Inside the Shadow City (3 page)

If I remember correctly, most of our responses were either incredibly boring or completely ridiculous. Dylan Handworthy wanted to be a socialite. Rebecca Gruber, who had hair growing in unusual places, thought she'd like to be a bear trainer. I informed the class that I intended to be a marine biologist who studied giant squid, and received a nod of approval from the principal.

The last girl to answer sat at the back of the class, hidden behind Lizzie Fitzsimmons, who was well into a growth spurt that wouldn't end until she reached the eighth grade and a full six feet.

“You in the back,” said the principal. “Don't think you can hide. Tell me. What would you like to be?”

“Dangerous,” said the hidden girl, without a second's hesitation. Everyone in class spun around in their seats. There behind Lizzie was a tiny girl no one could recall
having seen before. For a moment, I was certain I had misheard her.

“I'm sorry,” said Ms. Jessel with a patronizing smile smeared across her face. “I'm not sure the principal and I understood you.”

The girl held her ground. “When I grow up, I'd like to be dangerous.”

The principal and Ms. Jessel exchanged a look. “What is your name, my dear?” asked the principal in a tone that indicated she'd be keeping a careful eye on her.

“Kiki Strike,” the girl responded matter-of-factly, and as if on cue, the bell rang.

All it took was a single sentence, and Kiki Strike had me hooked. Who was she, I wanted to know, and where had she come from? Why did she want to be dangerous? And—most importantly—how had she managed to attend the Atalanta School without attracting anyone's attention?

The Atalanta School for Girls was the kind of private school where everyone knew everyone else. Not only that, they knew what your parents did for a living, how much money they made, what kind of house you lived in, and whether the shoes you wore were designer or knock-offs. As early as the first grade, each student was handed one of two labels: You were either a girl who had brains or a girl who had everything. The scholarship girls traveled to school on city buses that originated in parts of town you didn't walk through at night. They were silent, studious, and clearly out of their element. The rich girls, on the other hand, had French au pairs, famous last names, and chauffeured cars that waited for them on the corner.
Their tuition fees made it possible for the students on scholarship to receive a first-class education—a fact the rich girls were eager to point out whenever the opportunity arose.

Of all the girls at the Atalanta School, I was the only one who couldn't be labeled. My great-grandfather had invented control-top panty hose—a stroke of evil genius that could have kept my family fat and happy for generations. But having lived the life of the idle rich, he wanted something better for his only son. So he took his vast fortune and placed every cent into a trust fund that would provide each of his descendents with a top-notch education—and nothing else. Thanks to my great-grandfather, I could afford to attend the ritziest school in Manhattan, but I couldn't pay for a decent haircut.

That's because the old man had outsmarted himself. Neither his son nor my mother, his only grandchild, inherited his love of money. They made no attempts to scale corporate ladders. They didn't save their pennies and invest wisely. Instead, they simply took advantage of the trust fund and stayed in school their entire lives, accepting a few odd jobs here and there to cover the cost of food, clothing, and reading material. By the time I was twelve, my mother had three PhD's, and my father was working on his second. As far as I knew, neither of my parents was employed.

Given my unusual background, the other girls at the Atalanta School didn't know what to make of me. To the girls who had everything, I wasn't exactly a “bloodsucker” like the scholarship students, but with my cheap shoes
and homemade hairstyle, I certainly wasn't one of
them
. The girls with brains, on the other hand, considered me a dunce. They weren't far off the mark. The fact is, unlike my parents, I thought school was an utter waste of time.

Long before I reached the seventh grade I knew I had better things to think about than grammar or long division. I had spent the first twelve years of my life in a large, dilapidated apartment near New York University, which my mother and father had filled with books on every imaginable subject. Stacks of books lined every room, some seeming to hold up the walls and others balanced so precariously that they threatened to topple and bury us all in an avalanche of accumulated wisdom. Every closet had been converted into a miniature library of sorts, each devoted to a particular topic. In the bathroom, there were books on the history of plumbing, Roman sewers, aquatic reptiles of North America, coprolites, and Freud. The kitchen cabinets stored scholarly tomes covering the use of poison throughout the ages and medical texts devoted to scurvy, gout, and flatulence.

