Follow Me Down Read online

  Follow Me Down

  Gordon MacKinney

  © Copyright Gordon MacKinney 2017

  Published by Black Rose Writing

  www.blackrosewriting.com

  © 2017 by Gordon MacKinney

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publishers, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a newspaper, magazine or journal.

  The final approval for this literary material is granted by the author.

  First digital version

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Print ISBN: 978-1-61296-969-5

  PUBLISHED BY BLACK ROSE WRITING

  www.blackrosewriting.com

  Print edition produced in the United States of America

  I dedicate this book to the memory of Urangua “Sisi” Mijiddorj.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A special group of people encouraged me and helped improve my writing. My deepest thanks to (alphabetical by first name) Adrienne Schatz, Alison Kemper, Anson MacKinney, April Moore, Arthur MacKinney, Brian Kaufman, Brigid Kemmerer, Colleen Greshock, John Duesenberg, Katherine Valdez, Ken Harmon, Ken Slight, Laura Powers, Lisa Malmquist, Lois MacKinney, Nada MacKinney, Pat Stoltey, Paula Horton, Taryn MacKinney, and Teresa Funke. Lillian, Reece, and Merrick—you’re somethin’ special! The biggest and best of my gratitude to my wife, Kristy Dowers.

  The excellent book Access All Areas by Ninjalicious inspired the urban exploration philosophies of N. Jefferson Chapel in Follow Me Down. Jacob R. Mecklenborg’s Cincinnati’s Incomplete Subway proved an invaluable resource. John P. Maggard kindly provided informative research material about the Cincinnati Union Terminal.

  Praise for

  Follow Me Down

  “In this well-researched thriller, urban explorers descend into deep trouble when

  they uncover the buried crimes of a corrupt company.

  MacKinney keeps us turning the pages.”

  — Patricia Stoltey, author of The Prairie Grass Murders,

  The Desert Hedge Murders and Dead Wrong

  “This smart psychological thriller pulls readers into the fascinating world of

  urban exploration. MacKinney is a new author to watch.”

  — Secrets of Best-Selling Authors, www.KatherineValdez.com

  “Part treasure hunt, part mystery, Follow Me Down is a full-throttle,

  urbex thriller that deftly manages plot, setting, and complex characterization.

  (Five stars out of five)”

  — Rabbit Hole Reviews

  “A thriller indeed, but also a love story, between father and son, and between Lucas and a young woman willing to risk everything. Follow Me Down will keep you up at night and stay with you long after the final page.”

  — Kenneth W. Harmon, author of Upon the Stage of Time

  and The Paranormalist

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Praise

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  About the Author

  Leave me a place underground, a labyrinth,

  where I can go, when I wish to turn,

  without eyes, without touch,

  in the void, to dumb stone,

  or the finger of shadow.

  ~ Pablo Neruda

  CHAPTER 1

  Twenty feet below the shoes of Cincinnati’s pedestrians lay a wilderness as remote as the moon, a wilderness that had beckoned me since I was a kid. The city had gated off the unused subway when money ran out during the Depression. But in 1945, a nine-year-old girl named Emily Langford squeezed between the iron bars, got lost in the abandoned tunnels and, in the words of a careless politician, “screamed herself to death.” Afraid of another tragedy, the city council entombed the subway behind steel plates as thick as the hulls of oil tankers.

  My friend Reuben and I breached the barriers before anyone else, back when I had more flexible joints. I wasn’t trying to burn a corporate empire to the ground—not at first. I was only playing with matches, searching for sensations that sounded paradoxical to most people. How could I trap myself in concrete and earth, yet feel so liberated? How could I fear the cops arresting us, yet crave the thrill of talking my way free? How could I inhale decades-old vapors, some toxic, yet feel so damn alive?

  Reuben said I went belowground to escape. Perhaps. The above-ground world offered nothing after my father was killed. I couldn’t sleep, not when memories, sharp and bright as a wolf’s teeth in the dark, jolted me awake. Forbidden places distracted me. When squeezing through a concrete fissure too tight for a deep breath, I couldn’t dwell on the past.

  Our route to the off-limits subway was indirect, through an abandoned train station called the Cincinnati Union Terminal.

  The year was 1973.

  . . . . .

  My knees and palms burned after crawling through a hundred feet of ventilation duct, but I didn’t mind. We were almost in. Just beyond a vent cover was the concourse of the old train station. A familiar flutter in my gut, I checked my watch—4:10 a.m.

  Reuben crawled up beside me. In the gloom, his eyes glimmered behind thick lenses. A penlight tipped with a blue swatch supplied our only illumination. Reuben was an unlikely urban explorer—a mop-topped nerd in high school and a buttoned-up insurance actuary after we graduated from Xavier. Was he quenching some primitive male thirst for adventure? “No,” he would answer, “I keep your sorry ass out of trouble.” True, and I owed him for that.

