A simple-minded mystic bites off young boys’ penises in Spanish Harlem (Rooftops, 1981) while alligators roam the sewers (Death Tour, 1978). The real-life blackout of 1977 provides cover for half-human throwbacks to rampage up from the sewers in T. E. D. Klein’s novella “Children of the Kingdom,” and secret societies worship the subway-tunnel-dwelling Head Underneath in John Shirley’s Cellars (1982).