The one subject missing from our library was children's literature. (Neither of my parents found children very interesting.) So instead of building a relationship with Dr. Seuss, I educated myself on subjects I had discovered on my own. At the age of twelve, I was still a little hazy on my multiplication tables, but I considered myself an expert on at least five subjects:

1. giant squid

2. human sacrifice among the Aztec and Maya

3. carnivorous plants

4. alien abduction

5. Greek mythology

Since stumbling upon the Shadow City, I had been hard at work on a new subject, and my studies kept me occupied during the long, lonely winter break that followed Kiki Strike's first appearance.

For days, I pored through
Glimpses of Gotham
and ransacked my parents' library until the floor of my bedroom was covered with listing towers of books, and I was left with only a narrow passage from the door to the bed. Hours upon hours were spent curled up in a chair reading every history of New York I could find until my eyes grew so tired that the words melted into gibberish. Yet no matter how many books I skimmed or scoured, the Shadow City continued to elude me. I discovered hundreds of underground worlds—beneath Paris and Rome, even under tiny villages in Turkey. But historians and scientists alike appeared to agree that New York had always strived to rise high above the ground and had never stooped to tunnel beneath it.

The Catacombs of Paris

A city of the dead, the catacombs are an elaborate network of tunnels that stretch for hundreds of miles beneath the streets of Paris. For centuries, Parisians laid their dead to rest in narrow notches cut into the tunnel walls. Although stretches of the catacombs have been explored and mapped, no one knows their true extent. Over the years, dozens of foolhardy thrill-seekers have entered the tunnels, only to perish in the labyrinth, their bodies never recovered.

The Necropolis of Alexandria, Egypt

Another enormous city of the dead, the Necropolis was utterly forgotten for centuries. A tiny entrance was discovered by a seven-year-old boy who used the miles of tunnels as his personal playground before finally leading archaeologists to the Necropolis in 1998.

The Ancient City of Rome

Modern Rome is built atop the ruins of its ancient predecessor. Often unbeknownst to those who live there, the cellars of many of the city's oldest buildings open directly into the temples, palaces, and streets of the ancient city. During WWII, some Italian Jews were able to evade the Nazis for months or years by hiding in the forgotten city.

Derinkuyu, Turkey

Beneath the small town of Derinkuyu lies the largest of at least 150 underground cities in the Anatolian region of Turkey. For over a millennium, tens of thousands of people spent their lives in this dark subterranean world complete with everything from wineries to stables. The true scale of Derinkuyu is still unknown. Tunnels leading to new rooms and linking Derinkuyu to other underground cities are frequently unearthed. Since Derinkuyu was first discovered in 1963, at least eight stories have been uncovered, and some experts estimate that there may be as many as twenty-seven.

Pendleton, Oregon

During the nineteenth century, thousands of Chinese men came to the U.S. to build the transcontinental railroads. Sadly, when the work was complete, they found themselves unwanted in most towns. Undaunted, they chose to build their own cities—underneath existing towns. Several of these cities, such as the one beneath Pendleton, Oregon, have been discovered. However, there may be other underground Chinese cities across the U.S. that have yet to be found.

Finally, in desperate need of a little fresh air, I left my books behind and set out on foot in search of the Shadow City. At first, I planned to leave my own neighborhood,
imagining there would be nothing along the familiar streets that could have escaped my notice. But the moment I stepped through the door of my apartment building, I began to see a different city.

