The Felix Chronicles: Freshmen (25 page)

She wasn’t.

Below the bulb were three plaques much bigger than the others. He rubbed off a water stain from the one in the center and read the name aloud: “Agatha Pierre-Croix.” The moment the syllables left his lips, all the lights in the tunnels dimmed and he felt a cold breath on his cheek.

He jumped back, his head twitching back and forth, waiting. When the ghost didn’t appear, he read the names on the plaques next to Agatha’s. This time, he read them silently:
Constance Wethersby. Lucinda Stowe.
He noticed that all three women had died the same year. Turning away from the wall, he started down the new tunnel, wondering what was so special about Agatha, Constance and Lucinda, and why they’d all died in 1829.

When he came upon another door (to his left), a trickling sense of hopefulness teased him with warm anticipation. It was squashed a moment later once he realized what he was dealing with. Like the door beneath St. Rose, it was made of steel, it didn’t have a doorknob, and only a key could open it it. Out of sheer desperation, he pounded on it, and listened as it boomed and echoed hollowly in the silence, racing up and down the tunnels, swirling like a storm in the stillness. He gave up shortly. It most likely led to a basement deep below another building where no one would be, especially at four in the morning—
if that was the time
. His watch was sharing space with his cell on his desk; he hadn’t exactly planned for this.

He tried to work out in his mind which direction he was going as he trudged along through the tunnel. He was probably heading south. But he wasn’t entirely sure about that since the ghost woman had mixed him all up in the labyrinth-like corridors beneath the church. The tunnel he was on branched off at forty-five degree angles like a trident. With three tunnels to choose from, he remembered Lucas—or was it Allison?—saying the tunnels connected to every building on campus. And if that was true, and it now appeared that it was, it meant there were miles of tunnels down here. He could walk forever and never find an exit if the only way out was through one of the doors. Because without a key—

I could actually die down here.

The second that thought crossed his mind he told himself to stop being such a wuss. He
would
find a way out. It just might take a while. He took the tunnel to his left and picked up the pace. When he came to a door—this one on his right—he didn’t waste much time trying to open it. He just kicked it a few times and yelled “Hello!” until he was sure if by some miracle someone was behind it they would have heard him.

Later—he didn’t know how much later because the people who constructed the bomb shelter hadn’t thought to hang any clocks on the walls—the tunnel forked, and he took the one to the left. His confidence was sagging, and he was operating on a hunch that he hoped would lead him back to Downey and Satler and the other dorms on the east side of campus; unless, of course, he was even more discombobulated than he felt, in which case, he could be heading due west toward the football stadium and no-man’s-land. His sense of direction was good, but this was madness.

Three doors and several forks later, he was starting to lose hope. It all looked very bleak. Everything was tilting against him. Even without the aid of a watch he knew he’d been down here a long while. The solid steel doors were impossible to break down, and according to Lucas and Allison, nobody knew about the tunnels except for the few people who ran the school—and the president and the dean probably didn’t spend their weekends sleeping in the basements of hundred-year-old buildings.

I really could die down here,
he said to himself, and this time, he didn’t think he was acting like such a wuss
.
But was that really what the ghost was trying to do? Did she lure him into the tunnels so she could watch him slowly lose his mind and starve to death as he searched for a way out?
Don’t panic
, he told himself. Being stupid wouldn’t help. Freaking out wouldn’t help. But he had a damn good reason to freak out. After so much wandering around, the only thing he knew for sure was that the door beneath St. Rose was accessible and the rooms next to it were at least used occasionally. And as much as he didn’t want to be anywhere near the cemetery, maybe his best chance of escaping was to head back there and pound on the door and hope someone would happen by. Not a great plan. But better than insanity and starvation. He took one last look around before setting off to retrace his steps, thinking that if he hadn’t lost his bearings it would be a miracle.

