The Dark at the End of the Tunnel

by Taylor Grand

  My father.

  I woke up screaming.

  ****

  Despite the recurrent nightmares that plagued my nights, the days that followed seemed to soar past. My muse had returned like an insatiable lover; I hadn’t written with such passion in years. If fact, I became so fixated with writing The Infected that when my temp assignment was extended, I didn’t give it a second thought. Literally. Filing had become so rote by that point that I could spend most of the day plotting the book in my mind, and then get it down on paper at night.

  Within a few weeks, Denny Augustine offered to extend my position in the file room indefinitely, and I agreed to stay for the time being. Megan was about to take maternity leave and I knew we’d need my steady paycheck while I finished the manuscript.

  My wife would give birth to our baby daughter, and I would give birth to my first book in nearly four years.

  The story dreamt up by my grandfather, and later advanced by my father, had become a self-fulfilling prophecy for both of them. I had no intention of following in their footsteps. I resolved to take the story in a new direction.

  It was time for Jonathan, the hero of The Infected, to dig his way back from hell.

  Finding the writing voice of my predecessors was a challenge, but after a few false starts, I managed it. However, what proved the most difficult was creating a plausible ending that honored what had come before, yet still satisfied my desire for a more hopeful conclusion. I’d written about spies, soldiers and wayward adventurers, but Jonathan’s adversary wasn’t some larger than life villain he could simply outsmart or beat up. Jonathan was just an ordinary man, fighting something far more insidious; an internal antagonist…an infection that killed hope and destroyed dreams.

  The feeling was all too familiar, something I’d experienced after writing and producing a dismally received stage play about teenage runaways early in my career. Megan was still an actress back then and I had met her for the first time during auditions. She had received good notices for her performance, even if my play hadn’t, and I’d nearly lost my shirt putting up the show.

  I fell into a deep depression, convinced that I would spend the rest of my life in limbo as a temp employee. Megan was equally weary of being broke all the time, and we moved in together to split the rent. She took a much needed break from acting and I helped support her until she found a part-time job in customer service at a telecommunications company.

  Megan encouraged me to continue writing while I worked as a temp all over town. When she read a rough draft of my first novel American Underworld, a revisionist look at the Al Capone era, she hounded me to finish it. When I did, she hounded me again until I submitted it to publishers.

  We eventually fell in love, and Megan’s faith is what carried me through those dark times. And the book that resulted is what launched my writing career—such as it is.

  I knew that was what the protagonist of The Infected needed too: someone to believe in him.

  Picking up where my father had left off, Jonathan is desperate to escape from Grayston, terrified that he’ll become another faceless drone. However, as the sole provider for his younger brother and sister, he knows he’s trapped until he can line up another job. Times are tough, and with Jonathan’s limited experience, options are few.

  Deep in despair, everything changes for him the day he meets Sarah, a recently hired receptionist on the 3rd floor. She is the antithesis of the dispirited figures that haunt the halls of Grayston, and her radiance attracts him like a moth ticking at a light bulb.

  Friendly flirtations blossom into a spring romance, and for the first time since he can remember, Jonathan doesn’t feel alone. He and Sarah commiserate about the pall of enervated misery that hangs over Grayston. She finds his reference to “well-dressed zombies” both amusing and grimly true. Like Jonathan, she too dreams of a better life, and when they’re together they spend much of their time talking passionately about their goals and aspirations.

  Jonathan starts to feel hopeful again, and is able to stop drinking to get through the work day. Even the memory of the faceless drones he’d seen trapped behind the double doors begins to fade, and he convinces himself that it was merely a drunken hallucination.

  And yet, the deadened eyes of the infected always seem to be upon him, and it isn’t long before coworkers take notice of his budding romance with Sarah. They whisper to each other conspiratorially in the halls whenever he approaches and they stare at him and Sarah accusingly whenever they’re together.

  Jonathan becomes more motivated than ever to create an exit strategy, and he plans to propose to Sarah the moment he’s found a better job.

