The Boy in the Tunnel

by Gardner Linn

30.

Tim looked down at his swollen ankle and began to panic. The last thing he remembered was walking with Taddlington Taft across West Campus, listening to the injured and drug-addled columnist prattle on about how they used to be friends and play GI Joes together. Then he was here, in the stale air of what must be an underground room, his shoes missing, his ankle throbbing and purplish-green in the light of the bare fluorescent tube on the ceiling.

Tim tried to ignore the pain in his ankle and focus on his surroundings. The room was maybe 7’x7’, and twice as tall as it was wide. The walls and floor were concrete. On one wall was a rectangular metal door with no handle. There was a drain in the center of the floor.

This is a cell, Tim thought. I am a prisoner.

He had been helping Taft because they were both going to Yarrow Hall. He was going to Yarrow because he had seen a message on a bulletin board. He had thought the Nine Dead Men were summoning him. He had run into Taft in the garden and discerned that Taft was going to the same place. Taft had thought they were old friends. He had helped Taft across West Campus. And then...

Tim had no idea how long he had been in this cell. Minutes, hours, days...he did not feel hungry. He had no urge to use the bathroom. Except for his missing shoes, he was wearing the same clothes he last remembered wearing. He felt his jacket pocket—his Handbook was still there.

The presence of secret detention facilities underneath various campus buildings has been long rumored but never independently confirmed. Depending on the rumormonger, these facilities are operated by either Campus Police, DUH, the Nine Dead Men or the Living Creatures. Should you find yourself in one of these facilities, it is this Handbook’s opinion that you’re pretty well screwed.

The door opened and a man was shoved in. He fell to his knees, shivering, next to Tim. He was pale and thin, with densely muscled forearms and biceps. Stringy black hair hung in his face. His jeans and t-shirt were matted with unidentifiable filth.

He looked up at Tim. “What the fuck is going on, man?”

“I don’t know. I just woke up like five minutes ago.”

“Oh shit man. I don’t even know what the fuck is going on. I got this message saying to come to Yarrow—“

“Me too.”

“Right? And then some dude in a mask is shoving me in here. I mean what the fuck is going on? What the fuck is going on? Is this like...I don’t even know what. Christ, man!”

“Did you see anyone’s face?”

“No, everybody was wearing masks. There were like six guys.”

“You think it was the Nine Dead Men?”

“I don’t fucking know. I didn’t think they were real.” The guy crawled over to a wall and sat propped against it. He ran his hands through his hair, pulling it back from his face. “If these are the fucking campus cops, I’m screwed. There’s so much shit they could bust me on.”

“I don’t think this is the cops.”

“Shit, man, this is America, right? They can’t do this to us. Right?” The new guy looked at Tim, a desperate quiver around the eyes. “We are so fucked.”

“Look, everything’s going to be okay. Okay? Whoever it is, they can’t keep us down here forever. We’re gonna get out of here, okay? You just need to calm down. What’s your name?”

The new guy held out his right hand. “I’m Alex,” he said.

Tim shook Alex’s hand. “Tim.” Tim saw that Alex’s forearm was tattooed with a strand of blue razor wire that spelled out the name “Xander.”

“Don’t I know you from somewhere?” Tim said.

********

Xander took the baggie of black powder upstairs to his bedroom, locked the door and propped a chair against it, should Renee come looking for a fight. He pulled a small mirror off the wall and laid it on his desk.

Of the two twins, Xander had always been the one with the appetite. They had never had a chance in elementary school to pull the classic twin switcheroo to fool friends or teachers, because Xander had been fat—not big-boned, not husky, but fat, nearly twice the size of wiry Alex. At meals Xander cleaned his plate and his brother’s. Looking at the two of them was like looking at a juvenile Weight Watchers before-and-after photo. Alex liked to joke that they were supposed to be triplets, but Xander ate the third brother in the womb.

But in ninth grade Xander discovered speed and found something new to overindulge in. He forgot about lemon fried pies and Hardee’s chicken biscuits and began inhaling powders and tossing back pills. He went days without eating, and by sophomore year he and Alex were virtually identical, were it not for Xander’s sunken eyes and hollow cheeks. Over the next year he balanced out his amphetamine and food consumption as he discovered something—sex—that he wanted even more of, and he’d luckily managed to avoid an overdose.

