Tunnels 01, Tunnels

further blows, he waited until the cloud of brick dust settle. To his surprise he found that the area of wall he'd been attacking was only one brick thick. There was a sheet of old pig iron where the second and third layers should have been. He belted it a couple of times, and it resounded with a substantial clang on each blow. It wasn't going to give up easily. He breathed heavily as he pulverized the bricks around the edges of the metal surface to discover, to his sheer amazement, that it had hinges, and even a handle of some type recessed into its surface.
    It was a door .
    He paused, panting for a moment while he tried to figure out why anyone would want access to what should rightfully be part of the foundations.
    Then he made the biggest mistake of his life.
    He used his screwdriver to pry out the handle, a wrought-iron ring that turned with surprisingly little effort. The door swung inward with a little help from one of his work boots and clanged flat against the wall on the other side, the noise echoing for what seemed like forever. He took out his flashlight and shone it into the pitch-blackness of the room. He could see it was at least twenty feet across and was, in fact, circular.
    He went through the doorway, stepping onto the stone surface just inside it. But on the second step, the stone floor disappeared, and his foot encountered nothing but air. There was a drop! He teetered on the very edge, his arms windmilling frantically until he managed to regain his balance and pull himself back from the brink. He fell back against the doorjamb and clung on to it, taking deep breaths to steady his nerves and cursing himself for his rashness.
    "Come on, get a grip," he said aloud, forcing himself to get going again. He turned and slowly edged forward, his flashlight revealing that he was indeed standing on a ledge, with an ominous darkness beyond it. He leaned over, trying to make out what lay below -- it appeared to be bottomless. He had walked into a huge brick well. And, as he looked up, he couldn't see to the top of the well -- the brick walls curved dramatically up into the shadows, past the limits of his little pocket flashlight. A strong breeze seemed to be coming from above, chilling the sweat on the back of his neck.
    Playing the beam around, he noticed that steps, maybe a foot and a half wide, led down around the edge of the wall, starting just below the stone ledge. He stamped on the first step to test it and, since it felt sound, began to descend the stairway cautiously, so as not to slip on the fine layer of dust, bits of straw, and twigs that littered it. Hugging the diameter of the well, he climbed down, deeper and deeper, until the floodlit door was just a tiny dot way above him.
    Eventually the steps ended, and he found himself on a flagstone floor. Using his flashlight to look around, he could see many pipes of a dull gunmetal color lacing up the walls like a drunken church organ. He traced the route of one of these as it meandered upward and saw that it opened into a funnel, as if it was a vent of some kind. But what caught his attention more than anything else was a door with a small glass porthole. Light was unmistakably shining through it, and he could only think that he had somehow blundered into the subway system, particularly since he could hear the low humming sound of machinery and feel a constant downdraft of air.
    He slowly approached the window, a circle of thick glass mottled and scored with time, and peered through. He couldn't believe his eyes. Through its undulating surface, there was a scene resembling a scratchy old black-and-white film. There appeared to be a street and a row of buildings. And, bathed in the light of glowing spheres of slow-moving fire, people were milling around. Fearsome-looking people. Anemic phantoms dressed in old-fashioned clothes.
    Terry wasn't a particularly religious man, attending church only for weddings and the odd funeral, but he wondered for a moment if he had stumbled upon some sort of purgatorial theme park. He recoiled from the window and crossed himself, mumbling woefully inaccurate Hail Marys, and scuttled back to the stairs in a blind panic, barricading the door lest any of the demons escape.
    He ran through the deserted building site and padlocked the main gates behind him. As he drove home in a daze, he wondered what he would tell the boss the next morning. Although he had seen it with his own eyes, he couldn't help but replay the vision