by D Haltinner
“Well, the guy who lives across the hall said it was a professor who packed up his stuff.”
Jack frowned. “A professor?”
“I didn’t understand either, but there was something even more confusing.”
“What?”
“The professor who did it.” He looked into Jack’s face. “It was your dad.”
Jack looked as if he had just seen an eighty year old stripper-a mix of sickness and curiosity. “My dad?”
Darren nodded.
“Why would my dad pack out a guy who probably wasn’t even a student of his? Or any student for that matter?”
“That’s what the favor was.”
“What?”
“I was wondering if you could find out what was going on with this from your father.”
Jack sighed and turned his eyes to the floor, thinking.
“Just ask him about what happened to Troy,” Darren said. “Let’s keep it quiet about the hatch for right now.”
Jack closed his eyes and nodded, “That much I can do,” he said. “You said that my father was seen packing up Troy’s stuff after all.”
“Yeah.”
“Then I’ll tell him just that. I’ll tell him someone saw him packing up this Troy guy, and I’ll ask him why he-a professor-would be made to do that.”
“And what happened to Troy?”
Jack nodded. “And that.”
“Thank you Jack.”
“You made me curious now too.”
“It didn’t make any sense to me.”
“It doesn’t to me either. Why would my dad pack up a student's belongings?”
“I can’t even venture a guess.”
“And I wish we knew where the tunnel went too.”
“I’ve been guessing it’s some sort of maintenance tunnel.”
“Is that why you were asking me about underground rooms last night?”
“Yeah.”
“You know,” Jack said. “I can’t think of any reason for the tunnel.”
“No guesses?”
Jack shook his head and leaned forward with a squeak of the chair. “But I think we could find out pretty easily.”
Darren jumped forward. “How?”
“We go down there ourselves.”
Darren shook his head. “No way, not me.”
“Aww, come on. Aren’t you curious?”
“Not that curious,” Darren said. “Especially after what happened to Troy.”
“You don’t know that he got in trouble for being down there.”
“What do you think happened then?”
“Fine. But I still think we can find the answers in the library.”
“Without getting in trouble?”
“Yes”, Jack said. “They have architectural plans there.”
“Of the campus?”
Jack nodded. “I have a friend who’s majoring in architecture. He says they have plans for most of the famous buildings, houses, and the entire campus. We should be able to find the one for the library, and it’ll tell us exactly what the tunnel is for.”
“I don’t know how to read a blueprint.”
“Either do I, but I don’t think it could be that hard to figure it out.”
“Probably not.”
“When do you have lunch tomorrow?”
“I’m busy at lunch tomorrow, but I have the period before open.”
“Lunch plans?” Jack said. “Let me guess, you and Rachel made up.”
“Yeah, we did,” Darren said. “But that’s not what I’m doing though.”
“It has to be something good though.”
“Why do you say that?”
“You’re blushing.”
Darren reached up and touched his cheek. It was hot to the touch, but he hadn’t felt the flush until Jack pointed it out. “Audrey and I are going to talk about the paper.”
“Audrey?”
“My new history partner.”
Jack frowned as he concentrated for a minute, then his eyes shot open. “The hot chick?”
Darren nodded.
“God, I wish I could have lunch with her.”
“It’s not a date.”
“Then you wouldn’t mind if I tagged along?”
“It’s still a private meeting.”
“Just scholastic in nature.”
“Not romantic.”
“Right... sure.”
Darren could feel his face still burning now that Jack pointed it out, but there was no way for him to stop it now.
“I won’t tell Rachel, don’t worry,” Jack said.
“It’s not a date.”
Jack nodded but said no more on the topic. “I can talk to my dad in the morning, and then why don’t I meet you at the library after your first class.”
“That should be alright,” Darren said. “I do have gym in the morning, so I may be a little late since I have to shower afterwards.”
“Got to make sure you smell good for your date.”
Darren rolled his eyes.
“That should be fine,” Jack said. “I don’t think it will take too long to figure out what the schematics have to say about the tunnel.”
“I hope not.”
“Can’t let you be late.”
Darren ignored the remark. “I’m sure it’s just a short maintenance tunnel,” he said. “Troy said he could hear what sounded like machinery when he climbed down there.”
“What kind of machinery?”
“I think he said it sounded like a clunk followed by a hiss. An old printing machine or something maybe.”
Jack stared off into emptiness, thinking. “I don’t know. But why would there be machinery below the library?”
“Got me.”
“We’ll have the answers tomorrow.”
“I hope so.”
Jack stood up, the cushion of the chair relaxing back into shape. “But for now, I’m going to get ready for bed.”
“I think I’ll do the same.”
Jack gathered his things and headed down the hall toward the bathrooms. Darren changed his clothes and looked out the window into the night,
Tomorrow, the answers would become clear. He hoped.
