Eerie

Chapter 26 A Dark Tunnel

Chapter twenty-six

A Dark Tunnel

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” - William Shakespeare, Hamlet

Hailey stood staring at those lines, lips parted as some mix of disbelief and horror bubbled in her stomach.

…devoid of emotion…

That…couldn’t be right.

Asher certainly had at least anger figured out. And he cared about her—he’d said so.

“You’ll read this then and return it to me once you’ve finished,” Woodfork instructed, and Hailey nodded slowly, unable to tear her eyes from the word devoid.

“But…Professor,” she said in a small voice, “this can’t be…” If Asher had no emotions, he could betray her tomorrow and never think twice about it. A twinge of fear in her belly robbed her breath.

She looked up at Woodfork, shaking her head.

“It’s a long story,” he said. “You’ll read the rest, yes?”

“But—”

“And return it to me once you’ve finished.” Woodfork turned his back, gathering some objects into a bag as Hailey stared, slack-jawed.

“That’ll do for an Envoy discussion for one day.”

“But—”

“And now…” He spun around, smiling. “Let’s go explore a dark tunnel.”

“Asher told me to stay out of the dark tunnels.”

“Huh,” he grunted. “He does worry after you. But! You’ll be perfectly safe.

All we need is a robust spirit of adventure.

” He dug around inside one of his desk drawers.

“Aha! And some portable light.” He held up an Indispensable flashlight.

“Our back-up will be the Indispensable Never-Fail Lighter,” he said, handing her a small bronze object.

“What is…how does it work?” The whole thing was smooth. She couldn’t even tell where the flame would come out.

“With breath,” he said, and Hailey frowned.

“As if you’re blowing out a birthday candle, like so.

” He took the lighter, and holding it out from his mouth, he blew a puff of air against it whereupon a giant flame popped into the air over the professor’s head, as if it belonged to an invisible torch.

He handed the lighter back to Hailey, and the torch-less flame floated over her head.

“How do you put it out?” she asked, never taking her eye off the fire above her. “And where’s its fuel source?” She turned all around, still looking up at it.

“Simply hold your breath,” he told her, which she did with one eyebrow raised. To her astonishment, the flame snapped out.

“How is that possible? I mean, where’s the fuel?”

“Oh, you are a delight! A healthy dose of skepticism is always in order when one studies the science of the paranormal,” he told her.

“Many of our devices work with the help of Aethereal Energy, or AE, as we like to say. Harnessing free AE and directing it into tools, devices, and alas weapons as you’ll no doubt find in your Practical Applications class…

That is the mandate of the university, so to speak. ”

“I thought we were trying to tear the barrier.”

“Yes, one purpose feeds the other. Our benefactors want new technologies. As long as those projects further our understanding of AE on Earth, our…eh…founder finds them worthwhile.”

“After you,” he said as he opened his door.

She adjusted her backpack, and—

Wait. He was trying to distract her from asking about Asher. And it worked!

Well, enough of that.

She opened her mouth to speak but hesitated a bit too long.

“The fuel source, to answer your question, is the Sun,” said the professor. “The Indispensable Lighter is simply a precision barrier breaker—a bomb of sorts.”

“A bomb?”

And once again, her scientific curiosity betrayed her survival instinct.

Woodfork nodded, indicating her to lead the way down the stairs of Olde Main.

“Indeed. It opens a discrete in-between, which doubles back on itself, effectively folding our dimension so that a bit of the fires from near the surface of our sun come through. It draws free AE—it requires very little for ignition,” he said holding his finger up, “and so it does function outside of high-AE zones. And it attaches its position to the breath of the one holding the lighter—quite a feat of para-engineering. That was Pádraig’s project when he first arrived here.

He’s been a very productive student for the Indispensable brand. ”

“Indispensable makes a lot of things I’ve never heard of,” Hailey remarked as they reached the tunnels.

“Yes, well, of course it’s the University’s brand.

Not much demand for it outside of the paranormal world, but our devices are wildly popular among the supernatural creatures of Earth.

