Dark Cities Underground

PROLOGUE

BARNABY SATTERMOLE DESCENDED INTO THE OAKLAND Civic Center BART station. Undergrounds, he thought. Nether worlds. BART—Bay Area Rapid Transit—was not as extensive, and therefore not as useful, as the subways in New York, say, or Paris. Or the best, the one he knew better than any man alive, the London Underground.

Still, it would do for his purposes. The Shadow Committee had had some say in its construction, though their influence had waned since their heyday, the 1860s. A wonderful time, Sattermole thought, a time of major subway construction going on throughout the world.

The train came; he got on and studied the map posted on the wall. The Shadow Committee had seen to it that BART was built in the shape of an aleph: e9781466822566_img_8501.gif . Aleph was the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet, the Kabbalistic sign of beginnings. So few people who traveled this way had any idea of the map’s significance, Sattermole thought gleefully. Certainly none of the passengers in this car, a mother with two unruly children, a woman asleep over her newspaper, a man standing next to his bicycle.

After twenty years of negotiations and subtle persuasion the Shadow Committee had finally managed to extend the southwest leg of the aleph down the peninsula to Colma. Colma was a strange, sleepy little town made up almost entirely of cemeteries. Some people had questioned the wisdom of ending such a well-traveled line at such a minor location, but only Sattermole and the Shadow Committee knew the reasons for it. Nether worlds, he thought again with satisfaction. Necropolises. Colma was a significant location for Sattermole and the rest of the Committee.

It was very pleasant to be able to travel in this fashion toward his destination. Before the Colma station had opened he had had to take the freeway in his hearselike car, and while the freeway’s number—280—was auspicious enough, he, like all the members of the Shadow Committee, was far more comfortable underground.

The conductor on this train was chattier than most, giving the name of the station and the name of the line at every stop. This is a Colma-bound train, he said. Your final destination is Colma.

Maybe for the rest of the passengers, Sattermole thought, the ones who sleep out their lives until their final stop at the cemetery. But not for me—I’m riding back.

The train hurtled down into the trans-bay tunnel connecting Oakland with San Francisco. All around him people yawned or chewed gum as the air pressure changed. Sattermole leaned forward, invigorated by the descent.

The Shadow Committee had not managed to build unmarked stations on the BART line, as it had in New York and London and Paris. He had to get out at the Colma station like any other commuter.

He walked down the main street, a highway whose number—82—was twenty-eight backwards and therefore could be considered auspicious as well. He passed the tombstone cutters, the flower shops, the Italian and Jewish and Greek Orthodox cemeteries. He chuckled, as he always did, at the proximity of the signs Woodlawn Cemetery and Self-Storage.

After a few blocks he came to Colma’s oldest cemetery. He entered, walking past the landscaped lakes and pools and fountains. Rills of water splashed down stony creeks; ducks played in the shallows.

He followed a meandering asphalt path farther into the cemetery. To his right were stars and crosses, urns and obelisks and angels. To his left was what he thought of as the more upscale neighborhood of the cemetery, a row of solid family crypts fashioned of white brick and marble. Greek pillars or robed women held up the roofs; solid iron bars protected the tiny glass windows.

At the end of the row he came to a crypt that seemed almost shocking among the other blocky, stodgy forms. It was built in the shape of a pyramid; the door was wrought iron and looked like the web of a gigantic spider. The name Knox was carved in Roman letters above the door.

Sattermole walked up the steps to the crypt and inserted his key into the iron doorknob. He went inside, closed the door behind him, and checked carefully to see if anyone was watching. Unlike the other family crypts, this one had only one name carved into the wall: Robert Knox, In God’s Hands. No one in all the long years the crypt had stood here had ever asked which god it was that was being referred to.

He pulled at a handle on the side of the slab and the whole marble block swung outward. Beyond the slab were stairs leading down. With each step he took into the World Below Sattermole felt refreshed, rejuvenated. The descent, combined with the news he was bringing to the Committee, had him smiling widely by the time he reached the bottom.

The Committee was already there, waiting for him, ranged around a huge mahogany table. He walked to the head of the table and took his seat, then poured himself a glass of water and ordered his thoughts.

He didn’t mix very often with the denizens of the World Above. The exploratory trip he had just taken had involved him in the first real conversations he had had with any of them in years. Perhaps because of that, for a moment he saw the Committee with an outsider’s eyes, saw how odd they would look to anyone else.

