The Dark at the End of the Tunnel

by Taylor Grand

  Though Grady was a child, he damn well knew the difference between reality and optical illusions. For hours each night he tossed and turned in his bed trying to catch the shadowy creature off-guard, desperate for a longer, closer look. But it was elusive, forever hovering on the edge of his peripheral vision. The faster he tried to catch a glimpse, the faster it moved away. It became an absurd game—like a dog chasing its tail.

  But the game ended forever on a painfully cold October day, three days before his tenth birthday. He’d been lost in thought, watching snowflakes dance playfully outside his bedroom window, when a curious noise caught his attention.

  Cautiously, he followed the odd sounds into his mother’s room.

  The first thing he noticed was her favorite silver locket lying on the bed. To his knowledge, she never took it off. Even more unusual was that her left slipper—cornflower blue, except for shiny patches from excessive wear—had ended up on her pillow.

  And then, something—perhaps an intuition—made him whirl around.

  Something unseen seemed to leap back.

  He reached for his mother’s locket, fear clawing at him, when something just above the headboard caught his eye: an oddly shaped shadow looming on the wall.

  It lunged at him, its mouth the size of a small cave.

  Grady stumbled and fell flat on his back, which was the only thing that saved him. Impossibly, the creature distended its hideous maw even further. Inside that glistening cavity was something staring back at Grady, something that would haunt his thoughts and dreams for the rest of his life.

  His mother’s face.

  Her body was gone; only the head remained. Her once long and beautiful auburn hair was wet with ichor and wrapped around her pale skin like blood-soaked snakes. A mewling sound escaped from Grady’s throat, and he thought at that moment he might lose his mind.

  The monster charged at him again, but his survival instinct kicked in; he dove for cover under the bed. Jagged teeth—the size of butcher’s knives—snapped down inches from his face and he shrunk back from a blast of putrid breath, an unholy mix of fresh blood and decomposing flesh.

  He gaped in horror under the bed, his tear-streaked cheek pressed to the hard wood as the creature began to alter its shape. A swirling pool of darkness formed on the floor nearby, and Grady realized that if he didn’t move fast it would wash over him like a flash flood of black, gnashing death.

  He scrambled out from under the bed, but was instantly jerked back under when the thing latched onto his left foot. He yelped as his tennis shoe was yanked off and he was suddenly free again. The relentless thing was right behind him as he tore out of the room, but it reeled back when he reached the well-lit hallway, as if it had received an electric shock.

  Grady ran from his house with the kind of blind terror that only children can know. He didn’t dare look back until he reached the sanctuary of a neighbor’s house nearly a mile away.

  ****

  A lanky detective, who sported an iron gray cowlick of hair over his forehead, spoke to Grady on several occasions during the investigation into his mother’s disappearance. Grady told him everything he knew about the nightmarish creature that dwelled somewhere in the house. He explained how it could disguise itself as a shadow on the wall and had nearly swallowed him whole. Clearly, this is what had happened to his mother.

  However, his fantastic story only seemed to aggravate the no-nonsense detective. Grady endured hours of analysis with child psychologists who assessed that he was in denial about being abandoned by his mother. They hypothesized that he fabricated the mythical creature as a subconscious defense mechanism.

  Grady knew it was psychobabble, he just hadn’t known the word for it yet. Eventually, he gave up trying to convince everyone of the truth.

  The case went unsolved.

  That was the beginning of Grady’s lifelong struggle with the Vood; shortly after his first placement in a foster home—for he had no other family—he discovered that the relentless thing could follow him anywhere.

  He ran away multiple times, bouncing from foster home to foster home, disappearing whenever the Vood appeared, terrified that anyone else close to him might be eaten too. Eventually, he became a fulltime runaway; his days spent begging for money or pouring through books on myths and legends at the public library. At night he slept in train stations, subways, and brightly lit gas station bathrooms—anywhere that offered shelter with an abundance of light.

