The Tunnel at the End of the Light

by Stefan Petrucha

  As if feeling a chill, he put the coat back on. Then, with a pained sigh, he tore the shirt into a series of long strips, which he used to bind the creature’s hands and feet. It was still alive, breathing with what he guessed was a normal rhythm. Emily stepped up and saw a large swelling on the back of its head where the iron rod had struck.

  Emily watched as Lechasseur rolled the creature into a puddle of light from the nearest street-lamp. A sweet, sweaty smell rolled across her, making her gag and forcing her to step back.

  Pulling back himself, Lechasseur remarked: ‘Take a close look. He’s as ugly as Crest.’

  But Emily wasn’t listening. She’d spotted a five foot tall mound of fresh dirt in the park, built up into a pile in the middle of a paved stone walk. She moved closer and realised that the whitish object atop the pile was not a piece of clothing, or a flag, but a naked, bloody foot and ankle.

  Chapter Nine

  The creature was awake now, its wide eyes pivoting madly as if unable to make sense of the small flat that was its prison. The wiry thing bucked and twisted in the chair. Although its feet were tied above the ground, it arched its back with such force that the whole chair lifted and fell half a foot at a time. Lechasseur and Emily watched, worried that the chair might splinter at any moment.

  Lechasseur reached forward, planning to hold the chair down physically, at least until the thing tired itself out. But the creature snapped its neck around and, with the speed of a sprung mousetrap, champed down hard, only narrowly missing the tips of Lechasseur’s fingers.

  Lechasseur pulled back immediately. ‘Okay,’ he muttered. ‘Not going to try that again.’

  The thing snapped its mouth threateningly a few more times and emitted a low guttural growl.

  A ruddy sun was beginning to show over the building tops. It’d been a long night’s work dragging the creature and Lechasseur’s bicycle back here, and it was no surprise that morning was now arriving. Lechasseur stepped over to the windows and pulled the curtains closed.

  Emily rolled her eyes. ‘Must you?’ she asked from the far side of the room. Quite determined to keep her distance from the thing, she was leaning against the wall, pretending not to be trying to press herself through it. The rising sun had offered welcome relief from the preceding hours of desperation and gloom.

  ‘Not for me, this time,’ he said. ‘I’m not the only lover of darkness here, and we don’t want to upset our friend any more than we have to.’

  Though the creature still rattled about, the respite from even the dull light of dawn mollified it considerably. Its eyes moved from Lechasseur to Emily, then back again, as if finally seeing them for the first time.

  ‘Can you see anything about it?’ Emily asked – meaning, he knew, its path in time.

  ‘Not yet,’ he said, edging a bit closer.

  ‘Maybe you should... try,’ she said. ‘Practice a bit.’

  Lechasseur stopped short. ‘I’ve no idea how,’ he protested. ‘It just happens. You know that.’

  ‘But maybe it only happens that way because you’re afraid of it. Maybe it happens quite naturally, all the time, but when it usually does, you hold it back.’

  ‘Could be,’ Lechasseur said. ‘Unfortunately, I get tense just thinking about it.’

  ‘Let go,’ she encouraged. ‘Stare at it. Relax your eyes and let them go blurry. After all, it’s not as though we can ask it much of anything.’

  Wordlessly agreeing, Lechasseur raised and lowered his shoulders to relax them a bit, then exhaled and stared at the creature.

  It was human, but not quite. The eyes were too big, the loose, leathery skin too dark with both hair and a black, greasy oil. He could see why the newspapers had dubbed them cavemen, or troglodytes, but even those labels didn’t capture the sense of the creature before them. Living underground had given it and its kin a more reptilian slant than those words implied.

  After scanning the creature’s face, Lechasseur took a deep breath and looked it in the eyes. Surprisingly, this seemed to calm it more, and it returned the gaze with equal curiosity. Lechasseur found himself staring across a gulf into the heart of another species.

