by D Haltinner
“It looks like there are more words down here,” Darren said, pointing toward the base of the image.
Audrey tried a few settings, but the letters never took focus. “It’s just too far gone.”
Darren slid the one he selected out of the stack in front of her. “I think this one is salvageable.”
“Let’s give it a shot,” Audrey said. She took the page, put it in the scanner, and with a hum, the page appeared on screen.
“It looks a lot better,” Darren said, “I can already read a couple of the words over here.” He pointed to the edge of the screen.
“Let’s see if I can clear it up,” Audrey said as she adjusted the image.
The words began to take shape on screen, filling the paper in crisp, clean handwriting.
“It looks like a journal entry, or some sort of log,” Audrey said. She pointed to the heading. “November the twelfth, nineteen forty four.”
“That’s the day the six students went missing.”
“Let’s see what it has to say, shall we?” Audrey clicked on a button and the image filled the entire screen.
I have cursed my grandfather every day I wake up down in this concrete crypt, but finally, the last day of my watch is at hand. My father had these tunnels built below the school when the construction began on the campus, and has kept watch, preparing for the day that I would have to perform my own duties given to me by my grandfather. My father showed me all that my grandfather left behind, and taught me how to calculate the next occurrence of the cycle. I finished the calculation only yesterday, and it will be my job to hand this information down to my grand kids when the new millennium arrives.
If I survive the day that is. If any of us survive.
My grandfather’s memory failed him over the years, so I have chosen to write down what my next replacement will need. I have kept a log of my preparations for the day that has finally arrived, and have tried as hard as possible to follow the instructions my own father and grandfather had told me. Though my father has had no experience with what he called the blackness, my grandfather confided every memory and insight he had into him, which in turn was taught to me as I was raised. My grandfather only barely stopped it in 1877, but through his own trial and error, I should be able to prevent it easily. Despite my confidence, I have enlisted the help of six students who I have confided all I know in, and they should be arriving shortly so that we can prepare.
I was never sure if I believe what my father and grandfather tried to tell me about the blackness, but a few days ago I had my first experience with what lied within. I cannot convince myself that what I now know is untrue in any way, no matter how hard I have tried. I am frightened now-not only for myself, but for all.
I can only hope all goes as planned. There is no telling what will happen if we are unable to stop it, but one thing I know for sure is that everyone will wish they were dead instead of having to endure what the blackness has in store. It has been recovering and growing over the past sixty-seven years, and if the signs I have seen are any indicator, it is stronger now than it ever has been. My grandfather had no idea how long the blackness has been beneath the city, but if the story my father told me does indeed hold the truth, it has been here since the beginning of the-
“End of the page,” Audrey said, sinking into her chair.
“I don’t even know what to say,” Darren said. “That was just-”
“Too much to grasp at once.”
“Yeah. Do you think one of these other pages explains more? This was more of a end of the line summary, so do you think he actually wrote out his grandfather’s story on one of these other pages?”
“I would think so,” Audrey said. “He did say that he was going to write everything out for his own grandchildren.”
“Think he wrote it before this log?” Darren said.
“I don’t know, he wasn’t too clear on that.”
Darren shuffled through the pages in front of him. “One of these might be a log from after they did whatever they were preparing for, maybe he left more details.”
“Here give me one,” Audrey said.
Darren handed Audrey a page and she slipped it into the scanner, dumping the image on the screen in front of them.”
“I can’t clean this one up,” Audrey said after trying to adjust the controls. “Let’s try another.”
They went through page after page, trying to get one that was in good enough condition to read, but only one sheet was in good enough condition to be enhanced.
I can only hope we succeed today. The fate of too many rests on our hands. If anyone ever reads this, then we must have been successful. Whether I survived may be another question, but that would at least mean that it is safe until the next cycle. I can only do what I have the ability to do, but with the information left by my grandfather and my father, I believe I have enough to prevent it.
May God help us. I can only hope He is on our side.
“That wasn’t as informative as I hoped,” Darren said.
“No, it wasn’t,” Audrey said.
“Well, we at least know they succeeded in whatever they did. His log did survive.”
“But what did they do? He never said.”
“No, he didn’t, but whatever it was, he knew the possibility existed that he may not survive.”
“Could it really have been that important? So important that only six students and himself were the only ones needed?”
“I don’t know, he never exactly said what it was they were doing, or what they needed to prevent from happening.”
“He did say that if they didn’t stop it, that it would mean a fate worse than death.”
“So what, seven people prevented the end of the world or something?”
Audrey shrugged. “The world, or just locally? He never specified, but whatever he was afraid of happening must be happening again,” she said, “We saw his own calculations that he talked about, and if he’s right, whatever he worked to prevent is about to happen again on Tuesday.”
