The Box (5 page)
The initials
, he thought.
G. N. J.
Every building on campus was named after someone. The Craw Building was named after William Craw. Wuhr was named after Daniel Wuhr. His dormitory was named after Walter Lumey. Initials led to a name, a name led to a building, a building having something in common with music…
No. It was too much of a leap, too doubtful. If the location of this metal cover was actually meant to be found, whoever encrypted it had placed an enormous amount of faith in his ability to make such a connection. After all, when he thought of the music building he didn’t think of
songs
so much as
instruments
. He thought of marching bands, not rock bands.
And presuming he
did
actually make the connection, it took an even greater leap of faith to expect him to spot the number twelve from the back door of the building, especially when he was looking for a Z.
Maybe that was precisely the point. Maybe whoever sent the box intended for the puzzle to be too difficult to solve.
Albert frowned at this idea. That made even less sense. Why send the box at all then? No, that wasn’t logical in the least. He looked up at the clock face. Perhaps whoever carved the number into the box did not think about his two being mistaken for a Z. Would the number twelve have been such a hard thing to find if he’d known what he was looking for? Somehow he doubted it. Twelve was a relatively common number. It probably appeared dozens of times in and around the building.
Room
twelve was one example.
Most unlikely of all, he realized, was the understanding that one needed to actually stand in front of the post with the number on it and recognize the seven o’clock digit as an arrow pointing away from the center of the clock face toward an inconspicuous metal plate set into the sidewalk several yards from the nearest corner of the building. Shouldn’t his first thought have been to try and find a way into the clock tower to look for the final clue? Or to make some sort of numerical or symbolic connection with the number seven or the seven o’clock hour?
He remembered the strange double-take he’d done to recognize the panic button, as if something had whispered into his very brain. He tried to remember exactly what it was that made him look again, but he couldn’t quite recall.
This wasn’t how he usually thought his way through a puzzle. The solutions came in logical steps, not gut feelings. He followed a path, unlocked the clues…
He forced the idea out of his head and stuffed the box back into his backpack. That was stupid. He’d just gotten lucky, that was all. He’d found the solution quickly instead of turning up a hundred dead ends before locating the tunnel entrance. But all the way back to Lumey, he kept glancing back over his shoulder, half expecting someone to be watching him.
The creepiness that Albert felt that evening behind Juggers Hall was gone before he fell asleep that night and by the next morning he couldn’t wait to see what was in those tunnels.
He spent the morning planning, trying to decide the best way to proceed. He needed some supplies. Flashlights for sure, with plenty of extra batteries, and it wouldn’t hurt to have a plan to keep from getting lost.
It was maddening. He grew more and more eager to see what mysteries waited beneath the sidewalks. If the map on the box was true, then it was certainly more than just a simple steam tunnel stretching out from the power plant. It would have to be connected directly to the city sewer system, and even then the tunnels would have to be much more complicated than a city this size would really require. The map itself was simply a set of lines depicting only the path he would be taking, but along the way there were dozens of short lines branching off the main path, suggesting intersections that could lead anywhere. It seemed like so much for a city where the college made up a fair percentage of the population. He wondered if there was something hidden down there, something fantastic.
He drove to the local Wal-Mart and purchased his supplies, preparing himself for what he was sure would be a fantastic adventure. And later, before lecture, he told Brandy of his discoveries, only to be brought back to earth with a resounding crash.
“The
sewers
?”
“Well, not
sewers
,” Albert replied, already sure of what she was thinking. “They’re
some
sort of tunnels. They’re probably connected to the sewers somewhere, but I think they’re mostly service tunnels running from the power plant. Steam tunnels, probably.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Maybe. But who knows.”
Brandy did not reply. She was searching the contents of her purse for some lip-gloss.
“You in?”
She turned and looked at him as though he’d lost his mind. “What do you mean am I ‘in’?”
“I mean I’d like to go down there and look around. I want to see where the map takes us.”
She gave him a look that was all she needed to say, her eyes narrowed, her nose wrinkled, a genuine “are you nuts” expression if ever he’d seen one. “No way.”
Albert looked down at his notebook. She’d succeeded in making him feel perfectly silly.
“I don’t care if there’s a million dollars in gold and jewels down there, I wouldn’t wade through sewage for anything.” She went back to looking for her lip-gloss. “Besides, what makes you sure there’s anything down there anyway?”
“Maybe there’s not. Maybe there is. Weirder shit’s happened.”
“Touché.”
“I bought some supplies. I think it’s worth a look.”
“You’re crazy. Somebody gave us that box to get us to go down there. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t care much for the thought of being underground in the dark, maybe too far down for anyone to hear me screaming, and knowing that somebody
I don’t know
knows I’m down there.”
Albert nodded. He couldn’t really argue that logic.
“This isn’t the world’s safest campus, you know. Remember a couple of years ago when two students disappeared?”
“I hadn’t heard about that.”