There was the juggler, and the giant with his green skin, and the shifting beautiful woman whose hair was the night sky, glittery with stars. And the tree, and the rain, and the shadow, and the skeleton … . They all looked up at him, yellow legal pads and sharpened pencils at the ready.

He drew a newspaper clipping out of his briefcase. Look at this, he said, passing it to the skeleton on his right.

Museum of Neverwas Opens in Oakland, the headline said. The skeleton leaned forward and studied the clipping eagerly. If he had a heart, Sattermole thought, that heart would be beating wildly.

The skeleton passed the clipping to the tree. It’s him, isn’t it, the skeleton said, pointing to one of the photographs that had accompanied the article. It’s the boy, the child who found the entrance so long ago. It says here that his name is Jeremy Jones.

Yes, Sattermole said. He was grinning. Apparently he told his mother stories about the World Below in the 1950s, and his mother wrote them down. They’re famous children’s books, according to this article.

Funny we never heard of them, the shadow said.

Not really, Sattermole said, frowning at him. None of us go Above except me. And how was I to guess that the clue we sought for so long could be found in a children’s book?

The tree bent awkwardly over the clipping. ‘Jeremy Jones, presenting the museum with the famous stuffed dragon,’ he read. He looks exactly the same.

Sattermole chuckled. The boy had to be in his fifties by now. Still, the tree was right, in a way: in the essential things the boy had not changed at all since the day he had slipped into the entrance and they had been unable to follow. His narrow face and fine features were unmistakable.

We’re close, then, aren’t we? the rain-woman said. The excitement in her voice was clearly evident. He’ll help us find the entrance.

A mechanical whirring sound came from the end of the long conference table. The woman sitting there wore a long purple dress spangled with gold stars, and over that several scarves and shawls in clashing colors. Her red rouge and blue-and-purple eye shadow were as thick as paint, her hair a dull artificial black. She looked like a fortune-telling machine from the turn of the century, and she had spent decades at a seaside resort as just that. Exposure to the wind and rain had warped her face and scoured it with cracks.

The sound was her hand moving. She dropped a card to the table.

The giant next to her picked it up. You must visit the boy, he read. Gain his trust.

Sattermole nodded. I plan to, he said. I hope I’ll have the news we’ve been waiting for at our next meeting. He stood. I’ll see you all then.

PART ONE

THE DOOR IN THE TREE

THUS GREW THE TALE OF WONDERLAND

THUS SLOWLY, ONE BY ONE.

ITS QUAINT EVENTS WERE HAMMERED OUT … .

—LEWIS CARROLL,

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

ONE

RUTH BERRY PULLED HER CAR UP TO THE HOUSE IN OAKLAND and turned off the ignition. The car bucked several times after she stopped it and then slowly fell silent, like a dog coming to the end of a barking fit.

She went up the front walk and knocked on the door. There was no answer. Hello! she called out. Is anyone home?

A path of round white garden stones led around the house to the backyard, and a white gate stood open at the end. She followed the path and knocked.

The man she had come to see had his back to her, shoveling compost from one bin to another. It was late October; everything in the garden had been cut back and pruned except for a few red and orange roses.

The man turned slowly. He was in his fifties, tall and lean, with a narrow face and thinning hair brushed back from his forehead. The hair was black mixed with gray, the eyes brown, the nose long and slightly hooked. Yes, she thought as he turned to face her. There’s still a resemblance, after all these years … .

Mr. Jones? she asked.

Jeremy Jones wiped his dirt-caked hands on his jeans. Yes.

Hi, I’m Ruth Berry, Ruth said. Your mother is E. A. Jones, is that right?

His face became guarded. I’m sorry—I don’t talk about my mother.

Yes, I’ve heard that about you. I was hoping you might make an exception. See, I’m writing a book about her and the Jeremy series—

I’m afraid not. Sorry.

But why not? What did she do to you that was so awful? You said in an interview once— She took out her pocket notebook and began to leaf through it. You said that she stole your childhood. What did you mean by that?

Actually I never said that at all. I told you—I don’t do interviews. This dreadful woman came to the door, and when I turned her away she made up that quote, made up an entire article out of whole cloth.

What was it like? Ruth Berry asked softly. Being the kid in all those stories?

Jeremy hesitated. There was a moment, Ruth thought, when he might have asked her in, when the innate politeness she sensed in him might have won out over his defensiveness. Then, I don’t know, he said. That was someone else. Sorry, I’m busy now.

Here’s my card. Give me a call if you change your mind.

To her surprise he took it. Ruth Berry, he read.

