When I think back to those early days, those days before, I think how stupid I was. How naive. I should have thought about winter. I should have thought about the solstice.
By December of my sophomore year of college, I had cleared every room in the New Library. I had opened every door, checked every closet, and had a good mental map of the whole building. It was, ultimately, pretty unimpressive. I found no buried treasure, no secret stash of missing computer supplies cached in a forgotten closet. I did find a small, sweaty stack of bad porno mags in a supply closet in the basement level. "Wicked, Wicked Cowgirls." Who was I to judge?
December is a slow time for the Uni. After the mad rush of Finals, the campus was suddenly deserted, the remaining few staff seeming lost. The buildings stood silent, and dark, in the thin winter breezes. We had a steady series of snowstorms, but none bad enough to close the campus. I made sure the sidewalks were clear and the entryways salted, and otherwise tried to stay indoors.
Besides, I had the 'Old School' to explore.
The main 'Old School' building, Downing Hall, was a four-story V-shaped building. It had no elevators, tiny stairwells, and was only exempted from ADA compliance due to its "historical importance". It had no air-conditioning, save for sporadic window-mount units that were only permitted to be installed on the rear of the building, so as not to spoil the building's historic charm. The building's heat came from a massive, ancient boiler in the basement. As far as I knew, Al was the only person who knew anything about the boiler, and he must have kept it in good shape, because I never heard of any complaints about it.
I spent the second week after Finals Week poking through the top floors of Downing Hall. I didn't have a lot of time for exploring every night, as the snow gave me more than usual upkeep chores, but I made steady progress. I discovered a small room in the attic on the Left Wing that must have been an old Dean's office, complete with a beautiful antique desk and wardrobe. I checked both, thinking I might find something "historic" to give to the Dean, but the wardrobe was empty save for a moth-eaten wool scarf, and the desk's contents were limited to a few old newspapers and some tax forms from the 1950s.
A level below, on the building's fourth floor, I found two dozen small, empty classrooms. In my handyman mindset, I checked the windows for loose glass panes, and for water or rodent damage. I fully expected to see rat-droppings, or at least some insect damage, but I found none. The second and third floors were much the same, except the rooms on the rear of the building were air-conditioned and thus actively used for classes when school was in session.
The main floor was Administration, and included the Dean's office. I thought it wise not to snoop around in my boss's office, or in Payroll, so I skipped a lot of these rooms. I made my way to the stairwell to the basement, used my superhero keychain, opened the heavy door and went down.
The basement of Downing Hall was different from that of the New Library. For one thing, it was a lot more cramped. The hallway was narrow, and the ceiling was low, with doorways leading off at regular intervals. I checked every room, flipping the old two-button switches to ON, using my flashlight on the dark corners. I had carried a few packs of spare light bulbs - the fancy new CFC bulbs - in my satchel, thinking to replace any that had burned out, and save the environment while I was at it. The little rooms mostly contained junk - spare desks, filing cabinets full of forty- and fifty-year-old papers, old holiday decorations, and so forth, lit by naked hanging bulbs.
I'm not an imaginative kind of guy. I guess I'm pretty smart - I'd made straight A's in my college courses. It never occurred to me to be scared. I didn't think, "I'm alone in a creepy old basement." This was my place, my job, my hobby, and it all seemed so normal.
The Stairs and the Doorway
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