by D Haltinner
“I just told you, his dad-”
“His dad. His own dad may have kept that confrontation to himself.”
“Why would he do that?”
“To protect his own son.”
Darren looked up to the approaching library. “I never thought about that.”
“A father’s role is to protect his kids, and I’m sure his dad kept it to himself. He didn’t want unnecessary attention put on his son.”
“It makes sense.”
“That’s why I don’t think they’re worried about me, Jack, or even you. They have no reason to expect two of us, and they probably feel that they scared you off pretty well already.”
“You do make a good point.”
“That’s why I don’t think you have anything to worry about. They don’t expect anyone to go into the tunnel.”
“What if they have someone watching the hatch anyway?”
“All three of the hatches? They don’t know what we found two more. Troy entered the one under the bookcase, so they’ll think that is the only one you know about.”
“I guess.”
Audrey’s hand squeezed his tighter.
She did make a good point. They’re probably confident that they scared him off, and Professor Coleman most likely would have kept the conversation with his son under wraps. Whatever it was that these two professors are trying to protect, Darren wanted to know what it was. How many other members of the faculty might also know about the tunnel?
“Did you try calling Troy’s mom again?” Audrey asked as they pushed into the welcoming warm light of the library.
“Yeah,” Darren said. “Twice in the last hour. No one ever answered.”
“I’m sure it’s a bit hectic there right now.”
“I’m sure it is.”
“Maybe you should try again this evening. It might be more likely that they will be home then.”
“I’ll try.”
Audrey led the way past the empty librarian’s desk and toward the study area. She slowed when they passed by a cart stacked with books, looking over the titles as she ran the index finger of her free hand over the covers. After a moment, she reached the end of the cart and led Darren toward the tables.
A half dozen students sat scattered around the area with books and papers forming tight circles around them. In the midst of them sat Jack, laying back in his chair, paging through that week’s Time magazine. His backpack sat on the table before him, loaded light but lopsided. There were no books in his backpack, but the outline of a flashlight was easy to see.
“There you two are,” Jack said when Darren and Audrey approached. He dropped the magazine onto the table and stood up.
Audrey slid her hand out of Darren’s pocket and unzipped the front of her jacket. “Here and ready.”
Jack looked up at Darren. “So?”
“What?” Darren asked.
“Did you decide?”
Darren sighed.
Audrey put her hand on his hip, moving herself in front of him. She didn’t say a single word, but the pleading of her eyes said everything. She wanted to do this, and she wanted Darren to come.
“I can’t say no to you,” Darren said.
Audrey’s smile grew.
“So I better not regret this.”
Audrey reached up and kissed Darren on the lips. “You won’t.”
“You promise?”
“I do.”
Darren looked up to Jack. “I’ll go. All of us.”
Jack snatched up his backpack. “Great! I knew you’d come to your senses.”
“Before we go through,” Darren said. “I think Audrey should tell you what she found today in Rosch Hall.”
Jack looked at Audrey, curiosity growing on his face.
A shush came from across the tables so Audrey gestured toward the bookshelves and led the males down a few aisles.
“There’s another hatch,” Audrey said, keeping her volume low.
Jack spun around, looking at the floor. “Where?”
Darren shook his head. “Not here you idiot.”
“In the women’s bathroom, on the first floor of Rosch Hall.”
“Really?” Jack said. Surprised, but not as shocked as Darren had expected. “Is it connected to the same tunnel?”
“We don’t know,” Audrey said. “We didn’t open it.”
“Why not?”
“It was painted over and the paint was gluing it shut, plus the lock on it didn’t help matters.”
“You could have cut it.”
“With what?”
“I don’t know.”
Audrey glanced up at Darren before looking back to Jack. “We both figured that it was connected to the same tunnel, so we didn’t think it was worth the trouble if we were going to enter through the library.”
“I suppose, it probably does connect to the same tunnel,” Jack said. “But man, that’s pretty far away for a tunnel only a few feet underground.”
“I’m no engineer,” Darren said. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if a few winter freezes would have caused it to collapse.”
“Unless it was below the freeze line,” Jack said.
“But still, it’s probably been here since these two buildings were built.”
“I’m sure it’s been well maintained.”
“Enough that you two are confident it won’t collapse on top of is?” Audrey asked.
Darren shrugged.
“I don’t think it would,” Jack said.
“You don’t think?”
“It hasn’t collapsed yet, why would it do that tonight?”
“Murphy’s law,” Darren said.
“What?”
“Whatever you least want to happen, will happen.”
“Bah,” Jack said, dismissing the notion with his hand. “It hasn’t collapsed yet, and it isn’t going to tonight.”
“I hope you’re right,” Audrey said.
“I’m not worried about it.” Jack clapped his hands once. “So, are we ready?”
“As ready as we’ll ever be,” Audrey said.
Jack waved the other two along and moved through the aisles toward the boiler room on the far side of the building. Darren kept his eyes floating down each aisle they passed to be sure that no one was watching or following them, but the only person he saw was just another student searching through the lower shelf of the bookcase.
