The Tunnel at the End of the Light

by Stefan Petrucha

  So that now, a thousand darker dreams return,

  Grown all the more misshapen,

  By my abdication as their king.

  Midway through, Crest’s bearing changed notably, as if he were entering a trance. He now spoke with an eerie intimacy, as if his own words had cast a spell on him and he’d forgotten that he wasn’t the only person present.

  Memory steals the form I begged to inhabit.

  Instead the sea-self welcomes the demons

  That swarm from the centre of the world,

  All cackles, eyes and teeth.

  While I, a voice among the moans, am drowned.

  He looked up and seemed quite surprised to see the audience again. No-one seemed to know whether to applaud or not, until Bungard clapped his hands together. Not wishing to be rude, but appearing a bit stunned, the rest of the audience joined in.

  ‘Pretty dreary, wasn’t it?’ Lechasseur said, clapping politely himself.

  Emily leaned over and whispered: ‘Actually, that’s one of the cheerier ones. At least the demons don’t die in it.’

  ‘Ah,’ he answered, wondering just how long poetry readings generally lasted.

  The next few poems, paeans to death and darkness with some overtures to postmodernism, Yeats and Eliot, proceeded without event. Lechasseur even enjoyed a short bit about the Black Queen of Storms, but only because, in boredom, he’d imagined the Queen as Lena Horne, a favourite actress, and he as her welcome suitor.

  ‘Stormy Weather’ was still playing in Lechasseur’s mind when Emily nudged him in the shoulder. She nodded towards Crest and whispered: ‘Does he look ill to you?’

  ‘As opposed to what?’ Lechasseur answered. Then he realised that Crest had stopped speaking and was just standing there, wheezing.

  The audience were beginning to whisper. Bungard had taken a few steps forward. Crest made an odd, phlegmatic noise that sounded somewhere between a cough and a bowl of custard slopping onto a table top. He was clearing his throat. Bungard stopped, but his muscles remained visibly tense.

  ‘I’d wanted to...’ Crest began. He wheezed again and wiped his brow with his hand. Apparently forgetting where he was, he flicked the bits of sweat from his fingertips out into the front row, making Lechasseur quite glad that he and Emily had changed their seats. Bungard took another half-step, but Crest seemed to recover.

  ‘For this occasion... it’s not quite finished... but here...’ he said.

  Audience members began turning towards one another, as if they’d missed something. But then, Crest’s head turned up to the ceiling, leaving the folds of his substantial neck facing the audience. Then he began to sort of chant:

  Four corners of the world, Four edges of the mind of God,

  Permitted to be seen by Man, I beseech you

  Open my eyes to you, and your will to this rough beast.

  ‘That’s not in the programme,’ Emily whispered. Lechasseur nodded.

  Aer spiritus – I beg thy breath fill its intention,

  So thy wind will be hard on the falcon’s crest.

  Aqua spiritus – I beg its thirst be quenched in thy holy bath,

  Court the water, Man and do not be afraid.

  Listening closer, Lechasseur said: ‘Sounds like some kind of incantation. And look at him: his skin’s gone all pasty.’

  Ignus spiritus – I beg thy passion burst, O ardent muse,

  As Cionadh’s embers rise to greet you.

  Terra spiritus – I beg, thy marl cross Adamah,

  So instead buried deep, his bones gain strength from thee.

  Emily looked around, half-expecting some demon to rise from an unseen corner of the room. But there was nothing odd, other than the confused expressions on the faces of many of the listeners.

  Behold, the thought complete!

  The logos impressed upon the clay,

  Alive the rough beast rises,

  Thy head on the body of a lion,

  Not in salvation

  But in annexation

  Bungard, still caught in his half-step, thinking the reading done, was just about to applaud when Randolph Crest screamed loud and long.

  ‘They’re here! They’re here! They’re here!’ Crest spat, shaking horribly. ‘They’ve risen and they’re coming for me! It’s me they want! Not the others!’ He reached out stubby fingers to steady himself on the podium, but even that effort proved too much. He slid sideways, then tumbled to the tile floor like a sack of wet laundry. The scrap of paper from which he’d been reading fluttered to the floor beside him.