But the point is, basically, that if he discovered some mysterious substance hidden in Alex’s bathroom, he was for damn sure going to give it a test drive.

Xander poured out a small mound of the powder onto the mirror. As he looked into the mirror, the powder covered his right eye, giving him a piratic countenance. He dipped his little finger into the powder, then tasted it (he wanted to make sure it wasn’t just pilfered black pepper from Weston—at summer camp Xander had accidentally snorted some pepper during a nighttime nature-walk “hone your senses” activity, and spent the next few days suffering for his mistake). The tip of his tongue instantly went numb and something opened in his head, like a skylight that let in a shaft of the godlight.

This was going to be worth getting his dick cut open.

Xander cut the powder into four lines with his student ID card. He found a BabyShakers flyer in the desk and rolled it into a tube. He did a line.

He waited for it to kick in, but nothing happened. The skylight in his head closed, his tongue resumed normal functions. He waited five, ten minutes. If anything he was more sober now than he’d been in weeks. He turned on the stereo—Holst’s Planets, which always helped the godlight find its way in. But nothing was happening.

Someone knocked on the door. “Hey, Xander,” said a male voice. “Let me in.” Not Alex, but not Renee either. So that was something. Xander moved the chair and opened the door.

A portly middle-aged man in a powdered wig and knee britches stepped into the room. “Hi, Xander,” he said. “Shut the door, will you?” Xander complied.

The man sat on Xander’s bed and pulled his wig off a bald head. “Who are you?” said Xander.

The man carefully placed his wig on the round knob of the bedpost. “You can call me Tony.”

“You look like my dad.”

“Yeah, well. There you go.”

Xander sat at the desk. He nudged the mirror toward Tony. “You want a line? I’m not sure it’s any good.”

“No, thanks.” Tony took a silver snuffbox out of his waistcoat pocket. “I’ve got my own bad habits.” He snorted a pinch. “So what did you want to see me about, Xander?”

Xander thought back. Had he called this guy? Met him at a show? Maybe he was an A&R rep. Those guys could be eccentric. “I don’t know. Just general...you sure you don’t want to come back when my brother gets back? I mean, really, he’s like the leader of the band or whatever.”

“I could,” said Tony, “but I don’t think he’s going to be back for a while. I just talked to him, what, half an hour ago? He seemed busy.”

“You saw him? Where is he? I think we’ve got a show tonight.”

“He’s not going to make it to the show.” Tony stood up. “So, listen, unless you’ve really got something important to talk about, I’ve got to get going.”

Tony put the wig back on his head and bent over the mirror to check the fit. Satisfied, he turned to Xander and gave a little salute.

“Keep your nose clean, kid.” And he left.

***********

Whoever had surprised Drew and Kirkland hadn’t seen Joanie, she was sure, or else he would have demanded she come out of the tunnel. Or come in after her. She stayed back, out of the cone of light admitted by the little square hole, and listened.

“Secret spot not so secret now, Dragan is guessing. Congraduations! You find.”

“Hey, Dragan. It’s Drew. Drew Boyd? You’re my RA?”

“Oh! Is right! Dragan is not recognizing you. Drew Boyd is spending most time in his room, no?”

“Yeah, I guess. Listen, we’ll be out of your hair in just a sec. We were just checking out the costumes here. My church group is gonna do a little Christmas pageant kind of thing.”

“Okay, is fine. Just don’t be coming upstairs! Is for Dragan only.”

“No problem. See you later, Dragan.”

“Okay. Seeing you later, Drew Boyd. And...what is name? You are looking familiar.”

“John Thompson,” said Kirkland.

“No, Dragan is seeing you somewhere. Not name Dragan is knowing. Patrick, Petey...is something starting with P. And...why are your hands being tied?”

Then the clattering sound of a rack of costumes being pushed over. Joanie too off down the tunnel, running as fast she could, all hunched over and everything.

**********

The Black Line pulled up to the bus stop in front of the Student Union and discharged its heavy cargo. Dick, the first off the bus, led the throng into the building.

The second floor was packed, as usual. Dick stopped inside the door to watch a group of veterinary students on the way to a meeting, oddly sexy in their blue scrub pants and sloppy ponytails. A line of students, mostly male, waited outside the Union theatre for the monthly “Double Bill (and Ted)”: back-to-back showings of Excellent Adventure and Bogus Journey. Dick had never seen the appeal, but he had to admit he would have been all over a Back to the Future marathon. That was the kind of time travel he could understand.

