The Only Human Read online

  Ty let out a long nervous breath.

  “We have got to find out what’s in the old man’s satchel,” Ella said.

  “Not here,” Ty said. “Some place safe. We’ll take the next stop, my mom’s apartment isn’t far.”

  “Oh oh,” Ella looked at the car ahead of them.

  Two more police officers were passing through the connecting doors to enter their car as the train came up to the platform for the Christopher Street PATH station. When the officers entered the car, their radios issued a crackled dispatch.

  “ … male subject’s backpack is navy, female subject believed to have a backpack orange in color …”

  “Got a possible sighting!” One officer was looking directly at Ty as the train lurched to a halt. The subway doors whooshed open. “You two!” the cop pointed at Ty and Ella, “Don’t you move!”

  Riders began to flood out of the car as new passengers began pushing their way on.

  “Come on, Ella!”

  Ty and Ella squeezed their way out of the car and ran through the river of commuters for the exit.

  “Hey!” the cop shouted.

  As Ty and Ella bumped and knocked around people leaving the station up the narrow staircase, Ty prayed no cops would be waiting for them when they surfaced.

  There were none.

  But the cops behind them were gaining on them. Ty and Ella moved fast and melted into the largest crowd on the street. They got ahead of the cops for half a block before entering The Green Sky Café on Christopher Street.

  “I know this place. I come here with my mom,” Ty gasped for breath.

  Every table was occupied, the smell of coffee hung in the air. The sudden grinding of the espresso machine overwhelmed all conversations as they moved around the people toward the back and a narrow twisting hallway and several doors. Ty opened one that led to a back alley, stacks of boxes, dumpsters.

  He rushed to a rusted corrugated metal fence splattered with graffiti across the alley, tossed his backpack over it and began positioning boxes against the fence.

  “Give me your backpack. This is a shortcut to where I live.”

  Ty tossed Ella’s backpack after his then helped her over the fence into a narrow and foul-smelling vacant lot. They dropped down together, bending their knees and falling to their butts. When they got up, they heard a deep growl directed at them.

  They turned to meet the wrathful eyes of a massive German shepherd.

  The strap of Ty’s backpack was locked in its jaws.

  4

  The German shepherd stood its ground.

  Ty’s backpack dangled from its saliva-dripping mouth.

  “Ella, don’t move.”

  Ty searched the immediate area for a stick, a pipe, anything he could use to defend himself. Nothing was near, except Ella’s backpack.

  “Ty, he’s got the old man’s satchel.”

  “I know – shh – easy puppy.” Ty crouched down keeping his eyes on the dog while slowly extending his hand, curling his fingers around the straps of Ella’s backpack. Gathering it firmly and standing, Ty made a sudden, hard chest pass, hitting the dog’s head with it. The shepherd yelped, dropped Ty’s backpack and ran off.

  “Good work,” Ella said.

  Ty cringed at touching dog spit as they slipped on their backpacks.

  “I hope whatever the old man’s got in here is not fragile,” he said. “My place is two blocks away, we’ll look at it there. Let’s go!”

  Ty’s mother lived in a seven-story red brick building on Hudson Street. It had a blue canopy entrance and sidewalk landscaping. Ty used his keys to get them through the lobby.

  “Where do you live, Ella?” He asked her on the elevator.

  “West SoHo.”

  “With your mom and dad?”

  “Just my dad. My mom died when I was eight.”

  “How?”

  “Cancer.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. What about you? Do both of your parents live here?”

  “Just my mom. They’re divorced. My dad’s apartment is on a Hundred and Fifty-First Street. I live with him on weekends.”

  “So you go back and forth across the city? Sounds rough.”

  “Yeah, you get used to it. Do you like living in SoHo?”

  “It’s all right,” she said as they got off on the sixth floor and went to Ty’s apartment. “This is a nice building.”

  “My mom’s not home yet,” he said after unlocking the door.

  “Wow, this is really nice.”

  Ty led her to the living room where he reached into his backpack, pulled out the old man’s brown satchel and set it down on the coffee table.

  Its soft leather was worn smooth with dark patches.

  Ty glanced at Ella.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  She nodded and he emptied the contents onto the table: A small scuffed wooden box, dark blue and not much bigger than a smartphone, and a notebook which was about the size of a paperback novel. Ty picked up the notebook and thumbed the pages. They were filled with handwritten entries, most of which he couldn’t understand, addresses and sketches, mostly of old buildings, windows, archways, ledges, rooftops and stuff.

  He started reading it.

  “What does it say?” Ella asked.

  “Something about old buildings and history, I don’t know.” He shrugged and passed it to her.

  Ty then picked up the box which had a latch and hinges, no markings on the bottom. He opened the lid. Inside, resting in a bed of black velvet, he found a pair of goggles. They looked like they were from another time. The lenses were tinted violet, the circle caps were polished brass, with small bolts connecting them to soft brown leather, padded eyecups and a leather head strap. Upon closer inspection, Ty saw that each lens was fixed with an aperture, like a camera’s lens, and each had a small button slider at the top of the circular cap to control the amount of light allowed in.

  He slipped the goggles on and adjusted the strap. They fit perfectly and were very comfortable.

