“Gee, that’s almost funny, Jimmy.”
“It smells awful down here.”
“Mold usually does. Damp rock, wood, and dirt never have a particularly pleasant aroma. I can give you the exact chemical interactions, if you’d like.”
“Do you even know what you’re looking for?”
North didn’t answer immediately, for he was tracing the trail of chalk on the wall with his flashlight beam. He looked up ahead and stopped. “That,” he said and pointed.
North didn’t have a key to the room, as had BJ. He had brought a ring of old keys with him, however. As Swift held the light for him North tried each one, and each of them failed. North sighed, but Swift patted the wood with his hand.
“Hell, the blocking sheds are harder than this. Come on.”
“We can’t damage school property,” exclaimed North.
“We’re school property, if you think about it. And we get damaged every Saturday, and I don’t hear anybody complaining.”
“That’s actually an interesting argument,” said North.
“Thanks, now let’s go.”
They backed up as far as they could across the tunnel and then each took off running. They hit the door at the same time; it went down easily, and both of them landed in the middle of the room on top of the busted door. North quickly got up, suddenly worried that they might just have not only destroyed university property, but perhaps invaded BJ’s sleeping chambers as well. However, there was no sign of the bent man.
Swift slowly rose and dusted off his hands. “An empty room, really cool. Can we go now?”
North pointed to the corner, at the opening. “Not yet. This is where I stopped the other night. The guy wanted me to follow him into that next space. That’s when we turned back.”
“Why didn’t you go on?”
“I don’t know. Something didn’t seem right to me.”
Swift started toward the opening that was revealed in the far corner, but North grabbed him by the shoulder. “Wait a minute, Jimmy, don’t be in such a hurry.”
“Look, Merl, it’s already eleven o’clock. I’ve got an early class tomorrow and I need some sleep. Are we going to check it out or not? Come on, I can bench three-twenty, and you can do four. I think we can handle the situation. You said the old guy looked ready to drop as it was.”
In response, North pulled out the pistol from his coat pocket.
Swift stiffened when he saw it. “What the hell is that for, Merl?”
“Just a precaution. It belongs to my dad. He brought it back from Vietnam. It’s okay, I know how to fire it.”
“Right! You’ll shoot your damn foot off, or maybe mine.”
“Guns and ammo are simple physics: matter and energy colliding to create another type of force.”
“They’ll kick your butt right off the team if they see you with that. And me, too! And I can’t afford this place without my scholarship, Merl. I don’t have a rich dad like you.”
“Look, there may be something in there we can’t handle with just our brawn, Jimmy. The bottom line is that no one has ever searched down here for possible clues to Ruggles’s disappearance. He might have made it this far and then disappeared forever. I don’t plan on that happening to you or me. Now come on.”
North edged toward the opening while he aimed the old pistol with one hand and held the flashlight with his other. Swift followed, crouched into a tight ball, as though ready to explode into whatever might be lurking around the corner, or maybe in preparation for sprinting away from it. Indeed, Jimmy Swift looked like a young man who would indeed live up to his surname if anything remotely frightening came at them from underneath all this dirt, rock, and football stadium birthed from the dirty coffers of a coal tycoon.
As they passed through the opening, North’s fingers began to tingle and he had no idea why. It took quite a bit of effort to hold on to the gun and flashlight. As he looked over at Swift to see if his friend was having the same reaction, it surprised him to see that Swift’s image was blurry, almost holographic. North reached out to him, afraid that his fingers would pass right through Swift. Yet he touched flesh and his teammate gave him a reassuring grin, and soon the two were through the passageway and into the next space.
It was not as well lit as the room they had just left, though there was an almost ethereal glow present here. The space seemed to be almost identical in size to the one they had just left. The walls were rough stone with clay, and the drip of water and creak of earth were far more apparent, far more unsettling. North flashed his light up and down as he and Swift scanned the area.
