Yes.
He turned and walked out of the room. He was wearing his robe and a pair of hospital slippers and I could see glimpses of the scars on his back, and large scars on the back of his head. I think often of that moment, if perhaps I said something wrong, if I should have withheld some of the information I gave to him, if I was too forward, or if perhaps I should have sensed something when he told Jacob that he loved him. I think often of that moment, and I wonder if I should have known when he stood and smiled at me, that he was going to walk out of the room, and walk out of the hospital, and disappear again, and if I had known, would I have done anything to stop him.
MATTHEW.
Some people just ain"t made for the world. Can"t f.u.c.king take it. Can"t deal with Momma and Dadda and school teaching you nothing and a f.u.c.king job with some motherf.u.c.king boss going blah blah blah and bills and neighbors and some kind of bulls.h.i.t church and having a good credit score and a mortgage and getting married with kids and some kind of mysterious motherf.u.c.king retirement plan that don"t ever let you do nothing but put more in and get none back. Lotta people ain"t made for it. They the people you see on the streets, in dirty clothes, talking to themselves, screaming on the corner like they demonized, mumbling and crying, they the ones in your family and your town you always scared of and feeling sorry for and making excuses about, the ones you don"t even thinks is f.u.c.king human. They is, they just ain"t made like the rest of you and they can"t deal with it so they go to drinking and getting f.u.c.king high and being criminal and getting locked-the-f.u.c.k-up and just saying who gives a f.u.c.k to all of it. People be thinking they"re crazy and be needing some kind of f.u.c.king help, but the help ain"t nothing "cause a motherf.u.c.king soup kitchen or some kind of shelter that can"t hold enough or a nuthouse where we get beat or some charity that"s really about motherf.u.c.kers" friends knowing how good they is and how much they care ain"t nothing but bulls.h.i.t. And don"t even bring up that made-up motherf.u.c.ker people be calling G.o.d, "cause that motherf.u.c.ker don"t even exist, and don"t be bringing up all these so-called houses of G.o.d, "cause they more about killing and hating than they is about helping and loving. Sorry to break the motherf.u.c.king news if you ain"t heard it, but that"s it motherf.u.c.ker, that"s the f.u.c.king news.
I been living underground for a long-a.s.s mother-f.u.c.king time. Living underneath New York f.u.c.king City, where there"s tunnels, and there"s tunnels underneath the tunnels, and there"s some more f.u.c.king tunnels under those tunnels. Some of "em empty, some still got trains rolling through "em, some of "em got the subways and some of "em gots peoples. And then there"s some so dark, so G.o.dd.a.m.n dark, darker than the darkest night, and blacker than what you see when your eyes closed, that most peoples, even underground peoples, won"t go into "em. And those are the tunnels where miracles happen, where people like Yahya and Ben go and come back something different, where motherf.u.c.kers who got the gift go and in the blackness they see. I know it be sounding crazy, but the ones with gifts got to go into blackness, "cause that"s where they learn to see.
I was born in New Haven, Connecticut. My daddy was a respectable motherf.u.c.ker who had him a college degree and worked his a.s.s off as a bank teller. My momma finished high school and spent her life being his b.i.t.c.h. He wasn"t never around when I was growing up, saying he was always working to get promoted and going out with clients and his boss. When he was around, he was drinking and yelling and ignoring me and my two sisters and telling my momma she wasn"t pretty enough or skinny enough or dressing well enough or getting them invited to the right parties with the right peoples and every now and then if she talked back to him he"d hit her in the f.u.c.king face. He didn"t think nothing about me "cept that I was a piece of s.h.i.t, which was fine with me "cause I didn"t think nothing about him "cept he was a piece of s.h.i.t too. They sent me to all sorts of different schools, thinking the better name or more of "em would make a difference, but it didn"t make nothing "cept them real p.i.s.sed. When I was seventeen, I left "em for good. Just walked the f.u.c.k away. I was figuring I"d do fine on my own, and even if I didn"t, I"d rather be doing real bad my own way than be an a.s.shole doing what other peoples thought I should be doing. I convinced myself I was breaking out in the name of some kind of f.u.c.king freedom. I hadn"t learned yet that everybody"s locked up some way or another. That"s how life is; we"re all imprisoned by something.
