by D Haltinner
“Granola is good with me. Not as good as breakfast in bed sounds though.”
“After Tuesday I’ll make sure you get breakfast in bed.”
“What a gentleman,” she said before reaching up to kiss him.
“Off to the library then?” Darren asked.
“The library it is.”
Audrey wrapped her arm around Darren’s and slid her hand into his pocket, wrapping her fingers around his own. Darren led them to the library, and let her step into the warmth of the heated air, following behind her.
The aging librarian looked up over her bifocals at Darren and Audrey and watched them pass by her desk before looking back down to whatever was on her desk, out of Darren’s view.
“Think she recognizes us?” Audrey said.
“I hope not, but she might by now,” Darren said.
“At least tomorrow we can enter from somewhere else.”
“If we have to come back down.”
“I’m not confident today will be the last day we have to come down here.”
“I’m just more hopeful than you are.”
“I suppose so.”
Darren and Audrey weaved through the rows of bookcases and worked their way to the boiler room door. Darren held the door open for Audrey and then followed her inside, closing it behind him before turning on the lights of the room. He opened the hatch as Audrey watched, then dug out her penlight from Jack’s backpack and handed it to her.
“We’re one flashlight short now,” Darren said.
“We should be okay with just the two,” Audrey said, testing her small light.
“Just in case, I bought a lighter at the gas station this morning too so we could use those candles from the room we found. It wouldn’t be as nice as a flashlight, but after last night, I don’t want to risk being stuck in the dark.
Audrey nodded. “I understand.”
Darren closed up the backpack and dropped it into the shaft. He helped Audrey into the hatch, then shut off the lights and dropped himself into the concrete tunnel. He shut the hatch as Audrey held the light for him, and then the two started down the tunnel.
“You wanted to see the math formulas again first?” Darren asked.
“Yeah, I think after something you said yesterday, it makes sense now,” Audrey said.
“What do you mean?”
“Let me see if I’m right before I say anything.”
“Kay.”
The pair walked through the cool, thick air of the tunnel, moving toward the south and the door branching off to the west. Darren couldn’t see any sign of his trip down here last night except for a spot of disturbed dust where the backpack had been tossed below Rosch Hall.
Darren’s muscles tensed more and more the further south they traveled The void could have expanded or moved over the rest of the night, and it could even be coming up at any moment. He tried to tell himself it was just paranoia telling him that, but the corner of his mind wasn’t paying him any attention.
The corridor turned, and the steel door approached up ahead. The door still hung open on its frame just as it had been left, and Audrey wasted no time stepping through and going straight to the pile of papers on the table.
Darren hesitated outside the entry, shining his light southward, trying to see any sign that the void could be expanding this way, but his beam couldn’t travel far enough for him to see anything. It wasn’t far to the turn going under the road and toward the science building so maybe it didn’t reach that path yet.
“Come here,” Audrey said from across the room. “Let me show you this.”
Darren ventured into the room and went to Audrey’s side, shining his own light onto the papers she was already illuminating.
“This is what I thought,” Audrey said. She pointed to the initial formula. “There are two math problems compiled into one. The first is just simple arithmetic to come up with the year 2011.”
“This year.”
“Yeah, and if you look here, this formula where they tossed the year in with these other numbers that I can’t find where they came from.”
“What about it?”
“It’s a stepping function. It increases in spurts, exponentially.”
“Wait, exponential functions have an answer that keeps increasing though, right? So how could they find that as the sole answer?”
“Ahh, but they didn’t,” Audrey said. She ruffled through the papers and brought a different page to the top. “I didn’t notice it at first, but there were more than one answer, they just didn’t translate them into dates like they did that one.”
“Okay, I’m still confused.”
“It looks like this formula says that every one of these intervals, there is an exponential growth in the answer. They stopped calculating numbers when they reached the point of this date, which happens to be Tuesday.”
“Okay, but what does that mean?”
“It looks like these intervals are time periods. I’m not exactly sure what it is, maybe six hours or so, but at each interval, there is an increase in this number, which, after what you told me about the void, I think is the void’s size.”
Darren wished he could see what she did on these papers, but it looked like an astrophysicist’s dream to him. “You mean the void is growing every six hours?”
“More or less, yeah. Not only growing, but almost doubling in volume each time.”
“So what does Tuesday’s date mean?”
“I think that’s the point at which it engulfs the campus. That or the point of no return,” Audrey said. “Maybe both.”
“Jeez,” Darren said, running his hand through his hair. “The point of no return?”
“Meaning that if we don’t stop its growth by then, we won’t be able to.”
“How can you be sure of that?”
“Well, they used this variable here that I think might be the strength of whatever is in the void, but unlike the void itself, it seems-from their numbers-that it’s been growing for the last sixty-seven years, since November the twelfth of forty-four actually.”
“What the hell does that mean though?”