“But what was he trying to stop?”
“I don’t know anything more than you do, but the blackness-the void-is the key to it all.”
Darren sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “This is too much to try to understand at once,” he said. “How do we even know that what he said was the truth? He could just be some nutcase going off on some demented tangent.”
“He didn’t sound insane to me.”
“Just because he didn’t sound insane, doesn’t mean he wasn’t.”
“Let’s look at what he did say though,” Audrey said. “He knew about the void, the story correlates with the newspaper article you found, and I bet we might even be able to figure out who he was.”
“I didn’t see his name on any of the pages,” Darren said, looking through the sheets now scattered across the desk.
Audrey held up a finger, telling him to hold on, then turned to the computer. “It’s a stretch, but I bet we could find something in the school’s history. They have an essay somebody wrote about the school on the website. I think I remember seeing something that fits what the guy in the letter says.”
Darren watched as Audrey pulled up the UW-Redfern website and found the historical essay she was talking about.
“It says the school was originally built as Blackburn University in the twenties. Founded by a man named Richard Blackburn.”
“Okay, so?”
“So, I bet if I google Richard Blackburn, there’s a biography.” She opened up another website and read it over. “Richard Blackburn’s father Michael Blackburn ran the largest farm in the state. Richard went off to college, earned a PhD and taught for ten years before working his way up to chancellor. Michael died and Richard inherited the farm, but instead of selling the land or going back to farming, Richard decided to build his own university on the land. He married and had a son, Robert, who was believed to have died in nineteen forty four. It says Robert went missing and was never found. T
he university was sold to the state after Richard died, where it is now the University of Wisconsin in Redfern.”
“You mean-”
“I think that log was written by Robert Blackwell.”
Darren sighed. “Jeez,” he said. “If that’s the case, then they must have built the school, knowing that the void was beneath it.”
“And it also means that Robert didn’t survive whatever he succeeded in preventing.”
“But what was he preventing?”
“Whatever is going to happen again on Tuesday.”
Chapter 38
“How can we prove that any of this is true though?” Darren said. “The whole thing is just so looney.”
“It may be looney, but you saw the void with your own eyes,” Audrey said. “Whether you want to believe it exists or not, it’s there.”
“But what is it?”
Audrey shook her head. “I don’t know, but I think it’s only a veil, hiding something else inside of it. We both heard what was in there.”
“Yeah, don’t remind me.”
“Whatever it is, it’s big, and if Robert’s letter is any indication, it’s dangerous too.”
Darren looked up into Audrey’s eyes, trying to find some sort of explanation in her face, but she appeared just as confused as Darren-only more willing to take the extra step to believe that all this is really happening.
“You really think something’s going to happen on Tuesday?” Darren asked.
“If the void, and all we found in that locked room are any indication.” She nodded. “Yes, I think something is going to happen. Whatever it is, it needs to be stopped.”
“But how can we stop something if we don’t even know what it is or what’s going on?”
“We need to go back down there,” Audrey said. “We need to find those answers, and that’s the only place to look for them.”
“His letter said he was going to have to teach his own grand kids about the void, and charge them with preventing it again on the next cycle, so if he died, wouldn’t his dad Richard have passed it on in his place?”
Audrey turned back to the computer. “Richard died not long after Robert. It also says that Robert was an only child. Richard’s wife had sold the school when he died, but she died a widow a decade later. I don’t know if the information was ever passed on. I don’t think we can ever know.”
“We know,” Darren said, slouching his shoulders.
“How?”
“Don’t you think that if Robert died, someone else would have had to have known about these tunnels? He couldn’t build them alone, and someone has been keeping them in place with new construction.”
“It’s probable, but how can we find out?”
“If he told someone, that person would have at least visited the room where we found these writings, don’t you think?”
“I suppose.”
“Well, I doubt that happened, because I saw no evidence that anyone has stepped foot in there since Robert died, did you?”
“No, but if Robert told someone everything before he died, why would they need to go down there?”
“I guess they wouldn’t, but it would make sense. They know the specific date that they had to prevent whatever from happening, so wouldn’t they at least go down there to see what they’re up against, or what new information might have been left behind?”
“I would think so, yeah.”
“I’m not sure that anyone was given the duty to prevent whatever is supposed to happen on Tuesday. We would have at least seen evidence of someone going down there, don’t you think? A footprint or something?”
“Yeah, I guess,” Audrey said. “But you are forgetting one thing.”
“What?”
“The faculty knows about it already. They know about the tunnel, and they even tried to scare you off from going down there. If they know about the tunnel, they must have some sort of idea about what’s down there.”
“Maybe, but not necessarily,” Darren said. “They might know the tunnel exists, but they might know nothing about Tuesday or about the void. Robert’s log said that he wasn’t sure the void even existed until he saw it a few days before he wrote that. It may not have been visible until just recently.”