I lived in a park for a while. Lived in a cardboard box. Lived under a highway. Got my a.s.s beat and got robbed and got addicted and got locked up a few times and got raped more than once or twice. Learned what I already knew, that the world is an ugly motherf.u.c.king place where people"ll spit on you and f.u.c.k you up before they"ll be good to you. I found my way into the tunnels just wanting to get the f.u.c.k away, lived like a f.u.c.king rat, scrounging for food, eating f.u.c.king garbage, taking what other people didn"t want and using it to survive. First time down was for three years. Just by myself. Living by the trains that went to Long Island. Had a sleeping bag and flashlight and a baseball bat. Then I got busted for being in a fight with a knife over some pizza in a dumpster and had some crack in my pocket and got sent upstate for three years. Got out and came back to my tunnel and found some other motherf.u.c.ker in my sleeping bag and wasn"t in no mood for fighting after fighting the whole time in prison and went further down and found me an old electrical closet on an abandoned IRT track and stayed there for three years. I got back on the rock and drinking again and spent my days begging and going through dumpsters trying to find some s.h.i.t to sell. One day I came back from up top and I had me a couple nice rocks and a bottle of wine and I see two motherf.u.c.kers sitting on the ground outside my closet. They wasn"t in uniforms and they definitely wasn"t working with the MTA or Amtrak, so I figured it was some undercover pig motherf.u.c.kers coming to drag me back to prison "cause I didn"t never go see my parole officer, and I think about running away but figure they"d shoot me or some s.h.i.t like they always do to poor supposedly crazy homeless motherf.u.c.kers. So I just walked over to "em and asked them what the f.u.c.k was up and when I was close I could see for sure they wasn"t no f.u.c.king cops "cause they had these scars that was identical and looked liked someone had put two long slices on each of their arms and they said some motherf.u.c.ker named Yahya wanted to see me. I asked them what the f.u.c.k Yahya wanted and they said to see me. I asked them who the f.u.c.k Yahya was and where Yahya was at and they said they would show me. And that"s what they did. They f.u.c.king took me down into the blackness and showed me.
I was there on that first day we saw Ben. We was just sitting having some dinner and most of us was there, sitting at the tables eating some macaroni and motherf.u.c.king cheese. At that point I"d been with Yahya for almost ten years, and it had taken a long f.u.c.king time, lots of hard-a.s.s work and patience, but we had everything dialed up just f.u.c.king right: electricity hijacked from the city power lines, water hijacked from the city water pipes, a tunnel that hadn"t been used since the eighteen f.u.c.king hundreds that was blocked at both ends, holes that we could close that was going up to other tunnels in four different places, and one pa.s.sage that went straight into a alley on the Lower East Side that we could lock the f.u.c.k up to keep people out. We had built little shelters for everyone out of sc.r.a.ps of wood and siding that peoples up top threw away. We had pots and pans and sheets and towels and beds and old tape players for music and radios for when the bad news started coming and we had thousands and thousands of batteries. We had enough canned and boxed food to keep us going for a year, and that was if we didn"t start eating any of the rats or the other f.u.c.king animals that was living in the tunnels, which could keep us going for just about forever. And we had us a stockpile of weapons. Everything from old medieval-like s.h.i.t, f.u.c.king swords and spears and shields we made out of sc.r.a.p metal, to new-school s.h.i.t like nine millimeters and a.s.sault rifles and tasers and mace. There was other tunnels that had peoples living in "em, and there was other groups that had organized into some kind of community or something, but none like us. We was a movement, a f.u.c.king army, with a philosophy and a motherf.u.c.king plan. We was ready for what"s coming. For what is going to befall humanity. We was prepared to survive when everybody else is gonna f.u.c.king die.
Yahya"d been telling us for a couple weeks he"d been having dreams about someone coming to see us. Yahya was a prophet, an old school holy man, like f.u.c.king Moses or Muhammad or some other motherf.u.c.ker from the old books, so when he was telling us he was having dreams or visions we took that s.h.i.t seriously. Yahya had been in the tunnels for thirty-three years. Came down when he was fourteen years old, living in some foster care f.u.c.king nightmare, getting beat by the other kids and raped by the man who was supposed to be caring for him. He got fed-the-f.u.c.k-up one day and lit the house they was living in on fire. The other kids got out but the man burned to a f.u.c.king crisp, just like his a.s.s deserved, and as soon as he"d dropped the f.u.c.king match, Yahya walked into the nearest subway and hopped the f.u.c.king turnstile and walked off the platform and into the tunnels. He figured out how to live without being above, eating discarded food from the garbage cans of subway stations, finding clothes that people be leaving behind on accident, getting water from bathrooms at the big stations. He kept going down further and further, finding his own motherf.u.c.king way, like all the prophets and the great peoples of the world find their own f.u.c.king way, and eventually he found our tunnel we living in now, pristine and unopened for almost a hundred f.u.c.king years, and he lived in it alone for ten years, till he started building our society. He only been coming out one day a year for the whole time, just the day of the anniversary of the fire. He come out and he read a newspaper and he walk around the city and look at the s.h.i.t going down, which ain"t never any good, and been getting worse and worse every G.o.dd.a.m.n year.
