by D Haltinner
“Probably," Audrey said.
Darren said nothing. It didn’t sound like any boiler he heard before, but he hasn’t really heard that many.
Jack continued to lead the way through the tunnel at a casual pace. All the flashlights watched the footprints in the dust ahead of them, pigeon-toed smears that broke through the blanket covering the cement floor. Cracks climbed the walls and ceiling, spidering out in all directions in some places, but none of them looked big enough to affect the tunnel’s stability.
The minutes passed in silence as they walked, Audrey’s hand never releasing Darren’s. It was impossible to tell how far they walked in the monotony of the darkness, nor were there any further hatches above them that they had found yet to give them any sense of the distance traveled.
“Hey, I see something,” Jack said a minute later.
Darren and Audrey both raised their flashlights off the floor and pointed them ahead, down the tunnel. The light lit up something large, and it only took another four or five steps to realize that it was a wall.
“A dead end?” Audrey said.
“Already?” Darren said. “But we didn't reach the hatch you found in the bathroom yet.”
“I think we just did.” Jack raised his flashlight to illuminate the ceiling, where the cement gave way to a rusted door above them.
“And it’s not a dead end,” Audrey said, pointing her own flashlight ahead.
The cement wall dissolved into blackness that didn’t seem unusual at first. At least not until Darren noticed the light curving back into the blackness with each step.
“A turn?” Darren asked.
“Looks like it.”
“Which way is that? East?”
“Yeah.”
Jack stopped under the hatch and looked straight up. Nothing looked unusual about the hatch, beside a slim line of white paint that had ran through the seam.
“Looks like the hatch,” Audrey said.
“So we’re under Rosch Hall right now,” Darren said.
“What’s south of here?” Jack asked, turning his flashlight into the new direction of the tunnel.
“Jefferson Arts Center,” Audrey said.
“Suppose the tunnel doesn’t reach that far?”
Audrey shrugged, but it wasn't very noticeable in the dim reflection of the flashlights off the cement walls.
“If there’s one turn, there could be another,” Darren said. “I don't think that Jefferson is in a straight line with Rosch and the library anyways.”
“As long as it doesn’t turn into a big maze,” Jack said.
“We’ll always have our footprints to find our way back,” Audrey said.
Darren turned his light down, looking at the mess of disturbed dust below them and the trail back from where they came. Troy’s prints still continued off past the turn, into the darkness.
“Troy didn’t stop here,” Darren said.
Jack followed the prints with his light. “Then we don’t either.”
“How far are we going?”
“I figured we’d go until we found some answers.”
“We can’t be gone all evening.”
“Why not?”
Darren glanced at Audrey. “We have other plans tonight too.”
“Jeez you two,” Jack said. “We’ll go as far as you want, but that just means we’re going to have to make another trip.”
“We kind of figured that now,” Audrey said.
Jack grumbled something inaudible.
“You knew we had plans tonight too,” Darren said.
"Yeah, I know,” Jack said. “I just didn’t want to go back without finding anything.”
“What do you expect we’ll find?”
“I don’t know.”
“You almost seem like you do.”
“I know it's going to be something big, but just what it is, I don’t know.”
“At the rate this is going,” Darren said. “I didn't think we’ll find anything tonight anyways. There’s a lot of tunnel it seems like.”
“I can only go so far,” Jack said. “We’re only a building away from the edge of campus.”
“What if it goes past the theatre?”
Jack shrugged. “I plan on continuing to the end.”
“Let's just hope that comes sooner than we think,” Audrey said. “Let’s just keep moving.”
Darren and Jack both nodded in silence and Jack started off down the tunnel heading east. Audrey’s fingers tightened on Darren’s hand as they passed beneath a section of ceiling that appeared to have crumbled years ago, then relaxed when they passed the cracks radiating out from it.
“Another turn,” Jack said a minute later.
Darren and Audrey both raised their flashlight off the floor to look ahead. “That’s more than just a turn,” Audrey said.
Chapter 24
The tunnel did turn back to the south toward Jefferson Arts Center, but straight ahead of the three was a door. It fit into the tunnel-wall to wall, floor to ceiling-and appeared to have been made out of scrap pieces of steel welded together in a collage of misaligned pieces. The frame was made out of a square tubing, anchored to the wall from somewhere out of sight. It had a simple round doorknob waist high, with an oversized slot in the center of it for a key.
Jack led them right up to the door, stopping in front of it, running the flashlight across the entire seam. “What the hell is a door doing down here?”
“Hell if I know,” Darren said.
“Open it,” Audrey said.
Jack reached out to the handle, twisted the knob, but it didn’t budge. “Locked.”
“Could it be seized?” Darren asked. “Looks pretty rusted.”
Jack fidgeted with the handle for a moment. “Defiantly locked.”
“What could be back there?” Audrey said.
“Something they don’t want anyone to see,” Jack said.
“Yeah, I’m sure they have enough people coming down here that they needed to install a steel door,” Darren said.
