Chapter 36
Before they went too much further and lost any signal for their cell phones, Mac called Stella Bonasera and let her know they were investigating something near the City Hall Station line. If she didn't hear from him again in about two hours, she was to call for help.
Nina lead the way, map in hand. It didn't take them long to find the access tunnel mentioned on the map. There was only one problem; it was padlocked.
"Thing looks pretty rusty," Danny commented, studying the lock.
"Hence the hammer," Nina said, setting her bag down and removing the blacksmith hammer. The lock was not only rusty, it was also old and it didn't stand up to the hammer in the slightest.
"You look a little too comfortable doing that," Flack commented, watching as Nina pried open the door.
She grunted. "Been seeing ghosts most of my life and that meant that when it came to so-called haunted houses and haunted cemeteries and haunted what-not, I was always the first one in, even in those 'No Trespassing' places."
"So ghosts don't scare you?" Danny asked.
"Not in the sense that I get the heebie-jeebies, no," Nina said. "I have had the hell scared out of me on more than one occasion though."
"Why are they here?" Mac asked as they moved through the now-open tunnel.
Nina shrugged. "Most have unfinished business, sometimes they're confused about what happened to them, others are angry or frightened and have trouble finding peace. And others, well, they simply don't have any other place to be at the moment and are quite content where they are."
"What about Ruben?" Danny asked.
"Ruben was confused at first and then he was worried about you and his mom," Nina explained. "He also wasn't quite sure how to get to the other side until I showed him how."
"Did he move on?" Danny asked.
"Once he told me what he wanted to tell you, yes he did," Nina said. "He's at peace now and you'll see him either in your dreams or when it's your time."
They emerged from the tunnel and found themselves on the tracks of City Hall Station.
"Okay, what are we looking for here?" Mac asked, sweeping his light around as he remembered an incident involving Andy Davis, also known as Drew Bedford, when he had been stalked by him with the numbers 333, until until Mac had been dragged back to Chicago to face old memories. On his return to New York, Drew had kidnapped him and set up a trap for his co-workers at City Hall Station.
"Brings back memories, huh?" Flack asked, looking around. He'd been part of the group to rescue Mac from Drew Bedford, with the help of Jimmy Davis, Drew's older brother.
"Memories I'd like to forget," Mac muttered.
"I'm looking for a ghost kid, you guys are looking for anything out of the ordinary," Nina said, shining her light around slowly.
"Hi!" a little boy's voice suddenly said. Nina spun around, spotting the boy from her dream.
"Hi sweetie," Nina said. "My name is Nina. What's yours?"
"Joseph, but you can call me Joe," the little boy said.
"Okay, Joe," Nina said. She looked at the three men who were looking at her as if trying to decide whether or not she was off her rocker or not. "There's a little boy in front of me whose name is Joe," she explained.
"There's a ghost here?" Danny asked, trying to see what Nina was seeing.
"Thought I felt the temperature drop," Flack muttered, tugging his coat around him a bit more.
To Nina, he seemed a bit jumpy. She turned her attention back to the boy. "Joe, are you down here by yourself?" she asked.
"Nope; Papa's here too and so are a bunch of others," Joe said. "They're just too scared to come out."
"Are not!" a little girl said indignantly. Nina's eyebrows shot up as a little girl a bit younger than Joe emerged from the shadows, her blonde hair in curls around her face. "I just don't want Reverend Cameron catching us!"
"And you are?" Nina asked.
"I'm Anna Saunders," Anna said. "How come you're down here?"
"Looking for you, actually," Nina said. "Who is Reverend Cameron?"
"He's a minister who says the world's gonna end so we got to stay down here where it's safe and the Lord will protect us," Anna said.
"He's scary," Joe said. Anna nodded in agreement.
"Hey, how come you can see us and they can't?" Anna demanded, referring to Nina's companions.
"I don't know," Nina said. "Call it a quirk, call it a curse, a gift, whatever you want, the fact of the matter is I'm here and the world most definitely did not end."
"Oh yeah?" Anna snapped. "Prove it!"
Nina took out the current map of New York City and unfolded it completely, laying it on the ground. She then placed the older map next to it. "This map dates to the early 1900's," she explained, shining her light on the map and watching as the children crouched down to study the maps. "It shows City Hall Station as it was being built before it shut down in 1945. This map," she said indicating the bigger map, "is the current subway map and it dates at the beginning of the year 2008."
"It's huge!" Joe breathed, eyes wide.
"And growing all the time," Nina said. "Reverend Cameron is wrong, sweetie; the world hasn't ended."
"I gotta show Papa!" Joe exclaimed excitedly.
But Anna was worried. "Reverend Cameron isn't going to like this," she said. "He gets scary when he gets mad."
Nina looked at her and said, "I'll let you in on a little secret; angry men of the cloth don't scare me in the slightest."
"How come?" Anna asked.
"Because, in the end, they're just as human as you and me and I find that the ones that shout and rant, they're usually full of hot air and not worth listening to," Nina said.
"And the quiet ones?" Mac asked, feeling as if he was listening in on a phone conversation.
"Those are the ones you listen to because when they speak, they have something worth hearing," Nina said.
"You're not scared of Reverend Cameron?" Anna asked hopefully.
"He hasn't given me a reason to be scared of him," Nina assured her.
Anna studied her for a moment then said excitedly, "I wanna show Mama the map!"
"Then lead the way," Nina said, standing up and folding her maps. "We'll follow you on one condition; no going through walls! We can't do that!"
"Fair enough," Joe said excitedly. "C'mon!" And he and Anna took off down the tunnel, Nina following and Mac, Flack, and Danny not far behind.
As they trotted through the tunnel, Nina quickly brought the men up to date.
"This Reverend Cameron sounds like a handful," Danny said.
"Not the first one, doubt he'll be the last one," Nina said.
"So let me get this straight; we're following two kid ghosts who were led to believe that the world was going to end only they found out it hasn't?" Flack asked, struggling to comprehend what was going on.
"Not in the last hundred years, no," Nina said.
"And now they want to show the 2008 subway map to their parents as proof the world hasn't ended?" Flack asked.
"That's about the gist of it, yes," Nina said.
"I don't know whether to laugh, cry, or run like hell in the opposite direction," Flack said, causing Mac and Danny to grin and chuckle.
"I wouldn't advise running," Nina said, keeping a straight face. "It's a good way to get lost and I don't think you want to join the other ghosts down here; there's too many as it is."
Flack glared at her. "You're cute, you know that?"
Nina just grinned. "You think I'm bad, you should meet my boyfriend; he's worse."
Up ahead, Anna and Joe stopped in front of a portion of the tunnel wall. "We're in here," Joe said as the group joined them.
Mac studied the wall, playing his light over the bricks. "Looks like someone bricked this section up from within."
Nina scowled; an internal brick closure was never a good sign as far as she was concerned. "So we bring it down," she said.
"What do you think we'll find?" Danny asked.
"It's not what I think we'll find, it's what I know we'll find," Nina said grimly.
"And that is?" Flack asked.
"Bodies," Nina replied as she took out her hammer again. "Usually is in a situation like this."
"I so do love my job," Flack muttered.