Tales from the Canyons of the Damned: Omnibus Read online

  ~*~

  THE HARBOR

  Daniel Arthur Smith

  ~*~

  Madison had been standing outside of the bathroom door for an eternal ten minutes. Ten minutes becomes an eternity when you’re in the middle of the New York Harbor, everyone is staring at you, and your eleven-month old is wailing. Little Miranda had broken down on deck, her diaper diarrhea-soaked. The trip to New York wasn’t agreeing with her. The trip to the Big Apple wasn’t agreeing with Mommy too much either. But if you lived up in Red Wing Minnesota opportunities to travel to New York City didn’t come along every day.

  Since the baby arrived, she hadn’t even made her way up to Minneapolis. Madison hadn’t really gone anywhere. So when Todd told her he could bring her along on a five-day trip, she thought she was dreaming. She called Peggy, and Leslie, and of course she had called her sister Fran, not to gloat necessarily, that would have been rude. But to let them know Todd was doing really well. So well that his company was sending him to Manhattan, and he was bringing her along. She had the trip all planned out. She was going to go to all of the places she saw on Sex and the City—it was absolutely one of her favorite shows, she had even named little Miranda after one of the characters. She was going to take the three-hour Sex and the City tour and go to Magnolia Bakery and indulge on one of those famous cupcakes Carrie always ate when she was gossiping with Miranda, visit the site of Carrie and Big’s wedding rehearsal dinner, have a Cosmo at MePa. She had Cosmos back in Red Wing, but the idea of a Cosmo at MePa tickled her. She was even going to go to that naughty sex shop over on seventh, the Pleasure Chest, where Charlotte bought her Rabbit.

  Except the trip hadn’t gone the way she had planned at all, at least not yet.

  Todd had spent the last few days working from morning til night. She had only seen the hotel and the hotel restaurant. And the Holiday Inn Four Seasons wasn’t as fancy as she’d imagined it to be, neither was the neighborhood. She had taken Miranda out one day to buy diapers and formula. She saw three homeless people all on the same block. And everything in New York looked like it needed to be scrubbed. The place was dirty. Especially this ferry, this ferry that she didn’t want to be on in the first place. Todd finally had some time to spend with her and this was where they ended up. Them and a man named Terry. Terry seemed like a nice man. He was from New Jersey. Terry wasn’t married. Madison thought that a man Terry’s age should be, he was almost thirty. It was Terry’s idea to go out on the ferry. “It’s the best way to see the statue and the skyline.” That’s what Terry had said. “The Circle Line will just cost you money. You don’t want to do anything so touristy.” He had said that too. But she did want to do something touristy. She didn’t want to be standing outside of this bathroom on this filthy deck while Miranda was crying her eyes out. Poor baby.

  Madison bobbed Miranda up and down and softly whispered, “It’s okay, it’s okay,” over and over into the baby’s ear. She brushed her face up against the little girl’s tear-soaked cheeks. The little sign near the handle was still red, no vacancy. She leaned Miranda into her shoulder and then raised her other arm to knock on the door, and then, with a second thought, reached for the handle. Her finger had almost taken hold when, with two fast clicks of the latch, the door swung inward.

  Madison eased back and lifted her hand to Miranda’s head.

  The woman that stepped into the doorframe was rough to Madison’s taste, certainly not a Midwestern girl. She was wearing a short denim skirt, a bright yellow tee—she’d had the collar and sleeves removed, roughly by scissors from the look—and was revealing way more cleavage than any decent woman should. And the good lord had endowed this girl. The woman’s blonde hair was teased high, or rather brunette with a ton of blonde accents. And the tattoo, some kind of crazy black snake or dragon curling up her arm. Carrie might have called her a hot mess.

  The woman’s eyes went wide at Madison, and she sucked in a long breath through her nose. “If you want a tampon,” the woman said, “the machine’s empty.”

  Madison felt the corner of her mouth begin to curl up. What a disgusting thing to say. No one in Minnesota would ever say such a thing. Miranda squealed. Madison closed her eyes and waited for the excuse of a woman to pass. She opened her eyes and then stepped into the filthy Lysol-smelling closet of a bathroom to change her daughter’s diarrhea filled diaper.

