Secret Passages in a Hillside Town

by Pasi Ilmari Jaaskelainen

  Then Karri said that one of them had to try to help Timi. After all, he was one of the group, a friend to all of them, wasn’t he?

  Olli looked at Karri in amazement. Leo nodded and asked Karri what he thought they should do.

  Karri said that one of them should go in after the dog—just a little way, so their feet were sticking out—and look to see what was really in there. It could be that Timi was just stuck not far under the surface. If they could get hold of his feet it might be easy to rescue him.

  Before anyone had a chance to consider this suggestion, Karri had already volunteered for the job and wriggled into the hole. It was bigger than the opening made it look. The rest of them squirmed uncomfortably. Anne kept telling Karri not to go too deep.

  “All right, Karri. Stop now and tell us what you see,” Leo commanded.

  Karri was in the hole up to his waist and his answer was a faint mumble. Riku slapped him on the bum and told him to reach as far as he could and see if he could feel any furry dog’s arse.

  Leo growled at his brother.

  Karri went in deeper. Now all that was visible of him were his shoes, which Olli and the Blomrooses stared at. Shouldn’t he come back to the daylight now, while he still could? Anne started to get nervous. She worried that he might not be getting enough oxygen.

  Leo agreed. He tried to grab Karri by the ankles, but just then the boy’s feet disappeared into the hole.

  Those left on the surface looked at each other stony-faced. Leo looked particularly pale and stunned.

  They peeked into the hole, but they couldn’t see or hear Karri. Riku’s usual impish grin crumbled. He shot a look at Olli that seemed to say, It’s because of your dog, Olli, your stupid dog…

  Anne bent over, yelled into the hole and listened. Then she took a breath and, with stiff, robotic movements, wriggled into the darkness.

  Olli looked at Leo and Riku, scared.

  Riku whispered something that sounded like a curse.

  They could see Leo crumbling. He was the biggest and strongest and most confident one in the group. He had always taken responsibility for the others. They thought of him as older than he was, but Leo was still a child—ten years old, just a year older than Olli, Karri and Riku. And now he had lost control of the situation. That had never happened before. His arms hung limp at his sides and he turned to Olli as if looking for help.

  Olli felt sick.

  Leo got down on his hands and knees and Olli and Riku stood frozen as he, too, crawled into the darkness.

  He was stockier than the others and his shoulders tore the hole open wider.

  Staying on the surface without Karri, Anne or Leo was a frightening thought. Even more frightening than the thought of dying underground.

  Riku and Olli followed him in.

  When they returned to the surface they were exhausted and disoriented. The bright light hurt their eyes. The fresh air stung their lungs.

  They swayed for a moment in the sunlight, then walked a few metres away and collapsed in the tall grass. They didn’t move or speak, just sighed, enjoying the warmth, the colours and sounds and all the other things above ground; they had been gone so long they had nearly forgotten them.

  Gradually they started to see the trees and meadows. A little way off there was a walking path and people passing with towels over their shoulders, rubber rings under their arms, sandals slapping, ankles covered with sand. They were on their way home after a day of swimming.

  Olli tried to think. He felt faint and sick to his stomach. Something was licking his face. It was Timi. They really had found him, or maybe he had found them. Anyway, he had come back with them.

  The dog was overjoyed. He gave a wet greeting to each of the Five in turn. Then he went back to Olli and lowered his snout onto his master’s leg, his dark eyes filled with gratitude.

  They had come out on a hillside that looked out over the city, several stone’s throws from the place where they had crawled in. The sun was shining from a different direction now, lower in the sky. They had been under the ground for several hours.

  Olli tried to remember what had happened, but his memories of it fled into the dark like mice.

  Then he got hold of one memory: they were crawling through a tight tunnel single file, Karri first, and the others following, with Olli last. They could hear Timi’s voice coming from somewhere, ahead of them or behind them, whining and panting. Olli’s breath rasped in his throat. It was difficult to keep moving. His knees and elbows were torn open and he was running out of strength.

  Finally Karri stopped. He said they couldn’t go any farther; they were at a dead end. Riku started to sob. Olli was too tired to feel anything. He patted Riku on the back to remind him that there were others here, hoping that Riku would be ashamed and know that he should keep quiet.

  Then there was a glimmer ahead. Karri had started to dig away the wall with his hands. Fresh air, and then light, started to flow into the passageway. Karri made an opening and they scrabbled through it into a bright, cave-like space.

  *

  When they had sufficiently recovered, they went back to look at where they had exited from the passageway. What they had thought was a cave was in fact a cellar with stone walls. It certainly was in an odd place, out here in the woods.

  They found the remains of a building. Later Aunt Anna would tell them that it used to be a youth centre, but it had burnt to the ground fifteen years before when little boys were playing with matches there.

  They noticed that they couldn’t see the narrow opening any more. The stone wall had fallen over it. Maybe the whole passageway had collapsed.

  They looked at each other, then walked away.

  Riku tapped on his wristwatch and cursed. He’d got the watch as a birthday present and bragged that it was a “quality timepiece”. Now it had stopped.

