Facts Behind the Fiction: ISU's Tunnel System (with map)

This month's story, "Tunnels," is fictional, but there actually is a series of maintenance tunnels that runs underneath Idaho State University.

I first learned of the tunnel entrance in the Trade and Technology (T&T) Building when I began working for the Electronics Department in 1974.  The T&T Building's tunnel crosses Terry Street (now named Martin Luther King, Jr. Way) to what was formerly East Hall (now, the Rendezvous Building) and runs down the hill toward the Administration Building.

In the winter, it's possible to see where some of the tunnels are, because the snow melts off the areas above the tunnels.

In 1986, an account of the tunnel system under "lower campus" (the area between 5th Avenue and 8th Avenue) was published in the student newspaper.  The article is reproduced here, along with the accompanying map.

[Click on the images to enlarge them.]

The map does not show the tunnels that exist on "upper campus," the area east of 8th Avenue (now named Cesar Chavez Avenue).

Tunnels, Part IV "Unleashing"

"It's the cemetery," says Ashley.
“Oh, Geez.”

“How’d we get here?”

“I don’t know, but it’s creepin’ me out.  Let’s go.”

“Which way?”

Ouija points.  The pink neon glow of the Tastee-Treet Drive Thru sign on the far side of Fifth Street shows through a dense stand of lilac bushes.

“The space burger place,” says Jesse.  “Let’s get out of here and go get one. I’m hungry.”

Just as the group starts toward the distant pink beacon, a tremendous howl fills the air.  The long, drawn-out wail rises and ebbs and rises again, vibrating around their heads so closely that it’s impossible for them to tell where it comes from.  Ashley clutches Jesse’s arm.  Curtis claps his hands over his ears.  His helmet rides up on his head, his hair standing on end beneath it.  Ouija and Chris shine their flashlights in each other’s faces, as if searching there for the source of the terrible sound.  The howl ends abruptly with a queer, rasping jerk, and the silence that follows is as profoundly unsettling as the sound that preceded it.

Breaking free of Ashley’s grip, Jesse starts to run, blindly.  She stumbles on a low, rounded stone curb that fences in a family of headstones and falls, arms outstretched in front of her.  Before she lands, however, other arms grab hers and haul her up, supporting her back onto her feet.

“Who’s this?” says a deep voice just above her head.

“There’s more of ‘em,” says another.  “Get ‘em.”

Three dark figures holding flashlights emerge from behind the taller stone monuments.  They surround Ashley and Ouija where they still stand as if frozen, near the trap door.  Chris and Curtis are not in sight.  Jesse is nudged back to her friends, and the strangers--all tall and dressed in black--train their flashlights on the three friends.  Ouija shines his light back defensively until one of the figures yanks it out of his grasp.  “You’ll get it back,” the deep voice says, “maybe.”

For a moment, captors and prisoners stand in silent, concentric circles, contemplating one another.  Then the tallest of the strangers speaks, and the three friends recognize him as the older brother of one of their classmates.

“S-so.  What are you guys-s doing out here?” says the stranger.  His sibilants are purposely exaggerated, covering a hint of lisp.

“‘Serp,” Ashley whispers.  Ouija nods almost imperceptibly without looking at her.  “Serp” is short for “Serpent,” a nickname inspired by the older boy’s speech.  Junior high rumor has it that Serp’s lisp is a result of being struck by lightning while fishing the Portneuf River during a storm.  Ouija remembers seeing the name scrawled on walls near their school, the winding “S” topped by a snake’s head with a protruding, forked-lightning tongue.  Serp is the leader of a small band of ninth grade boys who spend their lunch hours lounging on the back steps of the funeral parlor across the street from the high school gymnasium. 

“There were more of ‘em, Serp,” says one of his followers.

Serp moves his light from Ouija’s face to Ashley’s, then Jesse’s.  “That s-so?”

“No,” says Jesse.

Serp takes a few steps toward the three friends, and they can see that he’s not only dressed in black jeans and a long-sleeved black t-shirt, but he’s also wearing a theatrical black cape.  The cape is long, hanging below his knees, and fastened at the neck with a heavy brass medallion.  The medallion is embossed with an image of a snake twined around an inverted cross.  

“I think ‘yess.’  Find ‘em.”  At their leader’s command, two of the older boys rove their lights over the grass and nearby tombstones.  One of the lights stops on what looks like a bright white rock, a particularly round boulder lying at the base of a large grave marker.  Crossing to the white mound, the boy leans down and tugs on it, dragging Curtis to his feet and prodding him into the circle to join his friends.

