by Brian Harmon
“Where do you suppose that goes?” Brandy wondered aloud.
Some basement was Albert’s guess. Or maybe the basement of a basement. But he wasn’t interested in the door. There was obviously no way to open it and it wasn’t on the map. He shrugged and set his eyes on the left side of the room, where a rusty railing separated them from a twelve-foot drop. Another rusty ladder led down into the lower space where another open gate waited.
Brandy crossed the room and studied the door. It was bolted shut so tightly that it didn’t even rattle when she pushed on it. It could have been nailed shut, for all she knew. She put her ear to it and listened for a moment, but it was silent on the other side.
“It’s one o’clock in the morning,” Albert said. “Unless it opens right into the party room at one of the frat houses, I doubt you’ll hear anything.”
Brandy shot him a curt look. “There might have been machines or something.”
“That’s true,” he admitted.
“Thank you.”
“Come on. We’re getting closer.”
They descended the ladder and continued on. Left at the bottom of the ladder. Right some distance beyond that, past one intersection and then right again at the next.
“So what do you think we’re going to find down here, anyway?” Brandy asked as she lit a cigarette.
Albert shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“You haven’t even imagined?”
“Not really.” It was the truth. He spent so much time trying to solve the puzzles and figuring out how to follow the map, that he really hadn’t thought much about where it might lead them, only that it must lead somewhere. He hoped it would be something fantastic enough to make all this worth it.
Brandy paused to mark the wall again and Albert glanced back at her. “You’re the one who was so intent on coming down here. Tell me what you think we’ll find when we get there.”
“I really don’t know.”
“Humor me.” She turned and set her soft eyes on his. There was playfulness in her expression, but there was something else there as well. Albert thought she was testing him, trying to feel him out for something. A lie, perhaps.
“A treasure chest?” he offered. “Some ancient scrolls? A big X and a shovel? Regis Philbin and a studio audience?”
Brandy smiled, but he could tell she wasn’t really amused. “Come on. What is it you really want to find down here?”
Albert frowned. What did he want to find? What kind of question was that? Did it really matter what they found?
Brandy stood and watched him for a moment while she smoked, waiting for his answer.
“I don’t know,” he said again.
“Really?” She continued to watch him for a moment. Albert watched her watch him, unsure of what else to say. He’d already told her he didn’t know. Finally, she looked off down the darkened tunnel as if daydreaming and said, “I think it would be awesome if we found a lost vault. Maybe a gangster’s hideout.” She turned her brilliant eyes back to him. “Someone like Al Capone, you know.” She looked down at her cigarette and was silent for a moment as she pondered the thought. “Imagine a cramped little room with a gas lantern on a table and a stack of stolen money from a bank heist.” She looked up at him again and the youthful fascination in her eyes was mesmerizing. “Maybe even a bottle of scotch and a half-full glass. Someplace they thought they were coming back to but never did. Maybe someplace they were the morning before the police finally caught up with them. You know what I’m saying?”
Albert nodded. “I think I do.”
“It probably sounds stupid, doesn’t it?”
“Not at all.” It was the truth. There was something very sweet in her ability to imagine such a thing. It was far fetched as all hell, of course. To begin with, somebody sent them the map to get them here. Why would they pass the credit for such an incredible discovery to them? But there was no doubt in his mind that such a place could exist. A mobster gunned down in a police standoff would undoubtedly leave many secrets untold, but for something like that to exist here of all places…
But then again, why not?
“But you don’t have any idea at all what you want to find?”
“I guess not. I mean, it’s not so much what we find as that we find something at all, you know? It’s like the way I wanted to solve the puzzles on the box. It wasn’t what I expected to find, it was that I could find it.”
He stood there a moment, considering what he’d just said. “For me, it’s not really where I’m going as how I get there. Does that sound lame?”
Brandy smiled. “No. Not at all. I think maybe you’ve just got your priorities straight.”
Albert shrugged. “I guess I’m not really all that imaginative. I tend to look at the world logically. Mathematically, I guess.”
“I don’t know. I think it takes a good amount of imagination to solve puzzles like you do.”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
They began to walk again.
After a moment Albert said, “I think I’d value knowledge more than treasure. I’d love to uncover a secret.”
Brandy smiled. “Like an eighty-year-old gangster hideout?”
Albert laughed. “Yeah. Just like that.”
They continued forward and soon they were distracted by a loud buzzing noise from somewhere ahead. Albert recognized the sound at once. Flies. Lots of them. A tunnel branched off to the right ahead of them and the noise intensified as they approached it.
“Tell me we’re not going that way.”
Albert looked down at the map. “No. We go straight.”
“Good.”
