The Boston Tunnel Affair - Up And Running

Part 3
The Boston Tunnel Affair: Beneath the City, the Tunnels are Alive!

(Frontispiece to the 1831 Edition of Frankenstein)

Bridgette’s Dairy
Tuesday, 13 January 1925

Dear Diary, I feel I must write this tonight, regardless of how tired I become. I doubt that I will get much sleep anyway. Therefore, I’ll record the day’s events in case I should not get the chance later.

            Keira O’Reilly and I arrived at the Boundaries of Science Conference quite safely. The conference is being held at The Grand Plaza Hotel in Boston, Massachusetts. We had barely finished our registration before being approached by a tall, slender man in a dark blue suit who proceeded to introduce himself to us as Mr. Walter Smith from the United States’ Bureau of Investigation. Mr. Smith then continued on to introduce us to Miss. Belle Devereaux, who is apparently a pilot – a flamboyant one, and Mr. Leonard Rasicci, a private investigator from Chicago, Illinios.

            We’re to puzzle out what has caused the disappearance of five people in five months from this particular hotel. Three men working in the janitorial department have disappeared from the boiler room while maids have disappeared from the 3^rd and 7^th floor, respectively. Their disappearances were apparently without any trace remaining. There were no clues that we knew left behind.

We moved aside to a small alcove where we could converse without being easily overheard. I believe the word for what Mr. Smith proceeded to do was “brief” us on the situation we had been asked to help investigate. A significant number of people had been disappearing from the hotel over the past few months. While foul play was suspected, it wasn’t the foul play one normally thinks of happening in America, such as the “mob”. Mr. Smith’s superiors believed there was something more sinister and possibly of a supernatural source at work here in Boston. Our jobs were to find out exactly what was happening and, if at all possible, put a stop to it.

The current suggestion was to keep our eyes and ears open and hope we noticed something amiss that would help unearth the root of the puzzle.

            Miss. O’Reilly and I scurried off to get settled into our room and then decided which lectures and presentations to attend during the rest of the afternoon. Mr. Rasicci wandered off to question various hotel staff and to poke around in interesting looking corners. Mr. Smith seemed to float about here and there, questioning people. He also poked in corners, and popped in to the occasional presentation. Miss. Devereaux apparently followed the same agenda as did Miss. O’Reilly and myself, as we noticed her presence in at least one of our presentations.

            During the very late afternoon, around tea time, we were in attendance at the presentation by one Robert Oppenheimer on the work of a Dr. Braumbauer concerning the reanimation of dead tissue using electrical impulses. It seemed extremely fantastic to me that such a thing could be achieved. Dead tissue fully reanimated as living, healthy tissue? That certainly falls within the realm of extreme science indeed. However, a few points that Mr. Oppenheimer raised certainly suggest room for further investigation. While I found Dr. Braumbauer’s claims to be rather extreme and outlandish, the concept is fascinating in a rather morbid way, suggesting shades of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstine’s monster.

 

But I digress. Sometime during the lecture, Mr. Smith apparently noticed someone he knew and quickly left the conference behind them. Glancing back, I caught sight of an extremely beautiful woman dressed entirely in red. As he didn’t seem to indicate he wanted any assistance, I tried to apply my attention once more to the presentation before me.

We managed to attend a reception after Mr. Oppenheimer’s presentation. Miss. O’Reilly impressed Dr. Werner Heisenberg with her astute questions, prompting him to offer her his business card and an offer for further conversation at some point during the conference. In my new friend’s defense, she did ask some rather pointed, intelligent questions concerning Dr. Braumbauer’s line of investigation.

Our little group of adventurers was also lucky enough to be invited to dinner with this very talented group of men, giving us further opportunity to ask questions of not only them but also others in attendance. While I very much doubt any of them have been haunting this Boston hotel for the past few months, perhaps a further line of inquiry into our mysterious disappearance will be suggested by some comment or the other. One never knows from which direction inspiration will appear.

            Fortunately, Mr. Smith reappeared near the end of dinner. I was starting to get worried about his absence, although he does seem more than capable of extricating himself from troubling situations. He gave the rest of us what I supposed would be called a “knowing look”, suggesting we all make our exits and regroup together once more. Shortly after, we do just that, although I must admit some reluctance on my part. The company was stimulating and fascinating, awaking in me an interest in science once more that has taken me a bit by surprise. However, I am sure those who sent me here, while understanding, had an entirely different intent in mind. I pull myself away from our esteemed company with a hope that our paths will cross again during the conference.

            We gathered together bit by bit in the lobby at the same location as our initial meeting and discussion. A Mr. Aiden Long has joined our group, apparently as a latecomer. I’m not sure what to make of him with his darker skin and long black hair. Native American perhaps? He certainly seems quite foreign and exotic. And then he opened his mouth to talk and sounded more American than anything else.

Mr. Smith informed the rest of us that the woman he had followed out of the lecture hall had in actuality been a vampire. I mean, really? A vampire – vile creature of literature as well as of folklore? And here I was thinking him such a competent man.

            While I’m swallowing down my shock at his seeming superstitions claim, he continued telling us about these so-called vampires. Apparently these vampires are made of a strange metal. They are quite evil, taking the skins of we humans to wear as a disguise, enabling them to pass as human while walking amongst us. I knew this conference was all about the fringes of science, but this has most definitely moved firmly into the realm of science fiction or, perhaps, outright fantasy.

 

I’m not at all sure what to make of this turn in events, but I shall try to keep an open mind. Surely there is some explanation that will make sense without violating the very laws of nature. I realize this stance may not make sense to those who know me and know of what I can do, such as those within the Society itself, but really, there are boundaries and then there are, well, scary stories to tell in the dark. We shall see.

To get back to the story, Mr. Smith had followed this vampire, Labana, to the laundry room, where she disappeared on him. He did find an opening in the floor which led to the sewer system running beneath much of Boston. Apparently she slipped down the entrance to the tunnels directly beneath the hotel. He then suggested we all regroup in the laundry room on the ground floor of the hotel in a few minutes’ time. It was agreed and we all scurried off to change and gather our electric torches as well as whatever other supplies we thought prudent. I’m grateful for the foresight involved in packing a pair of trousers for this trip.

Once we had met up again in the laundry room, Mr. Smith led us back behind the large, commercial washing apparatus full of scrubbing boards and giant wringers to a spot on the floor where the faint outlines of a trap door could just be seen in the dim light. With deft fingers he opened a pocket knife and used the largest blade to pry up the edge of the door. The opening revealed was approximately 2 by 3 feet, easily big enough for a person to let themselves down into the tunnel. The fumes wafting up through the space was definitely on the vile side, but not really what you would expect. This was supposed to be an opening into the sewer, but it didn’t have the stench of raw sewage or even of vile, stagnant water. In all honestly, it was so out of context that it took me several minutes of being in the tunnel to place it. What we were smelling was stomach acid! Why the sewer tunnels below the hotel would reek of stomach acid was beyond me, at least at the time.  Unfortunately, the reason would prove hard to believe if one wasn’t actually present when we discovered the answer.