Hearts of Delmar (Book 1 of 2)

Chapter 13: Hello Darkness, my new friend.

She walked about 50 yards in a straight line before reaching a branching point, a staircase to the left going up and one forward and down. She snapped one of the glow bands and placed it on the ground before going up and reaching a dead end heavy steel door. Not even a latch to open from her side. She scoffed, going back down and grabbing her glowband, following the stairs down.

The stairs opened into a room with dim lighting, a sickly orange like old sodium lamps, and a number of ways to go. She decided to follow the copper pipes that lead from the wall, ignoring the one leading down to another level and choosing the other. She tossed her glow band in the center of the room so she would know when she was back at the stairs. Something in her was drawn to the pipes. She knelt down and felt it, water running through it, leading down.

The dim tunnel was dusty, warm to the touch clearly damp and riddled with cobwebs. On the right side a natural stone wall carved out of the rock, and on the left, one made of brick and mortar, with a copper water line following it, and what looked like possibly electrical lines in rubberize plastic conduit. They branched down and left randomly, presumably going to whatever was behind the brick wall and whatever was in the tunnel below her. Now she questioned if she should have gone lower, but more so...what was behind the brick? Why divide a tunnel and spend so much effort just to make two narrower paths for the same utility lines? She followed the tunnel that snaked around in random jogs, as if going around something in the solid rock, going in the same direction but dodging an unknown obstacle now and then. Surface vents maybe?

She reached a T in the path, the strange brick and utility tunnel going left and a dugout hole going right. She broke another glow band, peering right. It dropped off into a large empty room, with stairs down and too many paths to keep track of. A junction room of some kind, a chance to maybe check the tunnel below her, but maybe later, she put the glow band on her arm and turned to the familiar tunnel that now took a very straight shot for a very long way. The lights flickered and dimmed randomly as she peered into the nothing, her flash light beam failing to find and end to the tunnel. She turned the lens and focused it, but the results were the same. Brick wall, pipes and what felt like an endless mile of straight line, tiny orange dots turning on and off down the walls leading to a point like it just beckoned her. The flickering almost seemed to start behind her and run down the tunnel like a little fairy of doom, racing it's way to the abyss as if to say "follow me." So she did.

She felt the slight sensation of leaning, realizing the path was ever so sloped downward, subtle but detectable to someone thinking about it.

"If I'm going down...I may as well go as down as I can." She reasoned, turning back and taking the stairs to the lower path leading the same direction, but with less flickering lights. The same brick and pipes, of slightly different size and height, much of the same pointless direction until she noticed the pipes at one point diverted down and up, unto the floors and ceiling and then right back down again just a few feet further, as if there should have been a door there. The old faded red brick wall abruptly became grey and mossy brick of a different kind, conveniently in the shape of a door where the pipes went around... With a hole in the middle, just above eye level.

"You aren't supposed to be there, are you?" she said, tip-toeing for elevation and trying to see through. Not enough room to crawl through or even stick her head in, just enough to reach in and shine a light around. On the other side, just more natural stone, separated by an endless wall and utility lines, for no reason. She pressed her face to the stone, trying to see anything else through the tiny gap where her arm was almost completely filling. She felt her skirt lift and flutter slightly, jumping and almost losing her flashlight as she turned to defend herself against... the wind.