“Helmet Boy,” laughs Serp, rapping Curtis lightly on the top of the head with his flashlight.  Serp points his flashlight at the two girls.  “And what are your namess?”

“Ashley.”

Jesse squints into the light.  “None of your business,” she says.

“I know you anyway,” says Serp.  “Your dad hangs out with my dad at the Bourbon Barrel.”  He turns to Ouija.  “What about you?”

“Ouija.”

“Wee-gee?  What kinda name iss that?”

One of Serp’s band joins in.  “Like the Ouija board?  That game that spells out the answers?”

Serp looks closely at Ouija.  “That it?  You the ansswer man?  You got all the ansswerss?”

“No.”

“Well, ansswer thiss, Ansswer Man.  What are little kids like you doing in the graveyard this-s late at night, huh?”

Ouija wants to look at the dark square of the tunnel entrance in the ground a few feet behind him, but he manages to turn his glance to Ashley and the others.  “Nothing,” he says.

“How late is it?” Curtis interjects.  “My mom--”  He breaks off as Ashley squeezes his arm.

Serp and the older boys ignore Curtis.  They narrow their focus to Ouija.  “Maybe,” says one of them, “they’re spyin’ on us.”

“Are you?” demands Serp.  “Are you s-spyin’ on us?”

The four younger kids break into murmurs of protest.  “Hey.  We’re just out here by accident,” Ouija explains.

“By accident,” Serp repeats.  He touches Ouija on the chest with his flashlight.  “Tell me, Ansswer Man.  Ouija Board.  What d’you think we’re doin’ out here?”

Ouija looks around, uncertainly.  He looks at Ashley and Jesse.  Ashley’s face is blank, her eyes wide.  Jesse purses her lips.  She cocks her head slightly down and to the left.  She takes a small step sideways, and her foot brushes a heavy marble cross.  Three arms of the cross are smooth and straight; the fourth ends in a jagged diagonal where it has been broken from its stone support.

Ouija draws a breath.  “I’d say you were tipping over gravestones.”  No one says anything.  Ouija glances at the medallion at Serp’s throat.  “I’d say you were having some kind of ceremony.”

“Satanists!” Curtis cries.  Ashley squeezes his arm hard and he yelps again.  “Ow!”

“Shut up, Helmet Head,” hisses Serp.  He turns back to Ouija.  “What kind of s-ceremony, would you s-say?”

Ouija shrugs and starts to speak, but Ashley beats him to it.  “‘Evil Summoning,’” she says, drawing each word out fully and clearly, as if conjuring up spirits from some deep, dark place.

The focus of the group immediately shifts to Ashley, but before Serp or anyone else can speak, Jesse takes a step forward, flinging her arms out in front of her in a casting away motion.  “Evil Unleashing!” she intones in an equally dramatic voice, and if her tongue hesitates a bit between “leash” and “leach,” only Ashley notices.

As Jesse throws up her hands, Serp’s followers instinctively take a step back.  Serp stands his ground, but his mouth hangs open slackly.  Before he can recover himself, a low groan rises from the earth behind the younger kids.  Curtis starts and looks around nervously.  Ouija and Ashley step away from each other, and in the space between them, Serp and his group see light shining up from a hole in the ground.  The groaning grows more intense, warbling and wavering.  Then slowly, like Satan himself uncurling from his underground lair, a disembodied head, bleached by light, rises out of the hole.  The hair of the head is dark and filled with crumbling earth, and the eyes show no color, only bulging whiteness.  The mouth forms a dark “O” from which the eerie sounds continue to escape.

The head rises a couple of feet above ground level and hovers there, groaning and swaying slightly.  Serp and his followers fall back.  One of them turns and runs away, the beam of his flashlight bouncing frantically ahead of him in the dark.

All are frozen in place for a moment, then Serp begins to laugh.  He shines his flashlight on the head and the body beneath it.  “Hi, Chriss,” he says.

“Hi, Serp,” the head says, snapping off the light under its chin.  “Hey, you guys, help me outta this hole.”  Ouija and Curtis pull Chris out of the tunnel’s entrance.  Chris hands his flashlight to Curtis and leans over, brushing the dirt out of his hair with both hands.  Serp’s remaining followers gather around him and Chris, exchanging high fives and stamping and spitting casually on the ground.  One of them hands Ouija’s flashlight back to him.  Another lights a cigarette and passes it to Chris.

“Pretty good trick,” Serp admits.  He turns to Ashley and Jesse.  “You, too.  Where’d you get that 'evil unleashing' stuff, anyway?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” says Ashley.  “Around.”

“How d’you know Chris?” Jesse asks.

