Chapter 8: Dark
December 7th, 1991 Day 15. Today we got the first rain of the winter. It rained all afternoon. We had a lot of fun today. Mark and Cliff finally found the entrance to the clubhouse after looking for it all summer. I was glad they finally found it because they are fun to be around most of the time. Cliff asked Becky to the dance! I’m happy for Becky but I think Marissa will be very upset. I’m not sure how she will take it. We also found a trap door that probably goes into another irrigation pipe. It started to rain though and we weren’t able to go inside of it. If it isn’t raining tomorrow then we will probably try to explore it. Grandpa’s diary said he went hiking with his Dad in the mountains tomorrow. That means I better be careful because otherwise I might make Grandpa tired wherever they are hiking. It could be out in the middle of nowhere!
Samantha slept late the next morning, not waking until nearly ten o’clock. The light coming through her windows was dark and feeble, obscured by thick low hanging clouds. If anything, the rain was harder than the day before. Samantha groaned. She imagined Mark and Cliff would feel the same way. All of them wanted to explore what lay under the trap door.
Samantha got dressed and walked into the kitchen. Her mother was nowhere to be found. Thomas was sitting at the kitchen table, eating an orange, and reading the newspaper. He looked up when he heard Samantha walk in and smiled.
“Hi Hon. Good night’s sleep?”
“Yeah. Too good, because I slept longer than I wanted to. The rain makes it so dark that I didn’t wake up.”
“I saw the news this morning,” Thomas said, gesturing towards the television in the living room. “It’s supposed to rain all day today too.”
Samantha frowned. “That stinks.”
“I agree. I wanted to work in the garden today. I still don’t have all of last year’s plants cleaned up. Did you see that I still have a few tomatoes growing! This is the latest in the year we’ve ever had them and I’ve been growing in the same spot for twenty years.”
“That’s really great Dad.”
Thomas grinned at her tone.
“Not as exciting as what you must have had planned today?”
“No.”
“What were you going to do before the rain ruined it all?”
“Cliff and Mark finally found the clubhouse entrance yesterday so Becky and I were going to play with them. We started working on a new tunnel yesterday but had to stop when the rain started.”
“Where is the new path going to go,” Thomas asked, reaching into the fruit bowl for an apple.
“To the second oak tree.”
“Another lookout?”
“Sure. Maybe even a good tree house I think. That tree would be much better for a full tree house than the other one because it is wider.”
Thomas nodded and bit into the apple. Samantha didn’t feel like eating fruit, so she got up and went to the cupboard for a bowl and some cereal. By the time she got it ready and got back to the table, Thomas had finished his apple and he had placed the core so it was sitting on his discarded orange peels.
“So I saw that you were supposed to write an essay about what your parents do for a living,” Thomas said casually.
Samantha almost dropped her spoon into her cereal and tried to look up, but she couldn’t meet her Dad’s eyes.
“Oh yeah. I had almost forgotten about that.”
“Were you nervous about asking me?”
Samantha nodded her head.
“Samantha, we’ve told you all about it before and you know there is no reason to be embarrassed. We got lucky, that’s all. Your Grandpa made a lot of money and he gave a large amount of it to me. He wanted us to be able to do whatever we wanted with our lives. Your Mom and I decided we wanted as much free time as possible. We both work when we feel like it and stop when we don’t. There is nothing to be ashamed of.”
“I know. But it feels weird to write about it, you know? Like Mark’s Dad is a doctor in the city so he can write about all the emergencies that his Dad works on. And Becky’s Dad is a lawyer and she can write all about his cases and will probably write double what we are supposed to write. But what can I write about?”
“Write about how our job is to have fun.”
“That’s dumb Dad. I can’t write that or everyone will laugh at me.”
“Well, write about when I was writing and your Mom was illustrating children’s books. That was a good job.”
“I don’t even remember that. You did that when I was five, right?”
“Sure, but it was a good job.”
“I don’t know. I’ll write something but I don’t know what yet.”
“Well, don’t feel bad about it Samantha. We are luckier than Mark’s Dad or Becky’s Dad, or Becky’s Mom, for that matter, who also works as an attorney. They have to work for someone else and we don’t. We can work for ourselves.”
“Maybe that’s what I’ll write about.”
“What’s that?”