They sell very well in the hidden places of this world,” he said proudly.

“Let’s try this one.” Professor Woodfork pointed down a dark tunnel to the right, which emitted a low, mournfully spooky cry.

Hailey peered into the darkness. “What do you think is down there?”

“Let’s find out, shall we?” He clicked on his flashlight, and Hailey blew a puff of air onto the lighter, igniting the nuclear sun-torch above her head.

Down the tunnel they went. As the moaning grew louder, it took on a more pathetic tone, like a cry for help. Soon they were right on top of the noise, but Hailey saw nothing that could be causing such a racket.

“Aha!” said Dr. Woodfork. “A moaning bookworm. Well, this isn’t normal.”

Hailey side-eyed him. Nothing about Bear Towne was normal, and she wondered if the professor knew that.

“You see,” continued the professor as Hailey squatted next to him, “he’s bookless…

and it appears…” With his thumb and forefinger, the professor touched what looked like a fat inch-worm and raised a tiny object.

“Yes. You see, it appears his eyeglasses are broken,” he explained, showing Hailey a teeny pair of spectacles.

“We’ll get these straight over to I-MET for repair, and then we’ll bring them back along with a book. ”

He handed the tiny glasses to Hailey. “Otherwise, if we were to neglect this little guy, he’d morph into a tunneling earworm—I believe you’re familiar?”

Hailey nodded.

“Yes, well, the dark tunnels are where various creatures come when they have…issues. Second-year students spend an entire semester sorting out the ones they can, and of course avoiding the ones that are too far gone.

“Those,” he said, waving his finger in the air, “are the ones that become killers.” He held up his flashlight. “They hate the light. As you can see,” he told her as he shined a light on the bookworm, “our little friend here does not shy away from the light, and so he’s still redeemable.”

“What do bookworms do?”

“Read, mostly. And drink tea.”

“Out of tiny cups?” Hailey tried to imagine it.

“Actually—and you’ll find this in the library—they can suck down a normal size cuppa in less than a second—it’s remarkable to witness. It does make them swell, though, and some of them swell to an enormous size. But, they are very gentle creatures,” he said as he started down the main corridor.

“Professor, why have I never seen any of these creatures before? I mean, do they just all live in Alaska?”

“No, in fact.” He swung his light down a side tunnel, and a trio of round eyeballs, all in a row, blinked back. He stopped. “Ah, another redeemable creature here. Those are Yeti eyes, but as you can see, they’ve lost their head.”

Hailey nodded. “Sure have.”

“Not to worry. I’ll have one of the seniors sort him out.”

“Uh-huh.” She shook the image of a hollow-eyed Yeti head from her mind.

“But,” said the Professor, “back to your question. There is an abundance of Aethereal energy at the university, hence the great concentration of Aethereal mutations, or as the unimaginative call them, monsters. They are creatures we’re not accustomed to for sure, and in most cases, nothing to fret over.

But that’s not why you haven’t seen them.

You recall your initiation charge, I believe it’s still delivered by a kiosk at the airport… ”

Hailey hung on every word.

“Let me explain,” he said. “You see, Aethereal energy is inherently hard to fathom, hard to see, hard to remember. It’s like a dream, really.

And so its creatures possess a natural sort of camouflage against the human mind.

A sufficient jolt of AE removes the camouflage, so to speak.

” He sniffed the air and slowed his pace.

“You may see an unremarkable pile of excrement, for example, but it’s a lie.

Your brain has protected you from the nonsensical.

Now that your brain has been charged with AE, it will always see past the dream-state hallucination and perceive, well, this. ”

He flashed his light down another tunnel and revealed a harrumphing pile of flatulating moose droppings.

“Ew.” Hailey wrinkled her nose.

“Careful,” warned the professor when a giggling pellet bounced her way.

She hopped over it and joined Woodfork in a jog away from it.

Soon they’d be topside again, and Hailey would miss her chance to ask what she really wanted to know. Or not know. Truthfully, she didn’t want to confirm what she’d read, and he’d probably just shut her down again anyway, but it was now or never.

