"Dr.
Even now, after everything that's happened,
“I still believe my uncle Thomas was a good man.”
Thomas, of course, is just a pseudonym. My uncle's real name is one that you might recognize if he watched the news regularly.
Although he never had a PR team or a security detail,
he was famous enough that my parents warned me to never tell strangers who he was. A few times, unscrupulous reporters even cornered me after school, hunting for juicy gossip about his private life. To me, their questions didn't make any sense.
Uncle Thomas wasn't some formidable figure standing behind a podium. He was just the fit, middle-aged guy with glasses who ran the barbecue on the 4th of July. If someone had asked me what was special about him, I would have talked about how his clothes always matched
and how he always remembered to call you on your birthday. Maybe it was that thoughtfulness that I was made us kids feel so comfortable around him. No matter what went wrong, Uncle Thomas would find a way to take care of it. Or so we thought, back then.
Every year, I looked forward to spending my vacations at his estate in the country. It wasn't just the swimming pool, the huge backyard, or the two-story house with so many echoing rooms to explore. It was getting to hang out with my cousins, Sam and Brady.
Sam was just a few months younger than me. While Brady was two years older, and the three of us had been getting into trouble together ever since before we could walk.
“Then, one summer night, Brady unveiled a secret.”
The three of us were lying on the floor of Sam's room, feeling sluggish and lazy from eating too much of Aunt Ellen's delicious pineapple cake. We were all wide awake, but for once, none of us had any idea what to do next.
The adults had switched out the lights and told us that it was bedtime, but their bedroom was too far away for them to hear us sneaking around. The night was ours, and we knew it. Brady suddenly sat up, a big smile on his face.
He told us about something he'd found earlier that day. Something we had to see to believe. Even in the dark, I knew Sam was rolling a rise. Lately, Brady had been lording his age over us, acting like turning 11 had given him some special knowledge that Sam and I lacked.
I didn't want to take the bait, but the curiosity was too much. I asked him what the hell he was talking about. That's when he told us about the Trump door. He said that he'd found it while we were playing hide and seek. It was in the middle of the woods inside a shed,
and somebody had left it wide open. Brady led the way, tip-toeing downstairs, while Sam listened for any sign of movement from Uncle Thomas's bedroom. When we reached the front door, I hesitated. We had tip-toed around after dark before,
but I had a feeling that if we got caught outside the house, the consequences would be a lot worse than a light scolding. By the time we reached the end of the driveway and turned into the woods, I was getting really worried. The feeling of slick ferns sloshing against my pajamas
and the whore of so many cicadas made the forest feel much louder than it did during the day. And out here in the country, the black night sky felt infinite. None of us had thought to bring a flashlight, but Brady knew where he was going. I hoped.
In a starlit clearing up ahead, I spotted an electrical pylon with a small shed underneath. It was a squat, forgettable gray structure,
the kind that I had always assumed was just for maintenance.
But as Brady tugged the door open, a faint glow caught my eye on the floor. A trapped door. Something suddenly felt wrong about Brady's story.
“Why had the last person to use the shed for gotten to lock it behind them?”
Maybe there hadn't been time, I thought. Maybe they were so upset or frightened by what they had seen. They forgot to lock it. Before I could voice my fears, Sam and Brady heaved the trapped door open with a screech.
A ladder descended into a wide, well lit tunnel. There was no dust here, no cobwebs. Whatever the place was, it was used frequently. Swallowing my fear, I climbed down behind my cousins.
Something about the cylindrical interlocked sections of wall, seemed unsettlingly similar to the corpse of some giant insect. There were lights at regular intervals. But how could we be sure that they wouldn't suddenly go out? I had no idea how big the place was, or what it was for.
But even at only nine years old, I knew that it must have cost a fortune to build. I thought about security guards, arrest, looking at my shoes while I explained to my uncle Thomas, that I hadn't been brave enough to tell my cousins now.
Up ahead, the tunnel opened into a large, sphere-shaped room.
We had walked out onto its second level.
There were benches all around us, arranged like spectator seating. On the true floor of the room, about 20 feet below,
Were 14 metal columns built in a circle with a drain in the middle.
It reminded me of something,
“something I'd seen for the first time just a few weeks before,”
while my parents were watching the movie Gladiator,
a coliseum.
But what was it doing here,
“and the middle of the woods near my uncle's property?”
We shouldn't be here, I told my cousins, and my own words echoed eerily back at me from the bare metal walls. Be here, be here, be here.