  Riku looked accusingly at Timi. “Olli, just so you know, your dog has my permission to buy me a new watch. If it hadn’t been for him we could have eaten our lunch without any problems and be lying around at Aunt Anna’s right now.”

  Anne stopped brushing herself off and asked in a tight voice, “What happened in there? What do you all remember?”

  They didn’t say anything.

  “Well, for heaven’s sake, don’t tell me that you can’t remember anything either,” she said. “I’m trying but I can’t seem to think of a single thing that happened. Well, maybe something, but…it’s just a hint of something that I can’t explain.”

  Everyone tried their hardest to remember.

  But it was soon clear that none of them remembered anything that they could talk about in the light of day. Whenever they thought of something, they couldn’t find words to express it.

  That was five summers ago, and now they’ve decided to find the first entrance again.

  They’ve searched for it before. The first time was right after they came up out of the passageway and went to get their picnic basket. They found the basket, but never found the entrance. They couldn’t remember where it was, not even Karri. Timi didn’t even want to look for it.

  That time, of course, they were tired and confused and still very young. Now they’re older and they won’t give up so easily.

  For the past few summers they’ve found new passages in other places, overcome their fears and gone inside them.

  They quickly realized that the secret passages affect your thoughts, and especially your memory. Inside the tunnels things are distorted; they seem different from how they are above the ground. And time progresses differently, too: sometimes it slows down, sometimes it speeds up, and sometimes it stops altogether. Afterwards they remember different things, or they remember the same things but each in a different way. Some things they can’t remember at all. Often after they come back to the surface, everything that happened inside the secret passages is cloaked in obscurity and all that’s left is the feeling of bewilderment that the passages give a person.

  Making sense of it afterwards is
laborious but fascinating. Not once have they all been in agreement.

  Leo’s theory is that there are fumes and gases there that muddle the functioning of the brain. It’s a plausible explanation. It would explain why Karri is able to find the passages—because he has a nose for sniffing out the air that seeps from them.

  Karri thinks that it’s not just gasses. He believes that he’s better at feeling the small atmospheric disturbances that the underground passages create.

  As he walks behind Karri down the slope of Taulumäki, Olli believes him. He thinks he can feel alterations in the atmosphere at the same moment that Karri’s demeanour turns tense, when he “gets the scent of a passageway”, as they put it.

  Karri stoops down, tosses aside some twigs and brush, and beckons Olli over.

  There is definitely an opening, the same one they all crawled into after Timi five years ago. As he peers down into it, Olli can smell the peculiar scent of the passages, like a garden in autumn.

  His hands turn cold, and he wants to run away. No sane person would crawl into the cold, dark ground. The hole exudes an indefinable menace.

  But Olli knows that that is how the secret passages protect themselves against intruders. To get in, you have to empty your mind of thoughts.

  He can hear the Blomrooses’ voices far off. They’re going in the wrong direction.

  “Let’s call the others,” Olli says.

  “Not yet,” Karri answers. “First I want to show you something. Follow me.”

  Olli looks at Karri questioningly, but he’s hiding under his hood. Olli doesn’t know what to think. He starts to feel nervous.

  Karri starts into the tunnel. Olli can hear his sweatshirt rubbing against the walls, breaking off dirt and sand. They are all bigger than they were five years ago, and the opening seems narrower. Then the passageway widens and Karri’s slim body slips smoothly into the darkness.

  Olli doubts that Leo, tall and broad as he is, will be able to get in so easily.

  Karri moves out of sight and Olli looks around. The day, though grey, feels pleasantly bright when he thinks of leaving it behind. He feels a need to take in the fresh air, to enjoy every breath.

  Going into a passageway always feels the same. Like drowning. Going to sleep. Giving in. It’s like trading the world and his ordinary life for a captivating dream.

  Leo, Anne and Riku’s voices recede. Karri is waiting for him in the dark. Olli hesitates.

  It occurs to him that he shouldn’t spoil his new denim jacket. He hangs it over a branch and pushes his way into the darkness. It’s cold in the passageway at first, and it’s difficult to breathe. But his body quickly adjusts.

  22

  THEY CRAWL ON HANDS AND KNEES through the dark, feeling their way.

  A minute passes, or an hour. Underground, time has no meaning.

  Sometimes it’s hard to breathe, sometimes it’s easier. For a while he can smell flowers, as if they were in a garden of exotic plants instead of under the ground. He feels heavy and light at the same time. His skin is tingling. His hands and feet don’t feel like his own. His movements are slow, but smooth and in a strange way easy. Like diving through black water. But now and then he hits his head on the tunnel wall and then gravity reminds him of itself.

  A couple of times he thinks he’s lost Karri. He panics, then he hears and feels Karri again, moving ahead of him. He has to keep going forward. The passageway is too cramped to turn around. Stopping would mean death. But dying doesn’t worry Olli; he just has to keep moving.

  The surface of the earth, and the sun, are farther and farther away. Olli remembers that the original exit collapsed five years ago. So they’ll have to find a place to turn around and go back the way they came, or find another way out. Assuming there is one.