“I’ll write about how you and Mom work for yourselves,” Samantha said.
By two in the afternoon the rain was still falling and Samantha was in her room, bored out of her mind. Several times she tried to start her paper but stopped because nothing sounded good. She listened to her radio, took out the flute she hardly ever played, and even tried drawing. Nothing was fun. She watched the rainwater pooling in the street outside her window and saw Mr. Henson driving back home, probably from church. He parked his car in the driveway and ran to his front door. Watching him run brought back a rush of near-memories but she wasn’t sure what they were, since she knew Mr. Henson had always been a good runner. She was about to try calling Marissa when she heard the phone ringing down the hall. She heard her father answer it and then yell, “Samantha!”
She got up and jogged out of her room, thankful for the diversion. She said hello expecting Marissa, but it turned out to be Mark.
“Hi Samantha.”
“Hi Mark.”
“Um, how are you today?”
“Bored. How about you?”
“Really bored,” he said, his voice relaxing. “Cliff and I have been stuck in here all day because my parents were home. But they just went out to the garage and got in the car.”
“So,” Samantha said, disgruntled and unwilling to hide it.
“So,” Mark said, suddenly excited, “Cliff and I are going to go into the trapdoor.”
“Really,” Samantha said, and she started walking towards her room with the cordless phone so her Dad wouldn’t overhear her.
“Yeah! Can you meet us?”
“Are you crazy? It’s pouring rain and I already told you that I’m not allowed in the bamboo when it’s raining.”
“But I bet you could come over here to play our new Nintendo games.”
“Not if your parents aren’t home.”
“Well, we’re going anyway. We want you to come but if you can’t then we’ll try. We’re so bored I think Cliff will go insane. And I can’t stop thinking about what might be in there.”
“I want to go too but my Dad is here. I can’t just walk over there.”
“Well…” Mark began, and then stopped. He sighed with an annoyed tone and didn’t seem to know what to say. Samantha didn’t know what to say either and the silence started to take up the phone line. Each silent second made it harder to talk.
“So,” Mark said, with an effort, “we’ll be over there in a couple of minutes. Try to make it if you can.”
“But…” Samantha began, and then stopped because Mark had hung up the phone.
She stalked out to the kitchen, shoved the phone into its cradle, and was about to tell her Dad what Mark and Cliff were planning so he could stop them, when she stopped herself. She forced herself to calm down. Her Dad looked up from the magazine he was reading.
“How is Mark anyway,” Thomas asked.
“He’s good,” Samantha said and then, before she even knew what she was doing, “he has a new Nintendo game a
nd he wanted to know if I could come over to play it.”
“Is your report done,” Thomas asked.
“No. I tried starting it a couple of times but couldn’t get anywhere.”
“Well, as long as you do it as soon as you get home. No later than six.”
“Sure Dad. Thanks.”
She started towards the door but Thomas asked, “Are their parents home?”
She had an internal pause, although it was certainly brief enough that her Dad would not have noticed. She didn’t want to lie, but this desire was strange because she started their conversation with an even bigger lie. Samantha had no idea why telling one lie seemed fine and telling another triggered guilt, but the feeling was undeniable and she followed it.
“No. Mark said their parents left a little bit ago.”
Thomas looked at her for a moment, and then smiled.
“OK then. Go ahead and have fun. But be home by six!”
Surprised but happy, Samantha said sure and headed out the door. The rain was still heavy and the sky was low, so she ran over to the Wilson’s. Even though she ran she was still drenched by the time she got to safety under their porch. Mark answered her knock within moments.
“Hi Samantha. I thought you said you couldn’t come over?”
“I asked my Dad and he said yes. Sometimes he surprises me with how cool he is.”
“Great.” He opened the door and let her inside. As she passed him she had to stop a laugh, because she noticed he was dressed all in black. He was also wearing a black hat over his dark hair. Samantha had not been to their house often and she was always amazed at how nice everything looked and how much stuff covered the walls. Vases sat on smoked glass end tables. Large, beautiful paintings adorned the walls. It was almost impossible to believe the house contained twin, rambunctious boys.
“Who was it,” Cliff called from the back of the house, nervously.
“It’s Samantha,” Mark said.
Cliff jogged into the room, also fully decked out in black clothes and black hat. Samantha couldn’t help but laugh this time, although she tried to cover up the sound with her left hand.