  Bungard was the first by his side, Emily and Lechasseur following quickly along, pressing through the now-standing crowd. Recognising the pair at once from the earlier altercation, Bungard shielded Crest protectively with his own body. ‘Stand back, please!’ he said, looking directly at Emily and Lechasseur.

  ‘Must be all the excitement,’ Lechasseur said. ‘Mr Crest leads a very reclusive life. Let us help you get him to the window.’

  ‘No thanks,’ Bungard answered. He nodded to two friends in the crowd. They roughly pushed in front of Lechasseur and Emily, forcing them back. Wordlessly, the trio half lifted, half dragged Crest’s limp, leaden body over to the somewhat fresher London air that drifted in through the room’s tall windows. By the time they had seated him on a bench and loosened his shirt and tie, Crest’s breathing had slowed. As the air cooled his sweaty face, his eyelids fluttered, indicating that he was coming to.

  Visibly relieved, Bungard rose. ‘I’ll call an ambulance. Try to clear this place out a bit.’ He headed toward the door, muttering: ‘Last time I try to pull someone out of semi-retirement. Just not worth it.’

  The two men remained with Crest, but Emily and Lechasseur managed to take a few steps closer, bringing them near enough to listen. By the time Bungard had vanished into the hall, Crest’s eyes were fully open.

  Abruptly, he lurched forward, trying to stand.

  ‘Easy,’ one of the men said. ‘You’ve had a fainting spell.’

  ‘I am the rare born,’ Crest said, still trying to pull himself up. ‘The rare born.’ One of the men half-forced him back to a sitting position.

  ‘Look at his eyes,’ Emily said. ‘He’s not awake.’

  Indeed, Crest’s dilated pupils belonged more to someone dreaming, or hypnotised. The man tried to shift him back a little on the bench, both to make him more comfortable, and to make it harder for him to get up. ‘Easy,’ the man said, trying to sound comforting. ‘Doctors will be here soon.’

  But words continued to spew from Crest’s lips: ‘I see what they can’t see, know what they can’t know. That’s why they want me. That’s why they need me. That’s why they try to hunt me down, to get me back. I am the rare born. But what are they building? For whom? Leave me! Leave me! Leave me! Take your dirt from my face and my neck! I can’t breathe! Get the water out of my mouth! I’m choking! I’m falling! I’m no use to you dead! Leave me! I’m not what I was! I’m not what you want! Who are you bowing to now? Leave!’

  Crest’s head bobbed lightly back and forth a few times. Then he gasped and collapsed, unconscious again.

  The ambulance attendants arrived fifteen minutes later, and, after checking his vitals, packed him off for a trip to hospital.

  From outside the old church, Lechasseur watched the flashing ambulance lights retreat into the million small glows of the London night. The audience were dispersing as well, while Bungard explained to stragglers that Mr Crest had been under a lot of stress, and may have had what was known as ‘an anxiety attack.’

  Emily Blandish, however, standing by Lechasseur’s side, was engrossed in reading a scrap of paper.

  ‘What’s that?’ Lechasseur asked.

  ‘Notes for the last poem he read,’ she said, not looking up. ‘I nicked it from the floor.’

  ‘
As if he’s not furious enough with us already!’ Lechasseur objected.

  ‘If he’s connected to the attacks, it’s a clue. If he’s not, what difference does it make how angry he is with us?’

  ‘Well,’ Lechasseur said, ‘we both sense he’s connected to something!’

  Emily sighed, shook her head, then went back to scanning the poem, looking for some sort of clue within it.

  Bungard tossed them a curious glance, so Lechasseur grabbed Emily’s elbow and began walking her off down the street. Once they were around a corner, she pulled away and headed for a street lamp to give herself some better light.

  Honoré threw his hands up in the air. ‘Have you even considered the possibility that we’re trying to make sense out of nonsense?’

  Emily shook her head adamantly. ‘Maybe connections don’t always play out in straight lines the way most people are used to thinking. Maybe each line of events only makes sense after the fact, and you have to feel your way through...’

  He turned to the night sky in exasperation. ‘Or maybe it’s your mind making a pattern when there’s really nothing... OW!’