  Olli smiles in the dark. Not because he’s happy, but because it feels soothing on his cheeks. The soothing feeling spreads from his face to his whole head as his thoughts follow the motions of his face. Things will happen the way they are meant to happen. There’s no point in worrying. Karri must know where he’s going. He’s at Karri’s mercy, so he might as well trust him as long as he has no reason to distrust him.

  Life and death feel smaller in the passageways than they do above ground. That makes moving underground easier, but it’s also one of the greatest dangers of the secret passages. Under the ground, it would be easy to forget yourself.

  It’s not completely dark down here. Olli can see something. Faint shapes. Karri’s feet. His own hands. Fingers waved in front of his face. Or he might be imagining all this. Down here he can’t be sure of anything.

  He focuses on crawling.

  Olli thinks he’s lying in a bed. He’s sinking into sleep, and he smiles. Grandpa Notary is standing in the doorway. “Goodnight and sweet dreams, Olli. Did you have a good day? What did you get up to today?”

  “We went somewhere,” Olli answers sleepily. “Hey, I don’t remember now. Let me sleep. I’m tired…”

  Something knocks against the top of Olli’s head. He takes hold of it. It’s a shoe. Karri’s smelly shoe.

  “Don’t stop.” Karri’s voice is sharp. “Keep moving!”

  Olli remembers where he is and latches on to the idea of moving. Crawling is all that matters. Here underground, there is nothing but crawling.

  It would be easy to lose himself here. The world left on the surface is too far away to feel real. The Blomrooses, Tourula, his mother and father… they’re all irrelevant. Meaningless.

  But one thing is true here; there is one truth that they can’t forget even for a second. They must always remind each other of it: keep moving, keep crawling forward, otherwise the darkness will come and swallow you. It wants everything that comes here in its arms, wants everything for its own. It takes power to resist and return to the light.

  It’s been a minute, or hours, since Olli hung his jacket on a branch and crawled into the hole. Since then centuries full of thoughts whispered by the dead have flowed through his mind.

  They’ve changed him.

  He’s different from the way he was when he crawled into that hole. The secret passages have purged him of all that he had accumulated around him. He no longer even remembers the name of the person he was before. The person who is here, crawling, is naked and nameless and weightless.

  It crawls deep into the dark and smiles.

  He’s crawling. His name and all the other things do come to him every so often. They land on him like crows and make him heavy and slow.

  Under the ground, he can see things. There are faint particles of light that sometimes gather around one thing or another and attach themselves to it. Then, for a moment, the invisible is visible, until the particles break off and continue on their way.

  Olli sees all kinds of things.

  Roots poking through the ceiling of the tunnel.

  Underground intersections.

  Passages stretching up and down and off to the sides.

  And figures—barely real, furtive; small, large, fast, slow; perhaps animals, perhaps something else.

  No need to worry, Karri whispers. They’ll stay away from us.

  Olli doesn’t worry. He just keeps crawling.

  He bumps into Karri.

  Karri has stopped in front of some kind of door. It’s small, like a little hatch. The light particles are attached to it. Olli doesn’t remember it from the last time they were here. But maybe it was here—your memory plays tricks on you under the ground.

  Karri tugs at the hatch. It’s stuck. He has to wrench at it with all his strength. Stones fall down off the walls of the tunnel. For a moment it feels as if the passage will collapse. This doesn’t really worry Olli.

  Karri tells Olli to go through the door.

  He goes through.

  On the other side of the hatch, it’s no less dark. But Olli senses that there is space around him now. The ceiling is high, the walls far apart. He stands up and walks farther in, his hands stretched out in front of him.


  Karri is still in the doorway.

  Then he asks Olli, “Can you see her?”

  Olli doesn’t understand. “Who am I supposed to see?” he asks, his voice amused.

  The answer is so long in coming that Olli thinks Karri must have gone away and left him here alone.

  “Do you see the girl? Look at the girl.”

  “It’s dark in here,” Olli protests. “I can’t see anyone.”

  “Look hard and you’ll see her,” Karri whispers. His words hiss like insects. Olli starts to feel cold.

  “Look at her hair,” Karri says.

  It’s difficult to say which direction the voice is coming from. It sounds close by and far away. “Look how golden her hair is.”

  Olli opens his eyes as wide as he can. The darkness is deeper here than in the other passages. Then the particles of light come. They start to gather together and he does see something.

  Hair.

  A girl’s curly hair.

  Golden yellow.

  Olli reaches his hand towards the light particles, then jerks it back with a start when he feels the strands of hair.

  “And her lips,” Karri’s voice continues, tense and breathless. “Can you see them? Red lips. Soft and curving. Can you see them smiling at you?…”

  Something red flickers in the blackness.

  “And her eyes, Olli… What kind of eyes does she have?”

  Olli meets the gaze of the stranger.

  “Blue,” he says, trembling. “No, green. I don’t know. They make me think of the sea.”

  He’s scared now.

  “Do you think she has beautiful eyes?” Karri asks.

  Olli whispers that he does. He is still staring into her green eyes. Then they disappear into the darkness they came from. There’s a scratching and rustling. Someone or something is moving in the dark.

  “What about my voice?”