“That you were right, the void is growing, and it’s growing in spurts,” Audrey said, setting the papers back down. “And at its last spurt of the day on Tuesday, the void is going to be too big, and what’s inside of it too strong, and we won’t be able to do anything about it.”
Darren shook his head. He didn’t see what she saw, but he believed her interpretation of the numbers nonetheless. It matched what he saw, and if it was true, he would be seeing a lot more soon.
“You’re sure about this?” Darren asked.
Audrey looked up at Darren in the pale light of their flashlights casting across the room. “I am. And it means that the longer it takes for us to figure out what’s going on, the harder it will be to stop whatever it is.”
“But how do we stop it?”
“The numbers don’t tell us that.”
“We need to find out somehow.”
“I’m hoping that the room by the science building might have some answers. There was only one other room on the map besides this one and that one, so if we find nothing below the building, we’ll have to check there.”
“And if we find nothing there?”
“Then I guess we’re on our own.”
Darren sighed and turned from Audrey to look toward the chairs in the middle of the room. “None of it makes any more sense then it did on Tuesday night when I stubbed my toe on the hatch in the library.”
“I know, but we’ll find some answers somewhere,” Audrey said, slipping her free hand around Darren’s waist. “Robert Blackburn left us a few answers in that diary we found, maybe he left more.”
A memory hit Darren’s mind and he aimed his flashlight at the bed in the corner. He had been so distracted by the papers Audrey found on the table the other day that he’d forgotten about those on the bed.
“There may be more of his diary in those papers on
the bed,” Darren said.
“What papers?”
Darren focused his flashlight on the papers he had left behind.
Audrey went over to the bed and picked up the stack of papers. She leafed through them under her flashlight, squinting and holding a few pages up to her face. “I can’t make anything out.”
“It’s probably nothing useful anyways,” Darren said. “Just our luck.”
“We’ll bring them back anyways,” Audrey said. “Maybe we’ll be able to do something with them on the computer.”
“If we ever have time again.”
“We’ll make the time.”
Darren walked over to the candles on the floor and slid his backpack off, putting the candles inside after blowing the dust off of their wicks.
“What are you doing?” Audrey asked.
“Loading up the candles, just in case we need the light,” Darren said. “I’m using the last of the batteries in my flashlight.”
“No more batteries for Barney?”
“Nope, he’ll die eventually.”
“We can’t let that happen.”
“Nope.” Darren zipped up his backpack and stood up as he fastened it around his shoulders.
“I suppose we should get going then.”
Darren nodded.
Audrey went to his side and put her arm out, holding the papers from the bed in her hands. “Why don’t we put these in there too and get going.”
Darren turned so Audrey could get to the backpack. She slid the papers inside and zipped it shut.
“Ready?” she asked.
“I guess so.”
“Is something wrong?”
Darren sighed. “Just too much at once.”
Audrey slid her arm around his waist. “I know what you mean.”
“I hope this is all over soon.”
“I do too.”
“Then you and I can take that vacation.”
“To Great America?”
Darren nodded. “Better than nothing.”
“Only one problem.”
“What’s that?”
“It closes for the season in September.”
Darren sighed. “Just my luck.”
“Then let’s go and get this over with before your luck gets any worse.”
Chapter 48
Audrey stepped first past the caved-in section of the tunnel, holding her arms out for balance as she dodged through the rubble. She held her arms out the same way when she lept over the trench in the section of tunnel that passed below the street. That time she needed a little coaxing to make the jump because Darren didn’t want to walk to the south end where the small ledge was that crossed the trench. He didn’t want to get too close to the void that had, by now, probably engulfed the ledge.
Darren worked his way through the rubble and rejoined Audrey at her side, heading west toward the hatch at the end of the section of tunnel.
“Where was this door you say?” Darren asked.
“I’ll show you when we get there,” she said.
“I still don’t know how we missed it.”
“Your dying flashlights weren’t enough.”
“Because you said it looked like it was built with the tunnel?”
“From the look of it. It’s not a pieced together deal like that welded door.”
“Odd.”
“I’d say.”
Their flashlight beams fell against the back wall and the hatch above as they got to the end of the tunnel. Darren looked for the door Audrey said was there along the side, but he didn’t see it until his light fell on the crack at the bottom of the door.
“See it?” Audrey asked as they approached the crack.
“I do now.”
The door was painted a light gray to match the walls of the tunnel enough that it was impossible to tell it apart in the dim flashlight. The rough wood surface gave the same textural appearance as the walls, but on closer inspection, the swirls of grain in the wood came into view.
“I don’t see a door handle,” Darren said.
Audrey shrugged. “I can’t figure everything out for you.”
Darren laughed. It was strange that he could still find humor in things after what he witnessed last night. “I suppose I’m the one with the tools.”
“That you are.”
Darren slid the backpack off his shoulders and set it in front of the door. He bent over it and dug through it, wondering what he could use to open the door. His hand fell on a flat head screwdriver beneath the thick candles he found, so he pulled it out. Thinking that he might be able to feel for the latch of the door, he stuck it into the crack at one side of the door and began to feel around as he stood. He bumped something solid down low, and then about half way up.
