Welcome to fast Food Horror. This episode of our anthology is entitled below the
Below by E Jay Miller. I hope this epan thing is recording. I
only want to record this once. I'm not even sure I'll be here to
record it a second time before I shuffle off this mortal coil. My English
teacher will be will be mighty proud. He thought I was paying more attention
to that redheaded girl in the front row, Tracy Tracy Tacco, than I
was to him. But there it is Shakespeare's Macbeth. Here, that mister
Wolf, a little bit of the old Bard. In my final hours,
let's get to this. My daughters have told me I have a few hours
left, perhaps a day maybe. Well, I have the Big Sea,
and as I said, it's my time. But before I go, I
need to unburden my soul, as it were. I've been carrying around this
secret, this wait for far too long, and with me dying and them
opening up that lavish bit of a lie, I you need to hear what's
below the below, what's under eighty nine East forty second Street, and what
they're hiding. My name is Thomas Moore. I've spent my life as an
operator. I could drive operate almost any piece of construction equipment there is crane,
bulldozer, excavator, cat. I was good. I was the best,
which made me a very valuable commodity for any construction company to have.
So I've never wanted for work. I was busy. I was bringing home
fat paychecks every week until until the economy fell in two thousand and eight,
construction slowed and then stopped. It did matter how good I was, how
precise, I could operate this or that without error. No construction meant no
work, which meant no money. Weeks and months went by until my boss
received that phone call. Now I won't name names, but a certain American
multi trillionaire had a job that wasn't exactly legal due to its location. You
see, he was into something called lay lines. I had to google that
on the Yahoo a bunch of times before I could really understand what it was
all about. I'll give you the vaguus wedding version. Lay Lines are straight
alignments drawn between historic structures, prehistoric sites, and prominent landmarks. The idea
was developed in the twentieth century Europe, with lay line believers arguing that these
alignments were recognized by ancient societies that deliberately erected structures along them for various reasons,
most revolving around alien landing sites. But this certain multi trillionaire had done
his research and found an overwhelming number of these lay lines converging at one point
on a map, a point an address located in Lower Manhattan at eighty nine
East forty second Street. He believed that there was something special about this site,
that it held secrets and power due to the number of lay lines that
crossed and intersected at one spot. Now, he had visited the spot many
times, taking tours all over every room and tunnel. He found nothing.
He gained no supernatural insight, he gained no extra powers. He even had
as people run sonar under the building. No secret rooms, nada ZIP,
no secret tunnels. Yet he still maintained there was something special about that site
and that it must be well below the reach of sonar. Now he tried
to do it legally. He approached the property owner and both federal and state
governments about drilling or tunneling underneath the location. And when he told them why,
no amount of money was going to have them okay the exploration. He
was undeterred, which is where we came in. He had purchased a property
at two blocks over his plan to tunnel from the neighboring property and then tunneled
down at the precise location of the intersecting lay lines, the key being precise.
Now, due to the downturned economy, my boss was not inclined to
turn down the job. Months of no work and the price he was given,
let's just say it was high seven figures. The job required street schematics,
where were the pipes, electrical lines, subway tunnels, depth of neighboring
buildings and their foundations and the like. And it also required specialized equipment.
We couldn't just tunnel under a few blocks of Manhattan excavating truck after truck of
dirt and debris and expect to go unnotice. Now this is where I came
in and operation of all things able to work with extreme precision. Now,
mister money, he furnished us with a large mobile gyrotron machine. It's a
radio frequency wave generator which can open holes in rock by vaporization or displace melted
fragments through pressroization, melting the rock and ceiling the walls of the tunnel in
a thick glass like substance preventing collapse. No debris removal, no beams,
no nothing, just a clean, secure tunnel without affecting the integrity of the
structures above. My cut of the money was going to set me, my
children and their children up quite nicely. We started on a Sunday, a
slightly less busy day for this area. Mister Money had the gyrotron delivered the
basement of the building he had bought. It was affixed to a cat which
was on a ramp positioned at precisely a seventeen degree angle. This would be
the angle of descent I would need to maintain until I reached the point of
lay line intersection below eighty nine East forty second Streets, also bringing me to
the depth at which the sonar had stopped its reading at the intersection point.
When I reached the point of intersection, I would affixed the gyrotron to a
cable system and lower it, drilling and drilling until we found what was there,
if anything. Now, I won't bore you with the minutia of the
day to day drilling. You see what I did there? Bore boor you
it's a little uh drilling humor. Sorry, where was I? Ah?