  Lechasseur had stared at caged tigers eye to eye, at pet birds, dogs and cats. He’d also stared at good friends, and at men he was just about to kill. But this experience wasn’t like any of those. The look the creature gave him wasn’t the blank and pitiless gaze of a caged tiger, nor the intelligent, more piercing look of a fellow human. Oh, there was definitely something else there, seeing him, feeling him, measuring him. It was deep, but not entirely sympathetic. Lechasseur just didn’t know what to call it.

  Remembering his goal, he tried to relax some more, to let his view of the creature go slightly blurry, and see what else came up. After a moment, a strange vertigo hit him. The scene before him split in two, and the half-world where worms of time took up space began to envelop his senses.

  He saw the three of them rolling backwards, out of the flat, back to the murder scene. He saw the creature hiding in the dark with its brothers as he and Emily passed by the first time. But then, all at once, a shrill whine filled its head, and Lechasseur’s ears: a rush like gallons of water, only made up not of drops but of voices, not speaking English, or any other recognisable language, but issuing commands and demands in images and screeches of hunger and need.

  If the distortion of time was disorientating, this indecipherable cacophony was all too much. Unable even to tell where it began and ended, Lechasseur pulled back with a hoarse scream. The creature, for its part, either sensing what Lechasseur had sensed, or simply reacting to his sudden sound and movement, began frantically jumping and pulling anew at its bonds.

  Lechasseur felt Emily’s hands around his shoulders, heard her voice asking: ‘What happened? Honoré? Are you all right?’

  Lechasseur grasped his head in his hands. ‘It was like... like... It was being one thing, thinking one way one minute, and then all of a sudden, it was something completely different. Something louder, stronger.’

  ‘Honoré,’ Emily said, a note of fear in her voice.

  He turned and saw that the creature’s stamping had cracked one of the chair’s legs, and was threatening to shatter it.

  ‘No, no, none of that!’ Lechasseur said, as if talking to a naughty pet. He crossed shakily to the kitchen area and began to rummage about in a cupboard.

  Emily watched the creature with growing trepidation as it smashed about harder and harder. She wondered if perhaps Lechasseur’s mind had been lost off down some time trail, but he re-emerged a few seconds later, holding aloft a wrapped bar of chocolate.

  ‘This time,’ he said, pulling the treat free from the foil, ‘you can enjoy it without the wrapper.’

  The thing saw, or smelled, the chocolate immediately, and jostled about with increased fury. Emily was certain that its bonds would give way any second, but Lechasseur screamed and pointed at it.

  ‘AHHH!’ he shouted.

  It stopped and stared.

  Lechasseur put his fingers to his lips and said: ‘Shhh!’ Then he pointed to the chocolate.

  Its brow furrowed. It began stamping again.

  ‘AHHH!’ Lechasseur shouted again. Again it stopped, and again he put his fingers to his lips and said: ‘Shhh!’

  This time it remained stationary, panting, its gaze moving forlornly between Lechasseur and the chocolate.

  Lechasseur smiled and said: ‘Good.’

  Then he held the bar towards its mouth. It jumped forward and snapped off a large chunk of chocolate. Lechasseur, still fearful for his fingers, pulled his hand back quickly. It was ignoring him now, though; chewing and making little grunting noises that both Emily and Lechasseur understood to indicate pleasure.

  ‘Maybe I should spread some papers under the chair,’ Lechasseur said grimly. I doubt he’s house trained.’

  Still
chewing, the thing looked up and gave Lechasseur a toothy grin, full of rotted teeth, with shards of saliva-wet chocolate visible in between.

  ‘I think it likes you,’ Emily chuckled.

  ‘Next time, I’ll let you feed it, then. Just so it doesn’t develop any favourites.’ Lechasseur tossed the remaining piece of chocolate into the creature’s open mouth. ‘We’d also better buy some more sweets.’

  ‘You were communicating pretty effectively,’ Emily said. ‘Something you saw?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Lechasseur shrugged. ‘Just an instinct, but these days I’m never really sure where they come from. I was fine following it back all the way to the park, but then something... possessed it, or rose up from inside it.’

  ‘Whatever’s been controlling them?’ Emily guessed.

  ‘It seemed more natural than that, like it was a part of it. Just not a part that worked in any way that I understood. Almost like it was sort of... outside time...’ Lechasseur’s voice trailed off as he realised he was no longer certain what he was getting at.