“Nothing to see,” said Swift. “Nothing to shoot,” he added, looking anxiously at the pistol.
“Great shit,” North said.
“What?”
“The guy BJ said there was great shit in here.”
“Maybe he has a lot lower expectation than we do. But then, to me great shit is a bottle of tequila and a night with Cindy Wilson in her itty-bitty cheerleader’s outfit.”
North seemed not to hear this because he had continued to shine his light around, and it had caught on something in a far corner. He rushed over to it.
“That’s a dress or gown, isn’t it?” asked Swift, who had come to stand next to his friend. They both stared at the cloth as it hung from a hook.
“Appears to be,” answered North, who wondered why he hadn’t seen it immediately. Swift was about to reach up and touch it when North stopped him. “It looks pretty old. It might fall apart.”
“So what if it tears a bit. We need to check it out, right?”
“Right,” said North. He reached out and nudged the dress. It did not fall apart under his probing. He carefully lifted it off. Revealed underneath was an even more curious object.
“A…wig?” said Swift.
“A blond woman’s wig,” added North.
Swift picked up the hairpiece and examined it.
“Check to see if there’s a manufacturer’s label on it,” said North. “I’ll do the same with the dress.”
The garment was a long, formal gown, of good quality, and made of heavy wool dyed dark blue. It was in remarkable shape for having been in such a dank place. North looked for a label but found none. Swift was more fortunate.
He shone his light on the tag on the inside of the hairpiece. “Jenkins Wig Shop. They’re over on Perkins Street near the courthouse,” he said. “I’ve seen the place lots of times. Never been in, of course. How old do you think this stuff is?”
North took the wig from Swift. “At least forty years old if it’s connected with Ruggles’s disappearance.” He thought for a moment. “This must be the great shit.”
“An old wig and a dress? It’s not like it’s buried treasure or anything. That’s what I’d call great shit.”
North lifted an eyebrow at his friend as he wrapped the wig in the gown and gripped it in one hand. “Treasure is in the eye of the beholder, Jimmy. Let’s go.”
When they reached the exit from the tunnel and breathed fresh air again, Swift looked at North. “Hey, do you think Ruggles disguised himself as a woman in order to disappear?”
“And then snuck back and left the gown and wig to let people know what he’d done? I don’t think so. And besides”—North held up the gown—“there is no way Herschel Ruggles could have fit in this. He was bigger than you, though not so big as me.”
“Look, maybe it’s not even connected to Ruggles. Maybe that guy you saw likes to play dress-up.” Swift smiled and poked North in the shoulder.
“You’re not taking this very seriously.”
“Come on, Merl, it’s been forty years. No one solved it in all this time, what makes you think you can?”
“Because I’m smarter than most people,” announced North boldly. “And maybe I care more than the people investigating it did. Maybe they were afraid if they discovered the truth, it would somehow hurt Ruggles’s reputation.”
Swift suddenly looked somber. “And you’re not
scared of that, too? From all you’ve told me your old man was tight with the guy. What if you discover Ruggles did something really bad and had to go on the run for it? What do you think that will do to your father?”
North considered this for a few moments. “Sometimes the truth does hurt, Jimmy. But I’ll take the truth over speculation and just plain wrong information any day. Once you accept anything less than that, the whole world goes to Hell.”
Swift shook his head and stretched his arms to the sky, working out some kinks that just came with playing football. “You’re a nut. But you’re a Mighty Johns nut. So what do we do now?”
North held up the gown and wig. “We find out where these came from, if we can.”
“It’s been a long time.”
“Time is just another part of the equation. Light traveling from the most distant quasar known takes almost fourteen billion years to reach Earth, so four decades is nothing to me.”
As they trudged off, the darkness was broken by the flash of a struck match near the tunnel entrance. BJ lit his cigarette, his gaze on the departing men. He glanced at the sky and then into the tunnel. The look on his face was not one of glee, yet it was also not one nuzzling on anger, either. It was difficult to say what was running through the man’s thoughts, other than perhaps the harsh and debilitating tug of melancholy. He smoked down his cigarette, stubbed it out with the toe of his scuffed shoe, and disappeared into the tunnel as the constant eastward wind crowded in after his vanishing form.