“My dad dated his mom,” says Serp.

“Chris’s mom sure gets around,” Ashley mumbles behind Jesse.

“One thing,” says Ouija.  “How did you make that loud howl noise?  It scared us half too death.”

“Oh, that’s eassy.”  Serp gestures to one of his group.  “Bring me the cougar call.”  The other boy picks something up from the base of a tree and brings it forward, holding it out in both hands for inspection.  Ouija turns his flashlight on the contraption, a length of thick, rough rope that runs through a ragged hole punched in the bottom of a tin can.  Two of Serp’s followers hold a length of the rope taut between them as Serp jerks the tin can up and down the rope, generating short, rasping screeches.

“It’s called a cougar call, ‘cause it s-sounds like a cougar.  The longer the rope, the more noisse you get out of it.”

Ouija and the girls take turns making the cougar call howl.

“Uh, I hate to interrupt--” begins Curtis.  Serp looks at him, and he falters to a stop.

“Go on.”

“Well, I was wondering.”  Curtis touches the top of his helmet.  “What time is it?  We gotta be at the roller rink by eleven.”

“Then you better get going,” says Serp, shining his light on his watch.  “You’ve got fifteen minutes.”

Ouija sighs.  “Oh, man.  We’re not gonna make it.  We gotta go back and get our bikes.”

Serp fishes in his pocket for a ring of keys and tosses it to one of the older boys.  “He’ll drive you,” he says.  He motions toward the distant street.  “Take my car.”

“You have a car?”

“Well, my dad’s,” Serp admits.  “Gotta have it home by midnight.  I just got my night license.”

“What about you guys?” Ouija says to Chris and Jesse and Ashley.

“We’ll give them a ride home after you’re dropped off.”  Serp turns to the two girls.  “In the meantime, how about a s-space burger?  My treat.”

Jesse and Ashley nod.  Ouija and Curtis start toward the car, but Serp stops  Curtis, pushing a forefinger into his chest.   “Take  that s-stupid helmet off.  I don’t want anybody s-seeing that in my car.  I gotta reputation, ya know.”

[To order a copy of the book, Walking Pocatello, call the Idaho State University Bookstore, (208) 282-3237, or send me an email.]

Tunnels, Part III "The Far End"

On the other side of the campus, Chris, Jesse, and Ashley prowl the halls of the Chemistry Building.  The hardwood floors creak beneath their feet; pale, worn paths lead them from hallway to classroom to laboratory.  They pass ceiling-high cabinets full of glass jars and beakers, and the gleam of Chris’s flashlight is caught and reflected, multiplied, by the cabinet’s mullioned windows. Ashley twists the brass handle of one of the cabinet’s doors, and Chris hands her the flashlight. She holds it close to the rows of heavy glass containers. Each is filled with a different colored powder or crystal. Ashley runs her fingertip across the numbers and letters etched in the glass on each jar.  “Kaolin” reads one jar, and the tiny bumps that make up the downstroke of the letter “K” tickle like Braille under her touch.

One of the labs is an inner room‚ with no windows, and Chris flips the light switch by the door. The fluorescent tubes overhead flicker into bluish life, casting a wan glow on the apparatus that clutter the lab tables.

“We should do some experiments,” says Jesse. She unfolds a white lab coat from a nearby stool and slips it on. The sleeves engulf her thin arms, and she rolls them up over her elbows. She settles one hip on a stool and fiddles with glass tubes and beakers, mimicking the gestures of a chemist combining potions.

Chris stands behind her, watching. Jesse’s short hair spikes away from her head in cowlicks and dark swirls.  “You look like one of those nutty science dudes in those old movies,” Chris says.

“Gee, thanks a bunch.”

“No, I mean, they’re cool. I mean, they’ve just invented the monster and stuff, and they grab their heads a lot. To help ‘em think, I guess.” He puts his hand on the top of Jesse’s head, pressing gently, his palm flat. The whorls of her hair spring up against his fingers.

“Whattaya doin’?”  Jesse pivots on her stool to face him. Chris leans in abruptly and tries to kiss her, but she pivots again, and his lips brush the side of her face.

“Knock it off!”

“Com’on, Jesse.” He reaches for her, his fingers brushing the slender body inside the loose lab coat.

“No.  Get away.  Ashley!” Jesse pulls out of the coat, leaving it bunched in Chris’s two fists, and hurries toward the laboratory door. She catches one foot on a metal stool as she passes down the long row of lab benches, and it tips over with a loud clang. Ashley appears in the doorway just as Jesse reaches it.

