The Tunnel at the End of the Light

by Stefan Petrucha

  Emily leaned her shoulder between two holes in the white plaster wall and looked out grimly at the steady rain. Now it was Lechasseur’s turn to believe he knew her thoughts.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, trying to sound soothing. ‘You gave them a few good kicks in the shins. I saw one of them skittering off in pain before the others pinned you.’

  ‘It didn’t help Mr Windleby,’ she answered numbly.

  Lechasseur shrugged. ‘Neither did I. But there must have been fifty of those things. We would have needed an army.’

  She turned to face him. ‘I know. I just can’t help but think that if we’d got him out sooner, or done something different...’

  ‘You’ll drive yourself crazy like that,’ Lechasseur said.

  ‘No,’ she said, a little angrily. ‘Other people drive themselves mad with maybes and might-have-beens, but we can change things!’

  Part of him agreed with her, but he didn’t want to admit it. He didn’t at all care for his proximity to death over the last few days. The sight of two bodies, both mangled and bleeding, had stirred a deep, wounded sickness inside him, bringing brighter hues and louder screams to the stray flashbacks that haunted his dreams. No less disconcerting was his brief fear, during the attack, that Emily had been killed, too. He’d feared that once before, even seen her dead body thanks to a strange twist in the time trails.

  The more time passed, the more he grew attached to her. It seemed to have something to do with their twinned abilities, as if they were bonding inextricably. The relief he’d felt when he’d found her rolled up in a ball in a corner of Windleby’s room, bleeding but alive, had been akin to the sensation he’d once felt when a grenade had gone off a few feet from him, and, after he’d staggered to his feet, he’d realised with infinite pleasure that he still had both his arms.

  But the knot of his feelings, and their potential to change the path of time, were not things he was willing to deal with at the moment.

  ‘Right now we can barely stand,’ he offered instead. ‘And who knows what to change, anyway?’

  Emily poked herself in the chest. ‘We should. We should know.’

  ‘To tell the truth,’ he answered, ‘I don’t even know why we survived. Why didn’t they kill us?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ Emily answered. The issue seemed to distract her, engage a different part of her mind. ‘But you’re right. They seemed so intent on their mission that they practically ignored us once we were out of the way. And what are they? I mean, they’re definitely humanoid, but they seem to have such a strong pack mentality, more than any apes I’ve seen, and certainly more than people. It was like they were of one mind.’

  Lechasseur waved the hand of his good, right arm at the newspaper in his lap. ‘Paper calls them troglodytes, primitive humans, cavemen. They’ve got the looks to fit the bill, but they certainly haven’t been acting that way the last two nights.’

  ‘Do you think perhaps they’re aliens or mutants or something?’ Emily wondered.

  ‘Creatures from another world?’ A few weeks ago that idea would have seemed absurd, but not now. Even so, he didn’t consider it likely. ‘No. I think maybe they were human once, like us, but got stuck under London somehow, and... adapted.’ Lechasseur spoke with vague conviction as he pulled the newspaper up along his chest for a closer look. ‘Without the light, maybe their other senses grew stronger, like this pack mentality thing.’

  ‘Not a very pretty adaptation, is it?’ Emily said.

  ‘Well... who knows what they look like to each other? Besides, it’s not really about aesthetics, is it? It’s about survival. And at the moment, the score seems to be in their favour.’

  Emily looked at him scornfully. ‘Well, I hope it’s at least a little about aesthetics,’ she said. ‘It can’t just be about who eats whom!’

  ‘Speaking of eating, I noticed something back at Windleby’s flat,’ Lechasseur said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Apple pie sitting in the kitchen. Ripped to shreds.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, whatever was keeping them from nibbling on us wasn’t strong enough to keep them from the sugar. I mean, I followed a trail of half-eaten wrappers! Their natural instincts aren’t being completely suppressed. But add it all together and we still haven’t got much. Two dead, perhaps intentionally assassinated, and a client who won’t speak to us.’