“What’re you laughing at,” Cliff asked.
“You guys. If you had a white collar you’d look like twin preachers. We’re only going to my backyard.”
“Yeah, but you don’t know where we’ll end up, do you,” Cliff said. “Who knows where that trap door is going to go.”
Samantha thought it would probably only lead a few feet and then stop, but she didn’t say anything. Mark had two flashlights, neatly coiled rope, two canteens, and two backpacks sitting on the kitchen counter. He started to load one of the backpacks and Cliff helped load the other one. Then they hoisted them onto their backs.
“OK. Here we go.”
Samantha followed them, feeling quite smug in her gray sweatshirt and jeans. The Wilson’s back door opened onto a large, beautifully furnished screened patio. Cliff and Mark walked through it quickly and out the door to the lawn. The Wilson’s yard could not be more different than Samantha’s. Although it was big for the neighborhood, it was still much smaller and had only a few trees, mostly around the perimeter. A lush full lawn covered almost the entire yard.
Once out of the screened porch they were in the rain, but it wasn’t raining as hard as earlier. Nevertheless, they ran to the loose fence board leading to Samantha’s back yard and the eucalyptus grove. Samantha could see the start of the grove behind the tall redwood trees lining the perimeter of the Wilson’s yard. It felt strange to approach her yard this way. She had done so before but it never struck as unusual until now.
Cliff went through into Samantha’s back yard but Mark paused and held the dangling fence board for Samantha. She went through and he followed. They emerged away from the eucalyptus trail, near the back section of the grove. There was no danger of being seen from the house but Samantha wanted to be extra careful.
“Let’s go around to the back entrance,” she said.
“Sounds good,” Cliff said. “That’s the tunnel one, right?”
“Yeah.”
They ran through the rest of the eucalyptus grove and out into the chaparral behind it, fully in the rain again. They curved around the bamboo until they were almost to the stream and Samantha called a halt. Cliff was looking at the stream, marveling at how high it had gotten over the past couple of days.
Samantha dropped to her knees and started crawling through the mud under the bamboo. Mark and Cliff did the same. She was over the back entrance trap door when she realized she had gotten herself covered in mud and would have a very difficult time explaining it to her Dad. She groaned.
“What,” Mark asked.
“Look how dirty my pant legs are. How am I supposed to get back inside looking like this?”
Mark shook his head. “I don’t know.”
Cliff, meanwhile, had opened the trap door and climbed down the ladder. Mark followed, with Samantha close behind. She closed the trapdoor behind them as soon as Mark was down and they were in complete darkness. Mark and Cliff snapped on their flashlights and hurried to the other end of the tunnel. Cliff was first up the ladder and he pushed the trap door up, allowing natural light to flood back in. Within moments they were all walking quickly down the bamboo tunnel towards the main entrance and the trap door.
As usual, the rain was muted and somehow spooky from inside the bamboo. The sound of the rain hitting the stalks was loud and it seemed to come from all directions, but no direct drops made it through. Instead, streams of water flowed down in places, channeled by the tightly interlaced bamboo overhead.
They walked to the trapdoor, the cover cast aside, as they left it the morning before. They paused above the hole in the ground and Mark and Cliff shined their flashlights inside. It was easy to make out the floor, which was about four feet below. A small stream of water about two inches deep ran through, flowing the direction from which they had come.
“So, who goes in first,” Mark asked.
Cliff didn’t say anything but he looked very excited.
“I’ll go in first,” Samantha said. “I’m the lightest and you two can lower me down.”
Samantha stepped over the hole and started to lower herself down. Both Mark and Cliff stepped over to either side of her. Mark grabbed one hand and Cliff grabbed the other, slowly lowering her into the hole. For a moment she was very conscious of Mark holding her left hand. Then her feet touched the floor and her shoes were flooded with cold water.
“I’m down,” she said.
Cliff handed his backpack to her through the hole and lowered himself down. Samantha braced his shoe with her hand and guided him. Cliff was a couple of inches shorter than she was, something she hadn’t ever noticed before, and so he had a slightly longer wait until he was standing firmly on the floor. Then they lowered Mark into the tunnel. Once down, they all looked up at the square of white light. Samantha saw that they could get out easily, but that none of them had considered the possibility that they could have been stuck. Suddenly nervous and feeling unprepared, she shivered.
