Tag Against Time (23 page)

The door flew open and Mr. O'Farrell stomped out. His eyes looked cobalt against his angry red face. He said, “Come with me, both of you!” He marched toward the elevator door and punched the down button.

“They are idiots with horse plop for brains,” Mr. O'Farrell fumed as the elevator door closed. “It's no wonder that today's young people don't trust anyone over thirty and are running away in flocks. I'd run away too with that kind of discrimination against me!”

“It's okay, Mr. O'Farrell,” Tag said, staring at the closed door. “I've been enough trouble already. It doesn't matter.”

“It does matter!” Mr. O'Farrell's face softened. “Tag, you're just going to have to trust us, especially Walker.”

Tag cringed. He couldn't trust Walker—Walker was a witch, a sorcerer—an enemy.

The elevator door slid open to a long narrow corridor, painted bright yellow. Mr. O'Farrell hurried down the hallway. Tag trailed through the twists and turns of the hall behind Mr. O'Farrell and Walker. They were mumbling as they went. The hall ended at a strange looking, four-foot-high metal door.

Mr. O'Farrell dug into his suit coat. “It's only a ten minute recess.” He pulled out a ring with a dozen keys dangling on it. “I can keep them busy for another ten or fifteen minutes at the most, so your time is limited.” He put a key into the lock on the door and smiled over his shoulder. “It always pays to pick up keys when you just find them laying around.” Mr. O'Farrell pushed on the door. “Walker, help me. The blasted thing is painted shut.”

Walker and Mr. O'Farrell pushed together. The door sprang open. Darkness stared out of the doorway. A cold chill raced up Tag's back as he peered into the darkness of an endless tunnel. What was going on?

Mr. O'Farrell snapped open his briefcase. “Walker, here's a flashlight. Keep to the main tunnel. Side shafts branch off on each side. Count the side shafts and turn left at the third shaft.” Mr. O'Farrell switched the flashlight on and handed it to Walker. “About twenty feet down that shaft on your left, you'll see light shining through a door that is ajar. Go through the door. You'll be in the basement of a camera shop. Go upstairs and out to the street. Gary is parked across the street in the parking lot.”

Walker took the flashlight and held out his hand. “Thank you sir, for everything.”

“I wish that I could do more, but the justice system is far from just. It's in your hands now, Walker. Good luck.” He turned to Tag and pulled him into a hug and held him for a moment. “Go with Walker.”

“But I don't . . .”

Mr. O'Farrell jerked back and looked Tag in the eyes. “You don't have any choice in the matter. You can't stay here. Son, I'd love to keep you with me, raise you up, but that wouldn't be fair to you or your parents.”

“You know my parents?” Tag demanded.

“No, I don't. But judging by you, they are great people, people who deserve to get their son back.”

“But . . .”

Mr. O' Farrell pushed Tag toward the darkened doorway. “You don't have a choice, but you do have a chance with Walker. Now go!”

Confusion and fear made things seem unreal as Tag stooped low and looked into the doorway. The flashlight barely put a dent into the all consuming darkness. What was going on?

“Come on, Tag.” Walker pulled him through the door. “Watch your . . .”

Tag clunked his head on a pipe running along the roof of the tunnel.

“Ouch! What is this?”

Mr. O'Farrell answered, “A tunnel that the Flagstaff Electric Light Company dug in 1920, to pipe steam heat and electricity through the town. It's been out of use since 1966. Don't worry. It's safe enough. Now get going. God carry you both, wherever you walk.” Mr. O'Farrell pulled the door shut.

The door closed. Darkness consumed Tag.

Tag's eyes adapted to the darkness. In places, his head scraped the tunnel's dirt roof. Fat and thin, insulated pipes ran at ear-level down the middle of the narrow conduit. Tag's heart raced. The air felt thick, old, unbreathable. Following Walker, he concentrated on the flashlight's thin beam piercing the darkness. They moved along the foot-wide, uneven pathway on one side of the tunnel. The tunnel's walls consisted of the rock or cement foundations of the buildings above. Rocks shifted under Tag's feet.

“
When the moon lights the passageway of time
 . . .”

The words erupted in Tag's mind. He clamped his hands over his ears. “No!”

Walker turned around.

The light's beam shone into Tag's eyes. “No! Get away from me!” He took a step backwards. “Get away from me you witch!”

“Tag listen . . .”

“No. I won't listen to you or your voices!” He whipped around and stumbled the other way. His head hit something, and his feet twisted and rolled on rocks. “No more voices, no more people!”

Darkness swallowed him. Keeping close to the wall, with his hands out in front of him, Tag kept moving.

“Tag, wait!”

He ignored Walker's words. Mr. O'Farrell said side shafts branched out from the main tunnel. If he hurried, he could slip into one. He felt along the tunnel's rough wall, moving as fast as he dared. Unseen objects banged his head, shoulder, and shins. He stumbled and fell on the rocks, but picked himself up and spurred himself on.

Reality bled through his confusion and fear. Where was Walker? Why couldn't he see the flashlight's beam? How far had they gone before the voice started? A hundred, two hundred yards? How far had he run in the opposite direction? The wall fell away from his hand. He backtracked a few inches and followed it around into a side shaft. Tag scrambled along in the dark for minutes, or hours. He was not sure which. He stopped and listened. Nothing. Good.

“
You'll never find your way out
 . . .”

“No,” Tag clamped his hands over his ears.

“
Spend the rest of your days wandering under the streets of Flagstaff
.”