  “What do you think?” he asked Ella.

  She looked up from the notebook. “Cool, very Steampunk.”

  “What’s that?”

  Ella could see her reflection in the glasses as he stared at her.

  “Well, it’s a movement or trend, I guess, inspired by the works of guys like H.G. Wells and Jules Verne.”

  “Right, who’re they?”

  “They wrote science fiction back in the day. You know, like, War of the Worlds, The Time Machine and Journey to the Center of the Earth.”

  “You really are a brain, Ella.”

  “I read a lot when my mom died.”

  “So what do you think this all means?”

  “I don’t know. I need time to study the old man’s notes.” Ella sat on the floor with her back against the sofa and used the coffee table as a desk.

  As she worked, Ty kept the goggles on, lay down on the sofa and used his phone to search for any news on the accident.

  He found nothing.

  He checked messages. He’d received a few stupid jokes from his old friends. Boy was he going to have a story for them. Ty’s mom had texted: “Working late. Going out with Roger.” She’d always said he was just a friend from her office, but Ty feared she was sort of dating him. He was okay but Ty didn’t like it. “Lotsa leftover pizza in fridge,” his mom reminded him.

  He then checked for any news on the accident again but couldn’t find anything. Ella was still going through the notebook, occasionally using her phone to research something and make her own notes.

  “Are you learning much?” Ty asked her.

  “Some, but it’s complicated. Some of it seems to be in a foreign language or code. I wish I knew his name so we could look him up, find out more about him, or go see him.”

  “I’ve been checking the news. So far, there’s nothing on the accident. He was odd and all, but I hope he’s going to be okay.”

  “Me, too.
”

  “I’m thirsty, you want anything?”

  “Water would be great. May I use your bathroom?”

  “Down the hall, the door at the end.”

  Ty got two bottles of water from the fridge. When Ella returned she’d texted her dad, telling him that she was studying with a friend and would be home late. Then she resumed examining the notebook and Ty continued searching for news as the time swept by.

  “All right, done,” Ella said.

  “Good, I’m getting hungry.” Ty sat up. “We’ve got lots of leftover pepperoni pizza. I like it cold.”

  “So do I.”

  They went into the kitchen and ate at the table. Ty lowered the goggles, letting them hang like a necklace around his neck.

  “So what does it say? Why did he give me these?” Ty bit into a slice.

  Ella tapped the notebook and consulted her phone as she ate.

  “There are tons of notes in cursive and some passages in an old language, or code, which I can’t understand. We’d need help on that. But there were a lot of addresses of buildings in New York, with their history and sketches of them.”

  “Hmm,” Ty said.

  “The tone of it seemed apocalyptic, you know, like the end of the world was coming.”

  “Maybe he thought the buildings are going to all fall down like in the movies?”

  “Maybe.”

  “So why did he pick me? What’s this all got to do with me?”

  “This is where it gets really strange.” Ella flipped between the notebook and her own notes on her phone. “He kept making references to ‘the awakening,’ the ‘curse,’ ‘they’re here among us,’ ‘they’ve found me,’ and then stuff about his efforts to find ‘the chosen one’.”

  “That’s what he called me. So why me?”

  “Here,” she tapped the notes. “See, he’s got a whole bunch of numbers, stuff about constellations, stars aligning and birthdates.” Ella tapped the underlined words “must find the boy with aligned numbers,” beside a date.

  “Hey, that’s my birthday,” Ty said.

  “And look at this note: ‘find him here.’ She touched the numbers “02-M104.”

  “What’s that?” Ty asked.

  “That’s our school district and our school number.”

  “So, there’s got to be other kids at our school with the same birthday as me.”

  “But look at this Ty, he’s got the term, “He is The Protector,” and underlines the first letter in each word, the T and the P. That’s you, Tyler Price.”

  Ty took a moment before he said: “This is getting weirder and weirder.”

  “I think the old man was some kind of numerologist.”

  “What the heck is that? Another word for whack job?”

  “No, I had to look it up again to be sure, but it’s a person who looks for occult meaning in numbers, like a dark or ominous secret message in the importance of certain numbers. And you know what else?”

  “What?”

  “You say he usually got on your bus at Union Square Park. Well, back in the day, that used to be a cemetery where they buried poor people who didn’t have any families.”

  “This is just freaking me way out, Ella. What about the goggles?”

  “They’re to help you ‘see the truth’.”

  “Whatever that is, and what do I do when I see it?”

  “I don’t know. He seems to suggest that you will find the answers.”

  She glanced at the TV on the shelf beside the blender.

  “Does that work?”

  “Yup, mom uses it for cooking shows and the morning news shows.”

  Ella checked the time. It was coming up on the hour.

  “The regular news should be starting now,” she said.

  Ty switched on the TV and surfed among the news channels, stopping on Channel 5, which was reporting an update on the missing tour bus.

  “ … that missing double-decker sight-seeing bus has been located – in Vermont! Now get this, a red-faced company official explained to Channel Five that the driver simply got confused about what tour he was giving. Instead of showing tourists the sites of Manhattan, he took them to New England at no extra charge – we’ll be back after the break.”

