Along State Street the movie shoot was rolling along. The star shuffled back and forth down the sidewalk in his slippers and robe, getting into character.
Across the street the paparazzi were lined up, their heavy bags slung around their thick torsos, lenses the size of interstellar telescopes in their grubby hands.
The star, an aging bald man of aristocratic bearing, sneered imperceptibly and perched on his director's chair to light a cigarette. He knew, of course, that the line of sight was blocked for the photographers by a parked car, a ladder and two trees, so he settled into his seat with great satisfaction and exhaled a long plume of smoke.
Pushing against each other, the photographers scowled, each craning for a shot above the parked car between the trees around the ladder. The only solution was to step onto the metal grate of the dilapidated townhouse being used as the movie backdrop. Danger and Keep Off signs were plastered to the peeling paint. The lightest of the trio ventured on the inclined metal platform. The others followed, one after the other, and although the metal creaked and groaned, it did not give, so the three men raised their lenses.
The venerable, much decorated, thespian watched the men now, a bored, slightly amused expression stealing across the surface of his immobile face. He flicked his ash onto the sidewalk in a studied and very intimidating motion of distaste.
One of the directors sauntered over to him and murmured directions. His head turned away from the photographers, the actor listened, nodded, threw his burnt out butt into the empty street, and rose. Across the street the camera shutters clicked together as one. The men shifted to follow the star as he strode out into the street unto his "stage." The cameras followed, worn rubber soles readjusting their weight yet again, straining the steel.
Meanwhile, under the brick vaults of the old basement, beneath the layers of ancient coal dust and petrol soaked dirt, the ground rumbled and shook. There was no subway running through underneath. The city's subterranean conduits circumvented this historic neighborhood, this house perhaps in particular. The ceiling of the basement was sheathed in copper, interfering with the smooth running of the modern households above it. Internet access and wi-fi was at best spotty except on the topmost floor. Cell phones simply did not function on the ground floor, and had to be used in windows or exterior doorways. And even then, there was always a gurgling static; almost a third party intercepting, eavesdropping on the conversations.
The house had quite a history, you can imagine. At one time it was a synagogue, its rabbi a renowned cabalist. The place went downhill after that as the neighborhood was overrun with immigrants disembarking from the port not three blocks away and eager but ill equipped for life in the new world.
It was during this period that the writer had moved into the front room, newly divorced, confused, and nearly penniless, even though the times were prosperous, or so he was constantly reminded.
The writer lived on tinned beans heated on a small alcohol stove in the alcove next to his dressing room, where he kept his worldly fortune: several bespoke suits and one threadbare but still serviceable overcoat. Of course he had books. Bookcases lined his walls, walls that were covered in a faded blue wall paper that masked the many cracks and odd angled corners of the room. On a small table in the front corner near the windows was his typewriter. This work area was also near the throngs of world citizens that bustled past, to and from the main artery coming from the port- Atlantic Avenue. Arabic, Spanish, Sicilian, Ethiopian, Cantonese, Russian, Greek and Mandalay dopplered past at all hours of the day and night as the writer hammered away at his peculiar stories in the Queen's English. Louder and louder he typed, hoping to silence the cacophony passing by his sunlit, occasionally moonlit, windows. He dared not look out past the his landlady's shabby lace curtains lest he see a turban, a negro, a mandarin in long braid and padded jacket, yet another skull capped jew, or then again, some creature he had never imagined, and he was already well known in certain literary circles for his unimaginable creatures! But the writer was a long way from home himself. He was a Yankee, and felt his race threatened by these swarthy crowds reeking of garlic and cardamon that infiltrated the fabric of upstanding Anglo-Saxon civilization like a voracious plague of biblical dimensions.
Almost in defiance of the flowing robes that paraded outside his window, he would every morning iron his shirts and handkerchiefs, and if he had the energy, his socks. At night when he finally collapsed into his narrow cot, he would, in what he hoped were merely dreams, plunge beneath the narrow pine floorboards, through the copper sheathing, the sooty sand that pooled around the brick arches and their mounds of coal, through those to burst beneath the crust of reality itself, where he would find...