Tag fell to his knees. “Stop!”

“It's okay. Tag, it's okay.” Walker's voice whispered through the darkness. He sounded close.

Tag leaped up only to bang his head on a pipe. He stayed down and crawled along the tunnel's dirt floor. Rocks tore at his knees through his blue jeans.

“It's not voices you are hearing, Tag. They are memories.”

“You're lying.” Tag crawled faster. He didn't see the flashlight's beam anywhere, yet Walker's voice sounded just a few feet behind him. “Keep away from me!” How had Walker found him? It was so dark that he couldn't see his own nose. Noise? Of course, Walker followed the sound of his movements.

Cooler air brushed Tag's cheek. He moved toward it, hit a wall, and worked around it into another side shaft. After three or four minutes of crawling, Tag stopped and curled up against the wall. He'd wait it out. If he wasn't moving, then Walker couldn't follow unless he used the flashlight. If he saw the light coming, he'd run or something. Tag curled up tighter. Could the witch hear his pounding heart?

“They are memories. Just memories. You are not going crazy,” Walker's voice whispered. “The people you saw were memories too, not hallucinations.”

Tag tried to pinpoint Walker's location. He couldn't. Walker's voice wasn't coming from the left or the right. It came from everywhere, no where—from his own mind.

“The veil over your memory is falling away. Let it fall. Don't fight it. Help it.”

Impossible! You're lying!
Tag thought.

“Not impossible, hard to explain, but not impossible.” Walker was reading his mind! Tag put his head into his arms. It was useless. He couldn't hide from him.

“Don't be afraid of them. They are just memories. Let them come.”

“Leave me alone, just leave me alone!” Tag screamed. His voice died in the darkness.

“You were in a tunnel like this once before, with two younger boys. Try to remember. Try.”

Vivid images of a small Chinese boy in pajama-like clothes burst into Tag's mind. A copper-haired, freckle-faced, barefoot boy in short pants, holding a candle, stood next to him. “
You're not afraid of small dark places, are you? Best stay close or you'll wander off into one of the smaller tunnels that branch under other streets. You'd never find your way out
.”

In his mind's eye, Tag saw himself following the boys as they wound along a dark passageway until a bright light burst into his mind. “
Slide the crate back to where it belongs. Hurry before anyone sees you
,” the freckle-faced boy ordered.

“It's Mr. O'Farrell,” Tag whispered. “But, he's just a kid.”

“That's right. Michael Tag O'Farrell was just ten years old, and you were trying to get to his father's office. His father, your friend, Sean O'Farrell, named Michael T.—Michael Tag, after you.”

A man with gray hair, white mustache, wire-rimmed glasses, and bowler hat appeared in Tag's mind. He peered at Tag. “
I learned long ago not to question things that have no easy answers; the needless deaths, the glorious births. But boy, I have to ask? Who are you?
”

“
I'm just a kid who wants to be an archaeologist
,” the Tag in his memory answered.

Tag cried out. Memories? How could all these be
his
memories? Mr. O'Farrell said his father, Sean O'Farrell, came to Flagstaff in 1880. How could he have known Sean O'Farrell? It was impossible, and there was no way he could have memories of Michael T. O'Farrell as a child. Did the T. in Mr. O'Farrell's name really stand for Tag? It was all too incredible. Tag's head throbbed with pain.
Confusion swirled around him like fog. How could this be happening?

Walker's voice came in a rush through the darkness. “You want to be an archaeologist just like your dad.”

“My dad?” A man in dusty jeans, work shirt, and boots materialized in Tag's mind. The tall thin man knelt beside a trench, digging with a hand trowel. He emptied each scoop of dirt carefully into a bucket next to him.

Tag tried to see the man's face. He couldn't, yet somehow he knew this man was his father. “Dad?” he whispered. “Dad!” Tag felt a hand on his shoulder. He jumped. A feeling of warmth and security flowed into him. Serenity replaced his worry and confusion.

“He can't come to you, Tag. You have to go to him.”

“But how? I don't even know who he is or where he is.” “I'll take you,” Walker whispered, kneeling next to him in the dark. “But you have to help me.”

“I don't understand.”

“I know. You'll just have to trust me.” The flashlight flipped on, pushing the darkness aside. Walker pulled Tag to his feet. “We have to hurry. Time is running out.”

Tag knew he had heard Walker say that exact thing before, but when? An image of them sitting on a rocky ledge overlooking the canyon took hold of his mind. The memory faded as fast as it came. His head throbbed. Tag knew they had known each other before, and that he had to trust Walker. There was no other choice.

He followed close behind Walker. How did Walker know where he was going? The tunnel seemed an endless maze, but he moved along without hesitation.

“There it is.” A strip of light seeped through a doorway.
Walker knelt and pushed the low door the rest of the way open.

Brilliant light blinded Tag. Walker grabbed his arm and pulled him down and through the doorway.

Shelves stacked with boxes lined the small basement room. A chunky man, in his late sixties, sat at a desk just inside the doorway. The man looked up from his work on the adding machine. He smiled and nodded as Walker and Tag scurried past. Walker pushed Tag up the steep stairway first.

A crowd of people swarmed the camera shop. Tag bumped into a bald man with anchor tattoos on his hairy arms. The man almost dropped his camera. “I'm sorry.” Tag recognized him as the same man he had run into at the canyon. Hurrying on, he heard Walker say, “I'm glad they could fix your camera. Have a nice day, sir.”