The Box (6 page)

The tunnels beneath Briar Hills weren’t like the sewers on television. Although he knew that Briar Hills in no way required the vast subterranean systems that New York City warranted, he nonetheless had pictured the wide, gloomy corridors with rounded ceilings that were so often depicted on television. What he found instead were confined, concrete passageways, many of them too short to allow them to walk without stooping. Shortly after their descent from the second passage, they were forced to continue on hands and knees beneath massive bundles of cables.

There was water everywhere. A perpetual dampness permeated the concrete around them, so that soon the knees of their jeans were soaked through. Shallow pools of standing water stretched along the floor in many of the tunnels, and the hollow echo of dripping water was as common as the shadows.

But nothing down here was constant, not even the sounds. At times there was a strumming of machinery echoing around them and at other times the tunnels were silent as tombs. Several times they were startled by strange noises they knew was the natural gurgling of water through some machine or some other harmless thing, perhaps even the simple flushing of a toilet somewhere above them, but which sounded like the gargling moans of something unearthly in the shadows. And several times there were skittering, scuffling noises that very likely did belong to something alive and hungry (but almost certainly small and harmless).

At one point they stepped out into a large, open tunnel with an enormous pipe running along the center of the floor. Here the machinery was the loudest and the temperature the hottest. But there were lights in this tunnel, and the floor was dry for a change. It was a welcome passage while they traveled it, but too soon the map told them to exit into a passage on the right and they found themselves in another damp corridor that took them to another rusty ladder that waited to take them deeper into the darkness.

From here, the floors became muddier, the walls slimier, and soon it became apparent to Albert that they were no longer in the university steam tunnels. It had been some time since they saw or heard any kind of machinery and the overall feel of the tunnels was different now. They found long stretches of round, concrete passages with few intersections. A few times they heard cars passing somewhere overhead and once they heard voices drifting from drainage grates in an adjoining tunnel, but for the most part they felt completely isolated from the world above them.

The worst part about these newer tunnels was the cobwebs. These rarely used passages were a haven for spiders of all types. Ghostly white curtains wavered at their approach, casting odd shadows across the walls. At times it looked to Albert like a city of pale silk, as if the tiny creatures had discovered a place private enough to build a metropolis. Invisible, gossamer strands licked their faces and clung to their clothes as they passed, and several times Brandy cried out in revulsion as one of the arachnid inhabitants of the silken city danced across the exposed skin of her face or hands.

“These tunnels just go on forever,” Brandy observed.

Albert nodded agreement. “I know. This city’s not that big. It seems like overkill.” The steam tunnels he’d expected. He was sure they snaked beneath the entire campus, perhaps for many miles, reaching as far as the river, and even several levels deep. But it felt to him that they’d already traveled enough tunnels to stretch from one end of the city to the other and back again. He’d begun to wonder if the entire city followed the university’s example, tying together the courthouse and the police station or the library and post office, perhaps networking the entirety of the city’s public buildings. But much of what they saw contained no equipment of any kind. It had even been a while since he last saw any cables or pipes. And yet, the labyrinth-like system didn’t seem like a very efficient sewer system. He would have thought that most of the tunnels would point east, toward the Mississippi River, but they seemed to go every which way. The tunnel they were in now didn’t look like it had ever held water. He wondered if some of these tunnels were a flood-prevention system of some kind, perhaps designed to carry large amounts of water past the city in the event that the mighty river overflowed its banks, as it was certainly known to do.

“I’ve always heard rumors about old tunnels under the city.”

Albert glanced at her, curious.

“There’re supposed to be miles and miles of them. Real old. Some people say they’re haunted.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. There’s lots of stories. Witches and voodoo. That sort of thing. Some people say that the city’s founders were into witchcraft. Used to scare the shit out of me when I was a girl.” She was looking around, uneasy at the thought. “I haven’t thought about those stories in ages. I figured they were all made up.”

“Sometimes there’s truth behind myths.”

“Yeah. I heard a friend of my parents tell them once that some of the tunnels were older than the city itself. He said no one knows how they got there.” She chuckled softly. “Daddy always said he was full of shit.”

Albert smiled. “Sometimes stories like that are comforting. Some people have a hard time believing that there aren’t any more mysteries left in the world. I guess I’m one of them.”

Brandy looked at him and smiled. “That’s kind of romantic.”

“Is it?”

“Yeah.” She turned and looked down the dark tunnel ahead. “But right now I’d rather not believe that there are secret tunnels built by centuries-old witches, if you don’t mind.”

Albert laughed. “Of course. I won’t bring it up again. But you have to promise to tell me more about those stories when we get out of here.”

“It’s a deal.” She smiled at him and he felt a sort of warmth flow from her. He couldn’t help but wonder what she was thinking.

They turned right and found a set of concrete steps descending deeper into the earth. At the bottom was another iron gate, this one different from those back in the university steam tunnels. Instead of a chain, it was secured by a simple latch and a place for a padlock. There was no lock present, however, and the gate stood ajar, as though waiting for them. Beyond the gate was a small room. There were a number of discarded soda cans and an old furnace filter lying among a scattering of cigarette butts, yellow insulation shreds and twisted strips of rusty metal. There were holes in the walls varying in size from one to eight inches in diameter, suggesting that there used to be pipes running through this room, perhaps even a heating system of some kind. Directly across from them was a heavy door with no handle.

“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.