  Madison looked at the warped reflection of her and her little girl in the tin metal mirror. She didn’t want to be in New York City anymore. She wanted to go back to Red Wing. She thought she might cry, and she might have, except Miranda beat her to it. Again she whispered into her daughter’s ear to soothe her.

  The light flickered and the little closet of a bathroom went dark.

  “What now?” she asked aloud.

  She continued to bob Miranda up and down. She just wanted to get a fresh diaper on the child and get her back on deck with Todd and that man Terry. She could feed her baby up there and everything could be fine.

  Then that loud hum, the roar that had been a constant since they had left the pier, ceased. The diesel engines had stopped.

  Miranda stopped crying as well.

  Silence.

  The room was black, but at least there was peace.

  And then, from out on deck, Madison heard the first of the screams. There was one, and then two, and then too many to count, all chiming in a horrific harmony. She fumbled for the doorknob, the latch, the handle, but it was black, and she couldn’t see where it was. She found the flat of the door with her hand, ran her fingers to the frame, and then started down the side. She found the handle and was about to push down to release the lock when the world jolted forward.

  Madison flew to the front of the small space, slamming her body against the child’s and the wall, the wall that seemed to be at an angle. But she couldn’t tell, it was dark, it was black. People were screaming, all around people were screaming, and there was a new sound, the sound of bending, twisting metal, twisting, crushing metal.

  Madison rolled to her side. Miranda was screaming now too, so much noise in that small space. She frantically searched for the latch again, now above her as she lay flat on the wall, on her back. She found the latch. She pushed the latch down. And through the freed door burst in –– along with more blackness –– the so cold harbor water.

  ~*~

  The moss and seaweed-covered rocks were slimy and foul, but they were warm, so much warmer than the harbor and the river had been. Her arms ached, her legs ached, her ribs, her chest, her neck, it all ached, too much for her to pull herself up out of the water and onto the esplanade. When the harbor engulfed her, when the world went black, when the ferry and the harbor both tried to pull her down, when that donut of a preserver slipped onto her leg, she’d squeezed it tighter than any man she had ever held there. Unable to see, she wrapped her arms around another floating cushion when she bobbed to the surface. And she rode the current, rode the cold water tide out and back in. She held tight in only her short denim skirt and sleeveless yellow tee, too numb to shiver, too angry to let go. And when the current washed Rosalee up against the slime covered stone of the Battery, she blindly curled into their stony warm womb. And then she slept or passed out, and that didn’t matter, because she’d lived through whatever happened out on the harbor, through whatever happened to that ferry.

  When she opened her eyes, she gazed up from the rocks to the long pier, the long building and clock tower with the words Pier A printed across the bottom. Rosalee recognized the building. The building was across Battery Park from the Staten Island Ferry terminal.

  Hours passed by and she did not move. She just stared, stared at the clock tower.

  Beyond the clock was a mist, no… a fog. A thick cloud that hovered and danced behind the tower.

  She may have not moved at all. She may have stayed there on the rocks. The huge round stones were warm, and the large drops plopping onto her forehead, arms, legs, and hair were warm, everything was warm. The light
of day was fading and Rosalee, her body in so much pain, was about to drift off again, to close her eyes one more time.

  The tide changed all of that. The first small icy wave to ripple against her aching feet, that was all it took. All it took to invigorate Rosalee, to remind her who she was.

  “Oh, hell,” she said aloud. She pushed herself up onto her hands, the burn of ache punishing her as she did. “Girl, you gotta move your ass.”

  Once she found her footing she carefully maneuvered to the break wall, wiped her hands against the concrete and then against the denim of her skirt. A glance down told her that the tee was ripped and that she was wearing no bra was no secret to the world. She was barely covered at all anymore.

  “Oh, hell,” she said again. “Barefoot and bare assed. Ain’t that wonderful.”