“I guess, it makes some sense.”
“I don’t think anyone knows about Tuesday except for us.”
“What do we do about it though?”
“What can we do? We don’t even know what’s going on.”
“We need to do something though.”
“But what?”
“That’s why we need to go back. We need to find some more answers down there.”
“What if we don’t find any answers?”
“We can at least say we tried.”
Darren laughed. “If there’s any truth to what Robert said, we will be wishing we were dead,” he said. “If we can’t figure it out, I say we leave town and save ourselves.”
“How can you say something like that?” Audrey said, her eyes growing wide. “You would let something like that happen to all these people, and not do something to help them?”
“We don’t even know what’s going on!”
“The least we could do is warn them.”
“Oh yeah, telling them that a void below the school is going to do something to them, but we don’t know what.”
Audrey’s eyes tightened. “No one would believe us, would they?”
“I’m still not sure that I even believe us. No one would ever listen to us,” Darren said. “And who’s to say that it’s linked to the campus? Why not the whole city? Or state?”
“That’s why we need to get back down there, we need answers.”
“I only hope there’s answers to be found.”
Audrey leaned back in her chair and let out a deep breath. “This has turned into a big mess, hasn’t it?”
Darren slid his chair closer to Audrey, turning so that she could rest her head on his shoulder. “It has,” he said. “But we’ll figure out what to do.”
Audrey laughed. “I don’t think we’re going to get that history paper done this weekend.”
“Doesn’t look like it. We always have next weekend.”
“If we’re still around by then”
“Don’t turn pessimistic on me now. We’ve figured out so much already, I’m sure that your right, and more answers are down there, waiting for us.”
“I only hope we can figure out in time.”
“We’ll try.”
Audrey shut her eyes and grabbed a hold of Darren’s elbow. “The fate of the world rests in our hands.”
“We can try to recruit others, if you think we need the help.”
“Let’s wait and see what the three of us can find tomorrow before we think of doing that.”
“Three of us? You still want Jack around?”
“I don’t think we can afford to split up with him. We need all out minds and eyes to figure out what’s going on.”
“I suppose.”
“I’ll just have to put up with him for a few more days. I think I can manage that at least.”
Darren kissed the top of her head. “I can tell him to back off a bit and quit being so bossy if you want.”
“Nah, just let it go. It’s only a few days.”
“Okay.”
The screensaver kicked in on the computer. A simple space scene with stars and planets moving across the screen, but it was hypnotizing enough to both Audrey and Darren that they sat in silence for a minute.
“Are you scared?” Audrey asked after a minute.
“I don’t know,” Darren said. “I think I’m too confused yet to be scared.” And it was the truth. He hadn’t given his or Audrey’s well being any thought until she asked. If the danger of death-or worse-was there, then he had a lot to be scared about. But until he actually knew what he should be afraid of, how could he be scared?
“I am,” Audrey said.
Darren kissed the top of her head. �
�I won’t let anything happen to you.”
“You can’t promise that.”
“I can at least promise to do everything in my power to keep you safe.”
Audrey paused. “I suppose I can accept that.”
“Good.”
Another moment of silence before Audrey spoke again. “Will you make love to me?”
Darren’s mouth fell open, a throaty noise coming out instead of words. The question caught him off guard. He knew she was interested, last night, and he thought it might come up again, but his mind had been so focused on the tunnel to have thought much about it.
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Audrey said, her hand still laying on Darren’s shoulder. “I just thought, that if the chance existed that something might happen to us…”
Darren kissed the top of her head. “I would love to.”
Audrey raised her head. Her perma-smile was gone, replaced by a flat, serious line that made her as alluring as she had ever been. She leaned in and kissed Darren on the lips. “Thank you,” she said at a whisper.
Darren rose, took Audrey by the hand, and led her to the bed.
Chapter 39
Darren couldn’t remember a time when his armpits had ever sweated so much, and there have been a few times in the past that have been dooseys. When he put his arms out to guide Audrey to the bed, the slick lubrication beneath his arms clung to the fabric of his shirt, and when Audrey slid her hands into his shirt, terror struck him as she weaved them closer and closer to the faucets until she veered off across his shoulders.
Audrey smiled up at Darren as he adjusted himself over the top of her, sliding in between her legs before lowering his lips back to hers. He let his body weight down on top of her, feeling her slim body push up against him. She gripped him by the hips and pulled him against her tighter, then sliding them up and down his back.
Darren hadn’t felt this much anxiety in three years. He wanted to undress the goddess below him and slide himself in, but he was so nervous. What if he was smaller than she was used to? Maybe he wouldn’t move right, maybe he’d push too hard, what if he was too nervous to get it up again?