  Something crawled across my wrist. I shook it free. “You ready?” I whispered, even though the chance of being overheard was nil. The security guard desk was too far away.

  “Ask me when we’re done,” Reuben replied.

  I grabbed from my backpack a cigar-thick gun sight I’d bought at the army surplus store for a buck, all the money in my pocket at the time, and pretty much ever since, thanks to grad school tuition and my cheapskate boss. I raised the scope to my eye and aim
ed through the vent cover toward the guard station at the far end of the main concourse, more than a football field away. “He’s not there. I think he’s making his rounds.”

  “You think?” Reuben sat so close I could smell the cinnamon from his Dentyne, which reminded me. I unzipped my pack’s front pocket, retrieved a fresh pack of gum and held it out.

  Reuben accepted the peace offering. “Thanks. You’re still a moron.”

  I smiled. “Of course.” I handed him the scope. “See for yourself.”

  Reuben repositioned his glasses on top of his wavy hair and pointed the device. “Come on, Lucas. This isn’t the same as the tunnels under the student union. That looked like a fraternity hazing stunt, so they believed us—”

  “Because we followed Chapel’s rules.” The late N. Jefferson Chapel wrote the ultimate how-to manual for urban spelunkers.

  “But this looks like trespassing in a guarded building because that’s what it is. We’re talking serious fines, maybe jail time, regardless of what bullshit you tell them.”

  “I don’t need to bullshit. We’re not thieves. We’re taking a picture, that’s it.” I didn’t blame Reuben for being testy. My photo required electronic flash, and not just one flash but a dozen. “Why not launch fireworks from the roof?” he’d said after I’d described my plan, that vein in his neck bulging. “Every Cincinnati resident has a view of those big windows.” But eventually he had come around. He always did.

  I twisted the metal clips holding the vent cover and swung it open, bracing for a hinge squeak that would slice the silence. But it didn’t come. I bear-walked into the concourse and stood. Blood flowed through my cramped legs. Overhead, even in the faint glow of exit signs, I could make out the scalloped ceiling with hundreds of curved indentations, shoulder to shoulder like marching centurions.

  The Cincinnati Union Terminal was an Art Deco masterpiece that could be considered a museum. Or perhaps a mausoleum. Trains ruled in the ‘30s and ‘40s but gave up their passengers to the superhighways. The city shuttered the building a year ago, a sad occasion. Today, only the ghosts of long-departed travelers remained.

  We padded past the station’s platforms, now slabs gathering pigeon guano. A layer of dust dampened our footfalls. I caught whiffs of moist concrete and machine oil.

  I sensed a sudden darkening, then a return to dim light. My palms tingled. I glanced ahead. The guard had returned and passed temporarily in front of his reading lamp.

  “Shit,” I whispered. I hooked my hand in the loop above Reuben’s backpack and yanked us both to the stone floor. I let out my breath.

  Reuben glowered inches from my face, grime powdering his lower lip and chin stubble. “What would Chapel say now?”

  “He’d say don’t get caught,” I whispered. I jabbed my thumb in the direction of the nearest vestibule and belly-crawled like a soldier. Reuben followed close. We sat up and leaned our backs against an abutment. My heart thudded inside my sweatshirt.

  Reuben wiped his mouth with his sleeve and held up the dusty result. “Do you know what’s in this crap?” He knew I did, but he continued anyway. “Rat crap. Along with mite carcasses, mold and asbestos—all so you can take a goddamn picture.”

  True, but this goddamn picture might change a few things, and Reuben knew it.

  I turned my body to aim the scope. The uniformed man floated on an island of light from the desk lamp, surrounded by an ocean of shadow that filled the cavernous interior. But thirty seconds later, he vanished into the darkness.

  “Okay, now he’s gone for real,” I said. “We’ve got thirty minutes to get into the rotunda, set up, take the shot, and get back here.” I clambered to my feet and took a swig of water from an old World War II canteen, a gift from my dad. Years ago, I’d hand-stitched a Foghorn Leghorn patch on the canteen’s canvas case.

  Reuben remained sitting, his jaw muscles bulging. “What if he wanders in while we’re still shooting?”

  “What if he doesn’t?” I replied.

  “We should’ve recruited a spotter.”

  “There wasn’t time.” No response from Reuben. “It’s not just about the picture.” An image of Dad flashed through my mind. He stood across the station’s grand rotunda, his hands clasped in front, grinning, so proud to show me his favorite city landmark. “And I can’t do it without your help.”

