He repositioned himself and tried again. This time the cover moved, but not without a great deal of effort. It slid across the concrete, grinding with enough noise, it seemed, to be heard from at least Memphis, but no one came to see what he was doing. When the cover was pushed far enough over to allow them to enter, he stopped to catch his breath and peered into the thick darkness below. Warm air rose up to meet his face and suddenly he was struck by the magnitude of what he was doing.
Up until now he’d been single-mindedly playing along with the box, contemplating the mystery first and his doubts second. But now he was taking a fabulous risk. He was getting ready to trespass in what was undoubtedly very restricted university property. If he and Brandy were caught in these tunnels, they would almost certainly face very serious charges. They could be expelled. They could be handed over to the city police and arrested. In his need to follow these clues he had managed to put both himself and Brandy in a very vulnerable position. And yet, Brandy had ultimately chosen to come with him of her own free will.
“Something wrong?”
Albert glanced up at her and then quickly looked around. Still no one had appeared. “Just catching my breath,” he replied. “Want me to go first?”
Brandy nodded quickly. He could tell she was nervous about going down there, and he didn’t blame her.
“Okay.” An iron ladder was bolted to the concrete on one wall of the tunnel. He placed his backpack on the ground next to it and climbed carefully into the darkness. He paused once to withdraw one of the flashlights from the bag and then descended into the tunnel.
For a brief moment he stood in the darkness, feeling the humid atmosphere. He knew that the tunnel stretched some distance in both directions, probably at least the full length of the sidewalk, and he allowed himself only that moment to feel the vulnerability of his blindness before turning on the flashlight.
“Hand me the backpack.”
Brandy knelt down beside the hole and lowered the bag down to him.
Albert took it and slid his arms through the straps. “Okay. Come on down. Watch your step.”
“Someone’s coming.”
“What?”
“Turn off the flashlight!”
Albert obeyed without delay. In an instant he was swallowed by darkness. He looked up through the opening above the ladder and saw that Brandy had vanished. Voices rose from the direction of the field house.
In the darkness, Albert felt terribly vulnerable. He wasn’t able to examine the tunnel very well in the short time the flashlight was on, but he’d seen enough to give his imagination plenty to work with. The tunnel stretched beyond the reach of the beam in both directions. Huge pipes ran the entire length of one wall while thick bundles of cables snaked along the other. Overhead was a freeway of water pipes. A locked switchbox of some sort was mounted near the ladder. The only other things he’d seen were concrete and shadows. The air was musty and warm. Far ahead he could see a narrow, dim light casting eerie, motionless shadows across the wall and lamplight drifted through a number of grates in the sidewalk. There was a grumbling of distant machinery that suddenly sounded like the snoring of some enormous beast. Standing alone in the darkness, it was far too easy to imagine things slinking toward him, nasty, drooling things with teeth and claws. The walls began to close; the cables and pipes unfastened themselves and reached out for him. Claustrophobia crept over him and childhood terrors rose from long dormant chambers of his mind.
The voices grew closer, more audible. Boys. At least two of them. He could not hear the subject of their conversation, but he heard when the subject changed.
“Whoa! Watch out.” One voice. Deep. Smooth.
“Yeah, that’s not dangerous at all.” Another voice, this one lighter. Softer.
Shadows passed over the opening and the voices faded. Somebody changed the subject, a third voice, he thought, but wasn’t sure. It could have been the first again. He focused on their voices, tried to picture the people they belonged to and wondered how different they really were from what he imagined.
He didn’t like being blind. Without the ability to view his surroundings, he was at the mercy of his imagination, and his imagination could be surprisingly frightening. And he hated being frightened. Fear was an illogical reaction to things like this. Fear should be reserved for human cruelty and natural disasters, not for empty, dark corridors. Standing in the darkness now, he thought he could almost feel the fur of some snarling creature brushing against the leg of his pants.
When the voices were completely gone he concentrated on the box and on his plan. The boys changing the subject meant that the open entrance to the tunnel was already forgotten. They probably assumed that it was left open by a forgetful maintenance worker or by some kids goofing around.
After what seemed like hours, he heard more footsteps. Then another shadow fell across the opening and Brandy’s voice drifted down to him like the welcome ring of rescue vehicles to a disaster scene. “They’re gone.”
Albert snapped on the flashlight with all the force of a drowning man gasping for air. Light filled the tunnel again, mercifully chasing away the darkness and revealing not a single drooling creature. There was not even a small rat to blame his irrationality on. As always when he found himself relieved of such situations where his imagination overpowered his senses, he felt embarrassed. It seemed to him that Brandy must be able to see him blush, that he must have his silly childishness written across his face in brilliant red hues.
“I couldn’t cover the hole. I just started walking. Went right past them and they didn’t even notice me. I went up past the field house and circled back.” She eased down onto the ladder and began to descend. She sounded out of breath. “I think they noticed the hole.”
“Yeah, but they didn’t think much about it.” Her quick thinking impressed Albert. He might have tried to run and hide and most certainly would have attracted their curiosity. “We should be fine.”
Once Brandy was off the ladder, Albert handed her the flashlight and then climbed up and slid the cover noisily back into place. It was a little bit easier from down here. Gravity worked with him more. When they were effectively sealed in, he removed the second flashlight, a can of spray paint and the box from the backpack and slipped it on again. With only the extra batteries inside, it was much lighter.
“That was really cool, actually,” Brandy remarked as he fumbled with the backpack. The girlish excitement in her voice lifted his spirits and helped to settle his nerves from his time in the dark. “I haven’t done anything like this since I was a little girl.”
“Did you sneak into a lot of tunnels when you were a kid?”
Brandy smiled. “Sort of. My cousins and I used to sneak into our grandma’s basement when no one was looking. We weren’t supposed to be down there, but it was so cool and creepy. It had this narrow little stairway and the floor was always a little muddy.” Those days seemed so far away now. It had been four or five years since she’d really spent any time with any of her cousins. She was the youngest of the five and they were all grown up now. The others were all married or engaged. It was kind of sad. Thinking back on it now, it felt less like she’d outgrown her childhood and more like life had outgrown her.
Albert chuckled at the thought of her creeping around in an old basement. “Sounds like some of the stuff I used to do.” He thought of his grandparents’ farm. The old, leaning barn. The cellar. Plenty of places he wasn’t supposed to go, but always did. That was so long ago. Could he possibly already be so old as to have such distant memories?