As if a sequel to Minuit’s letters all those years ago, the plants grew faster. The sidewalks cracked. Modern appliances seized up or caught fire. Guns rusted away to nothing, light bulbs burst in their sockets, and zippers became so unreliable that all but the bravest men entrusted their dignity to the button fly. Streets shifted in the night, and buildings sank beneath the earth. Water sprang up as if from nowhere, and strange new animals crawled forth from the sewers to the bafflement of scientists and the delight of the district’s children. The changes happened slowly enough that New York pretended they were not happening at all—you can always trust a New Yorker to ignore another man’s plight—even when people began to disappear.

The vanishings started slowly. A man set out for a growler of beer and never came back. A young lover glanced over his shoulder for a parting look at his sweetheart and saw that she was gone. The story was always the same: someone alone in the dark, alone where she should not be, turned a dangerous corner and was never seen again. Such cases were not taken seriously by the police or the public—until the drip became a flood.

I know the figures by heart:

174 vanished in 1903—hardly more than normal.

In 1905, nearly 300.

In 1907, 419.

In 1909, 912.

At first, the vanishings were written off as an unfortunate offshoot of a nationwide spike in crime. The mayor’s office blamed bad gin, bad water, bad hygiene, and the simple savagery of the Westside gangs. The press blamed immigrants, the poor, white slavers, and suicide. The religious blamed the devil; the superstitious blamed the night itself. There were rumors of monstrous creatures that crept out of the subway tunnels, of an army of corpses that lived in the sewers, of a cadre of killers that roamed the dark. But by all civilized people, the barbaric Westsiders were blamed for destroying their own, for making their once-charming neighborhood an uninhabitable hell.

No matter the actual reason—and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was all of these things, or none at all—the Westside was alone. No one listened when we called for help. No one listened until children began to die.

In 1914, over three thousand citizens vanished from the Westside, vanished from alleys and streets, from apartments and houses, from schools and churches and restaurants and parks. Nearly one-third were younger than eighteen. I was twenty-one then, practically a child myself, and I lost many friends. Seven years later, I remember their faces. I have forgotten their names.

All those who could afford it fled across the stem. The Eastside sagged beneath an added million. The Westside, vacant and dark, became more dangerous, and rumors began that its sickness was spreading. Vanishings were reported on the Eastside: first a few dozen, then more than a hundred, and finally, overnight, the city acted.