“One in the winter, one in the spring. Never found. Somebody else was murdered a year or two before that, too. A girl. Raped and strangled. They found her in the bushes near the Cube.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. They all could have received a mysterious box, too.”
Albert could think of no reply. She was right, of course. He remembered that weird paranoia he’d felt after he located the tunnel entrance. He wondered again at the odds of correctly solving the clues in such a short amount of time.
Brandy had been speaking to him, but not looking at him. Now she turned and looked directly at him, her blue eyes brilliant. “Just stay above ground, okay? You’re a nice guy. Don’t get yourself killed.”
That pretty much settled it. After class he came home and sat down at his desk. He felt like a first class idiot. He’d spent good money on flashlights and batteries, and all for a stupid expedition that made no sense to anyone but himself. There was no proof that there was anything down there. There was nothing but a map and a box full of junk. Furthermore, she was absolutely right when she said that somebody gave them the box, somebody whose intentions had obviously been for them to follow the map, but who neglected to mention
why
. In a country where there were something like thirty-five serial killers active at any given time and somewhere someone turned up missing, raped, brutalized or murdered almost hourly, it was far more likely that such a map would lead to a sociopath than to a treasure.
Above all, Albert Cross was a logical-minded person, and he could not deny that, logically, nothing about the box made any sense.
That night, he took the box with all its contents, locked it and then placed it and the key inside the plastic bag with the things he’d bought that morning. He then dropped the entire box into his bottom desk drawer and closed it.
On the following Monday, Albert arrived at class early, and was sitting at the table when Brandy walked in. She was wearing a small, purple dress, and he was surprised by how great it looked on her. Her slender legs were smooth and sexy, her figure lean, modest, pretty. She dropped her backpack on the table and sat down next to him, her knees neatly together, perfectly ladylike.
“Hello,” she chimed with tired cheerfulness.
“Hi. You look nice today.”
“Thanks.” She smiled at him as she sat down, genuinely pleased by his compliment.
“Special occasion or just wanted to dress nice?”
“Just wanted to.”
“That’s cool. If you know you’re pretty, show it.”
She smiled at him again, this time with a shy sort of embarrassment. He had flattered her. The look made him blush a little.
“You going to be ready for Friday’s test?” she asked, mercifully changing the subject.
“I think so. How about you?”
“Tests always make me nervous, but we’ll see.”
“I’ve always liked tests. Usually means no homework.”
“That’s true.”
“I’m going into the tunnels.”
Brandy looked at him so quickly that she nearly startled him. “What?”
“I’m going. I’ve been thinking about it all weekend.” Obsessing over it was more like it. He hadn’t been able to stop wondering where the box came from and what it meant. He could not get it off his mind. He kept finding himself gazing toward his desk, toward the drawer where it was hidden away. “I have to know what’s down there and I have to know why that stuff was sent to us.”
“Albert, I don’t know.”
“I know. I’m just telling you because this belongs to you too. If you don’t want to come that’s fine, I understand, but I can’t go down there without at least letting you know I’m going. Give you the option.”
“I’m not going.”
“Okay.”
“I really don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“I know.”
“It’s not safe.”
“I’m going tonight. If you don’t see me again, you’ll know that for sure.”
“Don’t say that. It’s scary.”
“I’m sorry.”
She shook her head. “Crazy.”
“I know.”
She began to remove her books from her backpack. “I mean I want to know what’s down there too, but
Jesus
.”
“I’ll let you know tomorrow.”
Brandy laughed. It was a short bark of a laugh, the sort of laugh that was akin to rolling ones eyes. “What is it with boys and adventures?”
“Too many cartoons.”
Again she laughed, this time more freely. “Yeah. I think so.”
“If you decide you want to come along, that’s fine. I’ve got two flashlights. Otherwise, I’m fine solo too.”
Brandy looked at him without speaking. Something stirred in her eyes, something he did not quite understand, but thought was a struggle. A part of her wanted to go, he could tell, she wasn’t really trying very hard to talk him out of it, after all, but it was only a small part of her. He hadn’t expected her to go, and why should she? Look at her. She was a beautiful young woman. He did not very well picture her crawling through dirty tunnels.
“No pressure,” he promised.
She said nothing more about the matter, and when class was over, she quickly gathered her things and left ahead of him.
Albert was disappointed. It would have been nice to have her along. It would have been sort of like a date, although a terribly unromantic one. He stuffed his books into his backpack, taking his time, and started home.
He’d done his best to invite Brandy on this adventure. He’d wanted her company, to spend some time alone with her. He had hoped that they would be able to get to know each other a little better. But it was also the right thing to do. He felt that whatever was down there belonged as much to her as to him, and he would not have wanted
her
to set off into the tunnels without
him
. And if she was right about the dangers, then at least someone would know where he’d gone if he didn’t make it back.