“Professor,” Hailey said, gathering her courage as they slowed to a nice walk again, “you wrote in your book that Envoys are emotionless…” She drew a breath but chewed her lip, rethinking this whole line of talk as she envisioned Asher listening in through Woodfork’s head.

“You want to know if Asher is capable of love.”

“Yeah…” she sighed, feeling exposed. “I mean, he seemed to want me here yesterday, but now—” The words stuck in her throat, and she shrugged. “Well, he just kicked me out of the university.”

She looked up at Woodfork, who nodded.

“Not to worry,” he said with a warm smile.

“As you’ll read in my chronicles, the Envoys came to this Earth devoid of emotion, but as the centuries passed, they became infected, so to speak, with feelings.

It’s new to Asher—these emotions. In a lot of ways, he is emotionally like a child—very easily injured.

Be patient with him, Hailey. I believe his feelings for you are genuine. ”

The tunnel opened to the Olde Main stairwell, and Dr. Woodfork led them into the darkness behind the stairs, where a large, rusty door hung with the letters I-MET painted in bright white.

Inside sat a crooked reception desk and a few tattered chairs under dim light, like the waiting room of a haunted doctor’s office. The professor tapped a “ring for service” bell, which called forth a shrouded figure, who held his hand out as if he were expecting them.

“This won’t take long,” the professor told Hailey after the ghoulish figure disappeared.

“Do you know where I can find Asher?” Hailey couldn’t stand it when someone was mad at her.

Mostly, she wanted to straighten out her expulsion and find out why it was suddenly “unsafe” for her there.

Honestly, she thought she’d handled things pretty darn well so far.

In fact, the more she thought about it, the more her Irish blood boiled. He had a lot of nerve expelling her!

“The Observatory, I believe,” Woodfork answered as I-MET presented a repaired set of teeny eyeglasses. The ghoul also handed the professor a paperback book.

Hailey frowned as they made their way back to the dark tunnel. “The Observatory’s off limits to students, isn’t it?”

“Yes, and I would not disturb him there.” He handed her the glasses.

Very gently, she placed them onto the face of the bookworm and set the paperback in front of him. Immediately, the groaning stopped—the worm flipped open the book—and both the book and the worm vanished.

“Where’d he go?”

“The library, most likely.” Woodfork beamed at Hailey. “Well done.”

Following her successful rehabilitation of the moaning bookworm in a dark tunnel, Hailey had every intention of disturbing Asher at the observatory, and headed out the doors of Olde Main via the red-buttoned out-between with quite a bone to pick.

Marching to the Observatory with an increasingly quickened pace, she swatted all thirty-five species of Alaskan mosquitos as she went, trying but failing to reach a particularly hungry one attached to the middle of her back.

By the time she reached the off-limits building, she had a full head of steam and a hungry swarm of bloodsuckers on her tail and didn’t hesitate to barge inside.

“Asher!” she called.

She got no answer from the Envoy at the top of the mezzanine, who looked through a telescope in the middle of the day. Ridiculous!

“You’ve got a lot of nerve—ignoring me now…after…” She had to catch her breath. “…if you…think I’m leaving this…place…”

The room swayed a bit, and she staggered.

“…I’m not…afraid of you… You’re…” She couldn’t believe she had to catch her breath again. “…I’m not…” She forgot what she wanted to say and blinked hard before falling to her knees.

Asher landed with a metallic clang on the grating in front of Hailey, and she squinted to see him. Fingers of blackness crept around her eyes as Asher helped her crumple gently to the floor.

“Asher…” she breathed. “…I don’t…feel…” As numbness spread down her legs and pins and needles jabbed her hands, Asher pulled a quill from Hailey’s back.

“It’s poison,” he said with no emotion, and then he paced away from her, looking thoughtfully skyward. “Asher…” Hailey cried between gasps. She tried reaching out to him, but her arm didn’t budge.

“Asher?” she called again, but he didn’t budge, either.