  Unlike most of the kids he met on the street, Grady managed to stay clean. When he wasn’t washing car windows for money, he spent his days at the public library and his nights hiding where he could. As years passed, he taught himself how to use the library’s computers and discovered that he had a knack for programming. His talents enabled him to crawl his way up from the streets, and what was first a teenage hobby became a lucrative freelance business as an adult.

  Working from home had been a strategic decision, as he knew he could never handle a job in a regular work environment. There were too many variables he couldn’t control, too many places for the Vood to hide. And working in his shadowless apartment allowed him to avoid the natural but dangerous inquisitiveness of coworkers.

  Grady discovered early in his life that maintaining any kind of relationship with friends or lovers was impossible. Certainly no one could understand, much less empathize with his predicament. And, of course, if he were to try and prove that the Vood existed to anyone, they would face terrible, unnecessary risk. He couldn’t bear the guilt of anyone getting killed for something as selfish as his need for companionship.

  Over the years, he’d found ways to cope with the interminable loneliness; TV personalities became his best friends and characters in pornographic films were his lovers. His only true companion was the Vood, and like a scorned lover, he knew it would never allow him to have a relationship with another.

  As the years passed, the murderous thing became more and more aggressive. No longer content to taunt him from the corners of his peripheral vision, it stalked him openly from the shadows—ready to seize any opportunity when he might grow careless. Grady became a fugitive from his own life, moving from one place to the next, always trying to stay one step ahead of the darkness.

  Always running.

  But now Grady was fed up with running, tired of feeling like the nine year-old boy hiding underneath his mother’s bed. He’d promised himself that he would not move again. Not from this apartment. Not ever. It was here that he would make his final stand.

  ****

  The crashing footfalls of Grady’s dream abated and he awoke, skin glistening with sweat. Fear, vague and undefined, crowded the edges of his consciousness, and the remnants of being chased still flashed in his mind.

  A shadow crossed his field of vision and he heard movement from close behind. He spun to face a hulking figure looming over him.

  Grady leapt back in a panic and knocked over his favorite lamp, a tall beauty with a carousel of bulbs. It crashed into four other lamps with a concussive domino effect. Grady scrambled to his feet with a mixture of anger, fear and outrage.

  A fat, pallid face stared back at him. It was A.J. Feckler, the apartment manager. He wore a tiny pair of horn-rimmed glasses too small for his elephantine face. The man’s skin was an unhealthy yellow and his fat lips curled over even yellower teeth when he spoke.

  “Your rent’s three weeks overdue,” he said with a slight Southern accent. “I let myself in.” His voice was deep and abrupt, like that of a former military man accustomed to command.

  Grady felt sickened and violated, as if the Vood had taken the form of this jaundiced, obese man and invaded his home. He readjusted his sweat pants, which was all he wore, and began to set the fallen lamps upright. Two of them, he noticed, had broken bulbs, and the diminished light increased his nervous tension. “You have no right to enter my apartment without notice—”

  Feckler cleared his throat of what sounded like a bowlful of phlegm. “I left notice
. Three times. They’re still taped to your front door.”

  “Still, you have no right—”

  “I have every right. Check your leasin’ agreement.”

  Feckler had him and he knew it. The roly-poly son of a bitch had him. “I’m working with my credit card company and—”

  “Look, fuckwad.” Feckler took a step forward, and all four of his chins jiggled when he spoke. “I don’t give a dead moose’s last shit about your shitty credit. I got fifty tenants with fifty tales o’ woe. Either you get me the money now…or your next notice is an eviction.”

  “Wait. Just…wait.” Grady quickly calculated the cash he had on hand. It would cover his rent and enough food and supplies for a week—tops. It was the last of his savings; his conflict with the Vood had so consumed his life that his business was now in ruins, as were his finances.

  “What’s it gonna be?” Feckler said. His sneer became a look of apprehension as he glanced around, as if trying to comprehend the strange arrangement of lights that congested the living room.