So he"d been telling us "bout his dream, that some motherf.u.c.ker was going to find us, a man who"d wandered the world, suffered s.h.i.t none of us could ever imagine, knew s.h.i.t that none of us could ever imagine, that his arriving was a sign that the end was coming, the final motherf.u.c.king sign. And there we were, eating our macaroni and listening to Yahya preach, and this motherf.u.c.ker comes walking out the darkness, skinny as f.u.c.k, white as paper, scars all over the f.u.c.king place, scars that made the scars we had, the scars Yahya cut into our arms as a sign that our life above was dead and we was in the tunnels for life, this motherf.u.c.ker had scars made those scars look like little bandaid b.o.o.boos I used to get when I was a four-year-old s.h.i.thead. Yahya, who preached every night at dinner, just stopped, stared. If he hadn"t been having his dreams he"d a pro"ly killed the motherf.u.c.ker. But he knew, knew he was coming, and knew who he was, knew why he was walking the face of the f.u.c.king earth, and Ben just came strolling up, not saying a word, just looking unhuman, but not scary like a monster or s.h.i.t, but unhuman "cause it looked like he was glowing, like there was some kinda light coming out of him or something. He came to the table, asked if he could sit down, and Yahya nodded. We was all shocked and I personally was scared, scared of the motherf.u.c.ker who could silence Yahya. So he sat down at the end of the table, looked at Yahya, and asked him, real polite and s.h.i.t, if he would continue preaching. Yahya smiled, and he was not the kind of motherf.u.c.ker who smiled very often, and said yes. And then he continued f.u.c.king preaching. And I remember that sermon "cause of Ben joining us. Was about how the governments of the world leading everyone towards death, disaster, ruin, and apocalypse. And how G.o.d and Jesus and the rest of the motherf.u.c.kers and the dumba.s.s prophecies in the Bible had nothing to do with it. It was the greed and folly of the men who running the world. Their belief in silly religions that preach murder and hate and division. Their need to control other peoples who"s different from them and kill them if they don"t bend to some motherf.u.c.ker"s will. That"s what"s gonna end it all, some dumba.s.s war over religion and money, and that"s who"s gonna end it all, the motherf.u.c.kers who believe and hold the purse strings.
Ben settled right the f.u.c.k in. He took a job like everyone had a f.u.c.king job. Most of us went up top to either beg for money that we used for buying weapons and long-term supplies or look through the garbage for food and building materials and s.h.i.t we could use down below. Some of us took care of our business in the tunnel, working on the electric or the water, managing supplies, doing maintenance, cleaning the place the f.u.c.k up. The worst job was cleaning the area around the toilets, two deep holes that went into a tunnel down below us. We had built little outhouses "round the holes, and peoples tried being hygienic and s.h.i.t, but it was still nasty, still a place where peoples p.i.s.sed and took s.h.i.ts and smelled f.u.c.king bad. Ben became the toilet man, cleaning and stocking the paper and dumping a bucketful of water down the hole to make some of that foul s.h.i.t go away. When he wasn"t working there, he"d help whoever else was needing help, doing whatever they was needing doing. When we was eating, he"d always sit at the end of the table, and he didn"t hardly eat nothing. Maybe two, three bites of rice or pasta, maybe an apple or an orange or half a banana, one gla.s.s of water, and that"d be it for the whole f.u.c.king day. And when we was sleeping, we all went into our shelters, some of "em being pretty f.u.c.king nice, with mattresses and TVs and more than one room, and some of "em being more the simple way, with maybe a sleeping bag or some blankets. Ben would sleep on the ground at one of the dark ends of the tunnel, all by hisself, nothing but his clothes, "cept when it got real f.u.c.king cold, then he used this thin-a.s.s blanket that wouldn"t keep a f.u.c.king c.o.c.kroach warm. And he didn"t hardly ever talk. If you asked him a question, he"d either nod or shake his head or smile. If it was needing more words, or was a more complicated kinda thing, he would always say just what he needed as quick as possible and then shut up. And with the way he looked, he was making all of us think he wasn"t a person, not a real person at least, he was something f.u.c.king else beyond, something that wasn"t like the rest of us, not even like Yahya.
About a week after he was being with us, his seizures started happening. One lunchtime he just fell backwards from the table and his body went f.u.c.king haywire. He was shaking and rolling "round and had s.h.i.t coming out his mouth and was grunting like a G.o.dd.a.m.n dog. People got up to help him but Yahya said leave him be, the man is doing what the man needs to do. So peoples left his a.s.s alone. And the first time it lasted something like two minutes. When it was over we just left him alone, and at a certain point he came back awake and sat back down at the table like nothing f.u.c.king happened. Twenty minutes later it happened again. He just fell back and freaked-the-f.u.c.k-out. One of us was a doctor before he became a crackhead and ended up in the tunnels, where Yahya found him and saved him, and he was saying we couldn"t just leave Ben alone, but Yahya kept saying this is what the man needs to do. And it was one of Yahya"s beliefs, one of the tenets of our f.u.c.king society: a man does what he needs to do, he lives his life how he wants to live it, other people ain"t got no f.u.c.king right to impose. So even though we was all scared, and we be seeing that the seizures were f.u.c.king his a.s.s up, we left him alone. He was doing what he needed to do.