Mark flashed his light both up and down the tunnel. Cliff did the same. There was nothing to see, except that the concrete tunnel was long. It was so long, in fact, that they could not see the end of it with the flashlights.
“What do you think we are in,” Mark asked. “A sewer?”
“I don’t know,” said Cliff. “I think if it was a sewer then we would be able to smell it. This smells pretty clean.”
“Maybe it’s a drainage pipe,” Samantha said.
“This big though? I thought drainage pipes were smaller than this,” Cliff said.
Samantha shrugged. “I have no idea. Maybe it used to the hold the whole stream. Why else would someone build this then?”
“Which way should we go,” Mark asked.
“The water goes that way,” Cliff said, gesturing with his flashlight, “So we know that it probably ends up at the stream, probably under your fence.
I’d say the other way will be more interesting.”
“Sounds good,” Mark said, and started walking up the tunnel.
The sound of their footsteps was disconcerting, producing flat echoes with each splashing step. The walls of the tunnel were pitted because the concrete was old and there were cracks at the joints. They walked about twenty feet and there was still no visible end to the tunnel. Samantha had a bad thought.
“Hey guys,” she said, and then stopped because her own voice echoed back to her and diverted her train of thought. “Hey guys, hey guys, hey guys, hey guys…”
Mark and Cliff both stopped and looked at her, flashlights pointing up against the walls.
“What if this thing floods? How would we get out?”
Mark looked extremely nervous. Cliff laughed.
“Look at the water. It’s been raining for two days and it’s just a trickle.” His echo replied, “trickle, trickle, trickle, trickle…”
“What if they only release water into this pipe in bunches though,” Samantha said.
“Then we’d end up in the stream,” Cliff said.
“But how would we breathe?”
“Do you want to go back Samantha,” Mark asked, almost timidly.
“I don’t know.”
“Ah come on,” Cliff said. “I want to see where this thing goes.”
They started walking again, but even slower than before. They passed clumps of bamboo leaves stuck to the sides of the pipe walls. It was hard to tell how far they had walked. Samantha looked back and could still see the light coming in through the trap door, but it was dim and far away.
“Hey,” Cliff said, “I think something changes up ahead.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know, but I think the tunnel starts to curve.”
Samantha squinted and could sort of see what he was talking about. The walls of the tunnel seemed to bend to the left. It was hard to see because the flashlights bounced as Mark and Cliff walked and the water reflected the light and splayed it across the pitted walls. They continued forward and the tunnel did start to curve. Samantha looked back again and could no longer see the trapdoor.
There were additional bits of wood and clumps of leaves scattered about the floor of the tunnel once they started the gentle curve to the left. Samantha started to lose sense of time and distance. She asked Mark how long he thought they had been walking and he had no idea. With the tunnel curving the flashlights did not penetrate as far into the darkness, removing even the limited comfort of knowing their immediate vicinity was clear. With the shortening sightlines, Samantha felt increasing claustrophobia as they walked. She had no desire to be the coward in the group. She hoped her uneasiness was also felt by Mark and Cliff. Judging by the tense posture of their bodies, she suspected they were also afraid. After a few more of indeterminate minutes, Cliff suddenly stopped, still as rock.
“What,” Mark hissed, and Samantha heard the edge of fear in his voice, which made her own fear increase.
“Look at the ceiling.”
He trained his flashlight on the ceiling, revealing a square of metal exactly like the one they moved to enter the tunnel. Samantha realized she had been so concerned with her footing that she hadn’t looked upwards since they entered. She saw Mark look behind them, exactly as she wanted to do, and she suspected he was thinking the same thing as her.
“How many of those do you think we walked past,” Mark asked.
“I don’t know,” Cliff said. “I only saw this one because I thought I felt something brush against my forehead. I looked up to see what it was and I saw the door.”
“Should we try to open it,” Mark asked.
“Yes,” Samantha and Cliff said together. They looked at each other and started laughing, but the sound of it echoing off the cement walls made them stop quickly.
“I wonder where we are. I mean, we couldn’t have gone that far because we were walking so slowly. We might be one neighborhood over but we can’t be any further than that,” Mark said.
“But there are only more houses over there. Where would this come up,” Cliff asked.