  Emily smiled at that. ‘Well, we have a chance to make it up to Crest. He’s doing a public reading of his poetry tonight, at a small hall off Tottenham Court Road.’

  ‘Really?’ Lechasseur was genuinely surprised. ‘He didn’t strike me as much of a publicity hound.’

  ‘He’s not, but in the letters I read, the gentleman who runs the show, Alan Bungard, managed to appeal to his ego quite effectively. I think we should go.’

  Lechasseur nodded, then added: ‘And I’ll try to keep my hands off him.’ He tossed her the paper. ‘I’m tired, aching and not at all happy,’ he said. ‘Probably a little blind right now, too. Maybe you can get something out of this.’

  He watched her take the folded paper and start to skim the central articles. Satisfied that she’d be busy for a bit, he turned to examine the rest of his own wounds. His long leather coat had saved him from some of the deep scratches that Emily had received, but his desperate efforts to reach Windleby had also made him more of a target.

  After a long silence, he said: ‘Anything?’

  She shrugged. ‘Nothing really. Just the names.’

  Lechasseur waved a hand, indicating that she should continue.

  ‘Mr Waterman was drowned in a fountain. Mr Windleby died from a fall. Water and wind. There’s this parallel between their names and the way they died,’ she said. ‘As if that’s why they were chosen.’

  ‘But what...’ Lechasseur began. Then it dawned on him. ‘As if for a sacrifice? Some sort of ritual? That would fit in with the idea of an outside force controlling them. These little devils don’t have the capacity for ritual magic, but someone else might.’ Excited now, Lechasseur stood up and joined her by the window. ‘Anything else about the victims?’ he asked, his mind beginning to race.

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘Obituaries. Check the obituaries. Waterman will have been in yesterday’s paper.’ He headed for a small table in the kitchen area. It was there that he left the old newspapers in a huge, disorganised pile. ‘Let’s look for something that might make him a suitable sacrifice; a significant date of birth or lineage or something like that.’

  As Lechasseur sifted through the pile, Emily reported: ‘Windleby was born 27 January 1889. That would make him... an Aquarius.’

  ‘You know your hokum, eh? But no luck with the theory, then. Aquarius is a water sign, isn’t it?’

  Emily shook her head. ‘No. It’s the water-bearer, but it’s a fixed air sign.’

  Lechasseur, having just located the previous day’s paper, looked up at her sharply. ‘Are you sure? Did you study this somewhere?’

  ‘Not that I know of. But it’s all right here on the opposite page, in the horoscopes. There are three signs for each element: earth, air, fire and water. Each is either mutable, cardinal or fixed. Fixed, I guess, is the airiest of the air signs.’

  ‘Okay then, what’s the fixed water sign?’ asked Lechasseur, searching through his own paper.

  ‘Scorpio,’ she read. ‘23 October to 21 November.’.

  ‘Bingo,’ Lechasseur said. ‘Mr Waterman was born on 30 October.’ Excited, he looked across at Emily, hoping she would come up with what they should do next.

  Two hours later, she did.

  ***

  When they reached the foot of the flight of old stone steps leading up to the imposing main entrance of Somerset House, Lechasseur stopped cold, sighed audibly and rolled his eyes. ‘Come on, don’t you think this is just a little silly?’

&
nbsp; By the time he’d finished his sentence, Emily was ten steps ahead. Seeing he was no longer right behind her, she sighed herself, stopped, turned, ran back down, then began yanking him after her by the sleeve of his trench coat. A few passers-by stopped to stare at the light young girl pulling the taller, stronger black man. Despite the rain, she was wearing only a white blouse and skirt. Next to Lechasseur’s black coat, she stood out like a beacon.

  ‘We’ve come this far, and neither of us has had any better ideas,’ she insisted. ‘Besides, we’ve only a few hours before Crest’s reading. Wouldn’t want to get bad seats.’

  ‘A few hours? Here?’ Lechasseur said in a pained tone. Then he gave in, pulled his arm back and trotted alongside her up the steps to the public records office.