Jack shrugged. “There’s something back there that they’re trying to protect.”
“Think there’s a hide-a-key around here somewhere?” Audrey said.
Jack began to look around the intersection with his flashlight.
“I would doubt there’s one,” Darren said. “This isn’t a place you would lose a key halfway to. You’d come down here knowing where you were going. You wouldn’t forget your key.”
“We need to find some way in there,” Jack said.
“Without a plasma cutter, I don't think we’re going to have much luck,” Darren said.
“A sawzall could cut through the latch.” Jack ran his fingers down the crack between the frame and the door. “There’s room for the blade.”
“You have a sawzall in the room I don’t know about?”
“You can rent them.”
“Battery powered?”
“Yep.”
“Maybe on the next trip then.” Darren pointed the flashlight at the floor. “Looks like Troy checked out the door too.”
“He kept going south,” Audrey said, shining her light down the southward tunnel.
“Then we should too,” Darren said.
Jack ran his fingers over the welds framing the door. “We need to come back here.”
“We will,” Darren said.
“There’s something back there,” Jack said.
“That usually happens with doors,” Audrey said.
Darren frowned at Audrey.
“Something big,” Jack said, seeming to ignore Darren’s remark.
“If you rent a sawzall, we’ll come cut it open,” Darren said. He didn’t know where Jack thought he was going to rent a sawzall, but he hoped Jack wasn’t able to get one. They were already going to be in enough trouble if they were found to have been down here, and they’d only be in a thousand times more trouble if they started to break into doors.
“I’ll do that first thing in the morning,” Jack
said, stepping back from the door, letting his eyes linger over its surface.
“Don't come back without me,” Audrey said. She squeezed Darren’s hand and looked at him in the glow of the reflected lights.
“I won’t go anywhere without you.”
“I know you won’t.”
“Enough of that mushy talk,” Jack said. “We got more tunnel to explore.”
Jack started down the southbound tunnel after a second look at the door, and Audrey pulled Darren along behind him, never relaxing her grip on his hand.
They moved in silence through the cement crypt for a few minutes before Jack spoke. “Another turn.”
Audrey tried to look around Jack’s body. “Which way now?”
“Well, it looks like we have two choices this time.”
“What do you mean?”
Jack stopped at the intersection and stepped out of the way. “South or west,” Jack said.
“What’s west of here?” Darren said. “I know we should just be about to the Jefferson Arts Building south, but nothing is west except for College Street.”
“Maybe it goes under the street,” Jack said.
“We’re not deep enough though,” Darren said. “The storm drains are at our level.”
“Could this tunnel connect to the storm drains?” Audrey asked.
“I think we’d see a lot more damage and mold if this tunnel did. It must end that way.”
“Troy must have agreed with you,” Jack said, pointing his light at the floor.
The set of footprints seemed to hesitate, looking down the west tunnel, but then they continued south.
“So which way do we go?” Audrey said.
“I’m in for the road less traveled,” Jack said without a moment of hesitation.
Darren shook his head. “One of the reasons we came down was to find out what happened to Troy,” he said. “I think we should follow his trail.”
“I think it’s pretty obvious what happened now,” Jack said. “Don’t you?”
“Not really.”
“He must have popped his head through a hatch in the theatre, and was either spotted by someone, or they were there waiting for him.”
“It’s possible I guess.”
“I don’t see what else could have happened. He didn’t come back this way and there's nothing else besides the theatre south of us.”
“Nothing that we know of.”
“True, but what are the odds that there is something else that way?”
“I'd say as good as finding a locked door down here.”
Jack said nothing at first. “You do have a point.”
“Why don’t we just do what we intended to do on this trip and follow Troy’s prints,” Darren said. “If we’re really going to be coming back tomorrow, then we can do some real exploring with more time.”
“We’ll let Audrey decide what we do today, how’s that?” Jack asked.
Darren turned to look at the glowing eyes of the girl beside him. She looked as pale as a ghost in the dim yellow reflection of the flashlights, and her dark hair seemed to disappear into the blackness behind her. “I’m okay with that.”
“Well,” Audrey said, looking at Darren, then Jack, then back to Darren. “I would really like to see where this goes west of here.”
Darren sighed.
“But I think it would be better to do that tomorrow when we have as much time as we need,” she said. “I think we should follow Troy’s prints like we set out to do, at least for tonight.”
“She has spoken,” Jack said. “Let her will be followed.”
Audrey rolled her eyes, the perma-smile on her lips a stark contrast between the upper and lower halves of her face.
Darren squeezed her hand. Her flesh was growing colder against his, so he guided her hand up to his elbow, and held it against his side to try and provide her with a hit more warmth.
“Let’s go then,” Jack said. He started to walk down the south tunnel, scraping his feet against the prints Troy left in the dust.
Darren and Audrey followed behind, pausing for a moment to shine their own lights down the westbound tunnel, seeing nothing but the monotonous cement.
