The Man Who Lived Underground

The Man Who Lived Underground Summary | Detailed Summary

A man crouches in a vestibule and as he listens to the siren of a passing police car, and he tells himself that he must find a place to hide. As he contemplates this, a sudden movement in the street catches his attention. Investigating further, he finds that the cover has come off of a nearby manhole. The man waits until the siren is no longer audible before stepping out into the street and toward the manhole. Even though the police car is nowhere near, he feels a sense of urgency as he struggles to remove the cover. When he has finally wrestled it from the hole, he lowers himself into the dark cavern. As he nears the bottom, he finds that the rungs he had used to lower himself into the hole have ended and so he finds he must let go and drop into the water below. He struggles to maintain his balance in the rushing current and as he does, he becomes aware that a police car has stopped on the street above him. The man is fearful that he is going to be caught; however, the policeman simply replaces the manhole cover before leaving.

Alone in the hole beneath the street, the man listens to the sounds of the cars passing overhead. After finding a package of dry matches in his shirt pocket, he lights a cigarette. Using another match for light, he takes a look at his surroundings. The man immediately realizes how close he had come to drowning. He discovers another tunnel nearby and since it is dry, he decides to investigate it further. After a few minutes, he finds himself at the mouth of what appears to be a cave, but after lighting another match he discovers that it is the remnants of an old sewer.

The man lowers himself into the hole and is immediately overcome with the sense that another person is nearby. Even though it is obvious that there is no one else in the hole, the feeling persists and so he walks around the perimeter. As he does, he becomes aware of voices, which he eventually determines to be singing and that is coming from an adjacent church. As he looks around, he sees a small amount of light coming from the direction of the church and so using the pipes overhead, he inches his way toward the light in an effort to see more. Peering into the church, he can see some members of its choir and although he feels as though he is somehow intruding, he continues to watch until he grows tired of holding onto the pipe.

After he drops to the ground, the man realizes that the cave is very quiet. Somewhat unsettled by this, he makes his way back to the opening so that he can once again hear the water rushing by. He contemplates whether or not to return to the street and find another place to hide, and eventually decides that he does not want to have to continually be on the run and elude the police. Even so, he's not sure what to do to pass the time while he remains underground.

The man spends the next few minutes wandering through the sewer. As he walks along, he is startled to see the lifeless body of an infant floating in the water. Unsettled by this, he closes his eyes and kicks the body away from him and waits until he is certain that it has floated away before opening his eyes again. He walks along awhile longer before finally returning to his cave and falling asleep. When he awakens, the man realizes that while he cannot remain underground forever, he doesn't want to return to the street. He thinks about the events that led to his exile: he was accused of a crime he didn't commit, and then beaten by police officers before being forced to sign a confession statement.

The man then realizes that he is hungry. He decides to attempt digging through the brick wall that surrounds his cave to see what is on the other side. He eventually removes enough bricks and cement to expose a set of wooden steps. He quietly climbs the steps and peers through the keyhole of the door that stands at the top. It takes a few minutes, but he eventually realizes that he is looking into the workroom of a funeral home. On his way back down the steps, he finds a light switch that he turns on to reveal a room full of tools, lumber and coffins. He decides to take some of the tools to help him tunnel his way through the walls of the sewer.

As the man begins to make his way back to his cave, he discovers another door. He pries the door open and walks through it. As he does this, the man becomes aware of a faint roar that sounds as if it is coming from far away. Even though he knows doing so may very well place him in danger, he feels compelled to investigate. He eventually comes upon a stairway, which he climbs. When he reaches the top of the steps, he realizes that he is in a movie theater. As he watches the people enjoy the movie, he realizes that the movie is merely an animated version of their lives. He feels compelled to confront them about this, but resists the temptation.

The man decides to leave the theater and on his way down the steps, is startled to encounter another man, who assumes he is looking for the men's room. He points the way and continues on. The man returns to the basement and finding a sink, washes his hands and then takes a long drink of water. As he finishes, he hears footsteps and so he crawls into a nearby coal bin. A man enters and after tending to the furnace, leaves. As the man crawls out of the coal bin, he spots a lunch pail, which to his delight is full. He also finds some cigarettes and matches. Taking his newly acquired possessions he returns to the basement below the funeral home to retrieve the tools he had found.