Besides, he’d already known that she would likely refuse the offer. He’d already resigned himself to proceeding without her. This was why it came as such a surprise when he found Brandy waiting for him outside the main doors, a cigarette in one hand, the other clinging to the strap of her bag. Her hair whipped across her face in the breeze and she squinted against the bright sunlight. She didn’t look at him, but rather out at the sprawling campus around them.
“I just know I’m going to regret this,” she said.
They met on the back steps of Juggers Hall. Some research had revealed to Albert that this was the business building up until the construction of the new Craw Building a few years earlier. Now it was the music building.
Albert arrived first, dressed in blue jeans and a long sleeve shirt and wearing his bulky, green backpack. It was a little chilly, but he chose to leave his jacket at home. He counted on being out of the wind and doing a lot of walking. Brandy arrived shortly after, dressed in jeans, tennis shoes and a dark blue sweatshirt. Her purse was slung over one shoulder. It wasn’t as sexy as the dress she’d been wearing that afternoon, but she was no less lovely.
Albert had told her to meet him here at midnight. From here they would slip into the service tunnel by way of the entrance he’d found. Even on a Monday night, there would be people out at all hours on a university campus, but he counted on the traffic being light by midnight. It would have been safer to wait until after two or three, but then they ran some risk of surfacing in the morning when traffic on the sidewalk would be terrible. The university would not take well to students walking around in their steam tunnels. It was likely a major violation.
The area was deserted. Two girls passed by just after Albert first arrived, but he’d seen no one since. There was no traffic to worry about. There were no roads within sight and from here all the buildings stood with their backs to them. No lights shined in any windows, the custodians either at work elsewhere in the buildings or, more likely, finished for the night. Luck was with them.
“Well,” announced Brandy, not sure what to say. “I’m here.”
“Yes you are.” Albert was looking around, checking again for anyone who might have crept near enough to see them, but the area was still deserted. It was almost eerie in its still silence. During the day this area bustled with foot traffic almost continuously.
“So now what?”
“Now we go down.” He descended the steps and crossed the wide sidewalk to the tunnel entrance. He looked around one last time and then knelt and pulled at the cover. It was heavy as hell, more so than he expected. For a moment he thought it was going to prove too heavy for him to open, and the thought was maddening. If he couldn’t move this cover, then what could they possibly do? It was the only way in that he knew about, and even if he did find another entrance, he was certain the map started right here. He hadn’t been able to find any information at all about these tunnels online, much less a map.
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?
“I guess that’s part of the reason I wanted to do this,” Brandy said. “It makes me feel like a kid on a big adventure.” She gazed around wonderingly. It was a warm feeling, getting that old jolt she remembered from her childhood adventures.
“I wondered what changed your mind.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I still think this is kind of stupid.”
It
was
stupid. If anyone caught them down here there’d be hell to pay one way or another.
“What do you suppose this tunnel’s for anyway?” She was looking back toward the field house. A few yards beyond the ladder there were some steps leading down and a tangle of pipes and valves near the floor.
“Steam tunnel.” He examined the map on the two sides of the box, trying to determine which end was the beginning. “Probably runs from the power plant to Juggers and the field house. I think all the electric, water, phone and networking lines run through tunnels like these, along with heat in the form of steam through these big pipes. Hence the term ‘
steam tunnel
’.” He looked toward the steps for a moment and then turned and looked back the other way. He wondered if that distant light was coming from the power plant. “I don’t really know for certain, though. I tried to look it up online and couldn’t find anything about Briar Hills.”
“I’m sure the university doesn’t really want to advertise its tunnels. I doubt if they’d be too thrilled to find us down here.”
Albert nodded. “Yeah. These things are dangerous. I didn’t find anything about Briar Hills, but I found some information on other steam tunnels. Lots of campuses use them. The one thing they all seem to have in common is that they all have confined spaces and extremely hot temperatures. There’s a very real threat of heat stroke and severe burns from the machinery down here.”
Brandy was looking around nervously now. “Will we be in trouble if somebody catches us?”
“Probably.”
“You could’ve told me about this
before
we came down here.”
“Would it have changed your mind?”
“Yes.” But she realized even as she replied that it probably wouldn’t have. In fact, it probably would have made the adventure even
more
appealing. Although she probably would have dressed differently.
“I’m sorry.” Albert looked back down at the map, turning it this way and that, trying to read it. “Hopefully this will keep us away from all the really dangerous areas.”
If I can figure out how to read it
, he thought. It was made up entirely of straight lines. A single line stretched around the corner of the box, making sudden sharp turns as it went. Most of the time, another line continued forward a short distance from each turn and then stopped, suggesting that the tunnel went on ahead, but was of no importance. Along the way, other lines jutted off the main path and stopped, showing other tunnels that should be passed by. Aside from this network of straight lines, there were no markings on the map. There was no start, no finish, not even an X marks the spot. “It doesn’t say which way’s up,” he observed, “but I figure if we go the wrong way we won’t get far before the map stops making sense.”