Something on the ceiling caught his eye. He ran over, stopped beneath it, and stared straight up at a manhole-sized opening carved out of the ceiling; it looked like a giant drill had bored its way through the earth. And then he saw something truly miraculous: sturdy-looking iron staples set within, and running all the way up to the top, of the cylinder—
a ladder
.

He jumped and grabbed hold of the lowest rung, then pulled himself up and started climbing. With only a few rungs left, he lifted his eyes, and what he saw caused the panic in his chest to flare: the ceiling was right over his head and the ladder seemed to run right smack into it—there was no place to go. He’d found a ladder, but it was a ladder to
nowhere
.

Then he lowered his gaze and realized that a small barren room was spread out before him, and that on the far side, attached to the wall, was a second ladder, its rungs descending down through another hole in the ceiling. Pulse racing, he swung his legs over the top of the ladder, scrambled across the concrete space and started to climb. He moved fast, the rusty bars passing beneath him one after the other:
twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight
, he counted, ticking them off in his head. He paused for a second to check for the ceiling—it was still fifteen or twenty feet above his head—then resumed his climb.
Please don’t let this be a dead end. Please.
When he reached the top, he looked over the last rung, hoping to find a big unlocked door with a luminous movie theatre style EXIT sign above it. But it was just another concrete room, this one even smaller than the first. He got to his feet, keeping one arm over his head to make sure he didn’t crack it on the low ceiling.

The space was tight, little more than a walk-in closet; it was a damn good thing he wasn’t claustrophobic. If he stretched out his arms he could touch two sides with his fingertips, and he had to hunch down to avoid scraping his skull. At least the light was still good. There were two bulbs in the room, both burning bright: One behind the ladder, and the other directly across from it, each protected by the odd metal casings like the others in the tunnels.

But there wasn’t a ladder in this room, or a door, or any other kind of opening—just flat, smooth, hard, impenetrable materials. He knew he had to be close to the surface after climbing for so long. There had to be a way out.
This had to lead to something.
The ladders couldn’t have been random.
What am I missing?
He stood there for a long while, deep in thought.

When it came to him he felt stupid for not figuring it out sooner:
a secret door.
There had to be a secret door in this room. Just like Woodrow’s Room.
But where?
That was the question. Squatting down low, he looked up at the ceiling, then he went over to the wall across from the ladder and starting at the top, placed both hands on it, meticulously working his fingers all the way down to the floor. Then he proceeded to probe the other walls. But there were no levers, no switches and no buttons—nothing that would activate a secret door.
Nothing.
Not a single goddamn thing.

Frustrated and slightly panicked, he knelt down in the center of the room and stared around, focusing on every little bump, groove and ridge on the surface. He wasn’t seeing
something
that had to be there. But what? He’d touched, pushed, poked and massaged every square inch of the room. He couldn’t have missed anything.
But this has to be the way, and you better figure it out or no one will ever see you again.

But he
had
missed something, and it hit him like a Jimmy Clay cheap shot.
The bulbs.
He bounced to his feet—and smacked his head on the ceiling because he forgot to duck—and stepped over to the bulb furthest from the ladder. It was near the top of the wall, perfectly centered and extremely bright—he had to squint to look at it. Sweat was gathering on the nape of his neck and rolling down his back. He reached up and lightly touched the metal casing, expecting it to be hot. It was—the first thing he’d been right about all night. He tapped down on it. Nothing happened. He flicked up on it, but that only burned his fingers. Tugging on the sleeve of his sweatshirt, he wrapped it around his hand and nudged the bulb’s protective shell to the left.

Something behind the wall made a soft
clicking
sound, like the gears of a grandfather clock before the chime. Then the wall moved, shifting slowly and almost noiselessly from right to left. He stepped back and watched as a narrow, hobbit-sized opening in the bottom right corner of the wall appeared in front of him. It was a safe bet it wouldn’t stay open for very long so he hopped over to the little door and crouched down, preparing to step through it. He took one tentative step. Then he stopped.

