The Dark at the End of the Tunnel

by Taylor Grand

  The last thing McDaniels saw, as his torso split open and his insides began to push their way out, was the boy staring down at him with familiar, bulging red eyes.

  THE INFECTED

  My father’s body, blood and other excretions had been removed—but his bedroom still reeked. Maybe the smell was real; maybe it was imagined. But I think it takes a lot more than industrial chemicals to scrub away a death like that.

  That type of thing tends to linger.

  The apartment manager gave me thirty days to clear out my dad’s stuff. I waited until the thirtieth day. If there hadn’t been a tight deadline, I might not have done it at all. It’s not the kind of thing you look forward to. It would be so much nicer to remember things the way they were, instead of how they are.

  I stood in the center of Dad’s bedroom—where he’d taken his old 12-gauge shotgun, pressed the barrel under his thick chin, and turned his head into something not unlike a giant burst tomato. That was my first thought when I’d had to identify his body; an image I would spend the rest of my life trying to flush from my mind.

  The cleanup crew had ripped up most of the carpet, which had been showered with bits and pieces of the man I’d once believed was invulnerable. Unstoppable. Invincible.

  As I scanned what was left of the furnishings in his room, I could no longer deny how far he’d fallen. He’d sold off anything of value at the pawnshop down on Western Ave., and all that was left looked like the unwanted dregs of a long forgotten garage sale.

  The clean up experts had removed anything defiled by human matter. All that remained were a couple of cardboard boxes filled with dog-eared science fiction paperbacks, a stack of twenty year-old TV guides that Dad had saved for the crossword puzzles, and a handful of tattered pictures of our family of three—back when Mom was still alive.

  Guardedly, I peeked inside the closet—and gagged. The clothes hanging there were permeated with fifteen years of cigarette smoke. I recognized some of the shirts immediately. Without Mom around to buy him new clothes, Dad had been rotating the same ten to fifteen shirts for years.

  I was about to start cleaning out the closet when I noticed something shoved against the far wall. As my brain registered what it was, I felt fingers of dread reaching up to constrict my throat.

  It was Dad’s old army footlocker.

  The Army green, metal box looked exactly the same as it had twenty-five years earlier when I’d first discovered it. It had been hidden in our garage, back when we lived in a two-story house in Encino. The footlocker was dented, scratched, and had two rusted bullet holes that ventilated the front—presumably from Dad’s stint in Vietnam.

  I’d been eight years old at the time and had tried to jimmy the padlock with a paper clip, like I’d seen them do on old TV shows. I’d sat on the cold, cement floor of the garage for over half an hour, failing miserably at my new career as a lock picker.

  Suddenly, a large specter stepped out of the shadows and I screamed.

  It was my father. He saw what I was attempting and proceeded to give me the beating of my life.

  I’d understood that what I’d done was wrong, of course. But the severity of the punishment hardly matched the crime. What had disturbed me most was the look in his eyes; he seemed more scared than I was, scared of what I’d find inside.

  I never dared to go through his things again.

  Now, as I stood in my father’s closet, surrounded by the pervasive stench and yellow-stained walls, I felt like that little boy again, about to unforgivably invade my father’s privacy. I half-expected his ghost to creep up from behind me and shout: ‘You want another beatin’, boy?’

  I backed out of the closet.

  I just couldn’t face the prospect of opening the footlocker; not yet, at any rate.

  ****

  Later that day I tried to donate Dad’s stuff to Goodwill. Most of it was tragically outdated, dirty or just plain useless. The disinterested woman at the counter would only accept his old television set and the stack of books. I guess even the needy have their standards. I ended up throwing the rest of it away, except for the box of pictures, and of course, the footlocker.

  It took several glasses of wine and a home cooked meal from my wife, Megan, but my mood lightened considerably by that evening. She did her best to distract me with future plans for our first child, Emma, who was due in four months. I was nervous as hell about being a parent, but Megan’s enthusiasm helped balance it out.

  “I found the greatest little outfit for Emma at the mall yesterday,” she said, while nibbling at the remainder of her roasted potatoes. “Embroidered on the chest it says: ‘Do infants enjoy infancy as much as adults enjoy adultery?’” Her grin caused dimples to indent her lovely pale cheeks.

  I laughed despite myself. “That’s horrible. Your mom will hate it.”

  “I know,” Megan said with mock maliciousness.

  I smiled back, desperate to hold onto the light mood. We gabbed about more baby nonsense for a while, but it wasn’t long before the reality of our financial situation seeped in like a bottle of spilled ink.

  The money I’d earned on my last novel was nearly gone, and for the past few months I’d been faced with the reality of getting a second job. Now, with my dad’s funeral expenses added to the mix, we’d jumped head first into the red.

  I’d started two mystery novels and a poorly conceived science fiction opus since my last published work, but hadn’t gotten past the third chapter on any of them. My muse had left me like a jilted wife after a long court battle, taking both my money and self-respect. I’d had three years of unrelenting writer’s block, and even my once enthusiastic literary agent had written me off.

  I’d bitten the bullet and signed up with several employment agencies over the past month, but the recession wasn’t improving and even the lowliest of temp jobs had become scarce.

