Chapter 6: Corridor

Stepping through the mirror was like plunging through a waterfall, icy and thunderous. Although the sound and the sensation were intense, Lydia felt curiously disconnected, as if someone were vividly describing it to her as she sat in a velvet seat in her little theater. A small part of her knew that this was all impossible—that a portal meant for a wisp of smoke he had somehow forced wide enough to accommodate her human body. Perhaps the iciness was not the portal itself but the fantastic amount of energy that he wielded so effortlessly in her small hands.

Then she heard his voice, whiskey-soaked and rough around the edges, as if it were being piped in on the theater speakers. In Dolby surround. "Come closer, Lyds. I need you to help. Cuz, um… I don't actually know where we're goin'.

"What?" Stunned disbelief would not even begin to cover how she felt. "Beej, I though we were going to my work to pick up my stuff!"

"Yeah, but I don't know where you work."

"But… you said you were going to go by yourself!"

"Yeah, well I was bluffin'. C'mere, girlchild." He sounded a little exasperated now. She stood and walked closer to the front of the theater, fuming and wondering what the hell she had gotten herself into. At first it was just a simple proposition, and an exciting one—she had always wanted to see the Netherworld that Beej talked about so much. Now, knowing that she might be in terrible trouble just by being here, and then his less than inspiring admission that he didn't know where they were going, and she felt like throttling him. Even if it couldn't kill him, it would be very very satisfying.

The closer she came to the front of the theater, the more she felt like she was in her own body again. Her hands felt as if he was holding them, and the deep electrical warmth in her veins throbbed and twisted. It was possibly the oddest sensation she had ever felt, as if she were stepping into a form that was made to her exact shape and size, and if not for the fluttering buzz in her stomach like a million butterflies, she would have felt almost normal.

She wondered what it felt like for him. And then, with a second thought, she thought she would rather not know. So she opened her eyes.

They were in a dank smelling corridor, water dripping in runnels through heavy mossy growth that was clinging to the walls. Walk, babe… he whispered, and she did, hesitantly at first, her eyes on the uneven ground. A wet, moldy, but intricately patterned carpet stretched from wall to wall as far as she could see, and what looked like gas lamps were set into the wall at sporadic intervals, leaving them in near total darkness in some areas and too well lit for her liking in others. Skittering sounds echoed off the rough brick, and faded voices. She slipped her hands across her own arms, wishing she had something to hang on to besides herself.

"What is this place?"

Um. Not exactly sure. It ain't like this for long. The leys always take character from what's been built upon 'em, but layers and layers of sacred and profane can give a place pretty strange character.

"This is a ley line?"

Yep. Pretty thrillin', huh?

"It's not exactly what I expected. I guess I thought it would be… shiny, or something. Not all gross and neglected."

They continued down the corridor, Beetlejuice content to be a passive burden within her for the moment. She had no thoughts to spare for the strangeness of it all. But as he had implied, their surroundings began to change. Fungus-slicked walls gave way to the smooth cool tile of what looked very much to Lydia like a blurry subway platform, but very old-fashioned, with delicate green glaze on the tiles and ornate shields marked with numbers. In fact, it looked very familiar indeed. "I've been here."

The old Sherman Square control house. And when he said that, the image snapped into focus.

"Holy crap! But… this looks new!"

Time's kinda funny down here, Lyds. Ley lines remember things different.

She puzzled over that as they walked past a post for apartments for sale in a building she knew no longer existed. "Ley lines have memories?"

Can we talk about this later? Less need to be so chatty right now. He sounded a bit nervous. She frowned, but had no one to frown at but her own shadow. She felt him sigh rather loudly. Look—it's you who's walkin', so you're guidin' us. If you start thinkin' about some random place you think might be nifty to visit, there's no tellin' where we'll end up, an' some places are harder to get back from than others, babe. That gave her chills, and she tried to focus on the place where she worked, and ignore everything else.