As they passed, Albert caught a brief, overwhelming whiff of decomposing flesh. Rat, he thought, pushing forward. Rats lived in places like these and they must die somewhere. But once the tunnel was behind him and the buzzing noise was fading, he wondered if he should have stopped to check the carcass. He remembered what Brandy told him the other day about students disappearing over the years. They could have received a mysterious box, too. Her words were humbling at the time and now he found them chilling. Suddenly it was far too easy to imagine that the rotting, maggot-ridden thing he left unseen in the darkness was a human corpse. What if she had been right about the sender of the box having malicious intentions and he just missed their only warning?
That’s stupid. And yet, there was no stupidity in being cautious. They still didn’t know who sent them the box and key.
But it was too late now. If he turned back he would have to voice his irrational thoughts and that would only serve to frighten Brandy.
But Brandy was already frightened. This place was far creepier than she imagined it would be. She reached into her purse and pulled out her cell phone. “No signal,” she said after staring at the screen for a moment.
“Lot of concrete and rock between us and the tower, I’d imagine.”
“Yeah.” She put it back in her purse without turning it off. The idea that she could no longer phone for help made her uneasy.
Ahead of them, the tunnel opened onto another one. The map said they would turn right here and then take the next left after that. Then they’d be nearing the end. There weren’t very many passages left on the map.
But it wasn’t quite that easy. Although the passage they were now approaching was large enough to walk comfortably in, even side-by-side if they wished—the first of its kind in a while—its floor lay beneath four inches of standing water.
For a moment, the two of them stood in silence. They did not need to speak. They were both thinking the same thoughts. The imagination held no end to the things that could be in that stagnant and trash-littered water, from human filth and garbage juice to dead rats and live snakes.
Albert stepped up to the water’s edge and shined his flashlight into the darkness ahead.
“I’m…” Brandy’s voice failed her. There were no words to describe the disgust she felt at the thought of what she knew Albert was thinking. “No. I’m
not wading through that.”
“Maybe it’s just rainwater.”
“And maybe it’s not.”
The water was murky, but he could see the bottom. It was spotted with garbage, dead leaves and cigarette butts and a shimmering, oily film covered the surface. There was no current. He peered as far as his light would reach in both directions and then, satisfied that there were no bloodthirsty crocodiles waiting to snap off his legs, he stepped out into the water.
“Oh, gross!”
There was an icy sting to the water, and a smell wafted up from beneath him, like an old damp cellar, but with a subtle yet unmistakable swampy stench. “It’s okay. It’s only runoff from the street.”
Brandy made a sound that was more a growl than a response.
“Come on. It’s not that bad.”
“I’m not getting my shoes in that.”
Albert felt a pang of impatience. He understood that it was not an entirely pleasant idea, but he could certainly think of much worse situations than having to wade through dirty water. “So take them off.”
“No way!”
They stood there, staring at each other. Albert saw the cobwebs on her shirt and in her hair and felt his impatience drain away as quickly as it came. He was eager to reach the destination on the map. His curiosity was driving him. He hadn’t really been aware of what she must be feeling. He opened his mouth to apologize, but she didn’t give him the chance. With a frustrated groan, she stepped off into the water. Her face twisted into an expression of pure disgust as it spilled over her heels and soaked into her socks.
Albert stood there a moment, watching her. He suddenly felt very bad.
“Well come on!” she snapped when he didn’t move, and he turned quickly to lead the way. He still wanted to apologize, but he sensed it would do no good.
They waded on, their flashlight beams reflecting off the rippling surface of the water, making the moldy concrete walls shimmer. The next turn was about twenty feet down the tunnel, and the small but dry passageway that awaited them was a welcome sight.
“That was horrible.”
“It was just drainage.”
“I don’t care.”
“I’m sorry.”
Brandy shook her head. “Forget it.” In the end, it was her decision to follow him. It wasn’t his fault that the passage was flooded. “Are we almost there yet?”
“I think we are.” Assuming these next few tunnels aren’t twenty miles long, he thought but didn’t say. The map so far was accurate, but by no means to scale.
The next tunnel turned out to be only a few yards ahead and was extremely small, forcing them to continue once again on their hands and knees. It was too short for Albert to crawl through while wearing his backpack, so he removed it and pushed it ahead of him. At the very least it made a good tool for clearing out the cobwebs, although there seemed to be far less of them down here than there were in earlier tunnels.
Albert wondered what purpose a tunnel this small actually served. Was it some kind of overflow pipe? If water periodically filled this passage, it might explain the fewer spiders.
“We make a left up here somewhere.”
About thirty feet into the tunnel, a hole had been knocked into the wall on the left and a larger tunnel, set lower than the one they were currently crawling through, was visible beyond.
“I think we’re getting closer,” said Albert as he examined the new tunnel. This one was older than all the rest. Its walls were made of rough stone, the ceiling rounded. The floor was packed earth. But it was tall enough to walk upright. There was a pile of rock and dirt leading down to the floor, as though the newer tunnel had been built right through the older one.