  Reuben stared at his filthy knees for a moment before sighing. “Okay.” He stood.

  En route to the grand rotunda, we passed by the security desk where I paused, curious. Our guard had been passing the nighttime hours with the Bible—The Gospel of Luke, to be specific.

  “We don’t have time for whatever you’re up to,” Reuben said.

  “Just a sec.” I flipped the pages to Revelations and smiled to myself. The man would return to read about scorpions, locusts and plagues.

  When I looked up, Reuben frowned back. “Why do you do stuff like that?”

  I shrugged. “Let’s go.”

  Lately I’d been drawn to ‘50s doo-wop, the musical equivalent of comfort food. As Earth Angel by the Penguins played in my mind, we slipped into the train station’s grand rotunda and eased the double doors shut behind us. Even in the fractured light from the tall windows facing the city, I could make out one stunning architectural feature after another. The vast horizontal space wider than NYC’s Grand Central Station. The liquid curves and clean grids of glass, aluminum and limestone. The crisp, geometric Jazz Age letters, the purest symbol of the Art Deco style, labeling the ticket windows, boot black’s shop, and Newsreel Theater.

  Dad used to say the building reminded him of a giant Philco radio with rounded top and vertical grill. When he first brought me, I pretended we were walking into Pinocchio’s whale. The arched ceiling seemed a mile above, swirling with parallel lines of muscle. Would the creature remain peaceful as we stomped on its insides, or would the dome collapse like a bellows and blow us tumbling out to the parking lot?

  That was long ago. This past year, Cincinnati’s politicos decided the derelict station would make a fine shopping mall. Soon, the concourse would be razed, and the massive circular rotunda violated by Day-Glo signs, the chink-ching of pinball machines, and the stench of deep fryers. Teenagers in cut-off jeans and sandals would drip ice cream on the tile floors.

  A number of firms had applied for the renovation job, but the winner was predestined: Drax Enterprises, the biggest and most powerful developer in the city. That figured. Drax had held Cincinnati’s weak politicians by the balls since the ‘20s. Before long, Drax people would slither all over the place. The thought made me sick. In the courtroom six years earlier, Drax lawyers had called my father’s death an accident—a lie.

  I located the ideal vantage point overseeing the rotunda and slid out the tripod legs. Reuben jittered just off my elbow. I lifted the camera from the bag.

  Reuben’s eyes went wide. “Blumenfeld let you borrow the Leica?”

  I winced. “Not exactly.”

  “You swiped it from your own boss?”

  “I’ll put it back in his desk before he knows it’s gone.” There’d been no choice. Alfred Blumenfeld would never loan it, and I couldn’t trust my old Yashica. Leica was one of the best cameras on planet Earth, with razor-sharp optics. By all reasoning, the old man shouldn’t have owned it because he despised everything German. The only better photo would come from Alfred’s Hasselblad, manufactured by the Swedes, which he reserved for weddings. The problem was that he never let it out of his sight, probably slept with it under his pillow.

  “I hope you know what you’re getting into,” Reuben said.

  “Calculated risk.” I thumb-screwed the camera to the tripod and crossed the terrazzo floor for the first
flash of the sequence. Reuben waited behind. I positioned myself a few feet from the wall and angled the flash. “Shutter open.” Because of the dome’s amplifying acoustics, Reuben could hear my hushed voice from two hundred feet away—a marvel that sent the same giddy chill down my spine as years earlier.

  Reuben depressed the shutter release and held it down. The film would remain exposed throughout the series of flashes, which I called “painting with light.”

  Alfred Blumenfeld had taught me the technique. A few months back, after closing time, I was developing black-and-whites from the latest off-limits excursion. Alfred allowed employees to borrow the darkroom for personal projects. He slipped through the light barriers and hovered over my shoulder, the quarters too cramped for his aura of English Leather and BenGay. He tweezed my print from the tray and held it up, the chemicals dripping. “You screwed up the lighting.” In the darkroom’s red glow, his herringbone suit and floral tie looked as lifeless as his skin by daylight. He sniffed. “Never hit your subject head-on. You’ll whitewash it.” He was right.

  I learned a lot about photography from the old man, but the lessons weren’t exactly pleasant experiences.

  Later, I had stuck my head into his office. “We’re going to shoot the grand rotunda of the Union Terminal at night.”

  He sat behind his wooden desk with perfect posture, looking skeptical. “Mighty big interior. At night, you say?”

  “Maybe the first time ever.”

  “And maybe the last.” He knew all about the shopping mall project. “So don’t botch it.” He set aside the piece of mail he’d been reading. “Ever see those National Geographic photos of the big caves in South America, the ones you could hold a concert in?”