  But he soon learns that the infected have no intention of letting him leave. They haunt him not only in his dreams, but also in his waking thoughts. Fear begins to eat away at his confidence and will, and he discovers that his greatest battle will be waged inside himself, against the first stage of infection, which has already started to spread…

  I stopped work on the novel temporarily when Emma, our baby daughter, surprised us by showing up to the party two weeks early. By the grace of God, she got her mother’s looks, and was more beautiful than I could have hoped for.

  Megan and I had spent an inordinate amount of time researching what to expect during our first year of parenthood—for all the good it did us. The onslaught of sleepless nights, the never ending cycle of feeding and pooping, took every last iota of energy we had.

  But despite the considerable demands, Emma turned out to be a gift in ways that I’d never anticipated. She took me out of my head, for one; forced me to stay present, and she renewed my sense of purpose at work.

  And for that I was grateful.

  Somehow three months slipped by, and then six—then almost a year. Overall, we had managed parenthood well enough, but sometimes I felt like a bystander in my own life, watching time race by like a subway train. Between fatherhood, supporting Megan through an extended interval of postpartum depression, and my promotion at Capital-Co., the goal of finishing my novel stalled.

  Fortunately, my new full-time role paid much better, as I was given more responsibility as the Document Management Coordinator for the Compliance Department. I learned all about task management and workflow, questionnaires and attestations, approvals and affirmations, personal trading, and case management.

  But the best part was that I was finally out of the basement file room. I even got to sit near a window with a view. You don’t realize how much you appreciate a view until you’ve stared at windowless walls in an underground room for the better part of a year. Besides, after being worried about finances for so many years, it was comforting to have benefits and a steady paycheck for a nice long stretch.

  That stretch turned into three years, then four.

  Alcohol helped me get through the fifth and sixth; I even started keeping a bottle of whiskey in my drawer at work. I started to wonder if I had become infected like my father, and his father before him.

  ****

  I realize now that zombies do exist in real life. At work I see them shuffle through the halls like disconsolate mourners at a funeral that never ends. And every day at the office I struggle to keep the infection at bay. But the allure of security is like a velvet covered cage.

  I cling to the hope of finishing my novel; it is my life. I have explained this to Megan many times. At first she seemed empathetic. But when I speak about my writing career now, her eyes seem to glaze over, and her speech takes on a slightly patronizing tone.

  Yet she always seems to have just the right words to say when the job becomes unbearable, especially when I speak of quitting—which is often. She does her best—often with great fervor—to help me understand the importance of a steady paycheck. And she even rejoiced at my promotion to Senior Manager.

  ****

  Megan never went back to acting, choosing instead to be a stay-at-home mom with some vague talk of starting her own business. This made sense the first few years as
we were able to save a lot of money on day care. But now with Emma in school full-time, I often wonder what she does all day. Sometimes when I come home I smell the faint but musky scent of men’s cologne in her hair.

  Last month I confronted her about going back to acting, or at least investigating a part-time job. She cried hysterically and told me that I was being insensitive to her bouts of depression. It was a convincing performance, I admit. But, of course, Megan has a whole wall of trophies and ribbons that attest to her acting ability.

  I think of my father wanting to protect me from the footlocker’s contents. I wonder why he couldn’t bring himself to destroy the manuscript; perhaps because it would have been like destroying the last glimmer of his own dream.

  And still the nightmares come; I wander lost through some endless limbo where the ravaged faces of the infected stare at me through the darkness and shriek my name. Each time I must fight for my life against my father and grandfather, who reach out to drag me in.

  But that isn’t what wakes me up in terror night after night. What frightens me most is the familiar face that has joined the ranks of the infected, screaming and calling out my name.

  The face of the woman I love.

  WHISPERS IN THE TREES,

  SCREAMS IN THE DARK

  A ghostly haze shrouded the forest path, swallowing Blake up to his knees as he trudged deeper into the wilderness. He drew his red hood close about his face against the chill of the night, wishing to God he had more sensible winter clothes. But as a recent transplant from Los Angeles, a hooded sweatshirt was the warmest thing he owned.