In our world, in our society, our civilization, our culture, and I ain"t talking "bout yours, the one above the f.u.c.king ground, I"m talking about our nation, the one in the f.u.c.king tunnel, the underground empire, in that subterranean realm, there was rules. If you got brought down, if you got found by Yahya and chosen, you learned the f.u.c.king rules, and you lived by them, and if you became part of us, you was saved. Yahya believed the end of the motherf.u.c.king world was coming, and he was right, because it sure as f.u.c.k is, and it is coming soon. If he found you, you was one of the ones who couldn"t live above, who wasn"t cut the f.u.c.k out for it, and he believed you was capable of living below, and he believed you"d be capable of fighting. You"d get brought down, f.u.c.king blindfolded and s.h.i.t so you wouldn"t know where you was, most of us was addicted so we"d get taken the f.u.c.k off whatever the s.h.i.t was, and we was indoctrinated. You had to work, f.u.c.king contribute. You had to submit your will to the good of the community. You could drink, use, f.u.c.k, gamble, read, play chess, cook, write, paint, build, do whatever the f.u.c.k you want, but there was no addiction, whatever you was doing had to be under control. You had to live and let live, but not like motherf.u.c.kers up top say that, you had to do it for reals. There was no stealing, no fighting, no judging, no hating. There was no G.o.d, no worship, no time wasting on made-up s.h.i.t. You had to renunciate the f.u.c.king world, free yourself from the bulls.h.i.t of it, accept that at some point there was gonna be nothing but what existed in the tunnel. And you had to be willing to die for that. And once you was f.u.c.king cool with all that, and was ready to make the commitment, you was f.u.c.king saved. And when you was saved, you was scarred. Yahya would cut you, two long gashes along each of your arms, symbolizing your death above and your birth below. And when the blood flowed, when you lifted your arms and it started running down your cheeks, your neck, when you could taste it, when you could feel it in your f.u.c.king shoes, you was free. Never going f.u.c.king back "cept to get s.h.i.t to live below. Never accepting their rules or expectations or so-called morals and so-called f.u.c.king standards ever f.u.c.king again. When the blood flowed, you was free.
When Ben came, there was thirty-two of us. It had been that way for two years. Even though Yahya had prophesized his coming, he had to follow the same rules as the rest of us, had to become one of us if he wanted to stay. His seizures made s.h.i.t a little more complicated, "cause he couldn"t be doing most of the normal kind of s.h.i.t the rest of us was doing. And who he was, why he was walking the mother-f.u.c.king face of the earth, the gifts he was given or acquired or whatever you want to believe, though I know what I believe, that made s.h.i.t more complicated too. Not every day a motherf.u.c.ker like him comes strolling into the motherf.u.c.king lunch line. But he didn"t seem to care. Yahya moved him to sweeping and garbage, which was sweeping the f.u.c.king grounds and taking the garbage out, which meant taking it to another tunnel that was also empty, "cept for the fact we"d been dumping s.h.i.t in it for years. When Ben would have a seizure, he"d just sit down and let it happen. Though Yahya noticed it the first time, the rest of us started seeing how Ben would go to another place right before those f.u.c.king things would blast him. His eyes would be real still, like he was looking at s.h.i.t no else could see or had ever seen or would ever see. It would only be a second, maybe, or two or three, but somehow, those seconds seemed like forever. When someone asked Yahya what was happening, he said the man was speaking to G.o.d, seeing through to the eternal. Someone else asked how he was talking to G.o.d, if G.o.d don"t exist? Yahya said G.o.d don"t exist like people on this planet believe he exist, some big powerful all-knowing motherf.u.c.ker sitting on a chair giving a s.h.i.t about what"s happening here on earth and planning our individual destinies, that"s just stupid bulls.h.i.t, but there was answers we didn"t have, things we didn"t know, things beyond the little minds of little men who was stupid enough to think that in the entire universe, infinite beyond human comprehension in size and energy and dimension, we was the only motherf.u.c.kers around, and that all the stupid little s.h.i.t we did and f.u.c.king worried about mattered in some kinda way. Ben went to those places, those infinite places, and understood "em, even though he couldn"t or wouldn"t talk about what the f.u.c.k it was he was seeing and feeling and experiencing.