“Com’on, Ashley, let’s get out of here.” Jesse herds her puzzled friend in front of her, and the two girls hurry through the dim hallway and down the basement stairs that lead back to the tunnels.

“What’s goin’ on?”

“Oh, that pervert, Chris. Tried to grab me. As if I’d be interested in him.”

“As if.”

“Hurry up. Here he comes.”

  Ashley holds the flashlight in front of her at arm’s length, and the two girls make their way back to the intersection of the tunnels. Chris follows them, but doesn’t completely catch up. When they reach the junction, they turn right and follow the same route that Ouija and Curtis took earlier.

      At the far end of the tunnel, Curtis sits lengthwise across the bottom step of the stairs that lead into the maintenance shops.  He holds the door marked “Shops” open with his feet and presses his back against the opposite wall of the stairwell.  His helmet is off, and he fiddles with the buckle on its chinstrap, pausing now and then to tear a length of licorice from the red candy rope lying across his lap.  He doubles the string of licorice into his mouth, chewing around it loosely.  Driblets of clear, red moisture hang in the corners of his mouth until he sucks them in noisily.

“Where do you s’pose they are?” he calls up the stairs.

“They’ll be here,” answers a voice from above him. Ouija appears in the brighter light at the top of the stairs.  He descends the stairs slowly, pausing on each step, clasping and unclasping the many blades of a large Swiss Army knife.  “I’m keepin’ this,” he says. He folds the knife closed and slips it into his pocket just as Jesse and Ashley, followed by Chris, round the corner and descend the slope toward him.

“Where you guys been?”

“In Chemistry, where else? Whattaya you been doin’?”

“Exploring.” Ouija tosses his head toward the shops behind him. “Lots of good stuff up there. You should see.”

“That’s okay,” says Ashley. “So, what else is down here?” She peers into the half-opened doorway on her left. “Where does this one go?”

Chris pushes past Jesse and elbows the door all the way open. Ashley shines her flashlight up the dusty steps to the wooden hatch at the top.

“Never been up this way before,” says Chris. “It’s always been locked.”

“Let’s check it out.”

Chris takes his flashlight from Ashley and mounts the steps. When his head reaches the level of the hatch, he places the flashlight on the top step and presses both hands against the wooden door. Heaving upward, he lifts the hatch a few inches above his head and shines his light into the dark space in front of him.

“It’s another tunnel,” he calls down to the others. “But smaller.  We’d have to crawl.”

“Where’s it go?” asks Curtis.

“Pay attention, stupid,” says Jesse. “He said he hadn’t been in there before.”

Curtis sniffs and settles his helmet back on his head. He tightens the chinstrap and stands up. “Let’s try it,” he says.

     Ashley moves up close behind Chris and peers over his shoulder into the low-roofed tunnel that stretches ahead into darkness, beyond the range of the flashlight. The tunnel is no more than three feet square, its sides formed by compacted earth. Metal supports--squared bands of steel--are set into the tunnel at three-foot intervals.  “It’s not even cement,” Ashley says. “Just dirt.”

“Yeah.” Chris pushes the wooden hatch all the way open, and it falls backward, landing with a soft thud. He hoists himself into the tunnel and turns, on his hands and knees, to face Ashley. He extends a hand, and, after a second’s hesitation, she takes it and lets him pull her into the tunnel behind him. Jesse scrambles up the stairs and into the tunnel behind her friend, followed by Ouija, who stops to put his pack on backwards. It hangs underneath him as he crawls, like a baby monkey under its mother. He switches on his flashlight and tucks it into the neck of his shirt, wedging it between his chin and the top of his backpack. The flashlight’s beam bobs erratically around the earthen tunnel as he moves along. Curtis sniffs again and follows Ouija into the tunnel, leaving the wooden hatch lying open. He inches away from the square of dim light, until it’s lost in darkness behind him.

The group crawls along slowly, close together.

“Ugh!  This is awful.”

“I’m getting filthy.  My hair!”

“You should be wearing a helmet.”

“Shut up, Curtis.”

“This better come out somewhere soon. I’m getting clos--claus--what’s that word?”

“Claustrophobic.”

“Yeah.  Clostaphobic.”

“Is that when you don’t like closets?”

“Yeah, sorta.”

  “Wait!”  Chris stops crawling. “We’re at the end.” The others pile up behind him. He shines his light on another wooden trap door set in the earth just over his head. This door is bolted on the inside, but Chris tugs on the bolt, and it slides reluctantly out of its hasp. He squats beneath the door, then stands, pushing it open. Cold air rushes into the tunnel.