  As I poured myself another glass of wine, I remembered something: a classified ad I’d cut from one of those employment newspapers you see in the free bins. It had sat crumpled on my desk for weeks. The headline read:

  Writers! Actors! Directors!

  Tired of waiting tables?

  Guaranteed work!

  Guaranteed work.

  I didn’t believe in such things, but I admit the ad piqued my curiosity; I’d seen it floating around town for years, and was understandably skeptical. At the same time, desperate times called for desperate measures, and I figured if the company were a complete sham, I’d discern it quickly enough.

  I told Megan about it and she supported the decision. We both knew that her maternity leave was going to kill us financially. She was a former starving actress turned full-time customer service representative, and didn’t make a lot of money. But it was the only steady income we had.

  With limited options and abject poverty looming on the horizon, I decided to call the number in the ad the next day.

  As we lay together in bed that night, Megan asked me about the footlocker that I’d pushed to the back of our bedroom closet.

  I pretended not to hear her, rolled over and shut my eyes.

  ****

  The name of the company in the ad—The Tempting Agency—was of course, a silly play on the word “temp.” But the woman I spoke with was all business. Before I knew it, she’d scheduled me for a computer test and interview. She told me that if I qualified for their services I’d be guaranteed a booking within twenty-four hours.

  Twenty-four hours.

  Unfortunately, there wasn’t an opening for an interview until the following Monday, so I sat around the apartment for most of the week, doing nothing but avoiding my manuscripts, avoiding the footlocker, and waiting for Megan to come home to rescue me from my thoughts.

  After four days of flipping channels and suffering through endless commercials for law firms and trade schools, it became clear that the only people who watched daytime TV were the unemployed, injured or disabled. And I didn’t plan on being any of the three.

  I de
cided to go for a walk to clear my head and pray to the Gods of Literature for the return of my muse. I didn’t have to go that far, though; my muse was waiting for me in the next room. I noticed it as I was getting dressed for my walk: the footlocker on the floor of my closet. It stared at me mutely, like a small metal creature with two rusted bullet holes for eyes.

  What the hell was I so scared of? The more I thought about it, the more I realized how childish I had been, building up the malevolence of the footlocker to the point of absurdity. I laughed then, imagining myself opening it after all these years, only to find a well-worn stack of girly magazines.

  I lugged the footlocker into the living room; poured myself a glass of wine, downed it in one shot, and poured another. I jangled my dad’s set of keys in my hand absently; they had been given to me by a police officer the same night I identified the body. Sure enough, in between his house key, his mail key and two unknowns, was an archaic one that looked to be Army-issue.

  I steeled myself as I inserted it into the war-torn lock and turned, holding my breath as it popped open. I thought of Pandora as I lifted the metal lid.

  Glancing at the innards of the box, I gave a massive sigh of relief. There were no rusted knives stained with blood, or grinning skulls from the Vietnamese soldiers my dad had killed in ’Nam (as my eight year-old mind had once imagined).

  One at a time, I removed the contents.

  The first item was a plastic-wrapped hardcover book called Chaos Signal, my father’s only published book, and nearly impossible to find anywhere—God knows I’d tried. It was in perfect condition and I was thrilled to have such a pristine copy. I’d found a decent used copy online a few years back, but this one looked like it had never been cracked open.

  Underneath that was a crumpled stack of typewritten short stories in various stages of completion—all were unpublished; next was a black and white photo of my dad and grandfather standing on some unknown lakeshore. My father looked to be about eight or nine years old, and was struggling to hold up a catfish about half his size. He was grinning so wide that his mouth threatened to swallow his ears. To see him that happy brought tears to my eyes.

  My grandfather—who had died of a heart attack when I was seven years old—also looked quite pleased in the photo. It may have been the only time I’d seen Grandpa crack a smile. To see them both together and happy in the same photo was simply too much. All of the pain I’d bottled up since my dad’s suicide came pouring out of me.

  I took me quite some time to regain my composure, but eventually, my thoughts returned to the footlocker. I pulled out a fourth item: a folder made of faded brown leather and stuffed with 8 x 11 paper. I was immediately struck by the unmistakable smell of musty old paper. I opened to the first page and realized that I was looking at an unpublished manuscript written in longhand.

  The title page read:

  The Infected

  By Robert Carter

  I felt the hairs on my neck stand on end. It was an unpublished novel written by my father! His book Chaos Signal was a wonderfully imaginative science fiction novel, and had inspired me greatly in my youth. I had no idea that he’d written another book.

  The opening paragraph read:

  It is beyond the bounds of my pen to describe what I have seen deep within the walls of the Grayston Building, so that you might imagine it in your mind as I see it in my nightmares each night. For within the shadowy recesses of the Grayston Building, a dark monolith that stands in the heart of the Chicago business district, there are things that no modern man can conceive.

  The protagonist of the novel, Jonathan Conner, is a well-meaning, if somewhat naïve young man who dreams of one day becoming an architect. The dream, however, begins to float adrift when his father becomes gravely ill and can no longer subsidize Jonathan’s education. Disheartened, the young man leaves college and moves back home to help take care of his family. With limited job experience, he takes the best job he can find: mailroom runner at a public accounting firm called Grayston & Co. The pay is low, but it helps keep food on the table for his father, mother and two younger siblings.