“Hinges,” he said, then moved to the seam on the other side of the door.
“Why don’t you just break it down with the hammer, or cut through it with the sawzall?” Audrey asked.
“I have no idea how thick it is, and the only saw blades Jack had are meant for metals-they don’t work so well on wood.”
“You could-”
There was a light clink when Darren’s screwdriver bumped something solid in the crack, and the door inched open.
“That was easy,” Audrey said.
Darren shined his light through the crack. “It was held shut by a simple hook,” he said. “I guess my luck might be turning around after all.”
“Maybe it is.”
Darren dropped the screwdriver back into the bag and stood up, flinging it over his shoulders. “Let’s see what’s back here,” he said as he gave the door a shove.
Audrey stepped through the doorway first, Darren right behind her, scanning the area with their flashlights.
“What the hell?” Audrey said, staring at the floor.
It was tiled. The monotony of cement turned into a marbled tile that was free of dust and mouse feces. It could use some wax, but it was an unexpected sight nonetheless.
Darren turned and shined his flashlight at the walls behind him. Painted a high-gloss white, the cement walls looked almost like drywall when they accompanied the tiles. The door they passed through was painted to match the walls, being held closed by a simple latch that was lowered into a bracket mounted to the frame.
“Why is this room so clean?” Audrey said.
“I don’t know,” Darren said. “But if I had to guess, I’d say someone still uses this room.”
“Who?”
“I have no idea.” He swung around, his flashlight beam catching the lens of a fluorescent light fixture on the ceiling. “If only there was a light switch around here.”
“What do they use it for?”
“I’d say we were about to find out.”
Audrey walked forward into the room, with Darren right behind her. Her flashlight beam fell onto a table covered with glass flasks and hot plates wired to a think cable that ran along the corner of the room into darkness ahead. On the right most edge of the beam of Audrey’s light glared off of a small aquarium on a metal stand, a wooden cabinet beside it forming a wall.
The map had shown the room to cover half the footprint of the building above them, but when they approached the side of a large glass display, a wall came into view.
“Shouldn’t the room be bigger?” Audrey said, standing in front of the glass, looking at the wall.
“According to the map it should be,” Darren said. He walked up to the wall and felt along it, then knocked on it. “This wall isn’t cement.”
“Meaning…“
“It was added later.” He shined his light down its length until the beam dissolved into the distance. “At least half of this space must be back there.”
“But what the hell is it for?” Audrey asked before she turned around and looked at the display behind her.
“I don’t kn-”
“Forget I asked.”
“Why?” Darren said as he turned around. “Did you-”
The glass displa
y behind them held a pair of college age kids. A male and a female, naked, in the midst of copulating, suspended in mid-air in the case. The girl’s long blonde hair spilled across the base of the cabinet, her eyes closed, and her lips hung partially open. Her bare chest didn’t rise in the slightest. She wasn’t breathing.
The male’s head fell limp from his neck, both eyes closed and his lips rose into a near smile. His groin was pushed against the females, his arms against his side, lying back to his hips. The hair on his back was plastered to his skin, while her body looked freshly shaved.
There was an odd appearance through the glass that made the pair seem thicker than they really were, but Darren couldn’t pinpoint what it was. He leaned closer to the glass to see if they were floating in a vat of formaldehyde, but they seemed to be floating in midair.
‘Oh my God,” Audrey said. “Who would do that to people?”
“I don’t know,” Darren said. “Maybe they were already dead before they were put in there.”
“There are still goose bumps on her skin!”
There were, and her nipples were shriveled into hard points.
“This is rather-”
“Creepy?”
Darren nodded. “But what the hell does it have to do with the void?”
Audrey shook her head.
Darren explored the wooden base for anything to explain the display’s purpose, and when he reached the end of the case, he hesitated.
“What is it?” Audrey asked.
“The glass is on rollers.”
“Rollers? You mean it moves?”
“There’s more than twenty handles on the side of it, each one on its own roller.”
“I’m afraid to ask what happens if you pull one.”
Darren stepped around the side, and took a hold of the middle knob-just like on a kitchen cabinet-and pulled.
A section of glass an inch thick came sliding out, the sound of the bearings below it groaning as its weight passed over them. The glass kept sliding, a section of the two bodies coming with it.
Audrey gasped and spun away.
Darren let go of the handle when it stopped moving six feet away, he moved to the side of the glass section and felt his stomach begin to turn.
A cross section of the copulating pair came with the piece of glass. The glass seemed to have been molded around the couple’s bodies. A piece of the woman’s brain lay open, just below the male’s own brain. Skin, bones, organs all lay exposed in a lengthwise cross section of their bodies, ending at the man’s inner thigh, and slicing the woman’s vulva into two. The man’s penis was visible inside of the woman, its flesh uncut by the glass, surrounded by the muscled flesh of her uterus.