The seizures got worse and f.u.c.king worse and f.u.c.king worse, and longer and f.u.c.king longer and f.u.c.king longer. They would last ten, fifteen, twenty minutes. Started lasting thirty minutes, lasting an hour, lasting three or four hours, shaking and convulsing and spitting up and grunting, you could see it hurting him while it was happening, and you could see him being in so much pain when it ended that he couldn"t hardly move. The crackhead doctor said Ben was experiencing some s.h.i.t called status epilepticus, a state of persistent seizure, and that he could be dying from it, that he would be dying from it if we didn"t get him out to a proper hospital. But Yahya said leave him, that man is not going to die, at least not down here. Then he had him a seizure that lasted for a day, twenty-four f.u.c.king hours straight. It was scaring everyone and making us think Yahya was wrong, that Ben was gonna f.u.c.king die. On and on and on and on. Worse than we had ever seen. Don"t know how anyone could live through it or be surviving something like that. And even if you could be living through it, how you wouldn"t be f.u.c.king insane from the pain, just crazy outta your mind from the physical f.u.c.king pain. When it stopped, he just lie there, on his blanket, on the floor of the tunnel. Slept for like another two days. We was always going over to check him, make sure he was still breathing, and he always was, but it was real light, and you had to be looking real close to see it. When he waked up, we was all sitting around after dinner. Yahya had given us a fierce preaching, along the lines of his typical but real inspired, saying the world above us was dying, that greed corruption hate and intolerance was gonna lead to a war that would destroy it all, that the war was coming soon, that we got to renounce that world and prepare to survive, that we got to love each other and let each other live, and help each other live, and respect each other. Don"t matter where we from or what we had before, don"t matter our color or our religion, that nothing matter but living, and letting live, and loving. After he was done we got to listening to some old-timey jazz on the ca.s.sette deck, some of us having c.o.c.ktails, some of us smoking some fine-a.s.s weed, some of us dancing, mens together, mens and ladies together, just ladies, all of them cool down here, sharing their love and spreading their love however the f.u.c.k they want, n.o.body judging them. Ben joined all the people dancing, probably about twenty of us. n.o.body saw him walk up, one second he wasn"t there, the next second he was. And he was moving real slow, slow and in perfect rhythm, like he was part of the music, another instrument to it or some s.h.i.t, tied directly into it. His eyes was closed, and he hadn"t f.u.c.king eaten in so long, his skin was even whiter than normal, almost f.u.c.king translucent. His eyes was closed and he started moving to each person or couple, and he touched them, held them, moved with them, slowed them down so they was feeling the music same way he was, he was holding their hands, holding their faces in his hands, pulling them close so their bodies was real tight with his, and he was kissing them, men and women both, slowly and deeply kissing them, and you could see in their faces, in their bodies, that none of them had ever been feeling anything like it, nothing as pure, as s.e.xual, as ecstatic, as f.u.c.king sweet and beautiful, and it was like he was f.u.c.king them, f.u.c.king them like they hadn"t never been f.u.c.ked before, even though he was just touching, kissing, moving, moving real slow, real real slow, he was f.u.c.king all of "em. And those he wasn"t with, who wasn"t dancing, we was watching, and we was as turned on as the people he was touching, he was f.u.c.king. When I was a boy living in a world in my head to escape the world I was living in for real, I used to dream I"d be able to do anything I wanted to people and whatever I did they loved me, just loved and let me be free from all the s.h.i.t in the world that I hated and that hated me. When I was older, I stopped dreaming that type of dreaming "cause I realized that kind of s.h.i.t just wasn"t real or possible or ever going to be happening. But then I saw Ben, and I believed it was possible, that f.u.c.king anything was possible, because I saw it and felt and knew it and believed it and even though it didn"t look real or feel real it was the realest thing I ever knew, that I ever saw on this f.u.c.king h.e.l.lhole of an earth. That love was the realest motherf.u.c.king thing any of us ever saw. When he had been with everyone dancing, Ben stepped away and walked towards Yahya, who had been watching and feeling and believing too, sitting at the head of the table where he was always sitting, and Ben kneeled before him and offered his arms. Yahya always had his knife on him, or near him, and he picked it up and he took Ben"s arms and he made the cuts. Normally takes longer, a year or so before you get them, and only when Yahya decides, but not with Ben. His blood flowed and he lifted his arms and the blood streamed down all over him. When he was covered and his clothes were soaked, and the ground beneath him, he stepped forward and he kissed Yahya. I hadn"t never seen anyone kiss Yahya before, or even touch him, not outside of his room, which was the only place he did things with people, and only women. And Ben kissed him for a long time, and when he pulled away, Yahya"s eyes was closed and he was breathing real slow and heavy, and he was looking like he couldn"t move, like he was f.u.c.king paralyzed. And Ben just stepped away and turned and walked into the darkness.