One more try, she thought. What the hell. Not as strange as Jeremy Jerome Gerontius Jones.

You have no idea, he said, returning to his compost.

She went back to the car, defeated, and turned the ignition. Good car, she said when it started. There was absolutely no money to repair it if it broke down, and she didn’t see how she could get around the Bay Area without it. She had to try Jeremy again, and then interview Jeremy’s mother—Esmeralda Ann, her full name was—and then, when the advance from her publisher came through, take a trip to New York to see E. A. Jones’s editor. New York was expensive, they said.

The car bucked. Ruth held her breath. It smoothed out and she sighed with relief.

She’d known that it wasn’t going to be easy to interview Jeremy Jones: that was why she hadn’t called before coming to see him. She would have to try again, though; she couldn’t finish her book without him.

She lived in Santa Cruz and had a long trip ahead of her, two hours if the traffic was good. As she navigated the freeway she thought about her book, and about the stroke of luck, her first in a long time, that had gotten her the contract.

Two months earlier a magazine editor she sometimes worked for had asked her to do an article about the new Museum of Neverwas. She had been allowed into the museum a week before it opened, and she and her daughter Gillian walked together through the quiet rooms, exclaiming over lunch boxes and plastic toys, pencils and mugs and t-shirts, computer games and limited edition porcelain figures. The museum had collected practically everything connected with E. A. Jones’s books: her notebooks, first editions from all over the world, illustrators’ renderings of Jeremy and the Guardian Dog and Iris and the pirates, animation cels from the Disney cartoon. One cabinet held some of Jeremy’s childhood drawings; she was surprised to see what a good artist he had been, much better than Gilly or any of her friends at the daycare center.

Mommy, Mommy—look! Gilly called. It’s the Dragon!

Ruth made her way to a glass cabinet. Inside stood the famous green dragon, the stuffed animal that Jeremy had taken along with him to Neverwas. But it’s brand new, Ruth thought, surprised. They must have bought a new one—this can’t be the original. It isn’t even scuffed.

She leaned over to read the index card in the case. Jeremy Jones’s beloved stuffed dragon, given to him by his mother, E. A. Jones, in 1954. On a wall nearby hung the original of C. C. Andressen’s famous picture, Jeremy clutching the dragon by the ear.

This doesn’t look like a beloved toy to me, Ruth thought. Gilly’s animals are much more beat up. There isn’t even any fur missing from the ear, from either ear. And wait a minute—

She went back to look at E. A. Jones’s notebooks. Yes, she thought. Look at this. Jones had started writing the stories in 1951, when Jeremy was five, three years before she bought the dragon. But everything Ruth had read had said that Jeremy and the dragon had been the inspiration for the stories.

She took a pamphlet from a stack by the door. It was the usual puff piece, but she noticed that Jeremy’s name was not listed among those who would attend the gala opening, even though his biography stated that he lived in Oakland and had donated the green dragon. His mother’s name was missing from the list as well, though that could be due to ill health or old age. Still, it seemed that he and his mother were estranged.

She studied the biographical information on E. A. Jones in the pamphlet. Esmeralda Ann Schneider, known as Ann, had married Blair Jones, a mechanical engineer, in 1945. Jeremy was born a year later. The couple had gotten divorced when Jeremy was two, and Ann had turned to writing to support herself and her son.

Ruth felt a strong kinship with Ann Jones. Gilly’s father Ned had left her shortly after she had told him she was pregnant, and she had never seen or heard from him again.

She tried calling Jeremy and E. A. Jones the next day, but both were out and neither returned her calls. The deadline for the article loomed; she turned it in without interviewing either of them. But in the article she managed to create an air of mystery surrounding the mother and son, to imply that something hung unspoken between them. Two days after the article appeared she got a call from an editor in New York. The editor’s curiosity had been piqued by the unanswered questions, and he wondered if she would be interested in writing a book.

THE DAY AFTER Ruth’s visit Jerry Jones got a letter in the mail. Dear Mr. Jones, the letter said. I am an agent representing a number of fine artists in the Bay Area. Recently I saw some of your work at the Museum of Neverwas and was quite favorably impressed. I hope to discuss an arrangement with you that should prove to be profitable to both of us. Please call or write me to set up an appointment. Sincerely, Barnaby Sattermole.

Jerry read the letter again. There was no acknowledgement of the fact that the work Sattermole had seen had been done over forty years ago, by a child of five or six. But that child, as Jerry had told Ms. Berry, was a different person. He even had a different name: Jeremy. His adult name was Jerry; there were fewer questions that way.