After the man gets the tools, the man decides to attempt to dig a hole in the wall of the funeral home basement. Before long, he realizes he is hungry and so he stops and eats the sandwiches he found in the lunch pail. His stomach full, he lies down and drifts off to sleep. As he sleeps, he dreams that he is walking on water and comes upon a woman who is holding a baby. The woman is sinking into the water and she is holding her baby above her head in an effort to keep it from drowning along with her. The man takes the baby from the woman and lays it on the water's surface so that he can rescue the woman. However, by the time he turns his attention back to the woman, she has vanished. He then looks for the baby, but the baby is gone as well. As the man desperately looks around, he finds that he too is sinking into the water. The horror of this dream awakens him and he leaps up and goes back to work.

As the man works, he wonders how long he had been sleeping. His thoughts are interrupted by a steady tapping noise that he eventually identifies as coming from a typewriter. Through a window above him, he is able to see into the room beyond the wall, but the only thing he can see there is a stainless steel disc with some sort of fine markings. A hand appears to rotate the disc, which makes the man realize that the disc belongs to a safe. As the safe opens, the man is startled to see wads of money, rolls of coins and other objects. After staring at the safe for a few minutes, he decides to wait to see if the hand returns so that he can attempt to get the combination. While having this plan makes the man feel better about staying underground, he begins to get frustrated when the hand doesn't return to the safe.

After some time passes, he decides to leave his perch so that he can further explore the basement. He comes across another door and pushing it open, finds a radio repair shop on the other side. He decides to take a radio to put in his cave. After he returns to the cave with the radio, he decides to check on the safe and is disappointed to see the door being shut. He chastises himself for not being patient enough to wait for the hand to reappear and then decides to focus on how he can get into the room where the safe is without being detected. He eventually determines that by digging a hole in the wall, he should reach the basement of the building where the safe is. With his plan in place, he begins to dig. Before long, he breaks through the wall and after widening the hole, is able to pull himself to the other side. He remains still for a few minutes to see if he can hear the familiar sound of the typewriter, but it is quiet.

Summoning his courage, the man opens the door to find that he has entered a butcher shop. As he surveys his surroundings, the butcher enters, takes a piece of meat from a hook and whacks it with a meat cleaver. When he finishes, he hangs the cleaver on the wall and taking the freshly cut meat, he returns to the shop. Alone in the storeroom, the man takes the meat cleaver from the wall and looks through the glass window into the shop. When he sees the shop owner lock up and leave for the day, he steps from the storeroom into the shop and picks several pieces of fruit to eat. When he has had his fill, he goes to the sink and takes a long drink of water. When he finishes, he sits down to smoke a cigarette and think about his wife, his employer, and the three policemen who picked him up. He then walks to the shop door and as he watches the activity that is taking place outside, he longs to go out to join in. Impetuously, he opens the shop door and is somewhat startled to find a man and woman walking toward the shop. They mistake the man for a shop employee and ask him for a pound of grapes. Rather than raise their suspicion, the man gets their grapes and the couple go on their way.

After the couple leaves the store, the man goes out into the street for a few minutes. He walks to a newsstand and sees the headline on the local newspaper: "Hunt Negro for Murder." Feeling more anxious than ever, the man retreats back into the store, retrieves the meat cleaver and heads back to the basement. He thinks about the events that led to his running away and realizes that although he is innocent, he feels guilty.

The man decides to return to his cave, but then remembers the safe. He finds a place in the wall across from the last tunnel he dug and begins to dig a new one. He is quite tired, so the work is hard and it takes him a great deal of time to complete the task. He finally makes his way through the door and finds the steps leading upward. He climbs the steps and opens the door at the top. To his surprise, there is a young woman in the room who is just as startled to see him. She screams, and the man quickly retreats back into the basement. When her coworkers come to investigate, she tells them that there had been a strange man in the room. Seeing no evidence of an intruder, her co-workers dismiss her claim simply a matter of hysteria and leave.

Meanwhile, the man goes back to the matter of obtaining the combination of the safe. As he waits, he realizes that it isn't the money that he is after but rather, the thrill associated with getting the money. He is just about to give up when the hand appears. The man carefully watches the hand's movements as it opens the safe. Within a few minutes, a second hand appears. The man realizes that these hands are different from the one he saw earlier and further, that the person to whom they belong is stealing. Even though the money doesn't belong to him, the man finds himself becoming indignant.

When it becomes clear to him that the establishment has closed for the night, he makes his way to the basement of the building. He is quite aware that a night watchman may be on duty and so he takes a good look around the room before getting to the task at hand. As he faces the safe, he recalls the numbers he has committed to memory and within minutes, the safe's door swings open revealing piles of money, rolls of coins, and jars containing some type of pellets. As he piles the wads of money into his sack, he realizes that he hasn't paid attention to the denominations and that up to this point, he has been taking all one dollar bills. He empties his sack and refills it with hundred-dollar bills.