Could the faculty involved in keeping the tunnel secret have hired students as spies to keep an eye on activities near the hatches? Pay them just to tell them if Darren or his buddies happened to show up in the vicinity of one?
Just paranoid thinking, Darren told himself. Stop thinking like that, otherwise you’re going to be seeing things around every corner. Going to start thinking that Audrey or Jack could have even been turned and are being used against you.
Jack led them to the far side of the library, and after a quick look around the vicinity, inched toward the boiler room door. He put his back against the steel door, glanced both ways, then pushed the door open, disappearing into the darkness of the room.
Audrey followed him in, but Darren hesitated outside of the door, wondering if there could be someone watching them from around one of those bookshelves. He didn’t get the feeling of being watched, but his paranoid side still couldn’t dismiss the possibility of being found out.
“Come on,” Audrey said at a whisper from within the darkness of the boiler room, so Darren slid inside, and shut the door behind him.
A low hum of the massive boilers filled the room, straining its way through the thick humidity of the air. The room was hotter than a night with Audrey could be, causing sweat to form on every pore of Darren’s body. He wanted to take his jacket off, but he knew that the tunnel was going to be just as cold-if not colder-than the air outside.
The lights clicked on-Jack stood off to Darren’s right with his hand on the switch-revealing the pair of steel tanks rumbling off to one side. Pipes ran into the ceiling and the
cement floor, rust flakes falling from one old iron pipe vibrating over head. A toolbox sat open against the far wall next to the steel hatch, a torn up cardboard box laying on top of it.
Jack moved right to the hatch, bending down and setting his backpack on the floor beside it. Audrey followed him to the hatch and stood over Jack with her thumbs laced into her own backpack’s straps. Darren stayed with his back to the door, thoughts of the manhole cover filling his head, growing deeper until it began to lap at his chin.
“I brought flashlights for everyone,” Jack said, pulling out his pen light as well as two plastic c-cell flashlights-both as purple as the Barney face stuck to them.
“Those must have cost a pretty penny,” Audrey said. “Even have stickers of Barney on them already, so you don’t have to add them yourself.”
“Two for a dollar at the Family Dollar store across Washington,” Jack said. “The batteries for them cost two bucks.”
“Three dollars well spent,” Audrey said, picking up the penlight.
“Hey, that one’s mine.”
“Not anymore,” Audrey said, twisting it on and off. “Girls always get first pick.”
Jack grumbled and snapped up one of the Barney flashlights. “Fine,” he said. “Be that way.” He flicked the flashlight on and off. “But next time I get the pen light.”
“Next time?” Darren asked.
Jack looked up at Darren. “You think we’ll find answers to everything in one trip?”
“Well, I kind of hoped we would.”
Jack laughed. “I’ll be surprised if we come out of the hatch without another dozen questions.”
“Jeez...”
“You’re not going to back out, are you?”
Audrey looked back at Darren.
“No,” Darren said. “But I don’t want to be going down there every day trying to find answers. We’ll be caught for sure if we do that.”
“I don’t think we’ll be having to do that,” Jack said. “But I figured that this trip was going to end up being more of a reconnaissance. Get the lay of the land so that next time we can do some serious exploring.”
“I suppose.”
“We do have a date tonight,” Audrey said. “So we can’t spend all evening down there. A girl needs time to get ready.”
“You already look perfect.”
Audrey’s smile widened. “I may not be looking that good when we climb out of there. Who knows what kind of filth is waiting for us.”
“Let’s get going though. Before I change my mind,” Darren said.
Jack zipped up his backpack and slipped it around his shoulders before opening that hatch. The steel door moved with ease despite the layer of red growth covering it, and Jack let it lay back to the floor before positioning himself before it.
“I can carry your backpack for you,” Darren said to Audrey.
“I’ll be fine,” she said. “And quit stalling and get over here.”
Darren pushed off the door behind him and moved to Audrey’s side, looking down into the shaft.
Jack flipped on his plastic flashlight and pointed it into the opening. Cement walls and a dust covered floor lit up in the light, illuminating the footprints that danced around the area below them. Most of them were Jack’s, but a sole pair of prints continued away from them, away from the library.
“Let’s get going,” Jack said. He sat down with his feet dangling into the hole, and without a moment of thought, pushed himself into the darkness.
Audrey looked up to Darren. “Are you ready?”
“Nope,” Darren said.
Audrey kissed him. “What about now?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be.”
Chapter 23
Darren dropped into the shaft, hitting the concrete floor softer than he expected. He tried to look down the tunnel in each direction as his lungs tightened against the stale air, but he could see nothing but blackness beyond the square of light the boiler room gave them.
It didn’t look like the hole he had spent twelve hours in back in Kingston five years ago, but the feeling was the same. He could at least see down here with the barrage of flashlights they had, so that settled his mind enough for him to keep himself focused.