Chapter 8
THE NEXT DAY NORTH entered the Jenkins Wig Shop, which he learned had been in business for more than fifty years. The place smelled of mothballs and incense, an odd combination, North thought. There were no other customers, so he walked directly up to the counter, took the wig out of a paper sack, and motioned to the woman there.
“I was wondering if you could help me.”
The woman slowly headed over. She was petite, though her build had run to stocky now. She looked to be around sixty or so, and seemed to be wearing a wig herself, one of short, ash-blond locks that curled around her ears and etched a straight line across her wide forehead. Her makeup was carefully applied, smoothing away wrinkles and other blemishes. Her clothes were expensive, and tailored to her figure. A woman who cared about her appearance, North concluded. Then, as she drew nearer, he took a breath and almost gagged as the woman’s perfume engulfed him. The smell was blunt, stupefying. He wanted to let out an enormous sneeze, but felt that might do irreparable damage to both her self-esteem and his inquiry.
“I’ll try, young man.”
North swabbed away drops of moisture from his eyes and said, “This wig, it has your label inside, and I was wondering if you could tell me something about it.”
“Like what?” The woman did not look much interested.
“Like who might have bought it. You see, I found it and I’d like to return it to the owner.”
She picked up the wig. “I don’t think they’d want it back. It’s an old style.”
“Right. Perhaps forty years or so.”
“Forty years!” She looked up at him, stunned. “Where’d you find it?”
“In an old trunk in the attic of the house I’m staying at. The owner of the house didn’t know anything about it. She said I could try to track it down. So that’s what I’m trying to do.”
The woman eyed him skeptically. “Lot of work for an old wig no one would want to wear anymore.”
“Well, it’s kind of a hobby of mine—a challenge, so to speak. Do you think it could be about forty years old? I’m sure you’re probably an expert in such things.”
Obviously flattered, the woman examined the wig with a keener eye. “Been running this shop for over thirty years, my mother for over twenty before that. I know my wigs, that’s for sure.” She looked it over thoroughly, including the inside. “Well, it’s at least forty years old, possibly older. That was the style back then, sort of a combo of Jackie Kennedy, Grace Kelly, and Kim Novak, pretty popular back then.”
“Any way to tell who might have purchased it? I mean, does it have a hidden serial number or anything like that?”
Her small lips curved into a smile. “It’s not a gun, young man, it’s a wig.”
“So there’s no way to tell?”
The woman sighed, and then thought for a few moments. “Well, we’ve got all the old sales records in the back. Mother never threw anything away, and I guess I’m just as bad.” She paused again. “You leave it with me, and I’ll see what I can find. If it was just about forty years ago, it’ll cut down the search quite a bit. I’ll start there anyway and see if we hit something.” She eyed him curiously. “Now, are you going tell me what’s really going on?”
North feigned looking sheepish. “Well, the truth is, it’s part of an experiment I’m conducting at the university. I’m getting my degree in science, and I’m trying to determine whether the energy levels released through the brain’s neocortex are substantial enough to have left residue of the firing of the neural network connectors, think of them as latent by-products of the synaptic impulses, on wigs and hats and such, anything that would have come in contact with that area of the brain. The hypothalamus, as I’m sure you know, is an extremely sensitive area lying within the ventral region of the diencephalon. It controls many of the interactions between the mental and physical: metabolic functions, autonomic nervous system, that sort of thing. Since humans are perfect communication transmitters, what with our chemical, electrical, and water makeup, my theory is that an energy release from each of us—think even along the lines of telepathic communication—can be physically captured, and what better place to begin than on objects covering the head? It’s my belief that physics and paranormal activity may actually be capable of extraordinary reconciliation. That’s why I’m so interested in this wig.”