  He looked back down to see that Emily had reached out in excitement, and had gripped him on the bruised section of his arm.

  ‘Where did Waterman live?’ she asked, hurriedly.

  ‘I don’t remember the number, off-hand,’ Lechasseur said, rubbing his arm. ‘The street was... Bath Row, I think.’

  She shivered visibly. Her gaze didn’t waver from the poem.

  ‘And Windleby?’ she said, her voice rising nearly an octave.

  ‘Don’t remember.’

  ‘Could it be Falcon’s Crest?’ she asked, slapping his shoulder rapidly with her free hand.

  ‘Maybe. Why?’ he said, curiosity rising. ‘You’re starting to sound a little like Crest, y’know.’

  ‘Look!’ she nearly screamed. Then she frantically jabbed her index finger at the handwritten poem. Lechasseur did as he was told, but could barely make out the handwriting. Shaking her head in frustration, she spelled it out for him.

  ‘It’s so simple, it’s insane! It’s right here! Aer spiritus, the spirit of the air, the wind will be hard against the falcon’s crest! Get it? Windleby! Falcon’s Crest! And here, couldn’t be any plainer than that!’

  ‘You think Crest’s the one behind all this?’

  ‘Well, he’s certainly wrapped up in it.’

  ‘Then who’s next?’

  Her eyes darted down the page again. ‘Ardent muse... must be Ardent Mews. We’ve got to find someone named Cionadh living there, or someone named Adamah living on Marl Cross!’

  Lechasseur looked up. The sky was black now, the hour approaching that when the Subterraneans usually struck.

  ‘In that case,’ he said. ‘We’d better be quick about it.’

  Chapter Eight

  After all her work, Emily had hoped that Lechasseur could see that she was in no mood to be criticised, but he did not.

  ‘Is this the best London street map you could find?’ he complained, the moment she handed it to him. ‘It’s falling apart, and half the streets on it don’t exist!’

  ‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘It’s the best and the only. I’m told a lot of them are like that these days! It’s not my fault the street maps haven’t caught up with reality.’ She grabbed the map back. ‘Besides, what have you been doing for the last half hour?’

  ‘I did find out that there’s an Ardent Mews, but it’s in Kensington,’ Lechasseur frowned. ‘It would take us at least an hour to get there.’

  Emily’s fingers danced along the little lines on the faded map. ‘Look! A Marl Cross in Mayfair! Do we have money for the tube?’

  Again, Lechasseur frowned. She stared, perplexed.

  ‘What about the big wad of money that Crest gave you?’ she said. Now it was her turn to criticise.

  ‘Back at the flat, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Then how do you propose we get to Marl Cross and stop the murder?’

  Lechasseur rolled his hand out regally toward his bicycle.

  She stared at him, aghast. He nodded.

  Forcing herself up onto the baskets on either side of the rear wheel, Emily held on as best she could to Lechasseur’s shoulders as he began a terribly uncomfortable, wobbly ride through London’s heedless evening traffic.

  After the third time they were nearly broad-sided by a speeding black cab, she shouted: ‘I thought you were the cautious one!’

  ‘Only about the time-travelling thing,’ he called back. ‘This part, I’m used to.’ He then promptly hit a pothole that almost spilled them into the path of an oncoming bus. After that, she decided it would be best not to speak for the remainder of the trip, and instead to concentrate on maintaining their balance.

  Just as Emily’s arms began to tire and her grip weaken, Lechasseur skidded to a halt beneath a street sign mounted in the stone façade of a building. Marl Cross. From the looks of it, it was one of those short, pleasant, expensive, exclusive residential roads.

  ‘Now we have to find someone named Adamah along the next mile and a half of houses,’ she said, rubbing the spots on her backside made most sore by the wild ride.

  ‘It’d be faster and easier to look for the Subterraneans,’ Lechasseur said, chaining his bike to some nearby railings.

  ‘Adamah...’ Emily stretched and rolled the name on her tongue. ‘It’s Hebrew, isn’t it? And it probably means earth.’