Chapter 9
Darren jogged across College Street through a break in traffic midway between the walkways. His hair was sucking the heat out of his skull, it was still soaking wet from the quick shower he took in the locker room-he had to wait for everyone else to change and leave first-but he couldn’t risk meeting Audrey later and smelling like sweat. He never would have taken a shower for Rachel-maybe when they first started dating he would have-but he couldn’t let Audrey become repulsed by him.
This wasn’t a date, Darren kept having to tell himself. This was only a gathering of the minds for a research paper. Nothing more. He had a girlfriend, he didn’t need to be impressing another girl, no matter how attractive she was.
No, no. He wasn’t trying to impress her. He was only trying to keep from disgusting her. That was it. He was going to have to sit by her for a while, and he couldn’t force her to smell his sweat. That wasn't very polite.
Thank God he left the cologne in his room.
Darren made it across the street and walked across the path toward the library. His arms were covered in goose bumps even beneath the sleeves of his jacket. The skin was tightening and freezing across his back to the point that it felt like it was going to rip open. The morning had been growing colder as the days went on into fall, but the afternoons had been holding out longer. That would all change soon as the leaves began to fall, but even now the colors were only beginning to tint and fall.
Darren wiggled his way through a line of students moving north and made his way up to the door of the library, rushing his way into the warmth inside. A handful of students wandered around near the entrance, but Jack wasn’t among them. Darren moved in further, passing through the security sensors, and walked down the main aisle toward the back of the library. He didn’t know where thes
e architectural drawings and blueprints were, but the building wasn’t that big, Jack shouldn’t be too hard to spot.
When Darren hit the back wall, he headed away from where the hatch was toward the corner of the building. He passed a long line of computers placed into small private cubicles, and then saw Jack behind them against the wall. He stood over a large table, a piece of paper unrolled in front of him, a tattered corner of it wiggling in the air from the breeze of the heating vent above it.
Darren made his way through the tables to Jack’s table, standing across him and looking down at the drawing between them. It was a detailed drawing of the library, from a bird’s eye view. Labels indicated what lines represented electrical wiring, what represented plumbing, and natural gas. There was a set of rolled up papers on the table beside them, and Darren guesses they were all drawings of the library from different viewpoints, and different features.
“Did you find anything?” Darren asked.
“Not yet, but I’ve only gone through one of the designs,” Jack said. He didn’t look up from the paper between them.
“That looks like the floor.”
“And the walls.” He pointed to the blocks at the outer edges. “It shows the foundation all the way into the walls where the electricity ran, then to the floor where the plumbing is beneath the cement.”
“Does it show the tunnel?”
Jack shook his head. “Can you show me on here where the hatch is?”
Darren hovered over the diagram, trying to get his bearings. He found the entrance, compared the distance to the back wall, and had to guess how far to the side it was, but he put his finger on the diagram in a blank spot where no plumbing or gas lines were ran. “Around here.”
Jack sighed. “There’s nothing,” he said. “Nothing there at all.”
“One of the other diagrams must have it on it.”
Jack rolled up the diagram without much care of creasing it, and took another one from the pile, stretching it out between them.
Darren held down a curled corner and looked over the drawing. It showed the library from the exterior, in all four sides as well as the roof. It showed a little bit of the foundation, but no sign of any tunnel.
“Still nothing,” Jack said. “Are you sure it was a tunnel?”
Darren nodded. “Positive.”
"I suppose it could have been added after the library was already built. The building is a good thirty or forty years old.”
“Wouldn’t they have updated the blueprints if they had?”
Jack shrugged. “Should, but they could have skipped over that if the inspectors never found it.”
“Are these the only diagrams they have of the library?”
“As far as I can tell. They could have them in the computers now, or have them stored elsewhere on campus.”
“Who would know if there were?”
“The deans maybe? The architecture professors maybe.”
“It couldn’t hurt to ask them.”
Jack leaned back with a sigh. “I’d still be careful though.”
“Why’s that?”
Jack glanced around the area, seeing who else was nearby. “This seems to be a rather touchy subject.”
Darren shook his head. “What do you mean?”
“I asked my dad about Troy.”
“And what did he say?”
“He did a lot of yelling and screaming,” Jack said. “He complained about nosy students, and how they can’t mind their own business.”
“Jeez.”
“Yeah, he sure jumped at me over that one.”
“I didn’t realize I was sending you into that.”
“My dad has never been that mad before,” Jack said. He looked down at the ground and lowered his voice. “At least since I was fourteen.”
“I don’t suppose he answered you though?”
Jack shook his head. “Not a full answer,” he said. “But he did say that he was told to do it by the Chancellor himself. He and two other professors.”
“Two others?” Darren said. “I only heard it was your dad.”