  ‘Maybe you should try again,’ Emily said. ‘There is still one murder to go.’

  ‘Or maybe one of us should be heading over to Ardent Mews to find this poor Cionadh person before it’s too late,’ he replied. ‘I would like to be able to stop at least one killing.’

  ‘But then what do we do with your house guest?’ Emily asked.

  ‘He seems pretty happy now. Maybe I can snag a box of chocolate. It’s what I do, after all. Then we can spread out a lot of papers, chain him to the pipes and leave him here. He’ll probably be happy as a clam.’

  They both turned to the creature just in time watch its grin vanish, its limbs sag and its pupils dilate. Once again it started jumping in the chair, not frantically this time, but rhythmically, with a steady, machine-like pulse.

  ‘What’s that about?’ Lechasseur wondered aloud.

  Emily, forgetting her instinctual fear, stepped forward. ‘You’re right. It’s not an outside force, it is natural.’

  ‘What’s natural?’

  Emily knelt down by the chair, and Lechasseur put his hand on her shoulder, ready to pull her back, but she brushed it away. ‘Leave me alone a moment. I can hear it.’

  ‘Hear what?’ Lechasseur knew that at times Emily was capable of an amazing intuition that bordered on telepathy. Now it seemed she was crossing the border. After some tense moments, she pulled back.

  ‘It’s like a beehive,’ she said. ‘A hive mind.’

  Lechasseur furrowed his brow. ‘A what?’

  ‘Scientists say that a beehive is like an individual organism, with each bee in it acting not as an individual, but as a part of a sort of single being, a single mind. The Subterraneans are more sophisticated than that. They have their own mind, but at times this sort of communal over-mind takes over, directing all their actions at once. Have you heard of Carl Jung, the psychiatrist? He said: “Don’t you know if you get one hundred of the most intelligent people in the world together, they’re a stupid mob? Ten thousand would have the collective intelligence of an alligator.” This would be the opposite.’

  ‘Doesn’t say much for mankind, but that explains how the Subterraneans could be so organised during the attack, and so disorganised once it was over,’ Lechasseur mused. ‘Is this communal mind arranging the ritual, then?’

  ‘Not sure,’ Emily answered. ‘We could try touching the creature and jumping along his time trail.’

  Lechasseur shook his head. ‘Who knows where we’d wind up or for how long? Maybe trapped underground with a hundred of his hungry friends. And it’s certainly not going to save the fourth victim.’

  At first she thought he was simply being resistant, as usual, to making a jump, but she had to admit his reasons were sound. ‘Then maybe you should have another look.’

  ‘I told you, it gets too noisy,’ he protested.

  ‘Maybe now that you know what it is, it’ll be different,’ she said. ‘Look, the chair’s holding, it’s thumping along like a cog in a wheel. Maybe you can see what this uni-mind, or whatever you want to call it, is up to.’

  ‘All right,’ Lechasseur answered. ‘All right.’

  He put his finger to his lips to try to hush the creature again, but it was no use. Even the strange intelligence he’d previously sensed in its eyes was gone, leaving behind this uncomprehending automaton.

  Lechasseur sighed and let his eyes go blurry again. The steady drumming of the chair against the floor helped it all come easier, perhaps because it made one moment seem exactly like the one before it and the one after it. The time worm rapidly emerged from the creature, but on this occasion headed not into the past, but into the future. The worm writhed and twisted, growing out in all directions, the more familiar three-dimensional reality played along its sides almost like a picture show.

  Lechasseur saw the creature there, surrounded by sweets and paper, then it was led in near pitch blackness along a dank sewer by a chain. An odd gradation rolled along the outside of the worm, and Lechasseur realised that the light and location were changing.

  They were in a tiny workman’s flat. The furnishings were meagre. An end table with the day’s papers and the evening’s post. The creatures were here, too, twenty to thirty strong. He could smell as well as see them. He even caught a glimpse of what he thought must be himself lying on the floor near the front door, pinned by the creatures, a chain still held tightly in his hand. Nearby, a powerful man was being lifted, then carried.