Albert shoved his backpack through the hole and then crawled out after it, carefully maneuvering himself across the rocks. When he was clear, he turned and offered Brandy his hand.
“Oh wow.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you think this is one of those tunnels I was talking about earlier? The really old ones?”
“I don’t know. Sure looks ancient.”
“Wow.” She looked back at the hole through which they’d just crawled. The previous tunnel was actually a hollow cylinder of concrete protruding from the rubble. “Looks like they just built right over the top of it, doesn’t it? What do you think it was used for?”
“Without knowing exactly how old it is, I don’t think there’s any way to know.”
“Do you think it really predates the city?”
Albert considered it. The construction was definitely very rough. The surfaces were all uneven. It could have been built by anyone at any time. It certainly lacked the modern engineering of the newer, concrete tunnels, but that didn’t necessarily mean much. The ability to dig a successful tunnel in the first place suggested some level of modern technological understanding. Didn’t it? “I don’t think so,” he said at last. “I wonder if it would have survived the New Madrid earthquake.”
Brandy thought about it for a moment while she lit another cigarette. “I don’t know. It could have.”
Albert contemplated it for a moment. The New Madrid earthquake was one of the largest ever recorded in the United States. It was felt across over a million square miles. He wondered if such earthquake damage could account for the confusing labyrinth of tunnels. He supposed it was likely that some of the tunnels would have needed to be rerouted. But then again, hardly any disaster ever leveled everything man-made. There was a very good chance that this tunnel survived that quake. For all he knew, the rubble through which that last tunnel was laid was from an earthquake-induced cave-in.
“I guess there’s no way to know.”
“Maybe.” Albert paused and looked at the map again. “Or maybe the answer to this will tell us.”
“That would be cool.” She leaned in to take a look at the map and let out a smoky breath that danced across Albert’s face. She quickly waved it away, remembering that he did not smoke. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Albert said. “My mom smokes. I’m used to it. Bugs the hell out of my sister though.”
“You have a sister?” she asked as they started walking again.
“Yeah. Rebecca.”
“Older or younger?”
“Older. She’s twenty-five.”
“Did she go to school here, too?”
“No. She went to UMSL,” he replied, pronouncing the university by its acronym.
Brandy nodded. “I have some friends who go there. Why did you decide to come down here?”
“I guess I was looking for a reason to escape,” replied Albert. “Most of the people I went to high school with found colleges in the St. Louis area. I wanted something different.”
“Did you not have a lot of friends?”
“No, I had friends. A few, anyway.” But not very many. He supposed it was a pretty lonely existence where he grew up. It was not as though his family didn’t love him. He was close to his parents and he certainly had no quarrels with Becky, although when he was a boy he’d been the very epitome of the annoying younger brother. But he’d always had his space and they theirs and those spaces had always been respected. He spent most of his time with books and games. He didn’t have the vast number of friends that Becky had, and he didn’t have any interest in the sorts of activities that would have allowed him to make more. He also lacked the outgoingness of his sister, the cheerleader and homecoming queen. “How about you?” he asked. “Any brothers or sisters?”
Brandy shook her head. “I’m an only child. Daddy’s spoiled little girl.”
“I’ll bet you have him wrapped around your little finger.”
“Only a little bit.”
Ahead of them, the tunnel forked off. One branch sank into the darkness to the left, the other to the right. “That’s the last turn on the map. We go left.”
Brandy turned and shined the flashlight back the way they’d come. “Did you hear something?”
Albert turned and stu
died the tunnel. “No. Did you?”
“I don’t know. Probably not. I’m just paranoid.”
“Come on.”
They began to move again. They were getting close. Whatever it was the map was leading them toward—if it was leading anywhere at all—was at the end of that last tunnel. If there were any ill intentions involved in getting them down here they would soon find out.
“What do you suppose is down the right tunnel?”
“Probably closed off just like it was back there. Or caved in.”
They turned at the fork and started down what the map suggested was the last leg of their trip. They walked in silence, their conversation having died away completely. Every now and then one of them would glance back the way they came. Somehow the seed of paranoia had been planted and now they were overrun with it.
Albert looked again at Brandy. It seemed surreal to him that she was actually here. A week ago he could only have fantasized about spending an evening alone with her. Again he wondered what it was that made her decide to come with him. Was it really just the adventure of it all? He couldn’t help but hope that her decision was at least a little bit about him.
He turned forward again just in time to see a wall materialize out of the gloom. The two of them stopped and stared. It was a dead end.
“What the fuck?” Brandy turned and scanned the tunnel walls with her flashlight, trying to understand. They followed the map step by step, never faltering, they’d even waded that nasty, stagnant water, and for what? A dead end? She stared back the way they’d come, feeling like a rat in a maze with no solution. If whoever gave them the box and the key wanted them down here for sinister purposes, they were now literally up against a wall.