With his sack filled, the man walks across the room to a typewriter that is sitting on a desk. Intrigued by the machine, he inserts a piece of paper and tentatively types his name. When he finishes, he decides to take the machine as well. Then, using his last match, he looks around the adjacent workroom and discovers that the establishment he is in is a jewelry repair shop. As he digests this information, he suddenly realizes that the pellets he had seen in the jars were diamonds and so he returns to the safe and takes all four jars.

With this task finished, the man returns to the workroom where he had seen another door. Curious as to what might lie behind it, he enters and immediately is overcome with the sense that there is someone in the room. He finally decides to turn on the light and is surprised, and shocked, to see another person, the night watchman, who is sound asleep. Before turning off the light, the man decides to take the gun and cartridge belt that is on the floor beside the sleeping guard. He returns to the room with the safe and spends a few minutes strutting around the room with the gun, pretending that he is faced with an imaginary foe. He then gathers all the things he has accumulated and proceeds to make his way back to his cave, being careful to make sure to replace the bricks that he had removed from the wall.

When the man gets back to the cave, he rigs up a light bulb and socket he had found in the toolbox beneath the funeral home. Next, he takes some of the money out of his bag and studies it closely. When he loses interest in the paper currency, he removes the rolls of coins from his bag and frees them from their paper wrappers. After sifting through the coins for a few minutes, he remembers the typewriter. He intends to type his name, but suddenly finds that he cannot remember what it is and so he types the phrase "it was a long hot day." He pretends for a few moments that he works in an office but soon tires of this as well. As he looks around the room, he spots a can of glue and immediately decides to paper the walls of his cave with the money.

The man is amused by this and spends a great deal of time wondering what those outside of his cave would think of his decorations. When he tires of this, he opens the boxes containing watches and rings and hangs them one by one on the wall. As he sits down to admire his work, he becomes aware that the gun he had taken from the sleeping night watchman is at his side. Because he has never shot a gun before, he decides to give it a try. The loud noise startles him and he drops the gun on the floor.

The man then opens the jars of diamonds and pours them into a heap on the floor. For a few moments he imagines he is a rich man strolling through the park on a sunny afternoon. As he paces across the cave, he kicks the pile of diamonds, causing them to scatter in all directions. Rather than attempt to collect the gems, he decides to grind them into the dirt with his feet.

Tired of the games, the man becomes restless. He realizes that he cannot remain underground forever, yet he also knows that if he leaves, he will almost certainly be caught. He spends the next several hours catnapping and wondering what he should do. As he lies in the dark cave, he can hear the singing from the church again and so he climbs up on the pipes so that he can get a glimpse inside. As he listens to the choir members sing, he thinks that their faith is based on their belief that they have done something wrong. This causes him to think of his own situation and he finds himself becoming tense.

The man decides to move away from the church and return to the cave, but he is stopped by the sound of voices coming from the radio store. The man stops to listen and soon learns that a young employee of the store has been accused of stealing the radio that he had taken. Despite his protests that he is innocent, the young man is being beaten. The man momentarily considers bringing the radio back to the basement but decides against it, reasoning that the beating the boy is receiving will enable him to learn the secret of his existence.

As he moves away from this section of the underground, the man finds himself beneath the jewelry repair shop. He is able to look through a narrow portion of an open window to see the night watchman in the process of being beaten by police officers. The man recognizes the officers as the same three that had beaten him and coerced him into signing the confession. After beating and torturing the guard for quite some time, it appears as though he has passed out and so the three police officers decide to go outside for a cigarette. The man is momentarily tempted to call out to the watchman and invite him to live in the cave with him, but he resists. Before long, the watchman gets up from the floor, walks across the room and removes a gun from a drawer. The man watches in horror as the night watchman kills himself. He then leaves his perch and makes his way back to the cave.

Back in the cave, the man remains frozen in fear for what seems to be an eternity. When he finally does move, it is with definite purpose. He climbs out of his cave and begins sloshing through the water. He is moving against the current, so he has a difficult time, but he continues on. He finally locates a manhole cover and climbs to the top. As he moves the cover from the hole, the light streaming in momentarily startles him. He becomes deeply conflicted about whether to remain underground or go out into the sunshine. He eventually summons his courage and pushes the cover completely off of the manhole. As he emerges from the hole, traffic momentarily stops and irate drivers berate him for putting himself and others in danger. He makes his way to the sidewalk and when he passes a mirror, he is amused to see that he is covered in mud.