  This is it, then, Lechasseur thought. The next murder!

  With a desperate ripple of old frustration, he reasoned that there was nothing he could do for himself or the victim in this shadow land of perception.

  Or was there?

  With the utmost effort, Lechasseur managed to swerve his point of view deeper into the worm, away from the carnage and toward the pile of letters on the table. With a satisfied sigh, he managed to hurl his consciousness back into the present, where Emily was waiting.

  ‘Did you see?’ she asked. ‘Did you find out the purpose of the ritual?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘But, I did see two things. First, this time, it didn’t look like they killed the victim. I think they kidnapped him. And I managed to spot the address. The Ardent Mews we’re looking for isn’t the one on the map in Kensington at all. It’s in Holborn.’

  Chapter Ten

  Thanks to the prodigious down-payment from Crest, which they realised might well be his life savings, Lechasseur had managed to procure at short notice from his suppliers some heavy chains, a large box of chocolates and a second electric torch with new batteries. Emily had meanwhile strewn newspapers about the flat in sufficient quantity to cover a third of the floor. With their primal guest tightly secured, and apparently quite content with the box of sweets, the duo quickly made their way by tube train to Holborn station, and from there to Ardent Mews.

  The smart street was clean and well-cared for; that is to say, with the notable exception of number 93, home of Mr Brae Cionadh, Irishman by birth, warehouse foreman by trade. One of the house’s two front windows had been boarded up with wood. The other had two cracked panes. Cionadh was in much the same dilapidated state as his home. He responded to the knocking at his door quickly enough, his ruddy face scowling out at Lechasseur and Emily from beneath a thick shock of fiery red hair. He wore a torn, stained vest that barely contained a thick combination of chest muscles and belly fat. Lechasseur and Emily were well aware that any attempt to persuade the uninitiated that their life was in imminent danger from a horde of Troglodytes would be difficult, but they also quickly realised that convincing Mr Cionadh would be a particular challenge.

  Trying to imagine what words from a stranger he might himself heed, Lechasseur spoke slowly and carefully about ‘a matter of grave importance.’

  Throughout his little speech, Cionadh angled his green eyes down
at some point in the middle of Lechasseur’s chest. He breathed heavily but steadily, in a manner not unlike the Subterranean they’d left behind. Sensing a pause in Lechasseur’s words, Cionadh looked up. Lechasseur noticed a yellowish tinge at the edges of the man’s eyes and wondered if perhaps he was ill.

  ‘Drink?’ Cionadh said, though it scarcely sounded like a word. With that, all three went inside.

  The flat looked exactly as Lechasseur had seen in his vision, only the human smell was thicker now, and he found himself wishing that the windows were open, not necessarily for the light, but for the air.

  Cionadh handed Lechasseur a crusty glass, quarter filled with amber liquid. Lechasseur accepted, but only sipped at the contents, which he swore more closely resembled kerosene than any drinkable spirit. Emily refused hers, which immediately marked her, in Cionadh’s eyes, as deeply suspicious. Cionadh downed her glass, then his own, then slumped into a wooden chair that seemed far too small for his size.

  Emily remained silent, while Lechasseur tried to talk about the danger without actually talking about it. Cionadh seemed to be listening, but then occasionally waved his hand in front of his face as if Lechasseur was some insect that he was trying to swat away.

  Not sure that he was making his point, Lechasseur became more and more explicit, and more and more frustrated that he didn’t seem to be getting through. Finally, puffing himself up a bit more than he intended, Lechasseur said: ‘Mr Cionadh, what I’m trying to say is that you’re in a great deal of trouble.’

  Responding to what he imagined as Lechasseur’s aggressive stance, Cionadh rolled forward. ‘I think,’ he drawled, ‘the only one in trouble here... is you!’

  Cionadh stood up and pushed Lechasseur hard in the shoulder with two stiff fingers. Trying to keep things from getting completely out of control, Lechasseur smiled as pleasantly as he could and shook his head.

  ‘No, please. You don’t understand. I don’t want to fight you. We’re just here to help you!’