
When Lucky said that they were going to explore the old smuggler’s tunnels under New Orange, Celeste pictured something out of The Goonies: tunnels carved through soil and rock that opened into giant caverns hung with stalactites and cascading waterfalls.
Instead, Lucky took her through an ordinary utility tunnel with cinder block walls and conduit pipes running overhead.
When they came to a fork in the tunnel, he shined a light over the wall on the right. A large shamrock had been spray painted there, along with an arrow that pointed back the way they came.
“You told Mr. Piñado that you hadn’t been down here since Prohibition.” She put her hands on her hips. “Who put this here if it wasn’t you?”
“It was me,” Lucky said. “I said I hadn’t used these tunnels, not that I haven’t been here. Someone has to keep track of the changes the city makes.”
He took a great lung full of air. “This way.” He led her down the tunnel on the right.
“Hasn’t the scent faded?” Celeste asked. “It’s been days.”
“Nah,” he said with a dismissive wave of the hand with the flashlight in it. “In a closed tunnel like this, the smell could linger a long time.”
“What does it smell like?”
“Like wet fur.”
It’s as dry as the desert here. Why are you smelling wet fur?”
“I have some idea, but you’ll see.”
The service tunnels continued downward, deeper and deeper underground. Celeste wasn’t sure how far down into the earth they had gone. She wondered if they would end up below the water table, the walls weeping salt water. Or if they would walk under the earth, right off the island and onto the mainland. She thought she heard a whoosh of air, like they were somewhere near the pneumatic train system.
The tunnel leveled out, but they continued on. Lucky’s bobbing light was the only point of reference in the darkness. Celeste had the urge to ask him something. She wasn’t sure what, just anything to break the silence.
Just as she opened her mouth, they turned a corner and stepped into a wider passage, one that was curving overhead like a large tube. She estimated that the tunnel here was as wide as Lucky’s barroom and twice as tall.
A rail fenced off the narrow walkway that extended down the passage. She walked up to the rail and looked over. Water, midnight black in the glow of their flashlight, flowed quietly along the tube below them.
Celeste took an experimental sniff. The humid air carried an earthy smell, like the inside of a greenhouse.
“This is a pipe!” Celeste realized out loud.
“Aqueduct,” Lucky said. “The water rolls down from the mountains.” He led her along the walkway. For a time, the only sound was the metal ringing of their footfalls on the walkway.
A quiet, lapping sound reached Celeste’s ears. She paused. Was that sound just the water flowing to their left? But the water slipped by noiselessly. So it had to be something in the water.
“Lucky?”
“I hear it, kid,” he said.
“What is it?”
“Something big,” he murmured. “There’s a catwalk up ahead. We can climb up where it’s safe and get a better look.”
Celeste fought the urge to run. If they ran, would it chase them?
A fork in the pipe system materialized from the gloom. A scaffold, suspended from the roof of the tunnel in front of it, connected their walkway to a new path on the other side of the fork. That had to be the catwalk that Lucky mentioned.
While they climbed the ladder to the catwalk, Celeste scanned the underground river, trying to make out anything in the blackness.
“There!” Lucky moved to the center of the structure and shined his light down. Celeste moved to his side, squinting down the beam of the lamp. Something that looked like a log drifted in the current.
“Debris?” She guessed..
“Doubtful.” The corner of Lucky’s mouth turned down. “They can’t afford a blockage in here.” He pulled a cucumber from a pocket in his tool belt and mimed flinging it at the floating junk.
She held her hand up in a one shoulder shrug. They might as well. If it was nothing, then they’d be down one vegetable. But it might provoke a reaction.
He pitched the vegetable toward the floating log-like thing. It spun end over end through the air, then landed in the water with a plop.
The log rocked gently in the water.
“Just an old piece of driftwood,” she breathed. How anticlimactic.
Then the log exploded in a flurry of motion. Several things seemed to happen at once. The front of the log seemed to hinge open, revealing twin rows of sharp, yellowing teeth in a v-formation. It twisted and clamped down on the floating cucumber, snapping it in half. Then a triangular snout jerked upward and shook side to side.
As Celeste gaped, the log seemed to roll over. Like a gator’s death roll.
As the body rolled, she realized that it didn’t look exactly like a gator. The way it twitched in the water reminded her of a horse twitching and rolling on the ground. With that thought, she picked out what looked like hooves and a tail.
Water horse? She wondered.
It grew still in the water, most of the face below the surface but eyes, ears and nostrils above the water. It blinked its glowing, amber eyes at them. The weirdest thing I’ve ever seen.
Then the thing lifted its head. The triangular head looked more reptilian than equine. Like someone had bred a horse and a gator.
Up, up, up the head lifted, like the body of a massive snake, until it glared down at them.
“Holy S—“
Lucky pulled her to the end of the catwalk. Then all but threw her over his shoulder and slid down the ladder like a fireman down a pole. The thing snapped at them, barely missing as the werewolf dodged nimbly.
As they passed into the left hand tunnel, Celeste threw a magical barrier behind them.
The thing slammed bodily into her barrier, bouncing away as if it had just slammed into a giant rubber ball. It shook itself, snarling and snapping at the invisible barrier.
“It’s okay,” she told Lucky. “We’re safe.”
“From that thing,” Lucky put her down. He bent backward, holding his side and panting. “How bad is your luck going to be this time?”
She frowned at the thought of being in a tunnel miles underground with bad luck in play. “We’d really better find another exit.”
“Thought so,” he said.
“What is that thing?” She studied it in grim fascination. She was disconcerted to see an intelligence behind its eyes. Even more so that it seemed to be studying her right back.
“It doesn’t look like anything that Mr. Piñado described.” Lucky said.
It looked like Dr. Frankenstein had designed it using a rubbing plate toy so that each part was a different animal. In this case, the body and ears of a horse, the neck of a giraffe and the face and leathery skin of a gator.
“You said that there weren’t any gators in this sewer!” She crossed her arms and glared at Lucky.
“You are obsessed with gators!” Lucky said.
“That thing looks like it’s at least part gator!” Celeste argued.
““Nah. If anything, it’s part crocodile.” Now that his breathing was returning to normal, Lucky’s sense of humor seemed to be coming back.
“What’s the difference?”
“You see one later, and the other after a while.”
“Hilarious.”
“I thought so, kid.” Lucky grinned lopsidedly. “Gators have a wider snout.”
The creature’s stare made her skin crawl. She stared back, hoping that her bad luck wouldn’t kick in just yet.
At last, the creature slid back into the water and drifted off down the rightmost tunnel.
“I guess it gave up on us,” Lucky said. “We should head back. While we wait out your bad luck, we can notify Power and Water.”
“You think that was our basement vandal?” Celeste asked.
“Doubt it,” Lucky said. “That was a water spirit of some kind. It wouldn’t be that far away from the aqueduct. Besides, it smelled different. Like a reptile.”
Celeste dismissed the barrier and led him to the scaffold. As she started to climb the ladder, her foot slipped.
Oh, come on! She railed internally as she fell. Her chin hit the rung of the ladder on the way down. Then the blackness closed in.