“We’re outside.” Chris scrambles out of the tunnel, pulling Ashley after him. One by one, the others pass through the trap door, until all five are standing on the grass in the night air, coughing and brushing damp earth from their shins and knees.

The night is clear, and there’s enough moonlight for them to dimly see their surroundings. They stand in the middle of a grassy, tree-lined field. But this is no farmer’s field of hay or potatoes. Marble slabs bearing kneeling lambs and sculpted urns that look like vine-hardened fruit are planted row-upon-row in the thick grass. Grey stone obelisks sprout from the ground, long darker-grey shadows spreading like strawberry runners behind them.
Some of the narrower monuments are tipped and broken on the ground. Cracked stone crosses and mutilated cherubs with trumpets are scattered in the grass, knocked off their bases by vandals.
“It’s the cemetery,” says Ashley.

Tunnels, Part II "Entrance"

Ouija and Curtis have stopped their bikes at the end of the next block.  They look back inquiringly. “Com’on, you guys!” Ouija beckons.  The girls pedal faster and catch up.

“So, where’s Chris s’posed to meet us?”

Ouija points.  “At the park.”  Three blocks ahead, an emerald square shines in the waning sunlight.  Thick, plastic tubes heave out of the park’s grass like the backs of giant night crawlers.  Each tube is a different color--red, blue, yellow--and large enough for a middle-sized child to crawl through.  As the kids approach the park, they make out the figure of a tall, thin boy leaning against one of the plastic tubes.  The boy is dressed in loose, ragged levis and an oversized black t-shirt.  He cups a cigarette in his right hand and teases a battered skateboard under his left foot, rolling it away from him with an urgent toe, then arresting it roughly with the heel of his dusty sneaker and dragging it backward.

“I didn’t know Chris smoked,” says Curtis, touching the crown of his helmet.

“Yeah, well, he’s fourteen, ya know,” Ouija says.

“He going into ninth grade?”

“Eighth.  He got held back.  Missed too many days.  He’s okay, though.  Said he’d watch out for me next year.”

“You scared about seventh grade?” Curtis asks.

“Some.”  Ouija pedals harder and pulls ahead of Curtis.

As the foursome comes to a stop in front of him, Chris, the older boy, gives his skateboard a particularly vicious push, tilting it upward and grasping the end of it with his left hand.  Taking a last, flourishing drag from his cigarette, he flicks it into the soft dirt at his feet and grinds it out.

“You guys are late.  Thought you’d chickened out.”

“Sorry, man,” says Ouija.  He gets off his bicycle, holding his palm out, up-turned, and Chris slaps it lightly in greeting.  He nods at Ashley and Jesse.  “Hi, Jess.  How’s your dad?”

“He’s okay.  How’s your mom?”

“Okay.”

“Our parents went out a couple of times,” Jesse explains to the others.

Chris eyes Curtis’s helmet.  “You gonna wear that?”

Ashley answers for Curtis.  “He has to.”  She rolls the front tire of her bike against the base of the plastic tube, bumping it hard and letting it bounce back.  “So, where’s these tunnels you’re gonna show us?”

“In a minute,” says Chris.  He turns to Ouija.  “You bring a flashlight?”

Ouija taps his backpack.
      “Me, too.  Okay.  Let’s get going.”  Chris mounts his skateboard and leads the way up the street toward the University, a cluster of orange-ish brick buildings set around quadrangles of lawn and shrubbery.  The group passes the Presbyterian church whose marquee announces that Reverend Bleat will preach Sunday on “Idols of the Beast Among Us.”  They cross over a block to Eighth Street, passing the College Market.  An old man watering his lawn from his front porch watches them go by.  He raises the nozzle of his garden hose in salute.  The water sprays upward, then falls with a heavy patter on the broad-leafed flowers that border the sidewalk.

  The four younger kids follow Chris up the street and around the corner onto Martin Luther King Drive.  They pass the four-story University library, and the street rises sharply, mounting the first level of hills that border the city’s east side.  The sidewalk on the north side of the street ends in an imposing set of concrete steps that lead up the steep slope to the front entrance of undistinguished tan brick building set into the hillside.  “Trade and Technology” reads a sign mounted on the building’s wall.
The group follows Chris as he cuts around the side and through a black-topped area behind the building.  “We can get in around the back.  There’s a window,” he says.  He props his skateboard against a wall near a row of dented garbage cans.  The others hurriedly dismount and conceal their bicycles behind a large yellow trash dumpster.  “Do Not Play On or Near,” read stenciled letters on the side of the dumpster.  Chris kneels before a narrow basement window, and the others queue up behind him, as if waiting in line to buy movie tickets.
Chris wrenches the screen from the window frame and pushes.  With a metal-on-metal screech, the window opens just enough to admit the passage of a slender body.  He beckons Curtis with a forefinger.      “You.  Shorty.  Crawl through and open the door.”
Curtis touches the top of his helmet.  “But . . . I thought you were going to get us in.”
“I have, you moron.  But you have to open the door.  Just go around that way”--Chris points--“and push on the crash bars.”  Curtis starts to protest a little more, but Chris thrusts him toward the window, bumping his helmeted head against the frame.  Curtis wiggles through, and moments later, all five of them stand inside the building.