  Before long, Jonathan discovers something rather disturbing at Grayston. While delivering mail to the various floors of the building, he notices that most of the employees shuffle through the halls like well-dressed zombies, with soulless eyes that stare right past him.

  With each passing day, he feels more like an outsider. His coworkers seem to be devoid of creative thinking, presence, awareness, intellectual curiosity, or humor. It’s as if he’s the only person at Grayston with any personal vitality.

  Jonathan becomes fearful of his fellow employees, fearful of the contagion that seems to have spread throughout the building. He tells himself that zombies only exist in horror stories and films, but the more he observes his coworkers, the less alive they appear to be.

  One evening at a burger joint after work, Jonathan runs into Brian Cort: a former college buddy. After the usual pleasantries, the inevitable subject of work comes up. When Jonathan mentions his job at Grayston, Brian laughs, though in a rather forced way. “I survived a summer internship there,” he says, “and barely escaped with my life. I actually lost points in my performance appraisal for being ‘too enthusiastic’.”

  Jonathan tries to laugh too, but it feels just as manufactured as Brian’s.

  Brian takes a long look into Jonathan’s eyes—as if searching for something. He says, gravely, “Something isn’t right about that place. You know that, right?”

  Jonathan tries to grin but it comes off more like a grimace, “Sure, we used to joke about corporate bottom line mentality back in sociology class.”

  “No, I’m talking about dehumanization like we never imagined back in school. That company won’t be satisfied until they’ve sucked your soul dry. Don’t get too comfortable there,” he warns Jonathan. “I’d hate to see you turning into one of them.”

  I stopped reading my father’s novel for a moment and reflected. The themes resonated and I particularly liked my father’s use of the concept of infection as a metaphor for the disillusioned, the hopeless and the countless masses living in quiet desperation.

  I continued reading until early evening when I was abruptly taken out of the story by a handwritten note alongside the margins of the manuscript.

  It read:

  Life imitating art…or the reverse? The longer I stay at Hudson and Weiss, the more I find myself struggling to separate the two. I’m beginning to think that the people I work with may actually be infected. Writing this novel may be the only thing keeping me alive…

  I had the startling realization that I wasn’t reading my father’s handwriting after all—it was my grandfather’s. I didn’t know much about him; other than that he shared my father’s name and, to my knowledge, had never smiled; except, apparently, in that one photo. When I saw the name Hudson and Weiss—purveyor of life insurance and maudlin TV commercials—it clicked. My grandfather had worked there most of his life, until he’d died of a heart attack while sitting at his desk at work.

  No one had noticed he had died for two full days.

  The note that my grandfather had written to himself along the margin was odd to say the least, but I didn’t realize its full impact until later.

  I sat there for a while, absorbing the fact that Robert Carter Sr. had been a writer too. Apparently, the apples didn’t fall far from the trees in the Carter family. It unnerved me—like I’d just discovered some dark family secret. Never in my life had I heard anyone speak about my grandfather’s writings. I found that terribly disconcerting, considering the fact that my father was a published novelist and so was I.

  The superlative manuscript in my hands made it clear that my grandfather had been writing for quite some time. You don’t develop a skill like that overnight. But where was the rest of his work? I wondered if it had returned to dust along with its creator.

  It seemed tragic that his book had never seen the light of day. My first instinc
t was to try to get it published posthumously. That is, if the rest of the story held up. It suddenly dawned on me that his manuscript might not be finished.

  I began flipping through the pages.

  At about the halfway point, the handwritten pages stopped, and the manuscript continued with typewritten ones. Folded up in the center were a handful of pages filled with random story notes. I scanned them and immediately recognized my father’s stationery. I couldn’t believe it; I was looking at story notes on my grandfather’s manuscript from my own father.

  The notes contained interesting new directions for the plot and various thoughts about the manuscript. Many of the ideas had been scratched out; and as I sifted through them I began to piece together a story of my own. From what I could sort out, my grandfather had given up on the manuscript at some point, though the reasons weren’t clear. My father’s desire had been to complete the book as co-author, and get it published as a tribute to his father.

  Suddenly, the manuscript took on a beautiful new meaning: it was a written testament to the love Robert Carter Junior had for Robert Carter Senior.

  I was holding a priceless artifact.

  I felt a renewed admiration for my father at that moment, and a connection to my grandfather that I’d never felt before.

  Megan came home about then and I rushed into the living-room to tell her all about the treasure I’d found.

  ****

  “Your test scores are excellent,” the man named Mills said. “Typing speed is above par too.”

  I smiled from the other side of Mill’s immense black desk, knowing I’d aced the software and typing tests. Now it was just a matter of winning him over with my personality—never an easy task for me, not being much of a people person. Perhaps that’s why I was a writer.

  I gave Mills the once over as he finished scanning my test results. He was literally the most nondescript person I’d ever met; if he ever decided to rob banks, there would be no need for a mask.