One vicious, windy day, Vincent was walking back from school. The
street was empty and old papers, cartons and styrofoam were
swirling up and down, sometimes blowing into him.
His parents had originally come from Italy, but now they were
running a small deli in New York in what is called a ‘canyon’, one of
the dark, narrow side streets that run between the skyscrapers.
Boiling hot in summer, dark and cold in winter, the canyons are often
subject to freak winds that can knock people down with their fierce,
unexpected force.
Vincent’s family worked incredibly hard but their deli was losing
business fast. That autumn more winds than ever seemed to batter
their canyon, windows kept blowing out and instead of being
replaced were simply boarded up. Pedestrians hurried by and even
the office workers in the skyscrapers avoided shopping there,
preferring to use the exits that gave them access to the main streets.
As a result, the buildings’ side doors were locked and the deli went
on losing business.
The vagrant hunched in a doorway was vaguely familiar. He had
long, matted hair and was so begrimed Vincent could hardly make
out what colour his skin was.
Suddenly he remembered seeing his parents give the old man
money when he was begging on the steps of the cathedral after
Mass, but although he had obviously been desperately poor, the
vagrant had not been as dirty and as ragged and decayed as he
appeared now.
But there were so many homeless people in Manhattan that
Vincent hardly gave him another glance until the old man called after
him.
Vincent hurried on, battling the wind, knowing the request would
be for money.
‘Hey there!’
The old man was walking behind him now, placing a gnarled hand
on his shoulder.
Vincent yelled as he was swung round.
‘I won’t hurt you.’
‘I haven’t even got a dime.’
‘I don’t want your money.’
‘What do you want then?’
The old man’s hand was still on his shoulder and he couldn’t
shake it off. Gazing around him, Vincent saw the canyon was
completely empty and his parents’ deli was some fifty metres away.
Should he call for help or could he handle the situation himself? He
decided he had to handle it.
‘You have to leave,’ the vagrant said.
‘Leave?’ Vincent gazed at him as if he was crazy – which he was
sure he was.
‘If you don’t, you’ll die.’
The vagrant shuffled away and Vincent shrugged. Yet he
remained slightly uneasy. The old man had been begging quietly a
few weeks ago. Now he was warning him. Then he dismissed him as
just another crazy old guy and hurried back to the deli and his
harassed parents.
Next morning, on the way to school, Vincent again passed the old
vagrant, slumped down in his doorway. Directly he caught sight of
him, the old man staggered to his feet and began shouting, ‘You’ve
got to leave. Got to leave right away. All of you.’
Curious now, Vincent turned back to him. ‘Why?’ he asked.
‘Because you’re going to fly, man. Fly through the air like a bat out
of hell.’
He didn’t respond to further questioning and Vincent walked on to
school, trying to forget the warning. New York was full of crazy
people.
On the way home, the old man was standing by Vincent’s bus
stop, as if he had been waiting for him.
‘You have to leave now,’ the vagrant yelled as soon as he caught
sight of him. ‘You and your folks. Before it’s too late.’
‘What’s going to happen?’ he demanded. ‘The end of the world?’
‘One hell of a big bang,’ said the old man. ‘It’s anniversary time.’
He trudged away, carrying a couple of battered shopping bags, his
filthy black coat drawn around him, his tangled hair falling down his
back.
Vincent shivered in the cold wind. What did he mean, ‘It’s
anniversary time’? Anniversary of what? Thoroughly uneasy now, he
decided to drop in at the local library, a couple of blocks away. He
had always been interested in history – maybe this time he would
discover something about his own street. It was unlikely, though, the
old man was probably just out of his mind.
Checking microfilm, Vincent went back ten years, then twenty. But he
could find nothing and decided to question the elderly librarian.
‘Twenty-Third Street. Did anything ever happen down there, like
some disaster or something?’
‘You mean the canyon?’ she said instantly.
He nodded.
‘There was one hell of an explosion there – long time ago now.
Twenty-five years or thereabouts.’
Vincent grew cold and tense as the librarian checked out the
microfilm. Then she gave a cry of triumph as the headlines came up
magnified on the screen. As he read them, Vincent felt a growing
alarm.
MANHATTAN MAYHEM
BLAST KILLS FORTY-EIGHT
ASSASSIN BLUNDERS?
Twenty-Third Street, Manhattan, was today the scene of devastation and
carnage as an explosion blew the brownstones apart. Although Police Chief
Arnie Subotsky denied rumours that the explosion was meant to kill landlord
Rudi Carlson, an anonymous local resident claimed ‘We all hate the guy.
Carlson charges high rents without fixing the buildings. Most of the
brownstones are running with vermin. I know some residents wanted to wipe
him out. Reckon they used too much gelignite and wiped themselves out. The
irony is: Carlson survived.’
Rudi Carlson later commented, ‘I guess someone may have had some kind of
grudge against me. But I peg rents down as low as I can. What do they
expect? The Waldorf?’
Then Vincent spotted the date and time of the disaster. 26th
November. 8 p.m. He gazed at the screen in growing horror. The
anniversary was tonight and he only had ten minutes left. Rising to
his feet, his hands shaking, Vincent knew he had to get back to his
parents fast.
Noticing his apprehension, the librarian only grinned. ‘Don’t worry,
son. Lightning never strikes twice.’
