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Welcome to fast Food Horror. This
episode of our anthology is entitled below the

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Below by E Jay Miller. I
hope this epan thing is recording. I

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only want to record this once.
I'm not even sure I'll be here to

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record it a second time before I
shuffle off this mortal coil. My English

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teacher will be will be mighty proud. He thought I was paying more attention

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to that redheaded girl in the front
row, Tracy Tracy Tacco, than I

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was to him. But there it
is Shakespeare's Macbeth. Here, that mister

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Wolf, a little bit of the
old Bard. In my final hours,

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let's get to this. My daughters
have told me I have a few hours

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left, perhaps a day maybe.
Well, I have the Big Sea,

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and as I said, it's my
time. But before I go, I

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need to unburden my soul, as
it were. I've been carrying around this

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secret, this wait for far too
long, and with me dying and them

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opening up that lavish bit of a
lie, I you need to hear what's

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below the below, what's under eighty
nine East forty second Street, and what

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they're hiding. My name is Thomas
Moore. I've spent my life as an

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operator. I could drive operate almost
any piece of construction equipment there is crane,

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bulldozer, excavator, cat. I
was good. I was the best,

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which made me a very valuable commodity
for any construction company to have.

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So I've never wanted for work.
I was busy. I was bringing home

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fat paychecks every week until until the
economy fell in two thousand and eight,

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construction slowed and then stopped. It
did matter how good I was, how

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precise, I could operate this or
that without error. No construction meant no

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work, which meant no money.
Weeks and months went by until my boss

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received that phone call. Now I
won't name names, but a certain American

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multi trillionaire had a job that wasn't
exactly legal due to its location. You

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see, he was into something called
lay lines. I had to google that

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on the Yahoo a bunch of times
before I could really understand what it was

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all about. I'll give you the
vaguus wedding version. Lay Lines are straight

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alignments drawn between historic structures, prehistoric
sites, and prominent landmarks. The idea

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was developed in the twentieth century Europe, with lay line believers arguing that these

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alignments were recognized by ancient societies that
deliberately erected structures along them for various reasons,

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most revolving around alien landing sites.
But this certain multi trillionaire had done

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his research and found an overwhelming number
of these lay lines converging at one point

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on a map, a point an
address located in Lower Manhattan at eighty nine

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East forty second Street. He believed
that there was something special about this site,

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that it held secrets and power due
to the number of lay lines that

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crossed and intersected at one spot.
Now, he had visited the spot many

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times, taking tours all over every
room and tunnel. He found nothing.

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He gained no supernatural insight, he
gained no extra powers. He even had

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as people run sonar under the building. No secret rooms, nada ZIP,

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no secret tunnels. Yet he still
maintained there was something special about that site

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and that it must be well below
the reach of sonar. Now he tried

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to do it legally. He approached
the property owner and both federal and state

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governments about drilling or tunneling underneath the
location. And when he told them why,

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no amount of money was going to
have them okay the exploration. He

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was undeterred, which is where we
came in. He had purchased a property

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at two blocks over his plan to
tunnel from the neighboring property and then tunneled

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down at the precise location of the
intersecting lay lines, the key being precise.

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Now, due to the downturned economy, my boss was not inclined to

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turn down the job. Months of
no work and the price he was given,

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let's just say it was high seven
figures. The job required street schematics,

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where were the pipes, electrical lines, subway tunnels, depth of neighboring

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buildings and their foundations and the like. And it also required specialized equipment.

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We couldn't just tunnel under a few
blocks of Manhattan excavating truck after truck of

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dirt and debris and expect to go
unnotice. Now this is where I came

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in and operation of all things able
to work with extreme precision. Now,

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mister money, he furnished us with
a large mobile gyrotron machine. It's a

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radio frequency wave generator which can open
holes in rock by vaporization or displace melted

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fragments through pressroization, melting the rock
and ceiling the walls of the tunnel in

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a thick glass like substance preventing collapse. No debris removal, no beams,

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no nothing, just a clean,
secure tunnel without affecting the integrity of the

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structures above. My cut of the
money was going to set me, my

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children and their children up quite nicely. We started on a Sunday, a

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slightly less busy day for this area. Mister Money had the gyrotron delivered the

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basement of the building he had bought. It was affixed to a cat which

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was on a ramp positioned at precisely
a seventeen degree angle. This would be

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the angle of descent I would need
to maintain until I reached the point of

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lay line intersection below eighty nine East
forty second Streets, also bringing me to

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the depth at which the sonar had
stopped its reading at the intersection point.

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When I reached the point of intersection, I would affixed the gyrotron to a

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cable system and lower it, drilling
and drilling until we found what was there,

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if anything. Now, I won't
bore you with the minutia of the

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day to day drilling. You see
what I did there? Bore boor you

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it's a little uh drilling humor.
Sorry, where was I? Ah?