  After twenty minutes of being politely bandied about from one confused clerk to another, they were finally taken to a small room stacked with files. There, they were introduced to a long, lean, white haired man whose glasses made his eyes seem the size of small, black plums. He, the others assured him, would at least be able to understand the question.

  Taking turns, the duo explained as best they could.

  When the man didn’t say anything for several minutes, Emily felt nonetheless obligated to ask again: ‘We’d like a list of people currently residing in London who were born between 21 April and 21 May and whose surnames somehow relate to earth, and a list of people born between 23 July and 21 August whose surnames somehow relate to fire.’

  The plum-eyed clerk turned to Lechasseur, who grinned sheepishly.

  ‘And you would like this information as well?’ the clerk said.

  ‘Yes, please,’ Lechasseur answered.

  ‘Well, let’s see,’ the clerk began, superciliously. ‘The last time we counted, back in 1939, there were about eight and a half million people in London. Of course, that’s a bit dated, but they cancelled the last census due to the War, so let’s say, for the sake of an easy calculation, that there are currently about eight million people living in the city.’

  He paused to let that information sink in, then continued, raising a single finger for each new verbal calculation that he made. ‘The two time periods you gave me are roughly a month apiece. I realise this next bit isn’t very scientific, since birth rates rise and fall throughout the year, giving an uneven distribution over any twelve month cycle, but if you divided that by twelve, you’d have roughly 708,000 people for each of the two periods you mentioned, making a total of 1,416,000 persons. Now, I have no idea exactly how one might determine how many of those might or might not have names associated with earth or fire, other than by reviewing each record individually.’

  Emily seemed genuinely confused. ‘But don’t you have some sort of machine you could just type the question into and have it spit the answers out at the other end?’

  Lechasseur and the clerk both looked at her.

  ‘No, madam, we do not,’ the clerk said with finality.

  Emily rubbed her forehead as her face turned red. ‘I’m so sorry. It just seemed to me that perhaps you should.’

  She grabbed Lechasseur’s coat arm and, with a sheepish glance at the clerk, started back toward the exit. The clerk stood and watched them go, a look of bemusement on his face.

  Chapter Seven

  To call it a hall was something of an exaggeration. The small space, in a building just behind an old church, would have been much more suited to an intimate study group than a large public reading. But Alan Bungard, a slim, wiry man of limitless energy, with sparkling blue eyes and a pencil thin moustache not unlike Lechasseur’s, had managed to squeeze in about fifty folding chairs. And they were rapidly filling up.

  The crowd was eclectic; artists, literary types, students and academics who’d actually heard of Randolph Crest were mixed in with a few wealthier patrons of the arts. There were even some members of the working class present, looking for some free entertainment. Given the variety of attendees, no-one cast a second glance as Emily and Lechasseur entered.

  A table near the entrance held a pile of folded programmes, each containing copies of the poems that Crest would be reading and featuring a small photograph of the author on the back cover. Though the photographer had done his best, he hadn’t managed to make the man seem at all attractive.

  Lechasseur grabbed a copy and showed it to Emily. ‘Not the choice I’d make,’ he said, sniggering a bit. ‘Advertising Mr Crest’s froggy face?’

  ‘Doesn’t seem to have stopped them from coming, though,’ Emily said. ‘This isn’t a half bad crowd.’

  ‘Gives us some place to hide, I suppose, until we’re ready to speak to him.’ Lechasseur pointed to two free seats in the back row, far from the podium and shielded by a wall of people.

  Emily shook her head and marched towards the front. ‘I think we should get it over with,’ she said.

  Lechasseur followed reluctantly. ‘How angry did you say he was?’ he asked, as they reached the front row.

  Emily shrugged. ‘Hard to tell, really. He’s given to hysterics, then he starts jumbling his words. I’m sure he’s calmed down by now.’

  ‘Thieves! Burglars!’ a high pitched voice hissed from behind a curtain near the podium. Crest’s large, round head poked out from behind, his eyes bulging alarmingly. Completing his resemblance to a half-animal character from the works of Charles Dodgson, he wore a black tuxedo, his bow tie hopelessly askew.