Once outside, he soon realized that an unusually fierce wind had
arisen. If it was this bad on the main streets then it was going to be
much worse in the canyon, and he began to run, desperate to get
home.
But when Vincent reached Twenty-Third Street, the wind was so
vicious that not only was the litter flying about but street furniture too.
Bent double against its force, he staggered on, narrowly avoiding a
rubbish bin and the remains of a street lamp. Flying glass began to
fall as the windows of the skyscrapers above him shattered, and
grabbing a dustbin lid he struggled towards the deli, lethal slivers
raining down on him and splintering on his improvised shield.
Then Vincent saw his parents running towards him, dodging in
and out of doorways, numbed and bemused by the sudden
catastrophe. Meanwhile, the glass continued to fall and he was
terrified that any moment they would be struck. Already people were
staggering around him, their faces gashed and bloodied.
Vincent glanced up and saw that a nearby building had a concrete
awning and he made a dash for its protection, shouting for his
parents to join him. Somehow they made it as the wind mounted in
strength and the shards of glass flew like darts.
From their place of safety they watched numbly. Then suddenly
the vagrant appeared, ambling through the falling debris as if nothing
was happening. Several times Vincent saw him get hit by glass, but
he still walked towards them, seemingly impervious, his eyes fixed
straight ahead.
‘That guy’s got a charmed life,’ he shouted to his parents over the
wild noise of the wrecking wind, but his father stared at him.
‘What guy? I don’t see no one,’ he yelled, puzzled.
Vincent stared at both of them incredulously. ‘He’s there – on the
sidewalk – right in front of us.’
But his father merely repeated that he couldn’t see anyone.
‘Don’t stand there,’ shouted the vagrant. ‘It’ll come down. Get off
the street.’
‘We have to go,’ yelled Vincent. ‘Like now.’
But his parents refused to move. ‘This is the safest place, Vince,’
said his mother, clinging to a pillar. ‘You can see that. It’s solid.’
The vagrant was shouting frantically, his voice drowned by the
howling wind. Then Vincent looked up and saw cracks beginning to
split the concrete awning apart.
‘Let’s go!’ he yelled, somehow dragging his parents out into the
canyon, the wind still mounting in force, screaming, tearing and
wrenching at the buildings. Glass continued to shower, and the
concrete canopy suddenly snapped into two sections, crashing on to
the very spot where Vincent and his mother and father had been
standing a few seconds before.
Trying to hold the dustbin lid over his parents’ heads, Vincent
spurred them on to run the last few metres to the main street where
the wind was gradually dying back. By a miracle they made it.
Vincent’s father wept quietly in the safety of the subway, knowing
the deli would have been destroyed. As his wife comforted him,
pointing out how lucky they were to be alive, the rescue services
arrived.
The canyon was now a piled-up mass of glass and chunks of
masonry, but Vincent could see the old vagrant standing in the
middle of the wreckage, one hand raised in greeting. Vincent waved
back in gratitude.
‘Don’t you see him now?’ he asked his father, but he didn’t even
look up.
As his family was given temporary accommodation, Vincent
repeatedly wondered what had happened to the old man and why
his parents denied seeing him.
Next day, he wandered back to the police barriers at Twenty-Third
Street and got into conversation with a young cop. The buildings
were being shored up and made safe before extensive repairs could
begin.
‘You didn’t come across a vagrant?’ he asked and the cop
immediately called across a superior.
‘What vagrant?’ asked the sergeant. ‘How did he look?’
Vincent described him in some detail and there was a long, rather
suspicious silence.
‘We found a body in a basement air duct early this morning, but it
had been there for some time – a couple of weeks, maybe more.
You say you saw him last night? That’s just not possible.’
Vincent decided to backtrack and say that he thought he had seen
the vagrant but couldn’t really be sure. He was often around the
area, he added.
‘Sure,’ replied the sergeant. ‘I used to see the guy on the
cathedral steps.’
‘Yes,’ Vincent said. ‘I saw him there too.’
A couple of days later, he read a report in the press.
DEAD VAGRANT IN CANYON BUILDING
The corpse of a seventy-year-old caucasian male was discovered in the
damaged Roebuck Building on Twenty-Third Street, Manhattan. He was found
in a basement air duct and is believed to have died of natural causes some
weeks before the recent freak winds.
The strange coincidence is that the corpse of the vagrant was identified
last night as Rudi Carlson, the racketeering landlord of many of the old
brownstones destroyed in an explosion in the same street twenty-five years
ago. The blast killed forty-eight residents and Carlson survived despite the
fact that it was rumoured the explosion had been designed to assassinate him
alone. Apparently too much gelignite was used. Looks like time finally caught
up with this old skinflint property owner, who later went bankrupt and became
one of the homeless.
Vincent cut out the article carefully. Carlson had clearly repented of
his former ruthlessness, understanding the despair and loneliness of
the poverty-stricken as he begged on the steps of the cathedral.
Maybe he had yearned to do some good to one family at least, but
perhaps it was only in death that he had been granted a last
opportunity to be generous.
The fire was out now and all the storytellers were as far down in their
sleeping bags as they could get. The party next door was over and
all they could hear from the other room was the snoring of some of
their parents.
‘One last story,’ muttered Jamie. ‘Who’s going to tell it?’
There was a long, unwilling silence.
‘My friend Jill and her sister saw a ghost,’ said Kathy hesitantly. ‘In
fact they moved into a ghost world.’
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