  ~*~

  TESLA

  Daniel Arthur Smith

  ~*~

  1904 Shoreham, Long Island, New York – about 60 miles from Manhattan

  ~*~

  Nikola Tesla’s repute was beyond mere mortal. A mysterious man that dabbled with the bolts of Zeus, played with them, a magician, a wizard, a giant among men, and from where Atticus Rendell stood, the man he was about to interview, this man of science, was all of those things. Tesla was certain that was what cycled through the man’s mind. He had pre-calculated the reporter’s observations, painted that portrait for the newspaperman.

  That’s why he waited at the edge of the cliff, his back to the man from the New York Herald.

  The image must be perfect.

  Tesla’s plan to meet the reporter after sunset was perfect, his plans always were, to the detail. The optimal atmospheric conditions required for his upcoming experiment were also highly conducive to a clear-lit Connecticut horizon. He had Keller, his assistant strategically plant lights far across the Long Island Sound, and they shone brightly, beginning at Tesla’s shoulder and casting out in line with his svelte frame, amplifying his already tall height. The Sound itself, one hundred and fifty feet below, and the full billowy blue storm clouds hovering above appeared equally distant. Framed on that cliff, Atticus was to see Prometheus personified, ready to steal fire from the gods, and Tesla was certain the theater was working.

  Though he could not see him, Tesla sensed the reporter’s proximity by smell. It was the trepidation—Tesla could put a name to the foul odor. Even with the salty evening breeze warmly blowing up at him, the stench was there, closing in behind him. It was subtle, but his senses were honed, he had been a vegetarian a long time and could detect it in the air, the stink of meat. When Atticus was at his shoulder, he spoke, but only in the most disinterested way, and without turning his head.

  “So you’ve come to record history,” he said. Yes, he liked that tone. Disinterested.

  “Yes, Mister Tesla, my name is Atticus Rendell. I’m here from the Herald and––”

  Tesla cut him off. “You were expected, Mister Rendell. Your editor—William—we spoke last Friday.”

  “Of course. Yes.” Atticus already had his notepad flipped open in wait for the scientist to turn back toward him. But Tesla didn’t. Atticus inched his way nearer to the edge of the cliff. He slipped his thumb behind his thin black tie and pulled his head forward. Tesla recognized it from the rack at Riker’s Drug near his flat on 23rd street. “That’s quite a…” Atticus jerked his head back and faced the man. “That’s quite a drop, isn’t it?”

  Tesla was taller than the man from the Herald, and his tan suit, which had appeared dark from behind, reflected a gold light from somewhere out in that abyss over the Sound. A light that made his face glow as well.

  “Look behind you, then look up,” Tesla said. “Tell me what you see.”

  Atticus began to turn, and then, unsure of his footing, moved half a step away from the edge. He then tilted his head up toward the huge lollipop structure he had traveled all the way out to the middle of Long Island to see. And it was something to see. He had watched it ominously grow on the horizon as he journeyed closer, watched it become a giant as the evening sky darkened behind it, the great Wardenclyffe Tower, the Tesla Tower. He nodded slightly and said, “I see the tower. What is that? Two hundred feet?” He scribbled into his pad. “And that steel sphere, that’s gotta be fifty tons.”

  “What you see,” Tesla said, “is only the tip.”

  The reporter spun around. “What do you mean only the tip?”

  “There is an anchor shaft plunged one hundred and twenty feet into the ground beneath what you see there, and sixteen iron pipes driven three hundred feet deeper.”

  “That’s one hefty anchor.”

  “The iron is a conductor. The pipes are buried deep so that currents that pass through them can seize hold of the earth.”

  Atticus was writing frantically. “Currents? All that for an antenna?”

  “An antenna that will tap the energy of the sun.”

  “I thought I was out here to record a wireless experiment. How do you use the sun to send cables?”

  “It is necessary for the machine to get a grip on the earth,” Tesla said, forming his hands around an invisible sphere, “otherwise it cannot shake the earth.” He clenched one eyelid half closed. “It has to have a grip so that the whole of this globe can quiver.”

  Atticus flipped a page and continued his scribbling.

  “You see those lights over there?” Tesla asked.

  Atticus peered across the Sound. “So many, huh? Amazing. Who’da thought?”