  The ambient moon and starlight proved no match for the inescapable gloom, and Blake was grateful that he’d been able to find a flashlight in his dad’s toolbox. He raised it to get a look at the terrain ahead and caught glimpses of brilliant eyes watching him from the safety of the shadows. Creatures sang, the wind whispered through the trees, and something eerie-sounding—possibly an owl—called out.

  He swung his flashlight back and forth across a maze of shadowy trunks.

  The wind unnerved him the most. It seemed to give unholy life to the forest: sighs, heaves and exhalations from the trees—soft murmurs amongst the leaves. He reached into his sweatshirt pocket and withdrew a now chilled can of spray paint that he’d plundered from his dad’s collection. After a few quick shakes of the can, he sprayed a conspicuous white “X” across a particularly thick trunk facing the forest path.

  He’d gotten the idea from the story of Hansel and Gretel, but figured that white spray paint would be a heck of lot easier to locate on the way back than a trail of breadcrumbs.

  He wiped mist from the face of his watch and strained to see the time. It was ten to midnight. He had ten minutes to reach the crossroads, where he’d find an old signpost with directions to the various hiking trails. At least, that’s what Rusty and Seth had told him.

  He hoped to God they wouldn’t show up. Then he could turn around and head for home sweet home.

  Well, that wasn’t exactly true. Home had become anything but sweet since…she had soured it. How ironic that the first word that came to mind when he thought of Myra—his future stepmother—was wicked.

  At first, he’d been thrilled to meet her. She’d managed to bring his dad out of the impenetrable shell he built around himself. But before long, she became his father’s singular interest and Blake an afterthought. His father lavished Myra with a constant stream of gifts and fawned over her ceaselessly. And while she didn’t live with them yet, Blake dreaded the inevitability of her taking up residence. But Dad was old fashioned about things, and claimed that it wouldn’t be proper for them to live together until after their marriage in the spring.

  Blake smirked at the thought. While it wasn’t proper to live together before marriage, apparently it was just fine to hump like wild rabbits during those terribly awkward nights when Myra stayed over (and tried unsuccessfully to sneak out unseen in the morning).

  Hearing his dad and future stepmother doing it hadn’t been as traumatizing as Blake would have imagined. No, what had disturbed him—scratch that—shamed him to no end was the fact that hearing their moans, groans and passionate screams through the walls had aroused him.

  After all, despite Myra’s glacial attitude toward him, Blake had to admit she was hot for a woman of thirty-two. Hot enough to make a lonely dad forget his pain and help a fourteen year-old boy to take care of business under his sheets on more than one degrading night.

  He imagined her then, naked and glistening on his father’s sheets, her long legs spread out for him as he…

  No!

  Blake pushed the thought away. It was a lot more comfortable resenting her.

  Thanks to Myra, he’d been torn away from the handful of friends he’d struggled to maintain back in sunny California. Thanks to her, he’d been dragged across three states and dropped smack into the bleak winter of Shitsville, Colorado, a town so remote you couldn’t find a decent movie theater or shopping mall in less than an hour’s drive. And while Blake’s love for his father was unquestionable, he didn’t think he could ever forgive him for the loss of his friends.

  They were now as distant as his former grade school friends had become; friends that abandoned him after the summer his mother died; when he binged on food, soda and candy ceaselessly to try and forget the pain. It was the year he went from not terribly popular to a pariah when his classmates saw how much weight he’d gained.

  These days, friends—even gimps and stutterers like Rusty and Seth—had been hard to come by. And it was that troubling thought that kept Blake pushing along the path, continuing deeper into the bowels of the forest, trying to ignore the wind as it whispered a low, lingering note, like a threatening invitation.

  Blake crested a steep, mist-covered hill and spotted the crossroads signpost just ahead. He glanced back at his watch. Midnight.

