Guest
Writer
Enjoy
the tunnels, you bastard!
Mel
by Jess
Gulbranson
Just for the record, our yellow-haired, red-sweatshirted,
space-traveling and somewhat scruffy hero has been bouncing between
dimensions since early last
year. Heres episode 17 ...
el
had never been in the basement of a haunted house before, yet
here he was being propelled down just such a staircase by a slightly
weird old man who claimed to be an off-duty bartender.
In reality, the house was actually a bar and the
old man probably just a regular with delusions of grandeur. Mel
peered down the stairs while the old man, Sam, ran a stream of
commentary in his ear.
"... and was a bordello turn of the century;
indeed, a bad place to be was Portland, could get shanghaied no
problem after dark ..."
Is shanghaied even a word? thought
Mel, though it reminded him why he was where he was.
An hour before, Mel had stepped off the trolley
and into the White Eagle a cozy little place, all dark
and quiet. The bartender, a bespectacled girl who looked about
12, was on the phone so Mel sat at a table for a moment. He watched
as Sam still an anonymous old man then hopped up
to the bar and poured two pints of a dark beer, which he slapped
on Mel's table before sitting down.
"Umm ..." Mel was a bit flummoxed.
"Messerschmidt! Messerschmidt! It's Sam!"
the old man said, with a vaguely European drawl. He was paunchy,
with long salt-and-pepper hair and glasses.
"Luftwaffe? Blitzkrieg? What the hell are you
talking about?"
The man leaned in. "I see you have not changed
these 60 years, in face. But now you favor red, not green."
Mel started to catch on as the man stared at his crimson hoody.
"Do you remember Malmedy, Messer Schmidt? Do you recall the
blood, the grinding, the oil? You spilled blood and oil and called
me to serve you after the war. You were Colonel before Malmedy."
"It's ... it has been a long time. I remember
so little." Mel affected a dignified tone to draw the man
out.
"Then
I will fill you in!"
Which Sam did for the next hour. The man seemed
to think that he served under Mel in World War II, with Germany.
"Messer Schmidt," Mel realized, was actually Mister
Smith. The green-shirted jackass had been busy with the zapper,
apparently, and doing some horrible things, if Mel remembered
correctly what happened at the Battle of Malmedy.
It seemed that the zapper could fudge with time
as well as space.
Mel had only intended to have a quick beer, but
the bar was so pleasant and Sam's weird ramblings so interesting
that he wasn't leaving any time soon. Sam's bartender status,
whether real or imagined, seemed to earn him free beer, which
he shared with Mel. At last, the conversation left Smith and Sam's
exploits in Antarctica and Chile, and turned to ghosts and the
Shanghai Tunnels.
"I am an expert in the history of the White
Eagle ghosts," Sam said, "and an expert in the tunnels.
There is an entrance underneath this building. Many ghost hunters
come and I lead them around. They talk big, but most are fat girls
or Dungeons and Dragons teens." He shrugged.
Mel had planned to go next door and visit Anne's
friend, Dr. Maniacus, who apparently had access to the Shanghai
Tunnels under Portland. But this weird guy was a windfall
providing beer and information without reminding Mel of his recent
heartbreak.
"How would you get into the tunnels from here,
Sam?"
"I will show you, Messer Schmidt!" He
jumped up from the table and all but dragged Mel out of his chair.
They made their way past the other tables to a back hallway. At
the end, Sam opened a door, revealing the dark stairs. Mel started
down the steps, emboldened by his several pints.
He stopped part way down, because Sam wasn't following
him. The old man was silhouetted at the top of the stairs, unmoving.
"Here, catch." Sam tossed a satchel at
Mel, who caught it deftly. "Enjoy the tunnels, you bastard!"
Then Sam slammed the door, leaving Mel to look back up the staircase
in complete darkness. When his eyes adjusted, he was in for a
shock: The staircase went up, but terminated not in a door but
a ceiling. It was as if the staircase had been built over, but
how ...
Mel walked carefully to the bottom of the stairs.
He felt around in the satchel and was rewarded with a metal cigarette
lighter. By its flame he saw where he was, which was a dusty corridor
lined with doors. Looking in the satchel, Mel found some interesting
things.
There was a nickel-plated flashlight, which worked.
He swapped its light for the lighter's. After that was a large
sheaf of yellowed papers wrapped with a rubber band, which he
put aside for later perusal. Next was a pistol, an old German
Luger in excellent shape. He left it in the satchel, though the
next item was something he would keep with him: a seven-inch rubber
handle. As he flicked it with a sharp wrist motion, two feet of
steel shot from the end. It was a police baton, for cracking skulls.
Mel retracted it by twisting the handle, and collected himself.
"I've started off with worse," he said
aloud, and proceeded with the only thing he could do in the situation.
He started trying doors. The first three were locked and unused,
to tell by the dust, but the fourth was clean. Huge black letters,
hand-painted, read POPE.
Black Pope? he thought, then entered.
It was an office, though fitted out in a style a
hundred years old. The two occupants could have been refugees
from a pirate movie. The nearest, in a red bandanna, challenged
Mel.
"Whot's you wantin', then?"
"I want to see the Black Pope." He was
out on a limb with that one, but it seemed to work most of the
time.
"Lissen ta this one, Bert," said the pirate
to his companion, "him whot want ter see the Black Pope.
GET HIM!"
They
rushed with surprising quickness, but Mel was ready. A quick backhand
motion brought the baton to full length, and its forward snap
took the pirate in the temple, dropping him instantly a
move that would have been called police brutality in most countries.
But Mel was no cop. Besides, he thought, when youre
shanghaied, all bets are off.
Bert, the other pirate, had stopped his charge and
fell into a corner. Mel advanced, but a door he hadn't noticed
before suddenly opened by itself. Bert's jaw dropped, but he managed
before he fainted to utter one thing in a squeaky voice: "His
Excellence, The Secretary General of the Society of Jesus, will
see you now."