  “That’s nothing. When this project is completed there will be more lights dotting that horizon than the night sky. I’m going to light the world.”

  Tesla quickly pivoted back toward his magnificent tower and the lab beneath. Atticus struggled to write and keep up. “And how are you going to do that? Light the world, I mean.”

  “I am going to bring the power of the mighty Niagara down here, using superior alternating current, of course.” He spun back toward Atticus, stopping the reporter short. “And then I am going to wirelessly transmit the power worldwide.”

  “Worldwide?” Atticus asked, awed. Tesla had already continued his route to his lab. “You plan to wirelessly transmit electricity? Nobody’s ever done that.”

  “I have.”

  “I mean long distance. Not just across the stage.”

  “I have. In 1899, I wirelessly lit 200 light bulbs from a distance of twenty-six miles.”

  “But that was never proven.”

  Tesla again spun to face the reporter. “That time I did not have the fortune of having a man from the Herald present to witness the event. Now I am about to prove that I can transmit power worldwide with this long-range test. My assistant, Mister Tobias Keller…” Tesla peeked down onto the pad. “That’s K-E-L-L-E-R…”

  “Got it.”

  “Is waiting at the top of the Empire State Building with a buoyed line to a receiver terminal high above New York City. The electricity that I am sending will light the top of the building with a thousand light bulbs.”

  “That’s sixty miles away.”

  “So it is,” Tesla said as he entered the lab. He began signaling staff to begin the experiment. They had rehearsed this before. Keller had walked them through it. When the Boss and the Reporter came through door, everyone had a job to do.

  “So this gargantuan tower of yours, it’s really a giant coil?” Atticus asked.

  “Spark-excited radio frequency resonant transformer.”

  “What about the weather? Those are storm clouds. It’s going to pour any minute.”

  “This machine, Mister Rendell, can control the weather.”

  “With electrical energy?”

  “Of course,” said Tesla. He threw a long arm out to his side. “You may want to stand over there.”

  ~*~

  Atticus followed Tesla’s direction and moved over to the corner of the lab, an atrium with glass walls and a glass ceiling. From his vantage point he could see the level he was on, from the near balcony the le
vel below, and through the glass, the massive tower above. The many men of science that occupied the room, white-coated all, moved about in a set choreography from one panel to another. Above Atticus, the tower began to hum, first subtly, a sound that may not have been a sound at all, and then in quick fashion, the tone escalated. The reporter scanned the room for Tesla. He found him in front of a large metal panel with several huge dials. The electrical wizard had his long fingers sprawled across two, and Atticus realized that it was he, Tesla himself, who was bringing the giant to life, because as the tall man’s wrist spun, ever so slowly, the humming increased until it became a full moan, surely echoing down into the belly of the earth where Tesla had it rooted. And then, with the crescendo of the hum, came the vibration. Atticus first felt it on the hair of his flesh, the tactile sensation of millions of unseen, crawling, rippling.

  The lab was no longer important to him.

  He had made a terrible mistake.

  Every muscle, small muscles, muscles he did not know he had, became tight and tense, knotting within him. His head rolled slowly on his neck as his gaze shifted up toward the tower. The vibration was everywhere now, in the floor, in the walls. His eyes floated in their sockets, inspecting the frames of the ceiling above. The glass was holding. But farther above, above the tower, up in the midst of the sky itself, something was happening. The clouds, the blue-gray heavy storm clouds pillowed up above, began to dissipate. Not everywhere, not across the sky, only the point above the tower, as if the beacon had somehow burst a hole up through the sky. The humming bellow of the resonation remained but the vibration had moved in spectrum, harnessing something unthinkable to Atticus. The odor of ozone soaked the air, and then, then it came. A massive cyan blue arc of lightning formed around the middle of the tower a hundred feet above where Atticus stood, a loop of pure electrical power. It hung for a frozen moment in time, and then it rose to the tip of the towering electrical coil and released in a streak of blue lightning. As the manmade bolt escaped into the night sky, a second formed in the same place as the first, and then followed the former’s course. Rhythmically, another followed, and then another, and another. Tesla was Prometheus.