Chris produces a flashlight from the pocket of his levis and motions to Ouija, who digs his flashlight out of his pack and switches it on.  Chris leads the group down a flight of stairs to a sub-basement.  He pulls open a heavy door at the bottom of the stairs and holds it while the others pass through.  It drops closed behind them with an echoing boom.  Chris and Ouija move their flashlights around the interior and across the walls, and each powerful beam throws a circle-within-a-circle of light on the contents of the room.
Wooden student desks in various states of disrepair clamber, one on top of the other, toward the low ceiling.  Refrigerator-sized cardboard boxes tip crazily against each other, disemboweled, their contents overflowing.  Multicolored electrical wires protrude from the boxes like the mylar-coated feelers of blind insects.
Ashley kicks at a ruptured box of capacitors.  It contents--tiny metal canisters--glint and spill across the floor.  “What is all this stuff?”
“Old electronics parts,” says Chris.  “My mom works upstairs in the lab.  I helped her clean all this out of the stockroom last summer.  Some of it’s cool.”  He turns his flashlight on a box of old circuit boards bristling with tiny, striped resistors and 8-pin connectors.  He passes a circuit board to Ouija.  “She taught me to solder, too.  Look.”  He runs his finger across the bright, smooth droplets on the board.  “Real silver.”
Jesse stands in the middle of the room, one hand on a flat hip.  “We didn’t come here to play with old junk,” she says.  “You were supposed to show us the tunnels.”

Chris flashes his light in her eyes. “Okay, okay. Just a minute.” He tosses the circuit board aside. “Over here.” Followed closely by the younger kids, he crosses the room to a low door set in the far wall, twists the knob, and yanks. A puff of cool, moist air bathes their faces. Chris moves his flashlight counterclockwise around the tunnel entrance, and the others can see damp, cement walls leading away to the right and left.

“Which way do we go?”

“That one”--Chris indicates the left passage--“goes up the hill to the gym.  That one goes down to the chemistry building.”

“Let’s go down.”

They move gingerly into the tunnel on the right.  Chris puts a chock of wood in the door that swings shut behind them.  Ouija leads the group, training his flashlight just ahead of them on the floor of the tunnel.  Walking slightly behind the others, Chris plays the beam of his flashlight across the ceiling and walls.  Large ducts run overhead, and vertical rows of pipes, dripping with condensation, protrude from the walls every few feet.  The group huddles closely together, shuffling along as one awkward creature with too many arms and legs.  The beam of Ouija‘s flashlight--Cyclops’s eye--leads them haltingly forward.  They shamble a hundred yards or so, and then the tunnel bends to the left and slopes gently downward.  A metal door is set into one wall of the tunnel at the point of the bend.

Ouija tries the door knob.  “Locked.”

“Most of them are,” says Chris.  “But not all.”

They proceed cautiously down the slope, gaining a little speed as they descend and relaxing out of their tight cluster.

Curtis puts one hand on the nearest wall, lightly dragging his fingertips along it as he walks.  He holds his fingers to his nose, then offers them to Ashley.  “Phew!  Smell this.”

Ashley slaps his hand away from her face.  “Get that away from me.  You’re disgusting.”

Curtis holds his fingers out toward Ouija.  “Look.  Green slime.”

“Yeah, Curt.  Cool.”

At the bottom of the slope they stop at the intersection of three tunnels.

“Which way now?”

Chris gestures with his flashlight.  “That one goes to the Administration Building.  Offices and stuff.  That one goes to Chemistry, and that one goes to Maintenance.”

“What’s the Maintenance one like?"

“Pretty cool.  Big storage room full of junk, a tool room, the woodshop.  If it’s unlocked.  Sometimes it’s not.”

     “Let’s go that way,” Ouija and Curtis say together.

“No,” says Jesse.  “Boring.  I thought we were going to Chemistry.”  She looks at Ashley.

Ashley shrugs.  “I don’t care.”

“Maintenance.”

“Chemistry.”