The gyrotron produced an eight foot in diameter tunnel. We were able to make
it seventy five yards a day, and it took us roughly thirteen days to
get to the intersection point. Now, there were days we made less than
seventy five yards. There were days we made up more than seventy five yards.
It all depended on the sediment we were drilling through the dirt and the
gravel composit was quite easy to navigate. The Manhattan Schist wasn't too bad when
we hit the shale, while that slowed us up a bit, but all
in all, the thing worked perfectly, reducing the gravel and debris to nothing
but a melted glass like wall. Around the diameter of the tunnel, we
strung lights that were suspended every three yards, reflecting gloriously off its sheeny surface,
a tunnel of electric blue leading the below. As I reflect on this,
i'm i'm off reminded of that quote from Jurassic Park. You were so
caught up on whether you could, you never considered if you should. On
day thirteen, I arrived at the intersection. By this point in the drilling
process, I was already wearing a respirator. The oxygen level and access to
it in this length of tunnel more than half a mile long, was less
than stellar. After affixing the gyrotron to the cable system, and after a
few hours of the minutia and boredom of watching feet and feet of cable go
down, I noticed the cable bounce, then swing from side to side,
like having a fish on the line. I reported this back to everyone top
side. I could hear the hoots and hollers without the aid of the microphone.
Their years echoed all the way down the electric blue tunnel. We had
hit a pocket, a cave of some sort. I pulled the gyrotron back
up, and since I was right there, I decided I'd lower myself down.
It was only forty yards or so. I could use the remote for
the cable system, put two vice clamps on the cable for hand holds,
and lower myself down, take a look around, and report back. I
first dropped five glow sticks down the hole to add some light to the cave,
and waited to hear them hit the floor, hoping not to hear a
splash indicating water. Each stick produced a small echo on impact, except the
fifth It sounded like it bounced off something metal, like when you'd kick a
soda can off the curb. What could be metal this far from the surface.
My excitement outweighed this bit of newly presented mystery. I put my phone
so it peeked out of my coveralls and pressed record to take video. My
miner's helmet light was on, lighting up anywhere I looked. The remote to
the cable system was firmly my left hand. I took hold of the vice
clamp with my right and found a purchase with my right foot and the other
clamp, and I began my descent. Further and further I went, the
metal echo becoming a distant memory. I emerged into the cave in darkness.
It felt like the light from my miner's helmet was being eaten up by the
surrounding inky black no matter which way I looked, I let out a hollo,
and as I hung suspended by the cable, and heard my voice carry
into what felt like an abyss that seemed to keep going, like a rock
skipping across an endless plane of water, fading as it traveled from its origin.
This echo, though, was different from somewhere below me, a voice
answered in a low growl, Free Us. I panicked for a moment,
spinning in the air, trying to focus on the source of the voice.
I turned up my light, trying to cut through the darkness, trying to
find the source. Free Us. There it was again, more intent,
more aggressive. The growl was intensifying, and there was menace. It wasn't
asking me to free it was ordering. I focused on the ground beneath me.
The light started to cut through to the ground, to the bars,
dark and worn with time, at least a foot thick blocking a twenty foot
opening under me, and behind them a large pair of glowing red eyes.
Free us. It roared again. This time many more voices joined his screaming
and yelling. Hundreds of pairs of smaller red eyes dotted the dark escape behind
him, all now rushing the bars of the cage. As the cave shook,
I smashed the button to go up and retreated to the safety of the
surface, reciting every prayer my mind could recall. A chorus of free us
and screams followed me up the hole as the cave trembled and shook. I
can still hear them in my nightmares. I made it up the tunnel to
the team. They were shaken and scared, embracing me as I raced out
of the tunnel. They two had felt the tremors and heard the screams.
I relayed in detail what I had found, as I have just done here
during my retelling. Mister Money turned white with the recounting of the events and
mumbled the gates of Hell before dismissing us and stopping any further activity at the
site. We have had zero communication from mister Money since being dismissed. The
checks cleared, and two months later constructions started at eighty nine East forty second
Street, well under it at least, where they have built a new Grand
Central station, putting a huge cap over the tunnel and the gate. Oh.
You could write this off as the ramblings of an old man looking for
his last bit of attention. But I have a card I have yet to
play. I recorded my descent. I have audio proof. Most of the
audio is degraded over the years, but here is a segment to put some
starch in your collar.