Every block I passed held a clue to New York in the days when the Shadow City flourished. Watching other people on the streets as they went about their business, chattering into their cell phones or hurrying to return unappreciated Christmas gifts, I realized that I could see things they couldn't. High above my head were faded advertisements for defunct carriage companies and snake oil treatments, their paint still faintly legible on the sides of old buildings. A rusted hitching post that hadn't seen a horse in a hundred years solemnly stood guard in front of a small brick house. Even the cobblestones that peeked through the asphalt were evidence of a world that was now invisible to all but a chosen few.

As a young child, I had always felt a bit cheated that I hadn't been born with a superhuman power, such as the ability to stop time or control the weather. I would even have settled for something as simple as ESP. But as I walked through the streets of New York that day, it began to dawn on me that I had finally discovered my special gift. Somehow, in return for my days of reading, I had acquired the ability to see things that no longer existed. By merely squinting my eyes, I could envision the city the way it had appeared 150 years before I was born.

What I saw was a dark and dangerous place that looked nothing like the New York that I knew. There were no skyscrapers or streetlights, just rows upon rows of tiny brick buildings, all sinking into the thick black
mud that smothered and splattered the city. Monstrous pigs trotted alongside horse-drawn carriages, stopping here and there to root through the mountains of garbage that lined the streets. Rats and half-fed urchins lurked in every shadow, waiting for a chance to pounce. I could see the filth, hear the calls of the street vendors, and practically smell the outhouses. But to my great disappointment, the one thing that always remained hidden from view was the Shadow City.

For an entire week, I did little more than wander the streets, taking note of everything I had overlooked for twelve years. I peered into windows, climbed fences, and filled three spiral notebooks with observations and sketches. Had I been anything other than an innocent-looking girl, my activities would have certainly attracted suspicion, but few people seemed to notice me at all. Their eyes skipped over me as if I were no more dangerous than a fire hydrant or a garbage can.

• • •

One evening, on my way home from a full day of investigations, I passed a lonely store on Second Avenue. The sky was swollen with snow, and the wind raced through the streets, lifting piles of dead leaves and spinning them into frenzied tornadoes. The lights in the store flickered momentarily, just long enough to catch my eye and direct it to a weathered display in the shop's front window, where several old maps rested upon a thick carpet of dust.

Two of the maps were familiar. I had come across copies of them in my parents' library. One, nearly six feet in length, showed the island of Manhattan as it had
appeared 200 years earlier, when cattle still grazed on the land where the Empire State Building would one day stand, and an open sewer flowed along what is now Canal Street. The second map featured a tiny sketch of the old Dutch streets that snaked across the southernmost tip of the island, twisting and turning with little rhyme or reason. A third map lay closest to the window but was so blackened with grime that it was impossible to identify. Driven by curiosity, I stepped into the store, hoping to see the map up close.

A child-sized woman sat on a stool behind the shop's counter, her legs crossed daintily, though they dangled two feet above the floor. Her hair, which was the color and texture of an enormous dust bunny, was pushed from her face by a pair of large glasses that sat perched atop her head. When I asked to see the map in the window, she smiled and hopped off her stool. She didn't ask
which
map I wanted to see, nor did she question why a girl of my age should be trusted with what was certainly a rare and expensive item.

I stood dumbfounded by my good luck, watching the top half of the woman's body disappear as she reached into the display to retrieve the map. When she emerged, she primly held the plastic to her lips and blew a cloud of dust toward the window before handing the map to me.

I had never seen anything like it before. Rather than a map of Manhattan, it was the blueprint for what looked to be three rows of little rooms, each row connected by a long hallway.

“Do you know what that is?” asked the woman
in a thick Russian accent. Her dark eyes twinkled mischievously.

“No,” I admitted.

“It is the Marble Cemetery.”

“Really?” I asked, pretending to be interested. In general, I find graveyards as fascinating as the next person, but I had more pressing matters to consider.

“You have seen it?” she asked. I shook my head, and the woman sighed. “I am not surprised. Most people do not even know it is there. You would like to take a look?”