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The gyrotron produced an eight foot in
diameter tunnel. We were able to make

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it seventy five yards a day,
and it took us roughly thirteen days to

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get to the intersection point. Now, there were days we made less than

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seventy five yards. There were days
we made up more than seventy five yards.

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It all depended on the sediment we
were drilling through the dirt and the

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gravel composit was quite easy to navigate. The Manhattan Schist wasn't too bad when

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we hit the shale, while that
slowed us up a bit, but all

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in all, the thing worked perfectly, reducing the gravel and debris to nothing

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but a melted glass like wall.
Around the diameter of the tunnel, we

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strung lights that were suspended every three
yards, reflecting gloriously off its sheeny surface,

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a tunnel of electric blue leading the
below. As I reflect on this,

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i'm i'm off reminded of that quote
from Jurassic Park. You were so

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caught up on whether you could,
you never considered if you should. On

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day thirteen, I arrived at the
intersection. By this point in the drilling

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process, I was already wearing a
respirator. The oxygen level and access to

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it in this length of tunnel more
than half a mile long, was less

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than stellar. After affixing the gyrotron
to the cable system, and after a

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few hours of the minutia and boredom
of watching feet and feet of cable go

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down, I noticed the cable bounce, then swing from side to side,

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like having a fish on the line. I reported this back to everyone top

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side. I could hear the hoots
and hollers without the aid of the microphone.

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Their years echoed all the way down
the electric blue tunnel. We had

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hit a pocket, a cave of
some sort. I pulled the gyrotron back

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up, and since I was right
there, I decided I'd lower myself down.

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It was only forty yards or so. I could use the remote for

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the cable system, put two vice
clamps on the cable for hand holds,

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and lower myself down, take a
look around, and report back. I

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first dropped five glow sticks down the
hole to add some light to the cave,

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and waited to hear them hit the
floor, hoping not to hear a

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splash indicating water. Each stick produced
a small echo on impact, except the

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fifth It sounded like it bounced off
something metal, like when you'd kick a

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soda can off the curb. What
could be metal this far from the surface.

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My excitement outweighed this bit of newly
presented mystery. I put my phone

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so it peeked out of my coveralls
and pressed record to take video. My

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miner's helmet light was on, lighting
up anywhere I looked. The remote to

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the cable system was firmly my left
hand. I took hold of the vice

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clamp with my right and found a
purchase with my right foot and the other

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clamp, and I began my descent. Further and further I went, the

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metal echo becoming a distant memory.
I emerged into the cave in darkness.

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It felt like the light from my
miner's helmet was being eaten up by the

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surrounding inky black no matter which way
I looked, I let out a hollo,

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and as I hung suspended by the
cable, and heard my voice carry

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into what felt like an abyss that
seemed to keep going, like a rock

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skipping across an endless plane of water, fading as it traveled from its origin.

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This echo, though, was different
from somewhere below me, a voice

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answered in a low growl, Free
Us. I panicked for a moment,

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spinning in the air, trying to
focus on the source of the voice.

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I turned up my light, trying
to cut through the darkness, trying to

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find the source. Free Us.
There it was again, more intent,

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more aggressive. The growl was intensifying, and there was menace. It wasn't

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asking me to free it was ordering. I focused on the ground beneath me.

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The light started to cut through to
the ground, to the bars,

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dark and worn with time, at
least a foot thick blocking a twenty foot

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opening under me, and behind them
a large pair of glowing red eyes.

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Free us. It roared again.
This time many more voices joined his screaming

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and yelling. Hundreds of pairs of
smaller red eyes dotted the dark escape behind

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him, all now rushing the bars
of the cage. As the cave shook,

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I smashed the button to go up
and retreated to the safety of the

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surface, reciting every prayer my mind
could recall. A chorus of free us

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and screams followed me up the hole
as the cave trembled and shook. I

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can still hear them in my nightmares. I made it up the tunnel to

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the team. They were shaken and
scared, embracing me as I raced out

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of the tunnel. They two had
felt the tremors and heard the screams.

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I relayed in detail what I had
found, as I have just done here

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during my retelling. Mister Money turned
white with the recounting of the events and

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mumbled the gates of Hell before dismissing
us and stopping any further activity at the

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site. We have had zero communication
from mister Money since being dismissed. The

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checks cleared, and two months later
constructions started at eighty nine East forty second

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Street, well under it at least, where they have built a new Grand

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Central station, putting a huge cap
over the tunnel and the gate. Oh.

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You could write this off as the
ramblings of an old man looking for

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his last bit of attention. But
I have a card I have yet to

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play. I recorded my descent.
I have audio proof. Most of the

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audio is degraded over the years,
but here is a segment to put some

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starch in your collar.