As they turned a corner, the space around them opened suddenly, making for more than enough clearance on either side of the track so they no longer had to walk along the rails and sleepers. “We’re underneath Central Park now,” Armstrong explained.

Doyle made a sudden hushing sound. He had a finger to his lips when Larkin turned around. He pointed toward the right. “Hear that?”

Larkin listened. It took a moment for the echo of their steps to recede from memory and the uncanny silence of the underground to come in like a rogue wave, but then he heard it.

A distant, but consistent ting, ting, ting.

Metal on metal.

He raised an eyebrow in question.

Doyle murmured, “Someone knows we’re coming. They’re warning others in the area.”

Armstrong turned his flashlight on the far wall, panning back and forth until pausing at an access door covered in grime. It’d practically blended into the darkness, save for the doorknob that was shiny from constant use.

“Where’s that door lead?” Doyle asked, keeping his voice low.

Armstrong shrugged. “Could be a utility room, cable room, maybe a shortcut between tracks. The Q, N, R runs this way too.” Armstrong stepped carefully as he made his way toward the door, so as to avoid making noise that’d echo and mark their position. He grabbed the handle and gave the door a hard yank.

Someone shouted—a roar of unbridled rage and fury—metal thwacked flesh and bone, and Armstrong was flung off his feet. His flashlight somersaulted through the air, illuminating the blade of a shovel, fresh blood glistening on its tip, and Armstrong’s boots as he fell backward, and then the light dropped to the gravel at the same time something cracked and Armstrong cried out in distress.

—Boom. Squish. Crack.—

In the doorway stood a stranger, his details scant in the haphazard glows of their flashlight beams: torn plaid pants, jean jacket, maybe a studded belt. He wielded the shovel, likely stolen from an MTA worksite, like a baseball bat.

Larkin froze in terror.

His fear was so unchecked, he imagined his expression comically grotesque in its inhumanness.

Because that monster, that ogre, that devil, stalked Larkin in that place where sleep and wake met and nightmares were real and that crack, crack, crack of his skull under the force of a baseball bat repeated forevermore.

“Drop it and put your hands up!” Doyle shouted.

Larkin snapped free from the choke hold of shock, of horror—Doyle’s voice an anchor to reality, a reminder that nightmares were only dreams shrouded in a black cloak and memories were only receipts of the past and that Larkin wasn’t prey, that he was safe.

The man—boy, Larkin thought upon second glance—disappeared through to wherever the open door led.