“You know what,” Samantha said suddenly, “I bet this thing run along the stream. It makes sense, because the stream turns to the left and runs out into the neighborhood through the church playground.”
“Why would it follow the stream,” Cliff asked.
“Who cares,” Mark said, “Let’s see where we are. Give me a boost.”
Cliff stuck one of his legs out and bent his knee, so that Mark would have something to stand on. Mark climbed up and started to push on the trapdoor. It wouldn’t budge. He shoved harder and Samantha imagined she saw the left corner tilt up for a moment, but nothing else happened.
“Hurry man, you’re killing my leg,” Cliff said.
“One more try.”
Mark pushed as hard as he could, slipped backwards off Cliff’s leg, and fell against the wall of the tunnel. His flashlight went flying out of his left hand and smashed against the concrete floor. It went out immediately and they could hear the glass cover scattering into the water. Mark cried out and slid down the wall. Samantha jumped back in surprise, and then ran over to Mark.
“Mark! Are you alright.”? Alright, Alright, Alright Alright...
Mark had his eyes closed and his teeth clenched. “Yeah,” he said. “I think so. I hit my head against the wall.”
Cliff had also squatted next to Mark and put his hand on the back of Mark’s head.
“Ouch!”
“Sorry, sorry.” Cliff ran his fingers through his hair and muttered, “That bump is huge already.”
“We need to get you back home Mark,” Samantha said.
“I’m fine. It just hurts.”
It started to get darker. Samantha looked upward instinctively, looking to see if a cloud had blocked out part of the sun. Then she remembered she was in a tunnel and not outside. She looked down and saw that Cliff, in his concern for Mark, had let go of his flashlight and it had rolled into the shallow water. The light was dimming noticeably.
“Cliff!”
Samantha sprung over Mark, grabbed the flashlight out of the water, and tried to dry it off against her sweatshirt. It was too late. The rest of the light faded and Samantha looked at Mark and Cliff, watching the stunned expressions on their faces disappear into the dark.
Samantha walked blindly across the tunnel and squatted next to Mark and Cliff. She groped for them and felt Mark’s hair.
“Can you walk, Mark?”
“Yes,” he said, but he sounded bad.
“What about you Cliff?”
“I think so. Damn! That was so stupid of me. Stupid!”
“Which way do we need to go? I kind of got turned around,” Samantha said.
“We go towards you,” said Cliff, “unless we can get that trapdoor open.”
It’s dark in here, Samantha thought, I could open up the door and they wouldn’t see me, so it would be safe. This is certainly the kind of thing I’m supposed to use the talent for anyway.
She opened her mouth to say that she could open the door, but stopped as she remembered her Grandpa’s diary. He had been hiking this day with his Dad. If she pushed the door open she could get wipe him out when they were deep on a hike and she couldn’t risk doing that.
Right as she was dismissing thoughts of opening the door, an even worse thought crept into her mind, one that hadn’t fully occurred to her until that moment. She could be drained herself, at any moment. What if she felt the draining while they were all stuck in the dark in the tunnel. Would she be able to walk, or even stay conscious? She had no idea, but it brought the edge of panic back into her and when she spoke to the boys her voice wavered.
“I think we need to start heading back now.”
“OK,” Cliff said. “Can you walk Mark?”
“I said yes,” he said, sounding angry. Samantha heard them getting up and walked to them, clutching for their hands.
“Let’s hold hands on the way out so we don’t get separated,” Samantha said.
Neither of the boys replied, but they didn’t let go of her hands either and they started walking the direction Cliff said was correct. It quickly became evident he was right, because, once their eyes got used to the darkness, a very faint light could be seen and Samantha saw that the tunnel was now curving to the right. She wondered where the light was coming from, and then they passed underneath another trapdoor. It was ringed by the faintest line of light. They passed under it, hurrying on, and before long they went under another trapdoor, which had no light ring but they could still see the shape of it because, up ahead, came the welcome glow from the open trapdoor they originally entered.
For the last stretch it took all of Samantha’s willpower not to break into a run. Cliff was still walking slightly behind Mark in case he should stumble and Mark was walking with his head down and his chin resting on his chest. They reached the door and looked out, realizing the rain had mostly stopped and that evening was approaching rapidly.
“Boost me up,” Samantha said.