It was a long time before anyone moved. And when we was moving again, we just went silently, not one f.u.c.king word outta anyone, back to our shelters, where most of us just laid there in our sleeping places and thought about Ben. Next morning we expected to see him, having breakfast or being in his sleeping area, but he wasn"t nowhere around. Peoples started talking "bout where he might be at, when Yahya tell us he gone, that he had him another vision last night, that Ben be gone into the tunnels, where he got some things that he need to do on his own, some fights he needs to be fighting on his own. Yahya say let him go, let him do what he needs to do, when he be finished with it, he"ll be coming back.
A week went by and he didn"t come back. Another week and still nothing. Peoples started getting worried a little bit. I started wandering the tunnels, looking for places I hadn"t never been, places further down, places that got the true darkness, the black that don"t ever see no light. I was thinking even though Yahya be having his vision, and even though Ben obviously got something special about him, he still a man, still flesh and f.u.c.king blood, still got him a heart that does its beating. And being a man, he vulnerable, and he wandering around somewhere with big-a.s.s motherf.u.c.king gashes in his arms and some kind of medical condition that f.u.c.ks him up worse than I ever seen. So I went looking for him, and looking for the places that are hidden, that ain"t supposed to be found, the places where I say before that the magic happens, where in the darkness you learn to see.
After four or five days looking, walking through subway tunnels, trains blasting by me just a couple inches away, walking through Amtrak and LIRR tunnels, walking through PATH tunnels, walking through abandoned tunnels, the old IRT, tunnels that got started and never finished, just empty f.u.c.king holes, I come across a door in the lower tunnels beneath City Hall. Normally I don"t bother with the f.u.c.king doors, "cause they all be locked and breaking the locks just draw attention that don"t n.o.body be needing, but something "bout this door draw me in. I checked it and it was open, so I look inside and there"s a hole with this ladder going straight down, though I can"t f.u.c.king see where it"s going or how far or where it ends. Ain"t nothing wrong with looking in life, looking for new things and places and feelings and beliefs, ain"t nothing wrong at all, so I start climbing down, looking to see what I find. I go down and it"s black and f.u.c.king silent and even though I"d been living down there a long time at that point, I was real scared, my heart thudding all fast and s.h.i.t, taking short breaths, wondering if something gonna come out and get me, some f.u.c.king monster or something, or if I"m gonna f.u.c.king fall and break my d.a.m.n neck. I was being real scared.
My foot hit ground and I could feel it wet and slippery, which was telling me I must be somewhere in the f.u.c.king sewers, which all of us stayed the f.u.c.k out of because they was full of rats and disease and lots of other s.h.i.t no man don"t want to spend time in or around. I started climbing right back up but as my foot start rising I heard me something that was sounding like a scream. I stopped and stood listening for more screaming and I heard another f.u.c.king scream almost right away. I got down and started walking towards where I was hearing it, stepping real careful and moving real slow because I couldn"t see nothing. Even though my eyes was real adjusted, I couldn"t f.u.c.king see nothing.
Took me a long time to go a couple hundred yards down that tunnel, long-a.s.s time. All the while I was hearing those screams, and the closer I was getting to "em, I was knowing it was Ben, "cause it was sounding like some of the noises I heard him making during his seizures. When I was real close I started hearing trickling water and started knowing that the screams is coming from below me, and that the water be running down somewheres. My eyes had adjusted and I saw a few steps ahead there was a huge hole, like some kind of f.u.c.king sinkhole or giant pothole that happens in New York once or twice a year, and Ben must be down in that hole, maybe hurt, and can"t get himself out. I was about to call out to him, tell him I was here and gonna help him, when I hear him start talking, talking real slow and deliberate, like he having a conversation with someone. So I slide to the edge of the hole and look down, and he be right there, maybe fifteen, twenty feet down in some other f.u.c.king sewer tunnel, and he just sitting on the ground like he Buddha, and I swear on my f.u.c.king life his skin was glowing, and his arms was already healed, the scars just blending in with the rest of his scars, and he was talking to the empty air right in front of him, and if I didn"t know him, and know how Yahya felt about him, I"d a done thought he was plumb f.u.c.king crazy out his mind.
I lied there and watched him. I was nervous he was gonna see me, so I only just peeked over the edge of that hole. I could hear him saying s.h.i.t like yes or no, yes or no, over and over again, saying why, saying how, saying no, I will not, I will not. He talked for like an hour or two hours and then I see him get real still and I know what that means and he starts seizing, worse than I ever seen before, his body literally coming up off the ground, he convulsing so f.u.c.king hard. And the noises he was making scared me, sounded like something I can only imagine hearing down in h.e.l.l, if there is one. And something felt wrong, like there was something else in there with him. Something dark and evil and old as the f.u.c.king sky, something with power that was beyond power, that was f.u.c.king so deep and black it was beyond power, and it made me shake and made the hair all over my body stick up and made me p.i.s.s myself, right there I f.u.c.king p.i.s.sed all over myself. Whatever it was, if it was anything at all, it scared me so f.u.c.king much I turned and got the f.u.c.k outta there fast as I f.u.c.king could.