  “I have some cash. Wait here.” Grady tried to maneuver around the grossly oversized man, but his arm brushed against Feckler’s soft belly. It gave like a giant balloon filled with lumpy pudding. Grady swallowed in disgust and hurried towards his bedroom.

  He’d nearly reached the short hallway when Feckler called out, “What’s with the lamps? Goddamn fire hazard, you ask me.”

  Grady glanced back, “I’m a…lamp collector.” He knew the idea was ridiculous even as he said it.

  Feckler chuckled in his bulging throat and said, “How ’bout that. I’m a collector too. Bullshit and excuses, mostly.”

  Grady glanced down and saw a pool of darkness spreading around Feckler’s feet.

  A shadow that wasn’t a shadow at all.

  Feckler noticed Grady’s expression of horror and followed his eye line down. He immediately stumbled back as black, oozing matter surged up from the darkness.

  My God, he sees it, Grady thought. And then he screamed, “Run!”

  But the monstrous thing struck at Feckler with the speed of a cobra, engulfing his massive torso within its writhing darkness. Grady froze in horror, unable to move. His knees grew weak at the sound of the man’s bones snapping—as if Feckler’s body were caught in a giant wood chipper. His muffled shrieks could be heard beneath the blackish ooze as the Vood thrashed and gorged itself on his quivering mounds of flesh.

  The loathsome thing grew larger as it feasted…and then it grew some more. Soon it filled the room like the smoke of an out-of-control fire. The echo of Feckler’s bones being crushed reverberated through Grady’s brain and gave him the determination to move. He grabbed his favorite lamp and thrust it forward, wielding it like a weapon.

  He swung it at the murderous beast, the light slicing through it as easily as a sword through silk paper. The Vood immediately drew back, as if hurt. Grady took one guarded step toward it, empowered by his newfound weapon.

  The dark thing retreated even more.

  Mad laughter erupted from Grady’s throat. He had it on the run for a change! He struck at it with the beam of light again and again, and it went berserk, like a gnashing tornado of black energy—terrifying in its intensity. But then slowly…reluctantly, it withdrew and shrank back, reminding Grady of what smoke looks like on film when it’s shown in reverse.

  Within moments the Vood was gone…along with any trace of A.J. Feckler.

  ****

  Grady spent the next three days vacillating between self-condemnation over Feckler’s death and fear of answering for it. Torturous images of the fat man’s demise replayed in his mind as he paced his apartment, often for hours at a time. Feckler had been an obnoxious, foul-smelling, Grade A asshole—but he hadn’t deserved to die, especially as he did.

  Hell, no one deserved a fate like that.

  Sleep had been nearly impossible for Grady. At any moment, he expected a knock on the door from someone looking for Feckler—most likely the police.

  Well, you see officers, he imagined himself saying. There is this man-eating shadow that I keep at bay with my lamps. Here, let me turn down the lights and introduce you…

  But the knock never came.

  By the end of the fourth day, he started to breathe a little easier. And by the fifth day, the sleep came a little easier too. After all, if no one had seen or heard Feckler enter his apartment, no one should suspect him of any wrongdoing either. Grady didn’t know any of his neighbors personally, but like most tenement dwellers, they seemed to prefer anonymity. Even if they had heard the scuffle in his apartment—hardly news in such a run-down dump—they would probably be reluctant to involve the police.

  He’d already removed the rent due notices on his front door to avoid suspicion. And he’d increased his credit card limit by transferring a large amount to his last available card. His rent was covered—if only for the short-term.

  That night he sent out some email queries to former clients, hoping they would forgive his months of lame excuses and general flakiness. Sorry I’ve been out of touch, he thought. Been a little busy on this end, trying to avoid being eaten. I’m sure you can understand.

  When he could keep his eyes open no longer, he wrapped himself in a sheet and curled on the floor. As usual, sleep came hard. And when it finally did, the echoes of Feckler’s muffled shrieks followed him into his dreams.

