash heap.

  A demented cackle echoed down the well shaft.

  ‘Helloooo, pretty girl!’ he shrieked.

  ‘Go!’ Red said urgently.

  Everyone bolted, racing away down the tunnel, running for all we were worth. I ran with them, forgetting all about the pink kangaroo I had dropped.

  I don’t recall much about our sprint through the second half of the tunnel, such was my panic. After running for about four hundred yards, I remember coming to the exit: another ancient stone doorway with another low pyramid. Beyond the stone doorway, I saw a second dust-covered miner’s cave.

  Misty inserted her gem into this pyramid and the portal filled with purple light, and staying close behind the others, I stepped through the curtain of light—

  —to find Griff and Hattie waiting in the dirt-walled chamber.

  I blinked. They certainly hadn’t been in the cave only seconds before, and the cave was now completely devoid of dust.

  What the hell . . .?

  Even though we were underground, I could hear the distant noises of the night from above: sirens, a car horn.

  No sooner were all of us out of the portal than Misty removed her yellow gem from the outer flank of the little pyramid and the curtain of light vanished. The tunnel stretched back into the distance behind me, silent, sombre and—somehow—not as dangerous with the light-barrier gone.

  Misty came up to me, smiling. ‘How about that for a rush?’

  I nodded, breathless. I couldn’t find the words to describe it.

  Misty took advantage of my temporary muteness to reach forward with a marker and draw a single black line on my wrist.

  ‘Welcome to the most exclusive club in New York, Skye,’ she said.

  AFTER

  After emerging from a private garden attached to the American Museum of Natural History (on the west side of Central Park), we adjourned to Misty’s place at the San Remo and hung out in her bedroom.

  Misty’s bedroom was actually two rooms, designed like a hotel suite: it had one room with a bed in it and another sitting room, with a lounge, TV, desk and bookcase. We gathered in the sitting room.

  I was still processing the whole experience, which Misty and the others seemed to particularly enjoy.

  ‘I think we blew your sister’s mind,’ Verity said to Red as she lay across his lap.

  Bo smiled at me. ‘I know what you’re thinking. I know everything that you’re thinking.’

  ‘What . . . how . . . what is it?’ I said. ‘What is that light across the doorway? How can the entry and exit caves be normal one moment and then caked in dust the next?’

  Misty said, ‘We don’t know. You put the gemstone in the pyramid, it opens the portal, and you step into another dimension or something. Then the second doorway at the other end of the tunnel brings you back to this dimension. But you can only go one way through each portal. They are both initiated by placing the gem in each portal’s pyramid: one takes you there, the other brings you back.’

  ‘Alternate dimensions?’ I said.

  ‘At least an alternate New York,’ Griff said. ‘A parallel New York.’

  ‘I think it’s another time,’ Bo said. ‘New York in another time: judging by the junk on that pile, I reckon it’s the future.’

  ‘It could be the past,’ Hattie said.

  ‘It could alternate between the past and the future . . .’ Dane said. ‘Every time we open the portal, it might be opening up randomly to a different time.’

  ‘But what about the trash heap?’ Bo pointed out. ‘It only ever grows. It doesn’t disappear or get smaller. Stuff only gets added to it. I don’t think it’s random.’

  I recalled finding the well concealed in the thicket behind the Swedish Cottage. It was definitely here in our present-day New York.

  ‘Seriously, we don’t know what the hell it is,’ Verity said, ‘let alone when the hell it is. Except for that one time Bo shimmied up to the top of the well, looked around for a minute and saw the city in ruins, none of us has ever gone out into the world up there.’

  ‘What about that bald man I saw up the well?’ I said. ‘The one who laughed at me.’

  Bo shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Have you seen him before?’

  Hattie said, ‘A couple of times. Sometimes he wears a hoodie. I call him Mr Insane.’

  Misty said, ‘We have no idea who he is, but he makes it a hell of a ride, doesn’t he?’

  I blinked hard, taking it all in.

  ‘How did you discover it?’ I asked.

  ‘We didn’t,’ Misty said. ‘It got passed down to us.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Misty held up her necklace, which now had its amber gem clipped back into its figure-eight centrepiece.

  ‘A long time ago, my great-grandmother gave this necklace and another one just like it to my grandmother, who gave them to my mom when she turned fifteen. My mom still keeps one necklace with a similar gem in it herself, while she gave this one to Chastity and me. We share it.’

  ‘Where did the gems come from?’ I asked.

  ‘You know about the Manhattan Purchase?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Remember the coloured glass beads that the Indians took from the Dutch in exchange for the island? They weren’t just any old beads and they sure weren’t worth twenty-four bucks. Some say that the Dutch had stolen them from the Indians and were returning them. To get them back, the Indians offered the Dutch the entire island of Manhattan. In any case, those beads somehow made their way to the Mayflower settlers in New England: our ancestors. Two amber ones—these two gems—came to my family.’

  Misty shrugged. ‘Obviousl
y, it’s all pretty strange to begin with, but there are a couple of extra things about the portal that are super weird.

  ‘First, it only works between December and April. Why? We don’t know. And second, it won’t allow anyone younger than fifteen or older than eighteen to pass through it. It knows how old you are. Once you turn eighteen, it won’t let you pass. The light-barrier just won’t let you through, in the same way it won’t let you go back out through the entrance.’

  Chastity said, ‘Which is why the gems get passed down from generation to generation. After you turn eighteen, you can’t enter the tunnel anymore. So my mom, like her mom before her—and her mom before her—ran between the ages of fifteen and eighteen. After that, she kept the gems and waited until she had children. When we were old enough, she brought us to the two private gardens and showed us how it worked.’

  ‘Your family owns the two conservancy gardens?’ I asked.

  Misty stood up and went over to her bookshelf. ‘Our family and a couple of other Mayflower families. Those gardens are held in a very old trust that predates the building of the park and which the Met and the Natural History Museum wish they could break open, but that ain’t going to happen, not while I’m alive or while any of our future kids are.’

  As she spoke, Misty pulled a fat hardback book from the bookshelf, a copy of Tolstoy’s War and Peace.

  I was wondering what she was doing—why grab a classic novel in the middle of a conversation?—when she opened the book and I saw that its pages had been hollowed out.

  A rectangular void had been cut into the core of the book.

  And suddenly Misty’s choice of book became clear to me: War and Peace was long, so it was thick enough to conceal the necklace inside it.

  Misty placed her figure-eight necklace inside the book then snapped the book shut and placed it back on the shelf.

  Misty smiled. ‘It’s a trick my mom taught me. Thieves always rifle through your drawers and they can open any safe these days. Mom told me about one rich guy who had a wall-safe: while he was away in the Bahamas, some thieves used a jackhammer to rip the whole thing out of the wall. It took them an entire day, but they did it. This is better. Seriously, there aren’t many thieves out there who are going to check out War and Peace during a robbery, are there?’