I started going back to see Ben whenever I could. Didn"t tell no one I had found him or knew where he was at. Most of the time he"d be in seizures, and they always bad. When he wasn"t, he"d be talking or sometimes screaming, screaming into the blackness, screaming into the motherf.u.c.king abyss. Sometimes I"d go down and I"d feel that thing, that mean-a.s.s evil f.u.c.king presence, and I"d turn and get the f.u.c.k out right away. Other times it"d come while I was there. Only once or twice it didn"t come at all, and those was times when Ben was screaming, like he was keeping it at bay or some s.h.i.t, like the sound of his scream had some f.u.c.king righteous power.
He was down there two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, six weeks. Down in that f.u.c.king nasty hole by himself. Far as I could see he never ate nothing, never drank nothing, never slept, never f.u.c.king left. And while he shoulda got sick or f.u.c.king died from f.u.c.king starving, it didn"t happen. If anything I was seeing the opposite. He was seeming stronger, still skinny as f.u.c.k, but stronger. And it was looking like he could somehow be controlling the seizures. Like he could make himself go in and out of "em when he wanted to go in and out of "em. I"d hear him ask a question or say something, some heavy-a.s.s s.h.i.t like what happened before the Big Bang, or who were they, why were they, answer the problem of quantum gravity, can we unify the four fundamental forces. After he asked, he"d close his eyes and take a breath and open his eyes and be in that place, that place like eternity, and then he"d seize. And for the entire last week I went to see him, the seventh week he was in that foul f.u.c.king hole, he was seizing. And the entire time, that presence was with him, stronger, seeming somehow active, like it would ebb and flow, attack and retreat, made me wet my f.u.c.king pants every G.o.dd.a.m.n time, scared me to f.u.c.king death. At the end of the week, I went down and he was gone. Made me real f.u.c.king worried, scared something had happened, that the f.u.c.king evil had somehow got him. I went right back to our tunnel, was gonna get Yahya and take him back and tell him what I"d seen and what I"d been doing with myself and Ben and tell him we needed to find him and help. I went back as fast as I f.u.c.king could, ran in the darkness, ran from the darkness. And when I got back, Ben was there, with Yahya, looking just fine, like he"d never left, actually looking better than I"d ever seen him, skinny and s.h.i.t, but glowing like some kind of fluorescent f.u.c.king lightbulb, even though I knew he hadn"t had nothing to eat or drink in seven motherf.u.c.king weeks. He was back. And just like Yahya had seen in his visions, the end was near. The end was f.u.c.king near.
JOHN.
I had heard there were people living down there. They were called mole people. There had been a book, a couple of doc.u.mentaries. It was one of those things people would talk about at parties. Frankly, I didn"t care at all. It didn"t mean anything to me. If people wanted to live underground, let them. It relieved the taxpayer of the burden of them, and it kept them out of inst.i.tutions. As long as they didn"t cross my path in some way, I didn"t give a s.h.i.t.
The main function of my job was the tracking of weapons that came into New York City, and the apprehension and incarceration of those individuals who chose to illegally possess them. It is forbidden by law to own or possess a gun within city limits unless you have a permit, and permits are very difficult to get. Whenever we recovered a weapon, our first priority was discovering how it had entered the city. A gun dealer in upstate New York led us to the individuals in the tunnel. We came across the dealer when a gang member in southeast Queens arrested for murder was found in possession of an illegal handgun. The suspect had not, as is standard procedure with gang members and murderers, removed the serial numbers from the weapon, which allowed us to trace it. When we arrested the gun dealer for selling weapons to individuals who did not have the required license, he made a deal with us to keep himself out of prison and started providing us with the ident.i.ties of other individuals to whom he had sold weapons. At that point, he told us about the group in the tunnel, who had bought approximately sixty weapons from him, and thousands of rounds of ammunition.
It wasn"t easy finding them. There are a large number of abandoned tunnels under the city, some of which haven"t been entered in decades. We initially undertook a search of the tunnels, which was fruitless. The gun dealer had told us that the members of the group, who he described as apocalyptic wackos, made their money begging on the street, and that they all had long scars on their arms. We started looking for individuals who matched that description, and after eight months found two of them, one a male and one a female. We put them under surveillance and found the tunnel where they, along with approximately thirty other individuals, were living.
We knew very little about them when we executed search warrants on them. There was some worry we might be entering a situation similar to that of the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, where a group of heavily armed religious fanatics, followers of a messianic leader named David Koresh, engaged a federal task force, which held them under siege for fifty-one days, until the Davidians" compound caught on fire and eighty people, including seventeen children, died. Fortunately, that was not the case. Approximately fifty law enforcement personnel entered the tunnel through four different access points. Almost all of the individuals residing in the tunnel were asleep, and the three that weren"t were taken into custody without incident.
