Lie + Urban Legend

Lie + Urban Legend

By Patrick Kane

            The are things that happen in life that will smash your reality.

            The smell of damp leaves filled my head, sickly sweet must. Rain fell in the picture I was watching, the distant picture of me. I felt the cold creeping up from the muddy ground, like a gremlin of shadow climbing my leg. Eyes of the dammed stared longingly at the stars, her eyes.

            “Are sure this is the right way?”

“Yes, it’s the right way. It was the right way when Max asked, it was the right way when Emily asked, and its still the right way…maybe.” I stopped and looked back through the underbrush at my cohorts, “it’s well hidden that’s kina the point.” They exchanged looks of “well we’ve come this far.” I pushed on ahead through the thickening brambles, my socks covered in itchy burrs and my shirt sticking uncomfortably in the late summer heat.

We were on an adventure, an after school exploration into the wilds of the city. The late September day had been absolutely beautiful, bright blue skies, warm clean air, and rosy treetops smiling at the migrating geese; all seen longingly out the windows of classrooms. At lunch we made a plan to take advantage of “what could quite possibly be the last nice day of the fall” and go for a bit of an adventure once freed form the hallowed halls of our high school. The three of them were following me down the thickly wooded bank of the river towards an opening in the storm sewer that I had found biking in the summer. James and Emily were dating and functioned mostly as one unit. James was tall and wearing a grey felt Swiss army coat purchased on a previous adventure into an army surplus store, Emily had a patch that James made sewn onto her black hoodie. Max was grumpy, perpetually.

Even though I was clearing the path I was going faster than the others, leaving them a clearer trail in my wake for them to follow. There was a goodly amount of woods and scruff to get through between the steep bank of the river and the nondescript parking lot we had started from. It had been nearly an hour of bush-whacking but I could finally see where the ground dropped away marking the top of the bluff. I whistled back into the sweet smelling woods and waited for the reply. Wer-whew, wer-whew, came the reply floating on the breeze. I walked along the top of the bluff, looking for the fallen tree that I had seen form the opposite bank, enjoying the bright blue sky reflecting in the rippled surface of the river. I marked the tree with a piece of neon orange tape from my pocket, a prize discovered on the walk from the bus to the parking lot. I leaned forward over the bluff slowly letting gravity tug me into a mildly controlled fall, swinging off tree trunks, skidding down the gravely leaves. There it was, the entrance to another world.

I looked down the storm drain, the tunnel was so smooth and uniform that it looked like it just got smaller. I climbed onto the top and waited for the others, max had the flashlights in one of his many pockets. The world was beautiful, sunlight filtered through the reds and yellows of the leaves, steely blue river gently lapped against the bank, shockingly blue sky reviled by a soft cool breeze.

“How’d you get down?” they had finally caught up.

“Just sort of, uh, fall, catch yourself, repeat” I hollered.

James first in an avalanche of debris, Emily was a little bit daintier very much more of a controlled decent, Max mostly just fell in a hurricane of sticks and gravel reaching the ground in a could of dust with a grin.

“Flashlight?” He tossed one up I clicked in on and shone the feeble beam into the dank, it didn’t do much. “It’ll be better when were not in the sunshine” I reassured.

“Uhhhhh guys, I don’t know about this”

James looked at me with a forlorn gloom, what Emily did James did.

            “You sure, come on it’ll be fun, its not scary” he fired off a volley of these trying in vein to persuade.

            “You guy’s go ahead. I’ll be fine James, don’t look so happy” James had a hard time controlling his excitement. “I’ll stay out here and draw, its such a nice day I don’t see why you want to go climbing in a sewer…” “storm sewer” “…anyway” we were not dissuaded. She walked over to a log and started digging in her bag for colored pencils and a tablet.

“Give a holler, or a whistle or something if you need us, I think it will echo up into there quite a ways”

“’k have fun” she wasn’t really paying attention, a chipmunk had captured her interest. She started to hum and sketch the curious little feller. James turned to me with a grin and gestured an: after you. I tilted my head in a bow and climbed regally through the rusty broken grate of the sewer, James and max followed with equal amounts of mock dignity.

            The pipe had about a five foot diameter necessitating a tilt of the head to walk upright. It was slightly musty, with a small trickle of water eternally running down the bottom. We walked straight for almost half a mile under the woods before we got to the first branch. Looking back the opening was just a pinhole of light in a sea of black.

            “Cool.”

            “Yeah, dudes we’re under the city.”

            “Cool.”

We had a friendly quarrel about which branch to take, and were off into the maze. Every new branch was a lesson in democracy, the one who made the biggest stink won. There were an amazing number of branches of wildly different ages, some that looked like they were brand new, some that looked a hundred years old made of brick. They intersected haphazardly, and at different levels. There were rusty ladders that went between them, we poked our heads up a couple to have a look but decided to save them for future trips we were already planning. There some natural caves that had collapsed a wall or ceiling reveling yet another set of things to explore. We ventured deeper into the “catacombs” slowly, stopping to look at interesting thingamajig’s and whatnots’ the cheap flashlights were beginning to fade, and the steady stream of water had made the lower bits of us well damp. We decided to turn back.

“I thought you were paying attention.”

“Don’t look at me this was your idea.”

“I thought you were marking it so I didn’t.”

“Uh-oh, are we lost?”

We were standing there deciding what to do when suddenly I had a terrible sickening feeling in my gut. Something was wrong, really, really wrong, it was the same feeling I had when I was young and my neighbor had electrocuted himself, but this was worse, the dread filled my every being. I turned and started to run.

“What the? Where are you going?” their voices faded into the gloom.

As fast as I could wasn’t fast enough, I pushed against the dank, my feet carried me faster. I slammed around corners, not even vaguely aware of the cuts I was inflicting. The flashlight was starting to fade, faster go faster, faster, faster, faster, I repeated this mantra in my head commanding my body to destroy itself if it needed to. The trickle of water had become a stream. My legs guided me though the maze, I didn’t know where I was going but it was the right way. It stopped me dead, I was still running but my soul stopped dead. Through the dark, through the dank, thought the time, I heard it. Filled with fear, dread, anguish, tormented like all the cursed in hell. I knew what it was, the feeling in my gut knew exactly what it was, death. Why am I still running? stop STOP, please stop I pleaded. My feet still pounded down the dark, I rounded the last bend the straight that had seemed so long before flew by, I flung myself though the grate.

The smell of damp leaves filled my head, sickly sweet must. Rain fell in the picture I was watching, the distant picture of me. I felt the cold creeping up from the muddy ground, like a gremlin of shadow climbing my leg. Eyes of the dammed stared longingly at the stars, her eyes.