  Blake’s teeth began to chatter from the cold, and he told himself he would wait no more than five minutes.

  The forest encroached on the crossroads with its night clamor—the chirruping of crickets, the duck-like quacking of wood frogs, the occasional screech of an owl. But one by one the forest voices faded and died until all that remained was the lonely sound of the signpost shingles creaking in the wind.

  Blake raised his watch: five past midnight.

  They’ve chickened out, he thought. Thank God.

  He tightened his hood and headed back home.

  Clouds gathered like a formation of dark soldiers, engulfing the moon. The forest was thrown into an impenetrable blackness. Even Blake’s flashlight seemed to give up in exasperation.

  He was suddenly grateful he’d had the foresight to spray white paint on landmarks along the path.

  Was that the wind he heard? Or was something pushing through the foliage?

  It grew louder.

  Slithering. Something was…slithering.

  It sounded like a snake moving swiftly through a field of dead leaves; a snake the size of a pickup truck.

  It was close now.

  Right behind…?

  Blake stood paralyzed. Even the trees seemed to hold their breath.

  Something powerful brushed against the back of his legs, nearly bowling him over.

  Blake was unable to make out any details, he was too busy running for his life. He might have run all night and into the morning, but a fallen log caught his foot and ended the marathon.

  He lay there, frozen in terror—unable to see anything in the crushing darkness.

  The forest seemed to sense this, for he could hear its faint, mocking laughter—carried on bone-chilling winds.

  As agonizing seconds ticked by, he imagined the shape of a hundred-foot snake coiled before him, fangs as long as yard sticks, dripping with venom—waiting to strike.

  But the clouds parted and there was only the moon, the stars and the endless forest.

  After a thorough scan of the immediate area, Blake allowed himself to breathe again—b
ut only just. While the monstrous snake couldn’t be seen, simply knowing it was out there made his chest hurt. How strange, he thought, that it had appeared at the moment he’d decided to leave the forest.

  Then he heard it again: faint laughter. This time it was distinct enough to know it wasn’t the forest. Nervously, he glanced over his shoulder and spotted Seth’s tall, lumbering figure in the distance, followed by Rusty, who—as usual—hobbled several feet behind. They didn’t seem to notice him, though. They were too busy gabbing and chortling as they trudged along the narrow path, seemingly without a care in the world. Their lanterns danced like two giant fireflies in the night.

  Blake had never been so happy to see two morons in his life.

  ****

  Blake decided not to mention his encounter with the colossal, man-eating snake—or whatever it was. He knew Rusty and Seth would just scoff and call him a wussy. When he caught them glancing curiously at the small gash in his forehead, he mentioned falling—but skipped the details. They didn’t seem to care enough to pursue it, and by the time they had walked a quarter mile deeper into the forest, it had clearly been forgotten.

  But the touch of the loathsome thing still lingered: phantom scales gliding across his legs, so icy he could feel them through his jeans—a sense memory that refused to go away.

  “Hurry up, chubby,” Rusty called back at Blake, walking a goosestep with his bad left leg. He and Seth were about fifteen feet ahead of him on the path. “You’re the only freakin’ kid I know slower than me!”

  Seth snickered at that. “Huh-he’s just st-stallin’, man. Afraid he’s guh-gonna luh-lose the bet.”

  Blake glanced away. He didn’t want them to see the hurt in his eyes. He couldn’t show any weakness with these two. Instead, he simply muttered “Whatever, dude,” and gave them a dismissive wave.

  The bets between them had become such a tedious ritual since he’d moved into the neighborhood, part of an unspoken but compulsory initiation into Rusty and Seth’s exclusive club of two.

  But this bet wasn’t like their usual nonsense. Like when he bet Seth that he could hold his breath the longest and had won a Playboy magazine that Seth had stolen from his dad’s stash; or when Rusty won five whole dollars off Blake by betting him that the Hulk was stronger than Superman.