The woman stared at him, her lips moving slowly as though she were trying to repeat all he had just said and yet being utterly unable to replicate even a smidgen of North’s rhetoric. Finally, she said, “You come back tomorrow afternoon, and I’ll see what I have for you.”
He thanked her and left, grateful for the rush of outside air to clear his sinuses and lungs of her potent scent.
Inside the shop, the owner, her expression inscrutable, watched North through the window as he headed down the street. Then she carried the decrepit bowl of hair to the back room.
Chapter 9
WHILE HE WAITED for an answer on the wig, North decided to make another clandestine visit to the underground room. It was possible that he and Swift had missed something of importance, and North also wanted to test a theory of his. However, Swift had steadfastly refused to come this time, excusing himself on the grounds that he had a date with Cindy Wilson that included a fifth of Wild Turkey, a date that no mystery, however enticing, could hope to compete with.
Going down there alone held very little appeal, yet ever since he was a child, North’s indefatigable curiosity always trumped his innate fear. As a small boy he had once stood under an enormous oak tree during a storm to test whether lightning actually was attracted to tall objects. His frantic mother had spotted him from the kitchen window, snatched him up, and brought him into the house about a minute before the tree was split in half by a lightning bolt. However, as an adult, neither was he one to undertake undue risk, so he brought, among other equipment, two flashlights, a video camera, and his father’s pistol, fully loaded.
The door he and Swift had burst through was still lying on the floor. North entered the main chamber and studied the space for any changes. He saw none, and now he prepared himself to test his theory. He pulled the video camera from his backpack, turned it on, and pointed it at himself.
“Merlin North, Senior, Science Program, Draven University, November Nine, twelve thirty a.m. Herschel Ruggles Investigation, Report One. Underground Room.” He strapped the video camera to a specially rigged helmet device that referees in professional football were now using to
give a ground level, in-your-face view of the game to appease the more bloodthirsty fans, and pointed his head here and there to test its balance and range field. Satisfied, he stepped toward the opening that led to the other room. As he had on the last visit, he held the pistol in one hand, his flashlight in the other. He counted off his steps to the opening and then stopped right before he would’ve broken the invisible plane he had diagrammed in his mind.
“Testing theory one,” he said for benefit of the camera’s recorder and, ultimately, posterity. North took great pains to dutifully record virtually every scientific experiment he performed. It would make his official biographer’s job that much easier, he felt.
He took a deep, cleansing breath, stepped forward, and then abruptly stopped. He swung his head and thus the camera around, taking in a 180-degree sweep. He took another step, and that was when he once again sensed the murkiness of the last trip through here, as though he were submerging himself in shallow, dirty water. North felt no sensation of panic or of being unable to escape his predicament. On the contrary, his mood was one of utter calm, of a serene peacefulness. He took another step forward and once more did his camera sweep. It was then that the image caught his eye.
“Jimmy? Jimmy, is that you?” Had Swift forsaken his planned rendezvous with Cindy and the Wild Turkey?
The man flashed by so fast North thought he had just stumbled into a real-life quantum tunnel of his very own. And then North nearly cried out because the man had carried a football in his right hand and wore the old-style headgear of a gridiron player of four decades ago, along with Johnny Unitas–style high-top black cleats and lumpy, antiquated shoulder pads that looked like the fake muscles used in the low-budget movies of a bygone time.
North had seen photos of Herschel Ruggles and that man—that very man!—had been the one who had just raced by him. The iron chin, the fire of determined brown eyes, dead-set pupils that did not countenance even the possibility of defeat, had been right beside North, almost touching him. And then he was gone. North dropped his light, and even came close to firing off his pistol. He staggered through the opening and into the “great shit” room, sank down against the wall, and rubbed his back against the abrasive surface, as though desperately seeking a firm footing in reality after encountering possible madness in the last few seconds.
The Final Play Page 4