There were objects dangling in his face… and there was something familiar about them. He reached out and tapped one with his finger. It was soft. It had buttons. Next to it was a thin metal wiry thing hanging from a rod. And next to that was a pair of pants, and next to that, a jacket with a zipper. He squatted down as much as he could, and keeping his head low, duck-walked into the opening, praying that the door wouldn’t close and crush him against the wall.

He took a deep breath and shuffled forward with one thought whirling around in his addled brain:
Whose closet is this?

Foot rot. That’s what the closet smelled like. It was probably coming from the shoes. Mostly sneakers, but the moldy Limburger stench seemed to be mushrooming up from a pair of topsiders. Guy’s shoes. Felix was scooting his way inside a guy’s closet, a closet that looked just like Felix’s closet in Downey. Same scuffed wood floor, same white painted interior, same size. This was a dorm room.
A guy’s dorm room.

With his butt dragging over the shoe tops and the clothes hanging from the rod brushing against his head, he leaned forward, keeping one hand on the floor for balance, and stuck his face right up against the quarter-inch gap where the doors came together. The room was dark.
Good,
Felix thought hopefully.
Not morning yet.
Whoever lived here was probably sleeping. He pressed his ear against the doors, held his breath and listened. Nothing. Complete silence.

The floor started to vibrate softly and there was a sudden
whirring
noise—the sound of gears in motion. The same sound he’d heard just a moment ago. He knew what it meant: the secret door was about to close. He snatched the hood of his sweatshirt and pulled it around, flattening it against his throat. The
Final Destination
movies had all made their rounds at the August house and he was familiar with death-by-your-own-shirt.

When he was sure that his hood wasn’t going to get caught in the door, he twisted his neck around to see what was happening behind him. The door was shifting back into place, slowly draining the light from the closet. He reached out for the topsiders—he couldn’t stand the stench any longer and didn’t think anyone would miss them if they somehow
disappeared
to the wrong side of the secret door—and a spider crawled out of the shoe and pounced on his finger. The spider was small, and most likely not dangerous to anything bigger than a bug, but Felix reacted like anyone would. He sucked in a jagged breath and took a swipe at it. The spider escaped without injury, but Felix lost his balance and bumped his head against a pair of pants swaying lazily from a sagging hanger. It had a domino effect: The pants swung into a shirt, which tapped another pair of pants, which slapped against three or four empty wire hangers, rattling them like a tambourine.

The portal to the tunnels beneath campus sealed itself shut with an anticlimactic puff, like air blown through a straw. The floor went still. He waited in the darkness. Sweat beaded up on his forehead and slid down his face. His undershirt was sticking to his back. Finally, the hangers stopped dancing. He didn’t allow himself a sigh of relief. He may have escaped the tunnels, but he was still trapped—trapped in a closet. And his situation, although perhaps no longer life and death, was still dire. If he didn’t get out of here unseen, he was screwed. Best case: the dean would throw him out of school. Worst case: police involvement, maybe even jail time.

So now he needed to escape from something else. A closet. In the dark. And without waking up the kids who lived here. His chances of succeeding seemed dim. But he did have one thing going for him: He didn’t know which dorm this was, but for his purposes, it didn’t matter. The room layout in every dorm and frat he’d been to was basically the same. Closets were at the foot of the beds on either side of the hallway door. That was pretty much it. Finding the door—even in the dark—should be easy enough. And once he made it that far, the stairs would lead him to safety before anyone saw him (as long as no one was still hanging out in the halls or on their way to the bathroom).

He placed his pointer finger against the door on the right and pressed until he heard the latch click faintly as the magnets (one on the door and one on the frame) separated and the door swung open. He waited a few moments, hoping for silence. Maybe they were out of town? But the sounds of slow, heavy breathing quickly dismembered his hopes. First to Felix’s left, then to his right, as if there was an echo in the room.

Okay,
Felix said to himself.
Let’s do this.