I met Ben when we were interrogating the suspects, who were being held at the MCC, the federal correctional center in lower Manhattan. We had found more than three hundred firearms and ten thousand rounds of ammunition in their compound, along with small amounts of cocaine and marijuana. They were also in possession of a large number of knives, swords, and spears. When we ran their prints, we were able to ascertain the ident.i.ties of all of them except for two, and all of them had records, most for things like drug possession and theft, though a few also had a.s.sault convictions. Of the two we could not identify, one went by the name of Yahya and was recognized by all of them as their leader. The other identified himself as Ben Jones.
Yahya refused to speak. He literally did not answer a single question we posed to him, nor did he request a lawyer. He stared directly into the eyes of both myself and the other agent interrogating him, and never said a thing. We a.s.sumed it was a ploy to intimidate us, but having been in rooms with drug lords, serial killers, and terrorists, I didn"t find him particularly frightening or off-putting. I did Ben on my own. As with Yahya, his prints and DNA came back clean, and there was no record of him in any law enforcement database. And though there had been extensive media coverage of the raid, we had yet to release pictures of any of the arrestees to any media outlets, and had yet to receive any public help in making a positive identification.
Before I entered the room where Ben was being held, shackled to the floor at his ankles and to the table at his wrists, I looked in on him through a one-way window. One of my colleagues was standing near the window, observing him. He sat absolutely still, his eyes closed. He was wearing a jumpsuit, so I could not see his arms or body, but his head and face were badly scarred. His hair was on the short side, black, dirty, and disheveled. He was incredibly thin, the veins in his neck and forehead and cheeks plainly visible. Usually people who are being interrogated for the first time are incredibly nervous and anxious; the only ones who are calm, as calm as he was, are usually extremely hardened criminals. I asked my colleague if he had observed anything unusual. He said the man looks like a f.u.c.king freak, and he hasn"t moved at all in the last hour, and if I didn"t know better, I"d say he wasn"t breathing. I laughed and entered the room.
Ben did not move or acknowledge me in any way. I waited for a few moments, a.s.suming he would, but he did not. He was absolutely still, eerily still, still the way large bodies of water can be still, the way they don"t appear to be moving, don"t appear to be alive, but you know they are. I spoke.
My name is Agent John Guilfoy. I"d like to ask you a few questions.
He slowly opened his eyes. I hadn"t had any contact with him during the arrests and hadn"t seen his eyes when observing him, and I had never seen anything like them. At least, not naturally. They were black, obsidian black, the black of silence, the black of death, the black of what I imagine it must be like before birth. They startled me, scared me. I waited for him to say something, and I waited until I was over the shock of his eyes, and I spoke again.
Do you understand why you"re here?
Yes.
Have you been treated well?
Doesn"t matter.
I"m going to tell you upfront that the more cooperative you are with us, the easier things will be for you.
He smiled, laughed to himself.
Is there something funny about that?
Go on with your questions.
We"ve been trying to identify you, and you haven"t turned up in any of our computer databases. I"m wondering if you can help us in any way.
I gave you my name.
Is it your real name?
I consider it so.
Is there another one we should be checking?
There have been a few.
Such as?
None of them will be of any use to you.
Try me.
He smiled again, didn"t say a word, waited for me.
I stared at him, tried to intimidate him. I might as well have been staring at a rock. He was silent and still and unmoving. I spoke again.
Do you understand the charges against you?
Yes.
You understand they are extremely serious?
If you say so.
You"re looking at years, maybe decades in prison.
Yes.
That doesn"t bother you?
No.
Why?
I can be free anywhere, just as someone can be imprisoned anywhere.
Is that something your leader taught you?
I don"t have a leader.
No?
No.
Yahya was not your leader?
My friend.
A dangerous friend.
If you say so.
He and his followers, amongst whom we count you, were in possession of hundreds of weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition.
I possess nothing.
Did you know of the weapons" existence?
Yes.
Then according to the laws of the government of the United States, you were in possession of them. He smiled again.
If you say so.
Do you find this amusing?
Yes.
Why?
I think your laws are silly.
Why is that?
People should be allowed to live and act as they choose.
Not if they endanger or impose on other people.
No one in that tunnel was imposing on or endangering anyone.
I would disagree.
As is your right.
You were living illegally on public land and h.o.a.rding weapons designed to kill people.
If the land is public, why can"t we use it?
Because it was designated for other purposes.
And how can the most heavily armed, most militarized government in the history of civilization tell its own citizens they can"t arm themselves in preparation for the coming annihilation?
The coming annihilation?