I had been under once before, with Wulf, but this was FiViL’s first time out. That first run was a rather dull trip through featureless RCP whose most interesting feature was that it ran under the graveyard(no bodies though), this time however, was much different.

We began our journey at a large rectangular concrete outfall, there was a grate on it, but no lock, just swings right open. A few steps in and we’re cloaked in darkness standing in about 2 inches of water. We got out our lights and prepared to descend further. FiViL cracked a beer, against my advice, but I would soon decide that beer=win.

The tunnels were long, and the reverb was crazy. Every 20 feet or so we’d get spooked by cars driving over manholes, the sound of which had been warped into growls and rayguns by the acoustics of the pipes. After a few 90 degree turns there is no sign of daylight in any direction, and it really starts to set in that you really are in fucking drain pipe. Underground. The one big light we have lights up maybe 25 feet ahead of us, the others are 5 feet at best. Long winding tunnels of darkness stretch out in front and behind us. “We’ve got to put this in our zombie movie”, I remember FiViL saying. Fuck yeah.

As we marched on we came across all kinds of forgotten debris. Some kind of rusty icepick/allan key thing, which I can only assume was used to lobotomise the homeless, a strange area with lots of tape from analog cassettes hanging from the roof, something that looked like a spinal colum, and of course, a lone condom hanging from a piece of re-bar, juice and all. The water started to get deeper here, and FiViL was clearly getting jealous of my shiny rubber boots.

Just up ahead we saw what looked like a hand hanging from the ceiling. “What the Fuck?”, we said in unison as we stomped forward to investigate. What we found was a very strange mushroom growing from the roof, bright white, growing in this damp, dark place.

We soon started hitting manhole rooms quite frequently, and FiViL decided to have a quick smoke where there was actually some ventilation (after a quick methane test, of course). As he smoked we killed the lights, and stood there in the emptiness, water half way up our shins. It’s an odd feeling, standing there under this small bit of sunlight that has squeezed itself through the cracks in the concrete some thirty feet above. I suddenly wished I had brought extra batteries.

The next few manhole rooms has all kinds of strange features. One of them had this black ooze dripping down the walls, it looked like Venom was looking for a new host. The others had interesting looking mineral formations on the ceiling and walls. Slippery shit.

There were 2 quick turns maybe 10 feet apart, and then we heard it. Rushing water. Maybe falling water. Whatever it was, there was lots. And it was moving fast. Excitedly we rushed forward until we reached the largest room we would see all trip. A junction room with 3 or 4 pipes met at this larger manhole room, we could hear the rushing water from one of them, and could even see light at the end. There was one problem however. These pipes were getting smaller.

On our hands and knees we crawled into the pipe and eventually came to an amazing waterfall room. I’m not sure how deep the water was where it was landing, but the pipe it was coming from was 20 feet up at least, with a manhole cover another 10 above that. The pipe looked big enough to move in, and the step ladder in the wall looked to be in good shape, if not a little slippery. We decided to turn back and take another way for now, but we hope to return in the future.

After crawling back through the pipe into the junction room, we climbed up and into a smaller section of RCP, which would turn out to be rather featureless visually, but quite interesting sonically. After passing more of the strange white mushrooms, we continued on, yelling like madmen, chanting like monks, and taking great joy in the sound of our bodily functions. I do not possess the linguistic skill to describe just how fucking cool it sounded. Well, the chanting at least. Simply amazing.

After quite a bit of walking hunched over in this smaller pipe and making jokes about the Nazis “never finding us here”, we hit another manhole room, but this time there was a smaller junction pipe with lots of light at the end of it, and, eerily, the sound of children laughing. FiViL decided to brave the sludge that had built up on the bottom of this pipe and crawl hands and knees towards the light and the laughter. Meanwhile I climbed the step latter in this manhole room and tried in absolute vain to open the lid. Nothing. I might as well have been trying to move a house.

I came back down to FiViL exclaiming at the room he had found, under a park or something, big and well lit by a grill type of manhole, but with no other pipes out. He got some good pictures, and I took the time to scrawl “Turtle Power” on the wall as he crawled back through the sludge. A piss and a smoke later and we continued down the back breaker RCP. Another manhole room, another lid we couldn’t move. By now we were out of beer. We were starting to get concerned about getting out before dark. We’d been under for near 2 hours, and we may have to go all the way back. The thing is, we didn’t know where, or if this pipe ended. It could just keep getting smaller, or be barred off at the exit and locked, or it could just stop. I wanted to turn back, but FiViL convinced me to continue on, I’ve very glad he did.

Another section of RCP and we stopped. Shit. The pipe stopped. It was just a fucking wall. Fuck.

Lucky for us there was a manhole room a few steps ahead with 2 pipes intersecting the shaft. One was dripping water, one looked dry, both were pretty small. FiViL climbed up to check out our options, and AHA! Light. Lots of Light. Just in-front of us was an exit into some kind of park. But there was iron between us and daylight…

We crawled up the ladder and down the pipe only to find that we were trapped in, no amount of pushing would moved the bolted on bars, and no amount of squeezing would get us through. So we sat, and rested, and took in the fresh air as we tried to figure out where the hell we were.

We finally decided to crawl back and try the manhole lid, not exactly confident from our experience with them thus far. I climbed up, brushed back the cobwebs and pushed. That noise. Metal scraping metal. Freedom. A few more pushes and we climbed out into a park near a highway and gazed over at the barred off tunnel of our would-be tomb. We did it. We made it. Fuck yeah.

Pics to follow, soon.