  ‘Here, you dare to come?’ he half-whispered, unable to contain himself. The natural murmuring of the crowd was the only thing muting his cries enough to avoid attention.

  Lechasseur turned back, but then froze. The powerful rush of intuition that made him want to reach out and touch this man had returned. He was caught between instincts. Emily, similarly affected, had no trouble deciding how to handle it. She rushed over to Crest, projecting, in her own low whisper, in as contrite a tone as she could muster: ‘I’m so sorry, Mr Crest. Please, if you’ll just allow me to explain ...’

  Though it seemed scarcely possible, Crest’s eyes went wider, enhancing their toad-like qualities even more. He pulled back violently. ‘Explain? Explain to the police!’ he shouted hysterically. ‘Explain to your God why you felt the right to trample on the pieces of my bleeding heart!’

  This time, Crest did gain some attention from the crowd. Alan Bungard, his normally cheery face suddenly concerned, strode from the side of the room with surprisingly quick steps.

  ‘I am so...’ Emily began again, but this time, Lechasseur cut her off and spoke in a slow, steady voice.

  ‘Mr Crest, we only thought you should know that we’ve found out quite a bit about the attacks,’ he said. But then Bungard stepped forcibly between Crest and what he deemed the source of the problem: Lechasseur and Emily.

  ‘Are you being disturbed, Mr Crest?’ he asked, but he was looking at Lechasseur.

  Closing his eyes fractionally, Crest pursed his lips and wrinkled his brow. The loose skin on his face was such that the use of those muscles created additional wrinkling near his temples, giving him quite a monstrous look. If he’d been at all otherwise imposing, he might have been frightening. As it was, the face only made him seem more comical.

  ‘No, no problem,’ he said, after a pause. ‘I’m simply very excited.’

  Bungard gave a little bow and withdrew.

  ‘Afterwards, we’ll speak,’ Crest said to Lechasseur. ‘The female can come, too, but I don’t want her talking.’

  Emily made a face, but Lechasseur nodded as if he understood. Crest turned back towards the dais, hesitated, then faced them again.

  ‘And do not sit in the front row,’ he whispered, sounding like some sort of reptile. Having no wish to offend him further, Lechasseur and Emily complied, and found themselves in the fifth row, behind some fairly large poetry aficionados who they hoped might conceal their presence entirely.

  After a custo
mary delay, Bungard made the usual opening comments about how much he appreciated the support of so and so, and how delighted he was to be able to present such a renowned poet as Mr Randolph Crest, in his first public reading since before the War. Crest’s outburst had rattled the audience, and as a result, the applause was muted, possibly for fear that any loud noise might upset the highly-strung poet further.

  Crest stepped out onto the podium, nodding in a practiced fashion. He looked down at the assembled crowd, but made eye contact with no-one. His face was covered with the patina of sweat familiar to Lechasseur and Emily. Shaking slightly, he stood behind the lectern and mumbled something that may have been: ‘Thank you.’

  As the audience wondered if his weak voice would carry to the back of the room for the duration of the reading, Crest reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a folded copy of the programme. Shaking, he slowly unfolded it, flicked off a bit of sweat that had fallen from his brow onto the front page, then turned to the first poem. This, according to the notes, had received favourable reviews in Anataeus and The Spectator. In any event, head bent low, rising slowly up and down as if in ritual prayer, he began to read.

  Things, such as I, decay,

  Time wins without raising a hand.

  At first sight of this ubiquitous dissolution,

  I don’t surrender so much as sigh,

  Wondering why I failed to see so large so long.

  The audience was silent, so not only the words, but also his rasping breaths, were perfectly audible. As he read, some of the stray twitches of his body stopped and slowed. His voice dropped in pitch just enough to be bearable, and some might say it had a slight musical lilt.

  But I know, my masks suffocated my lungs,

  My wickedness blurred my eyes,