Jeremy surfaced every so often, when Jerry had to fill out forms for a driver’s license or in a doctor’s office. Last name Jones, first name Jeremy, that much was easy enough. But what was his middle name, Jerome or Gerontius? Gerontius called too much attention to itself; he would write Jerome or J. But even so there would sometimes be someone who would read the names quietly and then aloud, and then with growing excitement say, Hey, I read those books when I was a kid. Was that you? Hey, Bill, come over here—look at this— And then the clerk or doctor or whoever would recite one of those awful rhymes that would make Jerry cringe with embarrassment.

It wasn’t their fault, Jerry knew that. The kind of doggerel E. A. Jones wrote stayed lodged in the memory and could not be shaken out no matter how many years had passed. He even found himself making up rhymes of his own as he took care of his daily business: Jeremy Jerome Gerontius Jones / Went to get an auto loan, junk like that. His mother had a lot to answer for.

He looked over the letter again. Barnaby Sattermole probably represented one of those horrible collectors, the kind who had to have every scrap of trivia, no matter how obscure, associated with his mother’s books. Jerry supposed he was lucky no one had yet decided to collect him. Still, he wondered how much Sattermole would be willing to pay for his old and useless drawings. He shrugged and put the letter away in a drawer; he’d decide what to do with it later.

LATER CAME TWO days after that, when he heard a knock at his door. He almost didn’t answer it, thinking it might be that prying woman again. But when he looked through the peephole he saw a short bald man smiling up at him. He opened the door a crack.

My name is Barnaby Sattermole, the man said. I wrote you a few days ago, about your artwork. Can I come in?

I don’t talk about my mother’s books. I’m sorry.

I’m not interested in your mother’s books. It’s you who interest me. As I said in my letter, I can make you quite a lucrative offer for any pieces of artwork you have lying around.

All right, Jerry said, unlatching the chain. But just for a moment. I’m fairly busy right now.

Sattermole strode into the house as though he had been there many times before. Jerry felt the familiar nervousness a stranger always aroused in him. His mother, he thought again, had a lot to answer for.

Great house, Sattermole said, looking around eagerly.

Jerry, looking with him, couldn’t see what had sparked such enthusiasm. It was a cheap stucco-covered bungalow, with thin walls and bad plumbing. He had a ratty couch and two uncomfortable folding chairs, and an old television perched on top of a card table. His ex-wife had taken all the good furniture, everything but the garden. He sometimes thought she would have taken that too if she could.

Sit down, please, Jerry said, belatedly remembering his nanny Hilda’s many lessons on politeness. Would you like something to drink?

No. No, thank you. Sattermole took the couch, crossing his legs and spreading his arms out along the back. Jerry sat gingerly on a chair. So, Sattermole said, this was where it all happened.

Where all what happened?

The story. Sattermole smiled broadly; the grin almost split his round face in half. ‘The sun was shining brightly as Jeremy Jerome Gerontius Jones pushed back the gate and went into the garden,’ he quoted.

Mr. Sattermole. I’m sorry, but you said you wouldn’t talk about my mother.

I’m not talking about your mother. I’m talking about you. It was you who pushed back the gate in the garden fence and found yourself in an overgrown field, almost a wood. And you who went through the wood and saw the huge tree with a doorway in its trunk, a doorway bound in iron and topped with spikes. And then you opened the door and found yourself in the tunnels.

Jerry stirred uneasily on his seat. His nervousness increased; he was dealing with a madman. Mr. Sattermole, he said carefully, that was fiction. A story. My mother made it up.

From stories you told her.

That’s what she says.

"What she says? Do you mean that she was the one who visited the Land?"

No. I mean that there is no Land of Neverwas, that the Land doesn’t exist. I may have been the one to make the stories up—I don’t remember. If that’s what she says, then she’s probably right. But I can assure you that I never actually went through a door in a tree trunk.

Let me ask you something, though. This house that you live in now, was this the one that had the tree in the backyard?

Jerry sighed. He should have never let this man inside, but now that he was here Jerry was too polite to throw him out. No, he said. No, that was the house where I grew up. I moved here with my wife in—

Sattermole seemed uninterested in that. And the house you grew up in. Where would that be?

Mr. Sattermole, Jerry said. Exasperation was driving out nervousness now. You said you wanted to talk to me about my work. My drawings.

"To be honest, I was hoping you would show me your old house, where the tree stands. I’ve cleared my calendar—we can go there now, if you’re