Audrey slipped one of the Barney flashlights into Darren’s palm and zipped up her jacket. The air was around the same temperature as it was outside, but it carried an inherent dampness that seemed to stick to the walls and into the fabric of their clothes. Darren hoped his clothes weren’t going to come out of this carrying that musky scent that sat heavy in the air, unmoving in the tunnel.
Jack climbed up the wall and wrestled with the hatch, trying to close it.
Darren looked down at Jack’s feet that appeared to be floating in midair, and saw the grooves that were molded into the wall, creating a pseudo-ladder that allowed easier exit. He hadn't seen them from above, but standing beside the rungs revealed the bodies of deceased insects and mold growth among them.
With a grunt, Jack managed to pull the hatch back over the shaft and began to close off the light, so both Audrey and Darren turned on their flashlights as the hatch shut.
“That was easy,” Audrey said. Her voice died out in the thick air as if the walls were covered in wall to wall carpeting.
“What did you expect?” Jack asked as he hopped off the grooves and into the pool of yellow light on the floor from Darren’s flashlight.
“I don’t know, a horde of beetles maybe?”
“I doubt you’ll find many of them down here, not much for them to eat.”
“I suppose.”
Jack wrestled the other Barney flashlight out of his backpack and flicked it on. All three of them pointed their flashlights down the tunnel in both directions, Darren focusing his on the footprints that disturbed the layer of dust on the floor.
“Which way?” Audrey asked.
Jack looked to Darren. “Your call.”
Darren lifted his eyes from the footprints and looked into the dark tunnel, trying without any success to see into the blackness. “We follow Troy’s prints,” he looked over to the soft glow of light in Audrey’s face. “Do you agree?”
“Sounds fine to me.”
“That way it is,” Jack said, starting to walk into the darkness without a regret in the world.
Darren was starting to regret it though. Someone could have seen them enter the boiler room. Someone could have heard the hatch shutting. They did leave the light on above them. Would someone notice it coming out of the bottom of the boiler room door and investigate? They’d see the cardboard stuck on the lock and know that something was up. Or what if the maintenance man had a weekly inspection to do today? They would find them for sure.
“Are you coming?” Jack asked. He and Audrey were already a half dozen steps in front of Darren.
Darren sighed and caught up to them. “This better be worth it.”
“I think it will be,” Audrey said.
Jack started to move again, and Darren and Audrey followed behind him, side by side. The tunnel was only wide enough for two of them to stand shoulder to shoulder and still have room to walk, and Darren thought he would develop a sense of claustrophobia beside her, but her presence seemed to quench every fear and concern he had in his head. Like she had some sort of a supernatural aura about her. Like a...
“Nymph,” Darren said aloud.
“What?” Audrey said, looking over at him. “Did you just say nymph?"
“Yeah, but I didn’t mean to.”
“Err... okay…”
Darren tried to clear his head. He didn’t know how that slipped out of his mouth, but for some reason it seemed like the natural thing to do.
Audrey’s hand reached out through the darkness and took hold of Darren’s, squeezing it tight for a moment before reverting to a comfortable hold. She had switched her flashlight to her opposite hand before reaching out to Darren, and now her light was illuminating Jack’s back instead of the tunnel ahead of them.
Da
rren glanced over his shoulder, not sure what he was expecting to see. There was nothing but a thick darkness-so thick that in Darren’s eyes it appeared as solid as the gray walls surrounding them. He had this odd sense that there was something behind them, but it wasn't very strong. It was probably brought on by the darkness traveling out behind them to some unknown destination, but it was an unusual feeling anyways.
There also was the idea in Darren’s head that there was something missing. That there was something out of place. He knew he had no rational reason to think that since he had never been down here before, but it was still there. Maybe something that he noticed when Troy had gone down here, or the last time he helped Jack inside?
“It’s quiet,” Darren said.
“I would have assumed that being underground,” Audrey said.
“No, I mean it’s too quiet.”
“Yeah.”
“The other times we opened the hatch, there was a sound, almost like a steam press that was coming from down the tunnel.”
“I don’t hear it now.”
“That’s the point, why don’t we hear it?”
“I couldn’t tell you.”
“Hey Jack,” Darren said, louder.
Jack glanced back over his shoulder. “Yeah.”
“Didn’t you say that noise was louder in this direction?”
Jack was silent for a moment. “I don’t hear it at all.”
“Neither do I.”
"That's odd.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“I wonder why it stopped?”
“Maybe it was just temporary.”
“Maybe it moved or got shut off.”
“Are you two sure it wasn’t the boilers you were hearing?” Audrey said.
“Oh yeah, we’re sure about that,” Jack said, his voice muffled as he spoke facing ahead of them. “It was definitely getting louder when I walked this direction. It wasn’t coming from below the library, and in fact, it sounded like it was pretty far away.”
“Well, whatever you heard is gone,” Audrey said. “But is it something we should be worried about?”
“We already have enough to worry about,” Darren said.
“I don’t think we have anything else to worry about,” Jack said. “The noise could have been made by anything, maybe even a leaking boiler over in Rosch if this is the same tunnel that the hatch you found connects too.”