Tunnels 02 - Deeper

by Roderick Gordon

  It was obviously a lamp. It had a cylindrical body, approximately five inches in length, to which was attached a circular housing with a thick glass lens inside. At the rear of the cylinder was some form of sprung arm, and there was also a switch of sorts behind the lens.

  It was highly reminiscent of a bicycle light, but it was sturdily made — from brass, Will guessed, given the green patches that he observed on its surfaces. He tried the lever, to no avail, and pulled at one end of the cylinder where there were two slight indentations. With a pop, the end came off, revealing a small cavity inside. If it was indeed a light, then it would need batteries, but even so, Will couldn't work out how such a small battery could power it, or where the wires were.

  Stumped, he called over to this brother. "Hey, Cal! Don't suppose you know what this is? Probably just a piece of junk."

  Cal ambled groggily over, but his face lit up as soon as he saw the object. He snatched it from Will's hands.

  "Hey, these are brilliant!" he said. "Got a spare orb on you?"

  "Here," Chester offered, swinging his legs over the edge of the table and climbing off.

  "Thanks," Cal said, taking the orb. First he removed all the dust from the device, turning it upside down and tapping it, then blowing inside.

  "Watch this."

  He dropped the orb into the cavity and pushed down until it clicked.

  "Pass me the top."

  Will handed it to him and Cal pushed the end of the cylinder back on. Then he rubbed the lens on his pants to clean it.

  "You move this lever," he told Chester and Will, "to adjust the aperture and focus the rays." He held it so they could see as he tried to move what appeared to be a lever behind the lens housing. "It's a little stiff," he said, applying as much pressure as he could with both his thumbs. Then, as the small lever gave, he grinned. "Got it!"

  Light leaped from the lens, an intense beam that Cal played around the walls. Although the room was already quite well illuminated from the light orbs they'd placed at various points on the bookshelves, they could see how bright the lantern's beam was in comparison.

  "That's awesome," Chester said.

  "Yep. They're called Styx lanterns — pretty rare, really. This is the best thing about them," Cal said, and, pulling open the spring-loaded flap of brass at the back of the light, slotted it over his shirt pocket. He took his hands away and moved his chest from Will to Chester, the lantern clamped firmly in place as its beam flashed in their faces.

  "Hands free," Will observed, blinking.

  "Absolutely. Very useful when you're on the move." Cal leaned over to look at the contents of the box. "More of them! I can rig up one for each of us."

  "Cool," Chester said.

  "So…" Will began as the thought occurred to him, "so this house — all the way down here — was for the Styx!"

  "Yes," Cal answered. "I thought you knew that!" He made a face, as if it had been blindingly obvious all along. "They would have lived here. And Coprolites would have been kept in the huts outside."

  Will and Chester exchanged glances.

  "Kept? What for?" Will asked.

  "As slaves. For a couple of centuries they were made to mine stuff the Colony needed. It's different now — they do it in exchange for food and the light orbs they need to live. The Styx don't force them to work like they used to."

  "That's nice of them," Will said dryly.

  11

  Mrs. Burrows was in the dayroom of Humphrey House, an establishment that purported to be a haven of recuperation, or "a respite from your day-to-day worries and strife," if you believed the brochure. The dayroom was her domain. She had commandeered the largest, most comfortable chair and the only footstool in the place, and, to sustain her for the afternoon's television viewing, had stuffed a bag of hard candy down the side of the chair. One of the orderlies in the home had been persuaded to pick these up for her on a regular basis from the town, but they were rarely shared with any of the other patients.

  As Oprah came to an end, she flicked through the other channels in a frantic haste. She ran through them all several times, only to find there was nothing on that remotely interested her. Thoroughly frustrated, she stabbed at the mute button to silence the television and leaned her head back against the chair. She missed her extensive video library of films and favorite shows much as a normal person might mourn the loss of a limb.

  She sighed a long and forlorn sigh and the irritation receded, leaving in its place a vague sense of helplessness. She was humming the theme from Murder, She Wrote in a mournful and desperate way when the door thumped open.

  "Here we go again," Mrs. Burrows muttered under her breath as the matron breezed into the room.

  "What, dear?" inquired the matron, a rake-thin woman with her gray hair tightly pulled back into a bun.

  "Oh, nothing," Mrs. Burrows replied innocently.

  "There's someone here to see you." The matron had made a beeline for the windows and now heaved back the curtains to flood the room with daylight.

  "Visitors? For me? Mrs. Burrows said unenthusiastically as she shielded her eyes from the glare. Without leaving the chair, she attempted to get her feet into her slippers, a tawdry pair of stained, fake suede moccasins with the backs trodden down. "Hardly likely to be family — not that there are many of them left, not now," she said, a little soulfully. "And I don't imagine Jean has stirred her stumps to bring my daughter all the way here… Haven't heard a squeak from either of them since before the New Year."

  "It's not family, it's a lady from social services," the matron managed to make herself heard, before opening one of the casement windows with incantations of "That's better."

  Mrs. Burrows gave no reaction to this piece of news. The matron rearranged the flowers in a vase on the window ledge and gathered up some fallen petals before turning to her. "And how are we today?"

  "Oh, not so good," Mrs. Burrows answered, laying it on thick with a whining, despondent tone and finishing her sentence with a small groan.

  "I'm not surprised. It's not healthy being cooped up indoors all day — you ought to get some fresh air. Why don't you go for a walk on the grounds after you've seen your visitor?"