  ****

  Grady took an inventory of his food and supplies with a sense of dread. He could no longer deny that he was in desperate need of both. With the Feckler incident weeks behind him, he realized he had no choice but to leave the safety of his apartment and head into the city. It was akin to walking through a giant minefield—even within the relative refuge of sunlight. The urban jungle cast shadows everywhere.

  For the better part of a year, he’d figured out how to avoid the shadows of the outside world altogether. He’d had his groceries and supplies delivered from a local, family-run store and had made a deal with the perpetually red-cheeked delivery boy to collect and drop his mail each week for an extra five bucks.

  His strategy had worked perfectly until one week prior when the store finally closed its doors, forced out of business by a larger, corporate-run supermarket. A supermarket that—according to the thinly disguised prick of a manager that Grady spoke to on multiple occasions—didn’t do home deliveries, thank you very much.

  Now, as Grady’s eyes scanned his tiny kitchen, it was clear that he could no longer disregard the empty cupboards, nor his empty stomach. He quickly got dressed, taking note of the three remaining buttons on his weathered chambray work shirt. The lowest button hung by a single thread.

  Symbolic of my life, he thought.

  As he surveyed his apartment and considered the paucity of resources, he realized that being eaten by the Vood was the least of his problems. At this rate, he was more likely to starve to death.

  Fighting monsters is exciting work, he mused with a macabre sense of humor, but the pay is shit.

  He faced his front door on legs that trembled ever so slightly, knowing that if he didn’t go at this very moment he might not have the strength—or the courage—to go later. He reached for the lock on his door and clenched his jaw so hard it clicked.

  Moments later, he stood motionless in the darkened hallway.

  Grady sometimes imagined that the path from his door, through the long hallway, and outside to the sidewalk beyond, had been purposely designed as a gauntlet of death. There were goddamn shadows everywhere. Of particular note was a menacing slash of darkness near the staircase that led to the second floor.

  It looked like a malevolent smile.

  Bite me, he thought petulantly and ran.

  He sprinted through the hallway that never ended, leapt over the grinning shadow, and pushed even harder toward the porch, never looking back. He didn’t dare stop until he’d reached the other side of the street.

  “I…made it,” he wheezed, offering his extended middle finger to t
he open door of his apartment building. “I made it…you son of a bitch!”

  He whirled around, looking for anything suspicious, but the street was almost preternaturally quiet. There was only he, an old woman who looked like her face had been pinched by a giant hand, her Chihuahua taking a pea-sized dump, and a squirrel as big as the dog watching from the safety of a tree.

  He didn’t sense the Vood anywhere.

  You can do this, said the voice in his head.

  He forced his thousand-pound feet to move and began the five-block trek towards Mondo Market. His eyes darted back and forth as he walked along the cracked and pitted sidewalk, assessing each shadow that crossed his path. Every parked car, telephone pole and length of shrubbery offered a different-shaped threat.

  He realized he might be a tad overcautious. The Vood could have been somewhere else entirely: another city or even another part of the world for all he knew. He often thought of this when it disappeared for what seemed like weeks at a time, as it had since the horrific Feckler episode. Perhaps it consumed other luckless souls in different time zones—when the night was young and the Vood was at its strongest.

  Grady’s focus shifted to his ill-fitting, second-hand tennis shoes that jutted out a bit too far in front of his much-too-short jeans. They slapped against the pavement in a rapid, steady cadence. The sun felt warm on his skin but he was unable to enjoy it, thinking only of the refuge of his apartment. His body was tensed to bolt and run as he carefully stepped around each shadow, although this slowed his pace considerably. To passersby, he imagined he appeared half-drunk or crazy, but he’d stopped worrying about other people’s judgments long ago.

  By the time he spotted the bright neon sign of Mondo Market, he was gasping for breath; too many years of inactivity, lack of sleep, and poor diet had taken their toll. Inside the store, the glow of fluorescent tubes cast a greenish-blue hue that gave everyone a washed-out, sickly appearance. Darkness was all but obliterated under the bright lights, but that was cold comfort; there was still the long walk back home, trying to juggle bags of groceries while avoiding shadows.