Feet readjusted, the men teetered to the right to avoid the yellow ladder leaning on the wall next to the actor's chair. The grate sagged beneath their weight, the rusted hinges finally gave, and swallowed the three just as their shutters closed upon the star brooding over the delivery of his new lines and also his dinner possibilities for that evening.
From the cloud of noxious dust, in absolute obscurity, our three paparazzi found themselves tangled together in the basement amidst a pile of broken glass, much of it hand blown, and coal, long obsolete. They gagged from fumes of fuel oil evaporating from the spill under the nearby tanks that had just been filled by the truck that morning.
"Shit! My camera! It's fucked."
"My ankle! I think its broken, I feel blood!"
"Of course, there's glass all over the place. What the fuck, we gotta sue, man!"
"Yeah, this is like a violation, know what I mean?"
"There a light around here?"
"Gotta match?"
"You from the dark ages, or what?"
The fumes that rose steadily from the oily sand floor around the pitch darkness, masked other more indecipherable odors. Blood seeped into the sand from as yet unacknowledged lesions. The paparazzi huddled in the obscurity, their confidence seeping out with their life blood. Then they saw it; perhaps their eyes were adjusting now. A dull green glow ebbed in the back corner. They all saw it now, but dared not admit they had seen it.
"Sue the bastards!"one whined.
"SOO THE BAHSTAHRDS.." came murmured intonations from the corner
"You hear that?"
"YOO HEAR THAHT?" An even deeper bass.
"The voice!"
"It's copying what we say."
"COPY WHAAHT..."
"It's just an echo, like in a church."
"This ain't no church, man, this place is haunted.
"AUNTED."
"Where is that coming from?"
"Fuck, your cologne stinks, man."
"Yeah, remember that bitch you said looked like Susan Sarandon, told you to upgrade?"
"UHPGRAYED."
"Shut the fuck up...From back there..."
"No its down there! Under the ground!"
"Think the subway goes through here?"
"No-oh."
"OK, So...?"
"KAY...SOOO"
"Maybe it's the cranes, aren't they doing the death scene from the crane?"
"No, a balloon. It don't make noise."
"No crane, there's no eek, eek of it backing up!"
"John kills the guy with a hatchet. They don't use the crane til later. Fuck, doesn't anyone have a fuckin' flashlight?"
"Your flash!"
"I told you to keep your hands off me, faggot!"
"We need Light!"the sniveler wailed.
"Just keep your bloody fingers off my camera, muhfuck.."
"MUH FUCK," The deep bass from the corner made a sound as if clearing its throat. "TAKE THE PICTURE. THIS IS A SCOOOOOP."
"Yeah,use your flash, stoopid!"
"MUHFUCK AND STOOPID. AND THE THIRD GENTLEMAN IS?"
CLICK.
The flash blasted the cavernous brownstone basement with its cold glare. Arches ran down the length to a dark recess in the back of the building, probably under the garden and parking lot where the cameras had been rolling for days, focused on this or that stellar talent, one the tabloids "most eligible bachelor" the other a henpecked golden boy, also premium tabloid fodder, whose jaw muscles worked incessantly on a wad of gum, possibly nicotine laced. The basements predated the house, and had tunnels running under the street, now closed off.
In that split second, though, it was not the architectural surprise of a more ancient structure that shocked our three friends, but the vision in the corner, illuminated so briefly-too briefly to sanely assess its true nature. Was it a disheveled coil of oily rope, a discarded pile a garden hoses, or was it something abominable, something belonging more to the depths of the sea, hiding in a crevasse from the giant whales and other monsters of the deep?
MONSTERS OF THE DEEP. Now, that struck a chord! The three men stared in the now dark corner in profound disbelief as urine trickled unheeded down their pants legs.
Above on the street, the actor wielded his hatchet, getting ready for the shot and joked with his would be victim in a convivial manner. Nearby the shorter director paced, his brows knit in thought.
Under the house, the creature uncoiled its tentacles, making itself more comfortable, assured there was no danger from the three buffoons and their soul capturing machines. The creature had no fear of these, its soul was so ancient and powerful it could swallow entire planets, if it so wished. All it required was a little amusement, and that looked very promising just now, with these three comedians and all the controlled chaos above, whose preparations had rattled the ground for days and woken our monster from a century of interdimensional slumber.
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