Cliff let go of Mark and stuck his leg out again so that Samantha could step on it. She did so, grasped the edges of the trapdoor, and pulled herself through. As soon as she was up, she leaned back inside and put her hand down so that Mark could have a handhold. She got one of his hands, then the other, and pulled upwards as hard as she could without using her talent. Mark got his elbows out of the trapdoor, then his knee, and then he was out, lying on his back on the cold, muddy path. Cliff’s hand’s appeared on the outside of the hole because he had jumped up and grabbed the edges. Samantha stepped back to help him as well, but he was able to pull himself up.
Mark stood up, holding the back of his head.
“Are you hurt,” Samantha asked.
“My head really hurts. But I think I’m fine.”
“That was pretty bad,” Cliff said. “Mark got hurt and we lost both of our flashlights. I guess we probably shouldn’t become cave explorers after all.”
Samantha laughed, mostly out of relief and the fact they were back in familiar surroundings. Mark didn’t seem to notice and he was shivering slightly.
“We need to get you home,” Cliff said to Mark.
Mark nodded, but didn’t seem to remember what to do next, so they led him back down the tunnel.
Samantha turned left instead of going straight and beckoned Mark to follow her.
“Where are you going,” Cliff asked. “You’re going out the front entrance?”
“Yes. I don’t want Mark to have to try to climb down the ladder. And I don’t even really care if my Dad does see us, do you?”
Cliff shrugged and followed Samantha down the short tunnel to the bamboo door. Quickly they were out and crawling out from under the bamboo and running quickly over to the cover of the eucalyptus grove. Samantha walked with them over to the loose fence board but didn’t follow them through.
“I need to try and sneak inside without Dad noticing my jeans,” Samantha said, gesturing down at her pants, which were now streaked brown.
“OK.”
Samantha looked at Mark again and his eyes were still somewhat unfocused. Nobody said anything. Then Cliff opened the loose fence board and guided Mark into their own backyard. He said goodbye to Samantha and moved the board back into position. Samantha remained where she was for a moment, taking in deep breathes of the wonderful smell of wet eucalyptus. She looked at her jeans, laughed a trifle bitterly, and walked towards the house.
The sky was dark and Samantha realized they had been inside the tunnel much longer than she would have thought. It was fortunate they had not continued because they would not have been back to the trapdoor until after nightfall. Their parents probably would have noticed they weren’t at either house and started searching for them. She felt bad Mark was hurt but she couldn’t deny his fall had saved them from getting in trouble.
Samantha paused at the edge of the eucalyptus grove and looked at her house. It seemed the only light on was the living room light, which meant her Dad was probably still in his chair, reading. She felt sure she could sneak into the kitchen and down the hall without her Dad seeing her. But what was she going to do about her jeans? Her Mom would notice them unless Samantha washed them first. That meant that she needed to get her jeans into the garage, sneak into the house, get fresh clothes, and sneak back out of the house so she could come in the front door.
Samantha walked out of the grove, staring intently at the back windows of her house to make sure her Dad was not looking out.
“So missy. Heading back inside,” said a loud, drawling voice.
Samantha jumped up, startled, and felt her legs and arms start to tingle. She closed her eyes and forced herself to not do anything with her talent. When she felt she was under control, she opened her eyes and saw Mr. Henson lurking behind the fence, staring over the top of it at her.
“I see you finally let those two boys into your little play area. Nice girls shouldn’t be inside a place like that all alone with two boys.”
Samantha ignored him and walked to the house. She felt his eyes on her until the corner of the house blocked his view. She snuck inside the garage and was delighted to find a large pile of her clothes waiting to be washed. Samantha pulled off her muddy jeans and her bare legs immediately were covered with goose bumps. Hurriedly she hid the muddy jeans at the bottom of the pile and grabbed a less dirty pair from the top. She started to put them on, feeling strange wearing only underwear in the garage. She pulled her shoes back on and ran lightly out of the garage and around the house to the front yard. She looked over at the Wilson’s house and saw a car was back in the driveway, which meant that Mark and Cliff’s parents were home.
She walked up to her own front door, opened it, and walked straight back to her bedroom. Her father was nowhere to be seen, although the light was still on in the living room. Then she heard a toilet flush from the back of the house and she knew she was safe. She walked quickly into her room and shut the door, changing into sweats and a warm sweatshirt.