“Look,” says Chris.  “I’ll take Jesse to Chemistry.  You guys go on to Maintenance.  You can’t miss it.  It’s a blue door at the end that says ‘Shops’ on it.  We’ll meet you there later.”  He looks at Ashley.     “You go with those guys.”

“No, you’d better come with us,” says Jesse.

Curtis and Ouija move off down the left tunnel.  Chris takes Jesse’s arm and leads her to the right.  Ashley hesitates a second, then follows Chris and Jesse, hurrying a little to stay within range of their flashlight.

“Girls,” huffs Curtis.  “Why’d he have to go off with them?”

Ouija flashes his light across a pile of metal cans and paint rollers. “We’re okay.  They’ll catch up.”

The two boys hurry along the tunnel.  They pass several doors set into the walls at irregular intervals, stopping to turn and yank on the handles.  All are locked, some so encrusted with rust and grime that it’s evident they haven’t been opened in years.  The tunnel makes a sharp right turn into another downward slope.  Curtis and Ouija round the corner and follow the gentle grade to the bottom, stopping in front of three doors set at right angles to one another.  The door facing them is blue, and the word “Shops” is stenciled on it neatly at eye level.

The door on their left is ajar; a short set of concrete steps leads upward into darkness. Ouija thrusts his head and shoulders through the opening and flashes his light up the steps, revealing a wooden hatch at the top. Curtis tries the knob of the door on their right; it’s locked. He turns the knob on the door marked “Shops,” and it scrapes open. Light floods into the tunnel, and the boys mount a flight of steps into a pine-scented room lined with cluttered workbenches and racks of tools.

Tunnels, Part I "Summoning"

“So, what’d you tell your folks you were doing tonight?”
“Stayin’ over at Jesse’s.”
“What if they call?”
“They won’t.  They’re goin’ out.  Won’t be home ‘til late.  What about yours?”
“Told ‘em Curt and I are goin’ skating.  They’re gonna come pick us up at eleven.”
“We’ll be back by then.”
       The two twelve-year-olds coast down the sharp incline of West Lewis Street.  Ashley lifts her feet off the pedals and holds them away from the sides of her bicycle like deranged kickstands. Her pale hair floats straight out behind her, the long bangs swept up and away from her forehead.  She follows Ouija around the corner and down the block toward the meeting place, Del Monte’s Meats.
Ouija swoops to a stop against the curb in front of Del’s.  He drops his bicycle and shrugs his way out of the backpack he’s wearing, draping it across the handlebars of his bike.  “Watch this for me,” he says and dashes into the store.  Ashley parks her bike in the shade on the east side of the market and sits down on the curb.  She peers up West Center Street, where the sun is slipping down behind the hills.
      Two more cyclists appear in the distance, a boy wearing a white helmet and a girl with short, dark hair.  They both lean back slightly as they coast down the hill toward the market.  The girl takes her hands off the handlebars and crosses them briefly on her chest.  As they near the meeting place, she waves.  “Yo, Ashley!  Can you believe this nerd?”  She gestures at the boy beside her.
  The boy, flushed and panting a little, brakes in front of the market.  He touches the top of his white bicycle helmet with a fingertip.  “Tell her to stop it,” he says to Ashley.  “I have to wear it.  If my mom catches me--”
“Oh, your mom,” says his companion.  She stands over the center bar of her bike and twitches her hips from side to side.  “Your mom, your mom,” she chants.
Ashley laughs, and the boy blushes more heavily.  “Tell her to stop.  Or I’m not going.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t go,” Ashley says.  “Your mom might catch you.”  Both girls laugh, and the boy in the helmet grips the handlebars of his bike tightly.  The corners of his mouth turn down a tiny bit, and he looks toward the front door of the market.  He lifts the front wheel of his bike off the ground and slams it down hard a few inches from Ashley’s sneakered toes.
“Okay, okay,” says Ashley.  “Don’t go all ballistic on us, Curt.  Can’t you take a joke?”
Curtis says nothing, just grips his handlebars.
“So, where’s Wee-Gee-Squee-Gee?” says the short-haired girl.
Ashley tips her head at the market behind her.  “Getting supplies.”  Just then the market door swings open, and Ouija comes out carrying a brown paper sack.  He nods a greeting to the new arrivals, then unzips his backpack and begins unloading the contents of the sack.
He tosses a can of pop to Curtis.  “Put this in your pocket.  I don’t have room for all of ‘em.”  He settles three more cans in the bottom of his backpack and layers a shrink-wrapped package of beef jerky and three ropes of red licorice on top of them.  He zips the pack and slips his arms into both straps, shaking the contents into a comfortable nest low on his back.  “Ready.”  He grabs his bicycle, heaving it into place beneath him.  “Let’s go.”
The four kids pedal down Center Street against the slow afternoon traffic.  Ouija leads, with Curtis close behind him.  The two girls follow at a more leisurely pace, cycling side-by-side and talking.  They gradually fall a block or so behind the boys.
Ouija pulls to a stop on the corner by the First National Bar and waits for the girls to catch up.  He points at a building in the next block.  “Don’t you have to stop in there?” he asks the short-haired girl.
“Yeah.  Guess I’d better.”
“Want me to come with you?” Ashley asks.

