“You’ve got a favorite speakeasy, don’tcha?” Memphis shot back. He raised his voice like a sidewalk preacher: “As for me, ‘I am large, I contain multitudes!’ ”
“Who said that? Calvin Coolidge?”
“Walt Whitman.” Memphis’s grin spread slowly, sweetly. “You’d know that if you had a favorite librarian.”
“I like having you around, Memphis,” Jericho said. He stood and stretched his cramped muscles. “Come on. Let’s try the cellar.”
Sam cocked his head, squinting. “You’ve got a funny idea of fun, Freddy. Ha!” He pointed at Memphis. “Alliteration! Besides, we already hauled up all the crates that were down there.”
“Maybe there’s something we’re missing. Let’s look again.”
Jericho kicked the Persian rug back and lifted the trapdoor set into the floor of the collections room. Memphis peered into the dark hole.
“It’s just as charming as it seems. Dark. Damp. Tubercular. Possibly haunted,” Sam said. “Come on! I’ll give ya the grand tour!”
The three of them climbed down the rickety steps, dropping onto the dirt floor. Memphis coughed up a lungful of dust. He wiped his filthy hands against his trousers. The damp smell of the earth was close.
“Here,” Sam said, handing over a lantern.
Memphis struck a match and turned up the flame, and the cellar flared with dancing light. They were in a large room whose bricks were covered in fading murals. Ahead, though, the cellar’s brick gave way to the earthen walls of a tunnel that seemed to stretch for a mile. Memphis paused in front of a mural of a slave family reaching their hands toward the sun, the word freedom painted above it.
“Cornelius’s house was also a stop on the Underground Railroad,” Jericho said, coming up beside him.
“God bless Mr. Rathbone,” Memphis whispered. He put a hand to the cool, painted stones bearing witness to so many names, so many histories. In the mural, there were painted lines for the Underground, like scars stretched across the skin of the infected nation. There were wounds and then there were wounds. Some were so great Memphis had no idea how they could ever be healed.
“Where does that tunnel open up?” Memphis asked.
“Don’t know. And I can’t say I’m too keen on tunnels after those things chased us through the subway,” Sam said, coughing.
Memphis lifted the lantern. Its light could reach only so far. “I need to see. Just a little.” He started down the narrow passageway, ducking his head as he came to a low beam. “Watch out there,” he cautioned.
“Watch out for what?” Sam said.
“Your …” Memphis looked over his shoulder. There were a good couple of inches between Sam’s head and the low ceiling. “Head,” Memphis said, fighting a smile.
“Some of us have to duck,” Jericho said, clearly happy to have a reason to needle Sam.
Sam folded his arms. “You’re really enjoying yourself, aren’t you?”
Jericho broke into a full grin. “More than you can imagine.”
Memphis hoisted his lantern again and peered through its hazy glow into the earthen curve of the tunnel. “This thing looks like it goes on for a mile.”
“I’m not up for a mile, pal. Sorry,” Sam said. “It’s been closed up for decades. For all we know, there’s no way out.”
There was a lot Memphis wanted to say to that. “So where’s this storeroom?” he said instead.
“This way,” Jericho said, opening up an easily overlooked door into a cold tomb of a room. “This is where I found all of Cornelius’s letters to Will.”
He snapped the chain for the overhead bulb. Its sick yellow light fell across another mural: a dark, macabre forest full of ghosts. There in the center was the man in the hat facing a young Negro man. Memphis frowned.
“Yeah, me, too, pal,” Sam said, coming up beside him. “It’s the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen—and I once saw my uncle Moishe naked at the Russian baths.”
“Why would somebody put that here?” Memphis said. “It doesn’t look like the others. The others are hopeful. This …” He shuddered. “This is a nightmare.”
“Hey! Come see what I found,” Jericho called.
Sam turned to Memphis. “See, when somebody says that to me in a dirty, creepy hole of a cellar, my first inclination is to run.”
In the corner, Jericho held up a small canvas sack. Sam and Memphis coughed as they waved away the clouds of dust released into the stale air. “How come it doesn’t bother you, Freddy?” Sam croaked out on a burst of coughing.
“Giant’s blood,” Jericho said, getting in one more jab. “I found this tucked behind some Christmas ornaments.”
“The professor used to decorate for Christmas? That may be the most surprising thing I’ve learned today,” Sam said, wiping his eyes.
They peered into the canvas sack. Inside were several moldy cardboard canisters. The paper labels, freckled with black mildew spots, read EDISON GOLD MOULDED RECORDS.
Sam wiggled off the top of a canister and pulled out what was inside. “What are these? Look like dusty, hollow candles.”
Memphis turned one over carefully in his hand, then put it up to his eye, peering through the tube of it. “They’re wax cylinders! My father recorded some of his music on these.”
“How did we miss this last time?” Sam said.
“We weren’t looking for them. We were looking for letters,” Jericho reminded him. He examined the old canister. A faint stamp on the bottom, barely legible, read, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF PARANORMAL. “These could have valuable information on them.”
“Or they could be recordings of somebody’s eighty-year-old aunt singing patriotic songs,” Sam said.
Memphis shrugged. “Worth a listen.”
“Okay. But if I hear a quavery soprano, I’m outta here,” Sam said.
“Where’s the player?”
“What’s it look like?”
“Like a phonograph player—wooden box with a big megaphone coming out of it.”
“I’ve seen it. It’s upstairs in Will’s office,” Jericho said.
They climbed back up, restored the rug to its rightful place over the cellar door, and crept into Will’s darkened office. “Don’t worry,” Jericho said, turning on a desk lamp. “He’s giving a lecture in Connecticut today. Still trying to pay off the tax bill so they don’t close this place. Here. In the corner.”
On a side table wedged into an alcove was something Jericho had always regarded as one of Will’s many curious, slightly useless artifacts. Now, watching Memphis thread the wax cylinder into place and turn the side crank, he understood.
“These sure look old. Not even sure it’ll play. But here goes,” Memphis said, dropping the needle. The cylinder spun around, spilling out its tale in pops and hisses until, finally, an echoey, familiar voice came through the attached megaphone:
“Good afternoon, Mr. Johnson. How are you today?”
“Sister Walker?” Sam whispered.
Memphis nodded.
“Fine, thank you. And yourself, Miss Walker?”