52. The Belly of the Beast - 1927
The wind had followed the girl from Gramercy Park. It caressed her cheeks with icy fingers, slipping between her teeth. Deep in her lungs, it settled, freezing her from the inside out.
The black-coat-wearing man with the kitten had taken her to a place she knew from pictures.
It was called Grand Central Station, and it was filled with people, all in a rush.
High above her, the velvety, fathomless blue ceiling shimmered like a stolen piece of night.
Painted across its expanse were peculiar creatures that pulsed with life: a great big thing with pincers; a huge horse with wings; a monstrous fish that looked as though it could swallow oceans whole.
Each was studded with tiny electric bulbs, glowing like scattered stars, their light echoing the constellations Daddy loved to trace for her on quiet evenings.
The girl shook her head, her damp blond curls sticking to her cheeks.
Everything was wrong. This wasn’t the real sky, and besides, outside it was bright despite the snow.
Beams of piercing sunlight poured through the high arched windows, stinging her eyes.
What was this terrible place, where the sky came inside and day and night were on backward?
What if the creatures fell from the ceiling, gobbling her up like in the stories Mama used to tell late at night, when the girl couldn’t sleep?
No one else seemed to be afraid of the creatures. But maybe that was because they were all too busy, scurrying this way and that like the ants the girl had once poked with a stick. Up the stairs and between the huge brick columns and out the doors they went.
The man pulled the girl into the crowd, and now she could only see the strange ceiling, miles and miles above, and the legs of the people who surrounded her. She wanted to go home. But how would she tell which direction home was, if she couldn’t even see straight ahead?
She stood on her tiptoes, pulling at the man’s hand, but it made no difference. Around her swirled women wearing fur coats, their softness brushing against her, hemming her in. The girl was a tiny animal in a herd of larger ones, being carried along regardless of her will.
I want my teddy, she thought, but Teddy was gone. Lost in the snow, like the kitten the man had left behind on a street corner. She worried about it, cold and alone in the snow.
The man tugged her into a booth so he could make one phone call, then another.
He held her on his knee and talked into the phone, saying words that made no sense, like “ransom” and “when you pay the money” and “you’ll have her back safe and sound, if you do what I say.
” Then he hung up, looking in front of him and behind him and all around, and swept her through the station and out onto the platform.
A big train sat there, a great hungry beast with its smokestacks belching steam and its metal doors wide open, waiting to gulp them down.
The man in the black coat scooped her up and carried her onto the train. He settled her into a seat by the window, and when she asked him if they were going home to Mama and Daddy now, he shushed her and said she would see her daddy soon, so long as she kept quiet.
The man’s accent was familiar. It reminded her of Bridget, her nanny, who she loved very much.
She tugged at the sleeve of his coat and asked him if he knew Bridget, but he shook his head and looked out the window, chewing on his nails.
His eyes darted back and forth, as if he was worried someone scary was standing on the platform.
So the girl looked, too. Her heart pounded with fear.
And then there was someone standing on the platform, right outside the window. Two big men, hulking and hairy like grizzly bears in a book, staring in at them. Their mouths moved, and their hands waved. They were yelling.
The man in the black coat shot to his feet, pulling something out of his pocket.
It was a key, hanging on a chain. He dropped it over her neck and shoved her off the seat, toward the open door of the train.
“Run, Ella,” he said, shaking her to make sure she understood.
“Don’t lose this key, whatever you do. If you keep hold of it, they’ll know who you are. Now run!”
The girl stood, frozen. She wanted to do what he’d said, so she could go home to Mama and Daddy again. But if she ran, she would go right past the bear-men. They looked so mean. What if they got hold of her and did terrible things?
“Run!” the man shouted again, pushing her toward the door. But it was too late. The bear-men barged onto the train, grabbing the man in the coat and dragging him onto the platform. He fought them, but they were two and he was one and he couldn’t get free.
The train growled and the man howled and the doors to the platform gaped wide, a greedy mouth, as Ella stood there, uncertain whether she should stay or go. Outside were the bear-men. But inside was the beast-train, trying to eat her up.
“Doors closing,” the conductor warned. “Step in and stand clear.”
The last Ella saw of the man in the black coat was his face, stretched wide in a scream, and his lips, forming her name, begging her to run, before the bear-men dragged him away.