The man walks aimlessly for the next thirty minutes. He eventually finds himself near the church he had discovered while underground. When he reaches the church he feels compelled to go inside but isn't sure what he would say. He nonetheless walks into the church and begins to speak. Some of the congregation tries to silence him while others, assuming he is drunk, attempt to remove him from the church. As they toss him back outside, they warn him that if he attempts to come back inside, they will call the police.

Back outside, the man suddenly is overwhelmed with the desire to go to the police station and attempt to clear his name. He is confident that he can convincingly state his case and convince the police officers that he is not guilty of the crime for which he has been accused. As he enters the building, he is stopped by a police officer who asks if he needs help. The man wants to tell the officer that he is looking for the officers that forced him into signing the confession, but he is unable to find the right words. The police officer, assuming the man is crazy, asks if he knows where he is. He next asks the man for his name and address, but he is unable to respond. Finally, he tells the officer that he has been accused of killing a woman and that he has been living underground. The officer assures him that he will be sent back to the psych ward and that everything will be fine. Finally the man tells gives the officer the name of the woman who was killed and so he brings him to the officer who had handled the case.

The man is brought into a room where he finds the three men who had beaten him sitting around a table. Only one of the officers recognizes him and he asks the man why he came to see them. The man tells the officer that he is tired off hiding. He goes on to tell them about the money he took from the safe and pasted onto the wall. He is interrupted by one of the other officers, a man named Murphy, who tells him that they have already found the man responsible for the murder and that he has been cleared of any wrongdoing. The first officer, Lawson, admonishes Murphy for telling the man that the real killer has been caught. The man, seemingly oblivious to what is going on, begins to tell the officers about the time he spent underground and itemizes the items he took. He remains adamant that he didn't steal the items, and that he has every intention of giving them back. It becomes immediately clear that the police officers are not comprehending what the man is telling them and that they assume he is crazy.

The third officer, Johnson, takes the signed confession from his pocket and burns it. The man doesn't understand what this means and becomes frightened. The officers try to assure him that he has nothing to worry about, but the man is not convinced. The officers are afraid that the man is going to get them into trouble and so they ask him why he is there. In an effort to get the officers to believe him, he tells them that he saw the night watchman kill himself and that he knows he did it because he was wrongly accused of stealing the items from the safe. The officers become frightened and decide to take the man out of the police station. The man suggests that they go to the underground so that he can show them where he has been living.

As the officers take the man outside, they try to come up with a plausible story to explain what has happened. The man clearly does not understand what is going on and continues to suggest that he show them the underground. They drive around for a time before the officer pulls the car over and once again asks the man where he had been hiding. When the man again insists that he has been living underground, the officers become increasingly frustrated. The car moves again and before long, they come to a stop in front of an apartment building. Lawson tells the other officers that they will wait in his apartment until it becomes dark outside.

As the men drink, the man becomes increasingly agitated at his inability to clearly express himself. He again suggests that he take the officers to show them the underground but his suggestion is met with a sharp blow to the head. The man passes out. When he awakens, it is dark and one of the officers suggests that they go visit the underground. The man is overjoyed at being given the chance to redeem himself. They get in the car and the man directs them to the right street. As they travel the deserted streets, the man again tells them about the way in which he decorated the walls as well as the fact that he fired a pistol. Playing along with him, the officers ask the man what he ate and they are amused by his descriptive answer. The finally reach the spot where the man went underground and the car stops. Two of the officers express their doubt that the man actually lived in the sewer, however, Lawson assures them he knows what he is doing.

The police officers let me man out of the car and ask him to show them where he lived. They walk to the manhole and Lawson suggests that the man show them how he went down. The man happily obliges and suggests that they can follow him. The man is happy that he can finally show the officers where he lived and what he did while he was down there. The man descends the ladder and hits the water. The current threatens to take him away, but the man manages to keep his balance.

The man cautions the other men to be careful but they do not follow. Instead, Lawson draws his gun. The man looks up in time to see the gun pointed at him. In the next instant, a shot rings out and the man falls backward into the water. As he fades from consciousness, he hears one of the officers ask Lawson why he shot. Lawson replies that he was afraid that the man would ruin their lives. One of the last sounds the man hears is the cover being placed on the manhole. He closes his eyes and lets the current carry him away.