The movie theatre at the Student Union shows important foreign films on weekends, classics on Mondays and Tuesdays, and the best of the current independent cinema the rest of the week. But you’re not interested in any of that. What you want is the midnight show every Friday and Saturday: the epic dreams of your childhood recovered from your memory and splashed on a screen for all to view. Find out how much nostalgia lies to you. Will Krull still be as terrifying today as it was when you were six?

Or maybe you’ll finally see the generational memories you missed the first time around. Don’t you hate the way people look at you when you say you’ve never seen The Goonies? Now you can find out what the fuss is all about. The Goonies is what you have instead of an actual history or culture. If you can’t talk about it, then what good are you?

Revel in this nostalgia for a past you never had. Spend your weekend nights in this theatre, remembering a time when your decisions were made for you and you still had the capacity to experience basic joy and terror. Try to recapture these feelings, drunk on smuggled PBR, sitting next to your roommate’s friends and not talking. An empty bottle rolls under the seats all the way to the screen. This means something.

Next to the theatre the student art gallery was hosting a photography exhibit by Renee Goldsworthy; a black-haired girl outside the gallery was complaining to her friend about Goldsworthy not showing for her own opening, which was “so like her. That bitch is probably passed out in that greasy Alex guy’s basement or something.” Dick peeked in the gallery—the photographs were all black-and-white studies of shirtless unconscious guys, different but all of a similar type: skinny (from drugs or malnourishment, it seemed), tattooed, dark-haired. One photo was of twins lying in a bed, one’s left arm crossed over the other’s right, both arms bearing a similar razor-wire tattoo. A line of people snaked around the perimeter of the room, moving from one picture to another but never stopping completely, legs crossing over each other like a slow-motion version of the shuffle drills Dick used to do at football practice.

To Dick’s left the Everybody girls he had left at Wintertree entered the Union. They spotted Dick and moved as one toward him. “Fancy seeing you again,” said their leader.”

“Yeah,” said Dick. “Fancy.”

“You should come to our social,” the girl said. “You look like you could use some new friends.”

“Thanks, but I’m meeting somebody here.” It was hard to look at the girls. Dick kept trying to unfocus his eyes and get them to all merge into one, or for some hidden shape to emerge like in one of those magic-eye things. A rocketship or a sphere or something.

“Well, maybe we’ll see you at the next one,” one of the girls said. It was hard to tell which.

“Sure,” said Dick.

The girls left Dick and went downstairs. He turned his attention back to the art gallery. “What’s your name?” said a voice.

One of the girls was still there. She was Asian—Korean, Dick guessed, though he didn’t know why—with a small silver stud in her nose. “Dick,” he said.

“I’m Sarah. You shouldn’t worry about them. They kind of weird me out too.”

“I guess.”

Sarah gestured at the photos in the gallery. “You like this stuff?”

“It’s okay, I guess. It’s all like the same picture.”

“I know the girl that took them. Renee. She slips roofies to these guys and then shoots them while they’re passed out. She says she’s some kind of avenger, getting payback for her gender, but I think she just likes having her way with unconscious dudes. I mean, clearly she has a type. If she was teaching men a lesson, you’d think she would throw in the occasional frat bro, and not just scrawny indie dudes.”

“Where are you from?” asked Dick. He meant: what nationality?

“Doraville,” she said. “What about you?”

“Kingston.”

“You’re not a snake handler, are you?”

“What? No.”

Dick’s focus fell to the white box Sarah was holding. “What’s in that?” he said.

Sarah rolled her eyes. “I’m just so bored with the whole thing. Every month another one of these stupid box socials. Kind of makes me wish I was one of the Living Creatures or something. I bet they actually do cool stuff.”

“Probably.”

“Hey, you’re not one of the Nine Dead Men, are you?”

Dick had no idea why this was happening, but he was pretty sure he was being flirted with. “If I was, do you think I would tell you?”

“I guess not.” Sarah pointed toward the arcade, next to the gallery. “You want to play some air hockey or something?”

Yes, Dick thought. Yes I do want to play some air hockey.

© 2006 Gardner Linn