“I guess he just tossed the stuff into boxes and threw them into the elevator. The other two were in charge of the rest of it. He only had twenty minutes to load the kid’s stuff up, so he just shoveled it into boxes as fast as he could and didn’t stop to see what he was packing. Just dropped stuff into the big boxes and pushed them into the elevator.”
“That’s rather…”
“Odd?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s why he was late for class yesterday. Came right after he took the last box to the elevator.”
“Must have run across campus.”
“Pretty much,” Jack said. “But now comes the big question.”
Darren nodded. “Why did the Chancellor have three professors do a rush job of packing up a student before morning class?”
Jack nodded. “I can’t even venture a guess.”
“From the way you said your dad yelled at you, it must have turned into a rather big deal.”
“Seems that way. That’s why I’d still be careful who you talk to about all this. The movies have shown us many times what happens to people who ask a lot of questions about things they shouldn’t be asking about.”
“This isn’t a movie.”
“No, but I’d still be careful about who you talk to and what you say.”
“After what happened with Troy, discretion will be my new best friend.”
“I couldn’t find out what happened to Troy, my father was too emotional for me to risk asking.”
“I understand.”
“I was just lucky that he spilled the beans about packing the guy out.”
“Thank you for trying.”
“No problem. I’m just as curious about the whole deal as you are.”
Darren nodded. “But where do we go from here?”
“I have a request first,” Jack said.
“Anything, I owe you a favor in return.”
“Can you show me the hatch?”
Darren’s eyes shot open. “The hatch?”
“Yeah. You said it was underneath a bookcase over there,” Jack said, pointing without any aim across the library.
“Um…Yeah... I guess.”
“We don’t have to open it, I’m just curious as to where it is and what it looks like.”
“Of course. No problem.”
Jack rolled up the blueprint and picked up the rest of the rolls, carrying them to a series of cabinets against the back wall, sliding them into small shelves. He grabbed his backpack off another table and slung it over his shoulder before coming back to Darren.
“Don’t you have a backpack?” Jack asked.
“No,” Darren said. “I just leave my gym clothes in the locker they assigned me.”
“Just don’t leave anything valuable in those lockers. Even while at class.”
“Why not?”
“There’s a simple trick to getting them open.”
“Good to know.”
“Come on,” Jack said, leading Darren through the maze of desks, back across the library to the aisles of bookcases.
Darren took the lead and turned Jack down a couple rows to the correct one, and then back across toward the bookcases that covered the hatch. “Here,” Darren said when they got to it. He pointed at the base of the shelf that covered the hatch.
“Beneath the bookcase?” Jack said.
Darren nodded.
Jack glanced around them, then went to the side of the bookcase and started to lift and twist the shelf.
“What are you doing?” Darren yelled. He slapped a hand over his mouth when he realized how loud a volume he was using.
“I just want to see it,” Jack said as he strained to move the shelves.
“Someone’s going to come along and see us!”
“No one ever looks at the biographies.”
“I obviously did!”
Jack turned the bookcase thirty
degrees from where it was and stepped back around to look at the floor.
Darren frowned, looking down.
“I thought you said it was here?” Jack asked.
“It was.”
“You sure?”
Darren looked around him, then at the books on the shelves. “This is the right bookshelf.”
“It’s not here now.”
Darren stared down by his feet where the carpet continued to span out before him where the hatch used to be. The carpet didn’t look dust covered like he would have expected, but it did have the impressions of the bookshelf lining it.
“I swear,” Darren said. “It was right here.”
Jack bent down and looked at the carpet, running his hands over the surface. It didn’t get up and walk away.”
Darren bent down and prodded the carpet with his fingers, digging into the threads. “I don’t know wha-”
His fingers came upon something out of place.
“What?” Jack said. “What is it?”
Darren felt around, making sure what he felt was what he thought it was. “The carpet’s been sewed.”
“Sewed?”
Darren nodded. He felt around the edge where the hatch had been, running his fingers down the tight seam hidden beneath the loops of the carpet. To prove his point, Darren stood back up, stepped onto the patch of carpet and jumped.
The thud of his weight hitting the metal echoed below him.
“It’s there…” Jack said, his voice trailing off.
“Someone was trying to hide it better,” Darren said. “The bookcase wasn’t enough.”
“But to go through the effort of sewing a patch of carpet over it?”
“That’s a lot of work. Must have taken them all night.”
“Why didn’t they just weld it shut? Or put a latch and lock on it at least?
Darren shook his head. “No clue.”
“They’re doing more than just trying to keep people out.”
“They don't want anyone to even know it’s here.” Darren stepped off the hatch and checked down the aisle to make sure no one was coming.
“Too late for that.”
“We can’t let anyone else know it’s here.”
“I’m starting to wonder though.”
“Wonder what?” Darren said, harshness in his voice that surprised even him. “No one else can know it’s here. No one.”
“But what if we did tell people?” Jack said, his eyes widening. “Lots of people, I mean, so many people that the entire campus knows.”
