Page 35 - the NOISE January 2014

and all sorts of interesting junk. I recognized an oscilloscope, a thermographic camera, and an old eidetic monitor. There were crates full of vacuum tubes, old computer parts, circuit boards, and some thick glass lenses.
I brushed a cobweb off a crate and saw that it was stamped “Edwards Air Force Base, Area 51.” I couldn’t resist prying up the lid with my knife. The crate contained a weird object or being I could not identify. It looked something like a large, soft mechanical insect, sort of like a plump scarab beetle, with hundreds of flecks of tiny multicolored beads all over it. When I touched it, my finger went numb and the thing shivered.
I saw a vent in the belly dilate open and a cloud of steam or pollen or something puffed up into the air, and I couldn’t help breathing some of it. It had a sickly sweet organic smell and it irritated my nose. As I gazed at the fleshy mass in the crate I saw it begin to throb gently. It began enlarging, swelling up slowly like a water balloon. I panicked. I still had my knife in my hand, and I stabbed it. The thing exploded, spraying wet stringy pulp everywhere. I wiped my face and put the lid back on the crate. I’m no exo-biologist, so I’ll leave that thing’s corpse for someone else to investigate.
I returned the way I had come, hurrying through the tunnel until I reached the branch to the north. This corridor led to the sub-basement of the Confederated Community Church on West Aspen Avenue. Apparently this room had been forgotten; it was empty except for an iron ring in a square of wood embedded in the center of the dirt floor. I tried to lift the ring, but it was so old it broke off. I was able to pry up the wood. I saw something buried there wrapped in a decayed material that looked like linen or maybe parchment.
Written on it were the words “SANCTAE CRUSIS CHRISTI FRAGMENTUM TUERI” which was Greek to me. The cloth was wrapped around a box that was obviously ancient, like maybe a couple of thousand years old. It turned out to be a puzzle box, which I suppose was a good way to lock a box before metal locks existed. I turned and twisted the various parts of the box until something finally clicked into place, and it popped open. After all that work, I was disappointed, because all it contained was an old piece of wood. I tossed it aside and headed back down the passage to the main tunnel, anxious to explore other branches.
Soon I reached the sub-basement of the Weatherford Hotel, which was built in 1897. This area had an interesting history. In 1907 movies were shown at Babbitt’s Electric Theater. John Weatherford built the Majestic Opera House, but the roof collapsed in 1915 after 61 inches of snow fell in two days. He rebuilt and opened the Orpheum Theater in 1917. The tunnel between the hotel and the theater had originally been excavated so guests at the hotel and performers at the theater could avoid inclement weather in the winter (most winters back then had about 15 feet of snow). There was a basement pool hall and bar called the Gopher Hole beneath the hotel. The Weatherford was known for its famous guests, including President Teddy Roosevelt, William Randolph Hearst, and lawman Wyatt Earp. Zane Gray wrote Call of the Canyon there, and was arrested once for participating in an illegal poker game.
As I explored the sub-basement of the Weatherford I thought I heard someone talking in the basement above me. I had not expected to encounter anyone else on my journey. I climbed up the rickety stairs and poked my head into the room above me. I was startled to see a young woman wearing a wedding dress and a man in a suit standing in the room. They were holding hands, chatting quietly, and floating in the air. It was quite dark, and I could barely make out their wispy forms. They did not seem to be aware of me, and soon they drifted across the room and then floated up through the ceiling like smoke. I don’t believe in ghosts, so this experience must have been a hallucination. By this point I was quite fatigued and had bumped my head several times in the tunnels.
I walked back to the main corridor and walked east under Aspen Avenue. Quite a few bats clung to the ceiling of this part of the tunnel, and the floor was covered with guano and wet garbage. Scratching among the muck I found cigarette butts, a small animal skeleton, a feather, a toy truck, and a moldy old Bible. I found another book, bound in dark brown, worn leather and tied with a strap. The tooled cover had an odd symbol with a blue gem embedded in the center. I opened the book and saw from the first page that it was a diary, dated 1904-1913 with the handwritten name Elizabeth McAvoy Ashurst. Unfortunately I lacked the time to examine it further. I stuck the book in my pack and continued through the tunnel.
I could hear the faint sound of car traffic on the street above me. The tunnel smelled like old sweat socks (or maybe that was just me). I felt as tired as I have ever been. I moved quickly from room to room, working my way down the street. Most of the rooms connected to the main tunnel were empty and I suspected that people have explored them fairly recently. I had read that this street had been Flagstaff’s red light district early in the 20th century (prostitution was legal until 1915). In the tunnel under the intersection at San Francisco and Aspen I found a door blocked by a heavy iron bar. It took all my strength to pry the bar up and push the door partly open. I squeezed in and saw a mound of old junk piled in the corner. I poked through it and found some whiskey bottles, poker chips, a broken light bulb, some chopsticks, and, almost buried in the dirt, a silver dollar.
There was an old suitcase that contained some yellowed newspaper clippings about a mur- der in 1957. There was also an old photographic portrait of a stern-looking woman in a back dress and bonnet, probably dating from the 1920s. In the next room I found an old steam boiler, a 35-watt generator, a horseshoe, and a moldy pouch of discarded tobacco. The basement un- der Babbitt’s Sports Center contained a Sears freight elevator, and under Mountain Sports the basement has, believe it or not, a bowling alley called the Lame Duck. It is not in very good condition, but I was able to set up the scarred old pins (I couldn’t find any bowling balls).
The room that connects to the alley contained some old medical equipment, some tattered flyers advertising Eagle Glen Whiskey, and a box of True Detective magazines. There were sev- eral empty boxes with mailing labels addressed to someone named McGaugh. I also found an old wooden box containing some yellowed teeth. Poking in the dirt I turned up a broken pipe that I suppose could have been used to smoke opium.
I searched around, tapping on the walls to check for hidden doors, and sure enough I found one. I pried it open and found a small room carved into the dirt. There were some very strange insects on the walls, with iridescent wings and antennae several inches long. They looked like a mutant combination of moths and roaches. They were singing, but I did not recognize the song.
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