Among the crowd of illegal drinkers, I spotted Albert—the ghost who inhabited the home of my friends Ben and Mara Danziger. For a moment, I tried to catch his attention, but I soon realized I was seeing a mere loop of history—a bit of the old buildings memory of its past. I watched Albert with narrowed eyes and recognized the quick twist of his head and the gleam on his spectacles from a far more recent encounter. I ground the feeling of unpleasant familiarity through my mind until the image and idea clicked together. He was the second spirit that had been riding the zombie I’d released under the viaduct. Damn Albert! What was the bastard up to? I’d have to find out. I didn’t like the idea that the unpredictable specter might be involved in the deaths of undergrounders. It might not be true, but I still needed to know.
I barely managed not to fall on the uneven slope of the floor as the guide led us out and up to the alley behind the Merchants Café. My knee made a popping sound as I stumbled to keep my footing. I’d need to ice it and do an extra set of stretches to keep it supple after this.
From the alley we could see down to Occidental Park—right to the lot where the Kline and Rosenberg building must have fallen.
Our guide continued his speech. “During World War Two, the military used the underground, but once the war was over, it was abandoned once again. From 1946 to 1952, the underground became a dumping ground for trash and broken furniture as well as a scavengers delight for antique collectors who stole most of the period bits and pieces including the doors right off the buildings. Without the doors, the underground became a highway for burglars, and most of the businesses in Pioneer Square were hit at one time or another by enterprising thieves who came up from the unprotected basements. It also became a haven for the homeless and several fires were started by transients trying to stay warm. In 1952, the underground was officially condemned and closed—supposedly for good,” he said.
He pointed down the alley to the park. “Normally, I’d take you down to the park for a look at the totem statues of sun and raven, the bear, orca, and Tsonoqua—the ogress called ‘nightmare bringer’—but it’s pretty cold and dark today.
They are very interesting sculptures, however, and I urge you to come back when the light and weather are better. Now, follow me across the street and we’ll wrap this up under the Pioneer Building.” As we crossed the street he told us we’d be going down one of the few original staircases still intact. “Most of these were removed in 1952 when the underground was sealed, but this one was preserved under its cover. When the lower levels of this building were reopened for business, the staircase was restored for our use. The original staircases had no rails, so try to imagine, as you descend, what it was like to use these steep, open stairs every day.” We followed him down the stair and I shivered at the thought of taking those slippery steps without a handrail. Especially if I’d been drinking like a miner or a lumberjack. No wonder people missed them and became “inadvertent suicides.”
We entered the final room of the tour, filled with strange objects that had been found in the underground. The guide pointed out a tin bathtub that had been found inside one of the walls—suspected of being used to brew up literal bathtub gin—and a bored out cedar log from the water system. There was also an early glass plate photo of a Madam Lou Graham and her “sewing circle” with a note attached that said Madam Lou’s brothel—where the photo was taken—had been housed at First and Main, probably in the building that was currently the Bread of Life Mission. Quinton and I both smothered chuckles over it. Finally, the group moved on and followed our guide into the gift shop, where Quinton and I cornered him at the cash counter.
His name was Rick and he was the tour’s historian. I introduced myself and said that we were doing some research into myths and legends of the underground.
“Well, I covered a lot of the more interesting ones on the tour,” Rick said, “but, of course, there’s more than a ninety-minute tour has time for. Some things don’t play too well, so we don’t use them on the tour, and others aren’t exactly family fare. We make light of the vice and crime, but it was pretty rank. For instance, the age of consent was ten and not a few Klondikers disappeared and never showed up again. It’s really safer to talk about toilets, rats, and political corruption in pursuit of the almighty dollar.”
No doubt, but sewage wasn’t my topic of interest. “We’re specifically looking for anything about Indian activity in the underground, any legends about monsters or ghosts that were banished from the area and when those might have occurred.”
Rick shook his head. “Aside from the story I told you about the shaman, I don’t know much about that. The local Indians haven’t had much pull with the city historically, so if they wanted to do anything or thought there was something going on, they were pretty much ignored until the eighties or later. Even the totems in Occidental Park were a pretty late sop to the native population.”
“Was there any activity after the earthquake of 1949?” I asked.
Rick thought a moment, narrowing his eyes so the wandering one seemed to vanish.
“Hmm… I think there might have been some kind of ceremony by the local Indians then, but I’m not sure. There was a lot in the papers of the time about the buildings that had been damaged and the repair or destruction of them, but the local natives didn’t rate that kind of coverage. Some interesting artifacts were found in the mess, since it was the first time some of that ground had been excavated since the fire. I think they pulled up some of the original wooden sewer pipes then and found a lot of objects in the street fill, since the city dumped anything it could get into the streets to raise them—including dead animals and broken furniture. Most of it was just thrown into a different dump, afterward. People weren’t very interested in the historical value of things dug out of the street then, and the local tribes hadn’t yet convinced the state to treat Indian artifacts as important. If the Indians did some kind of ceremony to placate earth spirits or ancestors, you’d get a lot more information by talking to them.”
I wasn’t sure there was anyone else left to ask. I said as much to Quinton as we climbed the stairs from the tour shop to the Square.
“Not a total bust, though,” he said. “We know the Indians were aware of things going on down there; we just don’t know what they did about it.”
“We’ll have to hope we get some information from Fish on that. And I’m going to have to go to the Danzigers’ and talk to them about something.”
“You think they’ll have some ideas about this?”
“No. I saw something down there that might link up to something else, but I’m not sure. I want to check before I make an assumption.”
Quinton stopped as we got outside the door and looked around. We both spotted Zip and Lass nearby. Lass chattered and punctuated his words with hard slashes at the air while Zip smoked. Across the street, I saw Sandy dragging her cart and watching something ahead of her that I couldn’t pick out. Lass and Zip suddenly turned and started in the direction of the Bread of Life Mission—it was dinnertime—passing Sandy, who ignored them.