The Closet

Chapter 17

            They had left the house at a few minutes after 8 that morning, and when Jarom had run back home, John and Jason hurried on to school.  Hoping to minimize the fallout for Jarom from being tardy again, John passed through the middle school office on the way to class to let them know that his brother would be a few minutes late. The middle school and high school were across the street from each other and lately, the older boys had made it a habit of meeting at lunch and after school. Their lunch period was at 11:30, and John walked out to the buffalo statue to wait for Jarom. He waited until noon before he decided that Jarom wasn’t coming, so he walked over to the middle school to see what kind of trouble Jarom had gotten into for being late. 

            He walked through the normal hang-outs but didn’t see his brother. His lunch period was close to over, so he walked back through the office and asked what class Jarom would be going to next. The secretary looked surprised.

            “Jarom didn’t come in this morning,” she said. “Is he sick?”

            “Maybe so,” replied John, trying not to look panicked. In an instant, he knew exactly where Jarom had gone.  “Thanks very much,” he said as he walked out the door, and then instead of crossing the street for the high school, he set off down the block toward home. The only entrance to the tunnels that was unlocked from above was the one at the cemetery. John accelerated as he rounded the corner of the school and broke into a run down the street. They had been forbidden to go back into the tunnels, and he was afraid that the rash behavior of his brother would have a lasting effect on Jarom’s relationship with his Dad.

            John knew that cutting his afternoon classes was not the wisest thing, but loyalty to his brother came first. Now, not only had Jarom disobeyed his father, but John was being drawn into the same snare. Arriving at Grant Circle, he skirted the gate and turned hard left toward the cemetery. He unknowingly retraced the path that Jarom had made that morning, passing through the gate, wandering down the rows of headstones, and at last finding the tomb he had seen before only in the middle of the night. 

            He lifted the gate off of the hinge posts and slipped inside and then set the gate back on the hinges. Creeping deeper into the tomb, he saw the opening into the dark recesses below.  Fumbling beneath his texts and notebooks in the bottom of his backpack, he found his headlamp. He strapped it on and pushed the button-switch. His eyes were used to the bright daylight and the headlamp only provided a minimal illumination in the darkness below. He slid down to the first step in the long stairway and began feeling his way with his feet, remembering the missing and broken treads. After a few moments, his eyes became accustomed to the deepening blackness broken only by his lamp, and he quickened his pace. 

            As he reached the round room, he was surprised to find that the chain escape ladder was gone. He hurried down the corridor to the west expecting to find Jarom at the third door, working on the lock or maybe even inside the room.  Jarom wasn’t there, though. The tools were there.  There was oil on the door, but Jarom wasn’t there. He lifted the closed padlock that secured the bolt and saw that it was oily, but he could do nothing with it, and he let it drop back into place making a metallic clunk.

            Jarom had been alone in room of death for what seemed like hours. It had actually been almost 2 hours, but with no frame of reference, he could not really gauge the time. The terror he had felt had subsided somewhat. He had walked through the room and though he had not become accustomed to the wizened corpses, his fear of them had subsided. The room was much like the other storage chambers except for its contents. There was little air exchange through the tightly-fitting door with its rubber seal and the smell of the putrefaction that had occurred here decades ago still persisted. He noticed several canisters on the ground near the door, and he picked one up to examine it. The label was in German and was nearly unreadable, but he could make out the words ,’Giftgas’ and ‘Vorsicht’.  

He knew that his family would miss him after school, and they would surely know where he had come. This hope helped him to retain his sanity in this unholy place, and he kept telling himself that it would be OK. He sat slumped against a wall, avoiding contact with the withered corpses that surrounded him. Then he heard the clunk of metal against metal on the door.

            He had no way of knowing who it might be, but he couldn’t imagine the situation being much worse. He pounded on the door with his fists and screamed. The solid steel door was massive and effectively dampened the sound waves generated in the air, but sound created with the steel door as an instrument of the sound was clearly transmitted. John heard the pounding and immediately surmised what it must be.

Jarom’s hands were a pulp, but reaching into his pocket, he found his key ring and began tapping a pattern on the door with his keys.  The metal-on-metal contact was more easily heard from both sides, and the brothers tried to communicate in that fashion. Neither knew Morse code, but being able to elicit a response from the other side with a tap gave courage to Jarom and assurance to John.

Since Jarom had become trapped inside the stone chamber, he had gone from terror with heart pounding to an expectation of eventual release with his physical responses returning to normal. After two hours however, he began to feel ill. He attributed his nausea to being surrounded by death, but he began to develop a headache and it was becoming difficult to breathe. In a large room like he was in, he didn’t expect that there could be a lack of oxygen, but he didn’t know what else he could attribute his weakness to. He was becoming increasingly dizzy and sank down by the wall. 

Standing by the door outside, John was in a quandary. He knew that he needed to get the door open to get his brother out, but he was not proficient at picking locks, and in any event, had nothing to pick it with. He supposed that it might be cut off with a torch or bolt cutters, but that would require his leaving his brother alone, and he was loathe to do that.  Meanwhile, he tapped on the door to maintain communication with Jarom.

Jarom had continued to tap in response to his brother’s attempt at wordless dialogue, but the effort had become too much for him. Just breathing was more and more difficult and he began to nod off.  John didn’t know what the problem was, but the lack of response from his sibling increased his concern.  For all he knew, Jarom could be injured or ill. If something untoward had befallen him, it was urgent that he be released from the chamber so that he could be given first aid or emergency care!

Desperation overcoming him and seeing no other alternative, he picked up the sledge hammer and swung it with all his might at the lock. The door rang like a bell and the lock suffered some damage, but the shackle wasn’t affected. In fact, it was surprisingly unaffected.  It was likely case-hardened steel, typical of a quality lock built to resist bolt cutters and brute force.  The hammer did have the effect of distorting the keyway entrance though, so even a key or picks now would be useless. Again and again John swung the hammer with no discernable positive effect.  Exhausted, he turned his attention to getting a response from Jarom.

He tapped on the door in a pattern as he had done earlier, but received no confirmation from Jarom. The silence was as terrifying for John as being locked inside must have been for Jarom.  He walked back into the main tunnel planning to go for help as quickly as he could when he came to the side passage leading to the old ammunition storage room, and he knew the solution.

He hurried into the room and on the floor he saw the spilled boxes of hand grenades.  His father had told them how they were used when Jason had tipped over the boxes.  He picked up one of the explosive devices and examined it.  He could see on the end of the handle how the cap could be unscrewed and could imagine pulling the porcelain ball inside to activate the timer. 

His overriding thought was that time was of the essence. Jarom was still unresponsive as John returned to the locked chamber door. He had seen hand grenades in the movies and he figured that the mass of the steel door would be little affected by a surface blast, but that if he could fix the grenade under the lock, the direct contact with the explosive would destroy it. The lock hinged upward, hanging as it was by the shackle, and placing the grenade under it, the weight of the lock held it in place. His father had told them that the hand grenades had a 5 second fuse, so his plan was to unscrew the end, pull the ball down sharply and then run out of into the main tunnel and around the corner. 

He looked at his preparations one more time to see if he had missed anything, unscrewed the cap and felt the porcelain ball fall into his hand. He held breath, gave the ball a jerk, and turned and ran down the short passage to the main tunnel where he took two steps to the side and dove to the floor with his hands over his ears.