  The street was quiet. Lechasseur, looking terribly out of place in his trench coat, but seemingly unaware of it, walked slowly down the centre of the road, scanning for sweet wrappers. Emily moved steadily behind him, her pace slowed by a newfound pain in her lower back. They passed a locked park, and several white buildings, all the while looking for shredded wrappers.

  Halfway down the street, having found not so much as a single wrapper, bitten or otherwise, Lechasseur stopped. ‘Nothing here,’ he said. ‘Maybe we should double back and check the manhole covers. Or maybe we should ask some of the neighbours for a Mr, Mrs, or Miss Adamah.’ He rubbed the back of his head.

  Emily looked up at the windows of the houses. A few had lights behind the curtains, but just as many were dark. She wasn’t at all sure what they would say if they did knock at any of the doors. ‘I’ve just realised,’ she said. ‘The addresses are tied in, too. Marl means some sort of dirt, doesn’t it?

  Lechasseur shrugged.

  ‘Earth... dirt,’ Emily wondered aloud. ‘How would you kill someone with dirt?’

  ‘Dump it on them,’ Lechasseur offered. ‘Bury them.’ Suddenly he snapped his fingers and whirled round. ‘We passed a park, didn’t we?’

  By the time Emily nodded, he was running back down the street towards the gated park. She could already see, from where she was, that there was something wrong with the curled iron gate. It seemed half off its hinges.

  Lechasseur, meanwhile, picked up speed, as if to jump the fence when he reached it. Emily, struggling to catch up, turned her attention to the interior, to the shadows of the low, pruned trees and the deeper darknesses within the park. She noticed, in particular, a group of thick shadows. At first, she took them for a row of bushes, until she noticed with a gasp that, as Lechasseur was moving towards the gate, they were moving out to meet him.

  ‘Look out!’ she called. But instead of drawing his attention to the danger, the cry made him turn back toward her.

  ‘No! No! The park!’ she shouted.

  Panicked, she gritted her teeth against the pain in her back and picked up her speed, just as the shadows reached him. He’d barely turned to face them as they passed. It was the Subterraneans all right – hairy, oily, bestial, and moving at a blinding speed. Emily held her breath, but, oddly, rather than attack, or even try to pinion them as they had so easily in Windleby’s flat, this time the creatures simply barrelled past, t
heir goal a manhole in the street a few yards away.

  They jumped and pulled over one another; a matted, hairy mass of skinny but powerful arms and legs that scrabbled and tore in a frantic effort to reach the manhole first.

  ‘Look how erratic they are!’ Emily called, slowing her pace. ‘This isn’t like last time.’

  Lechasseur noticed it, too, and stood stock-still as they raced passed him.

  ‘Might mean we’re too late,’ he said.

  All at once, she saw his face tighten.

  ‘But, I’ve got an idea,’ he said. ‘Stay there.’

  Slowly, Lechasseur made his way over to the gate. There, with both hands, he firmly grabbed and twisted free an iron rod that had been bent out of shape by the rush of the creatures. Then he waited.

  Ten... fifteen... twenty of the creatures skidded, slid and clawed their way from the park to the sewer as Lechasseur and Emily stood and watched. At first they came five or six at a time. Then the size of the groups shrank to three or four, then two or three. Just as what appeared to be the last three creatures leapt for the sewer, Lechasseur stepped forward and swung the rod, catching one of them on the side of its head.

  The creature flew sideways, staggered briefly, then righted itself and started racing for the sewer again, apparently none the worse for the blow. But then, as its two fellows squeezed past it, it suddenly rose straight up, then tumbled backward, heaving from side to side. Confused, it turned left, then right. It made a whining sound, like a baby, then collapsed.

  Lechasseur called to Emily. ‘See any rope anywhere? Anything we can use as rope?’

  She shook her head, then, realising he wasn’t looking at her, called out: ‘No.’

  Shrugging, he took off his leather coat and pulled off his shirt, briefly revealing his strong, but not over-muscled, coffee-brown shoulders and chest. There were some scars, but whether they were knife or bullet wounds, or from something else entirely, Emily couldn’t tell. She watched him curiously, never having seen her normally-guarded partner so physically vulnerable.