“WHOA …”
The space beyond the bookcase was huge.
It receded into darkness, the expanse broken by thick cement pillars. Rotting wood beams made rectangles in the ceiling, from which a few scraggly light bulbs hung.
I stepped inside, onto a floor of hard, well-trammeled dirt. The air was clammy and cold, and it smelled of mildew and dry rot.
I turned on two light bulbs. They swung jerkily as I let go, sending ghostly shimmers of light across the walls.
Plenty of students had found this place, besides The Delphic Club. Drawings and graffiti were all over the walls. This is what I saw on the nearest one:
BEANO + DELORES 1948
CLASS OF ’73 RULES!!!
MAX YASGUR FOR PRESIDENT
IMPEACH NIXON!
TRAMPLE THE NAZI DOGS!
END IMPERIALISM! MARXISM NOW!
U.S. OUT OF VIETNAM
GEORGE LOVES CALI 4 EVER 1967
I stared at that last one. I felt my heart skip.
George and Cali are my parents.
Well, one is and one was.
The message stood out so proudly, as if it had been written yesterday. I could see Dad, seventeen and looking over his shoulder, not wanting to be caught.
4 Ever, it said. That was how long they expected to be in love. Forever.
They didn’t make it. They had twenty years.
Twenty years seems so short. Yet the seven years since Dad died — that seems like forever. I guess it’s because my time without him will never end.
Terrific. My eyes were watering. I hated thinking about Dad. I’d trained myself not to. It was too frustrating. Whenever I did, I always wanted to ask him questions — about sex, about Ariana, about this crazy yearbook stuff. I would picture him listening, but I couldn’t picture his answer. Whenever I tried to imagine looking into his eyes, he was always looking back at a ten-year-old.
I needed to let my past alone. Reading about strangers was much easier.
Besides, some of the writing might answer what had actually happened down there in 1950.
A lot of the messages were faded or drawn over, but I could make out dates on quite a few. I saw plenty of writing from the forties, about Hitler and Mussolini and the atomic bomb. A couple of things were dated 1950, and lots of it was after 1965.
Absolutely nothing existed between those two dates.
The basement had been “sealed” after 1950, that much I remembered from the microfilm. But what exactly had happened down there?
I followed the writing deeper into the basement. Odd, unexpected corners opened into wider and wider areas, until the bookcase was nowhere to be seen.
The writing thinned out, then disappeared. But I didn’t care. The air was sweeter here, and I was feeling light-headed.
At the end of the wall was a long, long crack in the dirt floor, which I followed with my eyes till it led to a wide opening fifteen feet away — through which a soft mist billowed and hissed.
I’m coming.
I breathed deeply and started to laugh. A hole in the earth, maybe that was where The Delphic Club met, an underground lair like the high-toned Communist-agitated frat.
Someone was giggling, cackling. It didn’t shock me at all, and then I realized the laughing was mine and the smoke was circling my face and I was walking to the hole and I felt smart (om … pha … los) and powerful and charged with energy (Oh how weird what the hell did that mean?) and I never wanted to go back and I could live forever like that (4 Ever!) and behind me I could see the bookcase now and it was closing (Hamlet was a putz) and (Smut and Monique) and (what am I doing).
A strangled cry welled up from my toes. It exploded from my mouth, doubling and tripling off the walls.
I stood at the edge of the crack. My knees were locked, but I felt a piece of me ripping away, plunging in the blackness.
My heart was a jackhammer, my brain a tangle of loose sparking wires. Before the last echo of my cry faded, I turned and ran.
The bookcase was in view when I blacked out.
And another dream rushed in to fill the void.