It was less than two minutes later that they came to another hatch in the ceiling. Jack paused below it, shining the light at the rusted surface.
“Is that the one?” Darren asked.
Jack shook his head.
“His prints keep going?”
Jack nodded.
“We must be below the Jefferson Arts Center by now,” Audrey said.
“I would assume so,” Jack said.
“So there must be more than one hatch for the building.”
“I would assume so.”
Audrey reached up to Darren’s ear and whispered to him. “He’s a grumpy one.”
Darren just shrugged his shoulders.
“I guess we’ll keep going,” Jack said, turning his flashlight back to the footprints moving southward.
Darren and Audrey followed behind Jack in silence as he moved along south again. Darren kept his flashlight following the prints in front of him for while, then aimed his flashlight around the side of Jack mixing with his own light. The cement walls just came and came without ending, their monotony being the only feature they carried. There were darker colored sections and lighter sections as if the walls had been poured from different batches, but beyond that and the occasional cracks, nothing could give Darren a sense of location.
He followed the walls with his light until he saw darkness approaching and tried to point his light straight into it. Audrey was watching the ground directly in front of her. Jack was doing the same focusing his light on the footprints. Darren tried to see into the patch of darkness coming up, wondering if it was another intersection, but his flashlight was showing him nothing but blackness. It was more like his light was being absorbed into the air. The blackness reached from floor to ceiling, and it didn’t appear to be dissipating as they got closer. Jack continued to lead them toward the patch of darkness, not seeming to notice it.
Darren squinted into the blackness, trying to see what was through the wall of darkness, and then realized what it was.
Chapter 25
Darren yanked his arm free of Audrey’s, reaching out and grabbing the back of Jack’s shirt. Audrey let out a scream of shock, clutching her hands to her chest, illuminating her face with her own flashlight. Jack stumbled backwards, arms flailing, Barney flashlight flying back behind Darren, rolling back the way they came.
Jack landed on his back, his face in shock, Darren standing over him.
Their eyes locked and anger climbed over Jack’s face, “What gives?” He started to scramble to his feet.
Darren took a step back. “I just saved your life,”
“Like hell you did,” Jack said. “Throwing me on the ground? Trying to play tough for your girlfriend?”
Audrey backed up to the wall behind her, hands still at her chest, her flashlight pointing at Jack’s chest. Her face showed a mix of shock and fear that dissolved her perma-smile into a white lipped pout.
Darren held his flashlight out to Jack. “Look behind you.”
“What?”
“Look behind you.”
Jack took the flashlight with a grumble and spun around, pointing it into the darkness. Audrey’s flashlight joined the search.
“What the hell?” Jack said. He flashed the light in every direction into the darkness, his motions growing more frantic as he searched.
“What is it?” Audrey asked, inching away from the wall.
“I think it’s a drop off,” Darren said. “There’s nothing reflecting the light back.”
Both flashlights aimed straight down.
“I don’t see anything,” Jack said.
“I know.”
“I mean anything. It’s like there’s nothing there,”
“There has to be something,” Audrey said, searching with her own light.
“There’s
nothing,” Jack said. “Just nothing,”
Darren walked back down the tunnel to the fallen flashlight and picked it up. The plastic had cracked at the base, but it was in no danger of falling apart, so Darren carried it to the onset of darkness and peered in himself.
“It's almost like a wall of black,” Audrey said.
Audrey reached out with her fingers to the darkness, and Jack slapped her hand back down. “Are you nuts?”
“I was just going to see if there was something there.”
"And lose your hand?”
Darren shot his arm out into the blackness. His hand disappeared up to his wrist in the darkness.
“Are you stupid?” Jack said.
Darren wiggled his fingers. He could feel them, but he couldn’t see them. He pulled his arm back, all three watching as his flesh seemed to materialize out of nothing. “My hand seems okay.”
“What did you feel?” Audrey asked.
Darren shook his head. “Nothing,” he said. “It felt no different than it does right now.”
Audrey reached out again, but no one stopped her this time. She waved her arm around after it vanished into the void, her eyebrows crunching together in a sense of confusion. “It’s like, there’s nothing there.”
“Why can’t we see anything?” Jack asked.
Audrey pulled her hand back and looked at it, inspecting both sides. “I don’t know.”
“This is the way that Troy went through,” Jack said.
Darren moved his flashlight to the floor, trying to differentiate Troy’s footprints from the mess they had made. He looked behind them and saw the prints heading this way, and was able to spot a couple more by their feet before they disappeared into the blackness.
“I’m not stepping into that,” Darren said. “That could he a bottomless pit for all we know.”
“Hello!” Jack yelled into the darkness. His voice died off like all the sounds seemed to do down in the tunnel. “I doubt it’s a pi-”
“Hello!” Jack’s voice came back from the void.
All three stared at the wall of black in silence.
“It echoed back,” Audrey said.
“Nothing else we’ve said down here has echoed,” Jack said.