“Naw.  I’ll be right back.”  The girl turns her bike down the side street and pedals slowly toward the Bourbon Barrel, whose side door opens onto Harrison, the alley-like street that runs behind most of the downtown bars.  As the girl gets closer to the Bourbon Barrel, she swings off her bike and walks it.  She leans it against the wall near the shuttered window of the bar and pushes the door open far enough to stick her head in.

“I can’t stand it,” says Ashley, watching her friend.
Ouija shrugs and readjust his backpack.  Curtis tightens the chin strap of his helmet.  “What’s the matter with Jesse’s dad?”
“Whattaya think, you moron?  He’s an alky.”
     “Well, I know that.  I mean--how come he drinks so much?”
“Who knows?  It sucks.”  Ashley stares down the street.  Jesse still stands in the doorway of the Bourbon Barrel, her head and shoulders out of sight.  She balances on one jean-clad leg, the other lifted behind her to waist level, toe pointed like a ballet dancer’s.  As Ashley watches, Jesse withdraws her head and shoulders, letting the door of the bar swing shut.  Pivoting on her toes, she executes a coltishly clumsy pas de bourrée before mounting her bicycle.  She pedals quickly back to where the other three wait.
Jesse’s face is flushed but expressionless.  “Okay,” she says as she pulls alongside them.  “Let’s go.”

They cross Harrison Street in a group and coast down the incline that leads into the Center Street underpass. Enclosed walkways run parallel to the two-lane street that passes under the railroad tracks. Choosing the left-side tunnel, they pedal down the incline. Ouija noses his bike past Ashley’s and into the lead. He zips past the black and white metal sign that says, “Walk Bikes Thru Subway.” The others follow, speeding up as they enter the tunnel.

The air in the enclosed walkway is cold and damp; it strikes their faces like a musty dish rag.  Jesse wrinkles her nose.  “Eeow!  It stinks in here.”
“Smells like old pee.”
Ouija whizzes through a puddle of water that has dripped from the ceiling of the tunnel.  His tires spin water up behind him.  Ashley is bent low over her handlebars, and she flinches as the fine spray strikes her face.  “Hey!  You’re getting me wet.”
Ouija laughs over his shoulder.  “Don’t follow so close.”
“Then hurry up.”
Ouija pedals harder and bursts out of the east end of the block-long tunnel.  Ashley and Jesse follow him, bumping their bikes over a traffic island and up onto the sidewalk in front of the Power Company.  Curtis lags behind, stopping for a car that’s turning down into the underpass.  He walks his bike across the intersection, then mounts it and hurries to catch up with the others.  He joins Ouija in front of the girls, and the group rides several blocks in silent haste, slowing only when there is cross-traffic.
They come to a long block of businesses that have their doors nailed shut and their windows covered with sheets of rough plywood.  Small printed signs reading “For Lease” and “No Trespassing” are tacked to the plywood and nearly obliterated with the swirls and squiggles of multicolored graffiti.  “Going Out of Business” reads a drooping banner in the one unboarded and surprisingly unbroken window of the store on the corner.
In thick, black letters on a door next to this window, someone has scrawled, “Evil Summoning.”
Ashley slows her bike in front of this message.  “Whattaya s’pose this is about?”
Jesse shrugs.  “I dunno.”
A few yards farther along, another boarded-over door bears the word, “Deicide.”  The girls pull to a stop in front of it.
“Decide?”
“No, it’s D-e-i-c-i-d-e.”
“What’s that?”
“Dunno.  Maybe they misspelled it.”
They pedal on to the corner.  The last door on the block is dark green.  Thick slices of paint curl away from the wood, crackling like the ends of dried Christmas tree branches.  This door reads, in the same black, printed letters, “Evil Unleashing.”  The “s” doesn’t quite make its last curve; it looks like the letter “c.”
“Unleashing?  Or Unleaching?”
“‘Leaching’ means like draining,” says Ashley.  “I ‘member my dad and Lily talking about it.  Something to do with the garden.”
“I don’t think that’s it.”
“Me neither.”