She smelled it first, the smell of a thousand million pages of paper, ancient ink and modern, leather and wool and dust. She felt him stirring inside her, a cat waking from a long nap. The walls around them became the heavy brink arches of a subterranean basement. She paused.

"This is the place. Huh. I work on a ley line."

Not particularly surprised, Lyds. But… you work here?

"Yeah, it's not nearly as cool as I thought it would be." She sighed softly and contemplated the brickwork arches that supported the finest research library in the world. All of her ambition to become an archivist, photographing ancient books and preserving delicate texts on film and acid-free paper, and she was all nothing more than an unglorified secretary who took calls and repeated library hours and filed archivists records on the very books that she had signed on to save. She felt him snort in undignified disbelief.

Shoulda figured. Gods, why can't I hang out with normal people? She felt a tug, and she stumbled back into the theater of her own mind, too startled to ask him what he meant. Blinding light engulfed her, and some terrible cacophony of bickering and chattering voices, and then a door slammed shut with a bang.

"Damn. Think you're takin' a taxi back, girlchild. No idea…frickin' Grand Central here…" And then he had to reach out and catch her as she crumpled, his sudden dispossession sending crashing waves of nausea through her.

Lydia put her hands on the floor, the world moving in slow motion as she sank in his embrace. If she had had anything in her stomach, it would have come up, but her body shook with dry heaves until she couldn't draw breath. He was holding her, his cool hands on her forehead, her cheek, and his arms around her. She could hear him swearing, but her eyes were streaming, and she couldn't reply.

Finally her stomach calmed and she just lay limp in his arms and concentrated on breathing. He settled down on the floor with her and stroked her hair and her back, his fingers cool as they crossed over the nape of her neck. "Sorry 'bout that," he mumbled.

"Beetlejuice, I'm going to kill you for this," she mumbled back. "What the hell happened?"

"I didn't know you worked at a frickin'... Lyds, do you know what this place is?" His voice was suspended halfway between disbelief and nervousness.

"The New York City library." She relaxed, spawled as she was halfway across his lap, and closed her eyes, still feeling a bit sick.

"No, not the stupid library—before that!" He waved at the brick foundations that were barely visible in the half-light.

"Geez, calm down, Beej." She lifted herself up slightly and peered around her, consciously realizing where she was for the first time. She gingerly straightened up. "What did you do to me?"

To his credit, he looked a little sheepish. "I stepped out o' you too quick. This place ain't exactly where I thought we'd end up…" He glanced around him, and she followed his eyes, looking perplexed.

"What do you mean?" She settled her chin on her knees, and he slid an arm around her to shore her up a bit. She leaned her head against his shoulder, tired and disoriented.

"Before the library, this was a reservoir. You do know that, don't you?"

She nodded. "Everybody knows that, Beej. The Croton reservoir. They have pictures upstairs."

He snorted. "Sure, except everybody doesn't know what it was before the great city of New York built the damn thing on." He took a breath. "When Manhattan was still just a gleam in some white businessman's greedy little eye, this land was commissioned as a potter's field." His arm tightened around her. "An'then, when the city grew up too big, they decommissioned it, and built the reservoir."

She was missing something, she knew. The seriousness in his voice was too unusual to disregard. "So what? What's a potter's field?"

He turned to her in genuine surprise, his green eyes bright even in the darkness. "Potter's field is where they buried the dead that didn't have the money for a stone or a box, Lyds. Anyone could be buried here. Even them without trial, or honest death."

"So this used to be a graveyard?"

He shook his head impatiently. "Not quite there yet, Lyds. The city decommissioned it. Someone wrote up a paper that said it wasn't a graveyard anymore. And they built on it."

Icy realization bloomed in Lydia's breast. "Oh my God. They never removed the bodies."

"God don't have nothin' to do with it." His voice sent chills through her, and she pressed closer against him then, his dubious warmth a great deal more comforting than the cold stone floor. And what was underneath it.