Pasi Jääskeläinen - Secret Passages in a Hillside Town

Making sense of it afterwards is laborious but fascinating. Not once have they all been in agreement.

Leo’s theory is that there are fumes and gases there that muddle the functioning of the brain. It’s a plausible explanation. It would explain why Karri is able to find the passages—because he has a nose for sniffing out the air that seeps from them.

Karri thinks that it’s not just gasses. He believes that he’s better at feeling the small atmospheric disturbances that the underground passages create.

As he walks behind Karri down the slope of Taulumäki, Olli believes him. He thinks he can feel alterations in the atmosphere at the same moment that Karri’s demeanour turns tense, when he “gets the scent of a passageway”, as they put it.

Karri stoops down, tosses aside some twigs and brush, and beckons Olli over.

There is definitely an opening, the same one they all crawled into after Timi five years ago. As he peers down into it, Olli can smell the peculiar scent of the passages, like a garden in autumn.

His hands turn cold, and he wants to run away. No sane person would crawl into the cold, dark ground. The hole exudes an indefinable menace.

But Olli knows that that is how the secret passages protect themselves against intruders. To get in, you have to empty your mind of thoughts.

He can hear the Blomrooses’ voices far off. They’re going in the wrong direction.

“Let’s call the others,” Olli says.

“Not yet,” Karri answers. “First I want to show you something. Follow me.”

Olli looks at Karri questioningly, but he’s hiding under his hood. Olli doesn’t know what to think. He starts to feel nervous.

Karri starts into the tunnel. Olli can hear his sweatshirt rubbing against the walls, breaking off dirt and sand. They are all bigger than they were five years ago, and the opening seems narrower. Then the passageway widens and Karri’s slim body slips smoothly into the darkness.

Olli doubts that Leo, tall and broad as he is, will be able to get in so easily.

Karri moves out of sight and Olli looks around. The day, though grey, feels pleasantly bright when he thinks of leaving it behind. He feels a need to take in the fresh air, to enjoy every breath.

Going into a passageway always feels the same. Like drowning. Going to sleep. Giving in. It’s like trading the world and his ordinary life for a captivating dream.

Leo, Anne and Riku’s voices recede. Karri is waiting for him in the dark. Olli hesitates.

It occurs to him that he shouldn’t spoil his new denim jacket. He hangs it over a branch and pushes his way into the darkness. It’s cold in the passageway at first, and it’s difficult to breathe. But his body quickly adjusts.

THEY CRAWL ON HANDS AND KNEES through the dark, feeling their way.

A minute passes, or an hour. Underground, time has no meaning.

Sometimes it’s hard to breathe, sometimes it’s easier. For a while he can smell flowers, as if they were in a garden of exotic plants instead of under the ground. He feels heavy and light at the same time. His skin is tingling. His hands and feet don’t feel like his own. His movements are slow, but smooth and in a strange way easy. Like diving through black water. But now and then he hits his head on the tunnel wall and then gravity reminds him of itself.

A couple of times he thinks he’s lost Karri. He panics, then he hears and feels Karri again, moving ahead of him. He has to keep going forward. The passageway is too cramped to turn around. Stopping would mean death. But dying doesn’t worry Olli; he just has to keep moving.

The surface of the earth, and the sun, are farther and farther away. Olli remembers that the original exit collapsed five years ago. So they’ll have to find a place to turn around and go back the way they came, or find another way out. Assuming there is one.

Olli smiles in the dark. Not because he’s happy, but because it feels soothing on his cheeks. The soothing feeling spreads from his face to his whole head as his thoughts follow the motions of his face. Things will happen the way they are meant to happen. There’s no point in worrying. Karri must know where he’s going. He’s at Karri’s mercy, so he might as well trust him as long as he has no reason to distrust him.

Life and death feel smaller in the passageways than they do above ground. That makes moving underground easier, but it’s also one of the greatest dangers of the secret passages. Under the ground, it would be easy to forget yourself.

It’s not completely dark down here. Olli can see something. Faint shapes. Karri’s feet. His own hands. Fingers waved in front of his face. Or he might be imagining all this. Down here he can’t be sure of anything.

He focuses on crawling.

Olli thinks he’s lying in a bed. He’s sinking into sleep, and he smiles. Grandpa Notary is standing in the doorway. “ Goodnight and sweet dreams, Olli. Did you have a good day? What did you get up to today? ”

“ We went somewhere ,” Olli answers sleepily. “ Hey, I don’t remember now. Let me sleep. I’m tired …”

Something knocks against the top of Olli’s head. He takes hold of it. It’s a shoe. Karri’s smelly shoe.

“Don’t stop.” Karri’s voice is sharp. “Keep moving!”

Olli remembers where he is and latches on to the idea of moving. Crawling is all that matters. Here underground, there is nothing but crawling.

It would be easy to lose himself here. The world left on the surface is too far away to feel real. The Blomrooses, Tourula, his mother and father… they’re all irrelevant. Meaningless.

But one thing is true here; there is one truth that they can’t forget even for a second. They must always remind each other of it: keep moving, keep crawling forward, otherwise the darkness will come and swallow you. It wants everything that comes here in its arms, wants everything for its own. It takes power to resist and return to the light.

It’s been a minute, or hours, since Olli hung his jacket on a branch and crawled into the hole. Since then centuries full of thoughts whispered by the dead have flowed through his mind.

They’ve changed him.

He’s different from the way he was when he crawled into that hole. The secret passages have purged him of all that he had accumulated around him. He no longer even remembers the name of the person he was before. The person who is here, crawling, is naked and nameless and weightless.

It crawls deep into the dark and smiles.

He’s crawling. His name and all the other things do come to him every so often. They land on him like crows and make him heavy and slow.

Under the ground, he can see things. There are faint particles of light that sometimes gather around one thing or another and attach themselves to it. Then, for a moment, the invisible is visible, until the particles break off and continue on their way.

Olli sees all kinds of things.

Roots poking through the ceiling of the tunnel.

Underground intersections.

Passages stretching up and down and off to the sides.

And figures—barely real, furtive; small, large, fast, slow; perhaps animals, perhaps something else.

No need to worry , Karri whispers. They’ll stay away from us .

Olli doesn’t worry. He just keeps crawling.

He bumps into Karri.

Karri has stopped in front of some kind of door. It’s small, like a little hatch. The light particles are attached to it. Olli doesn’t remember it from the last time they were here. But maybe it was here—your memory plays tricks on you under the ground.

Karri tugs at the hatch. It’s stuck. He has to wrench at it with all his strength. Stones fall down off the walls of the tunnel. For a moment it feels as if the passage will collapse. This doesn’t really worry Olli.