  “Well, what do you know?” Ty said and resumed eating during the commercials. Ella had checked something on her phone.

  “Look at this tweet.” She held it up to Ty to read. “That Channel 5 story on the bus is a lie. My parents are still missing and the bus company is lying. Worried in Pittsburgh.”

  “Whoa, what’s going on?” Ty reached for a second piece of pizza.

  The news returned with a photograph of the old man on the screen as the news anchor reported the story.

  “Tragedy this afternoon in Lower Manhattan. Police have identified Bertram Blair as the victim of a traffic accident. Blair, who was seventy, died from injuries he suffered after he was struck by a cab at Sixth Avenue and West 14th Street. Police say he apparently ran into traffic after stepping off of a city bus. No other details are known.”

  5

  Ty switched off the TV news and looked at Ella.

  “I can’t believe the old man died,” he said.

  “It’s so sad,” Ella brushed a tear.

  “Sure he was strange.” Ty shook his head. “But, a few hours ago, he was just sitting beside me, talking to me.”

  “Ty, this is getting serious. I know what I said before, now I’m scared. Maybe we should give his stuff to police. You know, say we’re sorry we took it and just forget about everything?”

  Ty looked at Ella for a moment.

  “No! Remember his last words when he was on the road, surrounded by police? He said: ‘Don’t give them the bag.’ That’s why we ran from them, remember?”

  “Yes.”

  “And on the bus he told me that whatever happens, whatever anyone says, I can’t let them take it from me because I need everything inside to do whatever it is I was ‘chosen’ to do.”

  “Okay,” she said wiping her eyes with a napkin. “Then we need to know more about Bertram Blair, to figure out what you’re supposed to do. Where’s your computer?”

  Ty ran to his bedroom, fished his MacBook Air from a heap of clothes on his bed, then he and Ella scoured the web for anything and everything they could find on Bertram Blair.

  It didn’t take them long to learn that he was born in London, England, where he studied architecture and designed buildings before becoming a university professor. But he left England to come to America to work as a New York City engineer. He’d spent his retirement years studying the history of New York’s buildings.

  “Where do we start?” Ella asked as the information blurred by.

  “Here, we start here.”

  Ty pointed to the screen which showed Bertram Blair’s last known address, a building on Amsterdam Avenue and 108th Street West.

  “We’ll go there and ask his neighbors about him,” Ty said. “Maybe they’ll point us to people who know more about this ‘awakening’ stuff.”

  Ella looked out the window. It would be getting dark soon.

  “I know the way. It’s the same direction as where my dad lives.” Ty located the address on the MTA’s online map. “It’ll take half an hour to get there.”

  Ella checked the time then bit her lip.

  “It’ll be dark by then, Ty.”

  “What time do you have to be home?”

  “Usually by nine, or when it gets dark.”

  “Text your dad, tell him you’re helping a friend. I have emergency money for a cab.”

  “So do I, but –” She hesitated.

  “Ella, it’s like you said, this is serious.”

  “Okay, okay, let’s go.”

  They collected the goggles and notebook into the satchel then headed for the Christopher Street – Sheridan Square subway station. They swiped their MetroCards through the turnstile and hurried to the platform where they boarded a northbound Number 2. The train rumbl
ed and rattled in and out of each stop. They got off at the big Times Square – 42nd Street station and transferred to a Number 1 train bound for Van Cortlandt Park.

  As the tunnel walls raced by Ty counted the stations, they had eight to go. They passed 50th, then 59th for Columbus Circle, 66th for the Lincoln Center. Along the way he replayed Professor Blair’s warnings in his mind: “they’re everywhere, they’re watching.”

  Who? Who was he talking about?

  Ty stole glances of other riders. Was it the old woman with the shopping bags, or those two teenagers holding hands, or the bearded guy with ear phones, nodding his head?

  How am I supposed to know?

  The train passed the stops for 96th and 103rd Streets before easing into the Cathedral Parkway – 110th Street station.

  “This is ours,” Ty said.

  They surfaced into the night and the distant echo of sirens. Living in New York, Ty and Ella were used to sirens. There was always an emergency somewhere nearby. But as they hurried along 108th Street, and got closer to the address, the wailing grew intense.

  “I smell smoke,” Ella said as they turned onto Amsterdam Avenue.

  “Me too.”

  “Look!”

  Billows of smoke churned into the glowing sky as flames licked from the top floors of an apartment complex. The air smelled of burning wood. Ty checked the online picture he had of Bertram Blair’s address.

  “The professor’s building’s on fire!”

  6

  Ty double-checked the picture in the light of the blaze.

  “That is definitely Professor Blair’s building!”

  “This is terrible!” Ella said.

  Firefighters on aerial ladders poured water on the fire from several points. The entire block was cordoned off with clusters of fire trucks, ambulances and police cars. Amplified radio dispatches rivaled the roar of the pumper trucks while flashing emergency lights painted the neighborhood in red and white.

  “Over there, Ty,” Ella pointed from the barricade near one end of the block. “Maybe those people know something about him.”

  Firefighters and police were guiding residents to safety, helping them step carefully over the fire hoses that webbed the water-soaked street in front of the building.