  The matron stopped and swiveled back to the window, scanning the garden beyond as if she was looking for something. Mrs. Burrows immediately took notice, her curiosity piqued. The matron spent her every waking hour tirelessly organizing people or things, as if her calling in life was to impose some sort of order over an imperfect world. A human dynamo, she did not stop — in fact, she was the complete antithesis to Mrs. Burrows, who had put the struggle with the last mutinous slipper on hold for the moment to watch the matron's atypical inactivity.

  "Is something the matter?" Mrs. Burrows asked, not able to keep silent any longer.

  "Oh, it's nothing really… just that Mrs. Perkiss swears she saw that man again. Quite beside herself, she was."

  "Ah." Mrs. Burrows nodded knowingly. "And when was this?"

  "This morning, first thing." The matron turned back into the room. "Can't figure it out myself. She seemed to be getting on so well, and, all of a sudden, these strange episodes started." Frowning, she looked at Mrs. Burrows. "Your room is directly under hers — you haven't spotted anyone out there, have you?"

  "No, and I'm not likely to."

  "Why's that?" the matron asked her.

  "Bit bloomin' obvious, isn't it?" Mrs. Burrows replied bluntly, finally succeeding in ramming her foot home into her slipper. "It's the person we all fear, deep down… the final curtain… the big sleep… whatever you want to call it. That Perkiss woman has had the sword of Damocles hanging over her for a long time… poor cow."

  "You mean…" the matron began, as she caught on to what Mrs. Burrows was suggesting. She gave Mrs. Burrows a gentle "pah" just to emphasize what she thought of her theory.

  Mrs. Burrows wasn't deterred in the slightest by the matron's reaction. "Mark my words, that'll be it," she said with total conviction, her eyes driftin
g back to the silent television screen as it occurred to her that Millionaire could be about to start any moment now.

  The matron exhaled skeptically.

  "Since when had death been a man in a black hat?" she said, and reassumed her usual businesslike manner, glancing at her watch. "Is that the time? I must be getting on." She fixed Mrs. Burrows with a stern glance. "Don't keep your visitor waiting, and then I want to see you go for that brisk walk on the grounds."

  "Of course," Mrs. Burrows agreed, nodding vigorously, but inwardly finding the whole suggestion of exercise quite distasteful. She hadn't the slightest intention of taking a "brisk walk," but would make a big show of getting ready to go out, then merely promenade once around the house before ducking into the kitchen to lie low for a while. If she was lucky, she might even get a cup of tea and some shortbread biscuits out of the cook.

  "Tickety-boo," the matron said, checking the room for anything else that wasn't in its place.

  Mrs. Burrows smiled sweetly at her. She'd learned very soon after arriving that if she played along with the matron and her staff, she could get her own way, well, most of the time, anyway, particularly since she wasn't much trouble in comparison with many of the other inpatients.

  These were a mixed bunch, and Mrs. Burrows viewed them all with equal disdain. Humphrey House had its fair share of "Snifflers," as she called them. There was a barrel-load of these miseries who, if left to their own devices, positioned themselves all over the place like lost, lonely waifs, usually in corners where they could mope away the hours uninterrupted. But Mrs. Burrows had also witnessed the quite startling change that this breed could go through, more often than not in the evenings. Without warning, they would undergo some form of transformation after "lights out," like a caterpillar wrapping itself in a duvet cocoon only to emerge as a completely different creature, a "Screamer," in the small hours of the morning.

  Then this normally nonviolent breed would howl and wail and break things in their rooms until members of the staff came to placate them or administer a pill or two. And, usually, they'd miraculously metamorphose back into Snifflers again by sunup.

  Then there were the "Zombies," who shuffled around as if they were clueless extras on a film set, not knowing what they were supposed to be doing or where they were meant to be going, and certainly never remembering their lines (they were mostly incapable of any rational exchange). Mrs. Burrows largely ignored them while they stumbled around the place on their random, senseless paths.

  But the very worst for her had to be the "Bagmen," horrible specimens of middle-aged, male professionals who had burned out from their overpressured careers in accountancy or banking or, as far as Mrs. Burrows was concerned, similarly inconsequential occupations.

  She loathed these pinstripe casualties with a passion — sometimes, she thought, because their mannerisms and blank expressions reminded her so much of her husband, Roger Burrows. She'd seen the little danger signs that he was going that way just before he had upped and offed, disappearing who knows where.

  For Mrs. Burrows hated her husband with a passion.

  Even in the first years of their marriage, things hadn't gone smoothly. Their inability to have children together cast a pall over the relationship. And all the rigamarole associated with adopting meant she couldn’t concentrate on her own job and she'd been forced to pack it in: Another dream stymied. After they had been successful in their applications to adopt two young children, a boy and a girl, she had struggled to give them everything she'd had in her own childhood, all the trappings, such as nice clothes and mixing with the right people.

  But it was impossible; after years of trying to make her family something it could never be — not on Dr. Burrows's fleabite salary — she gave up. Mrs. Burrows had closed her eyes to her surroundings and her situation, seeking solace in the worlds on the other side of the television screen. In this blinkered, unreal state, she'd abdicated motherhood, handing the responsibility of the house, the washing, the cooking, everything, to her daughter, Rebecca, who took it all on with surprising ease, considering she had been only seven years old at the time.

  And Mrs. Burrows felt no remorse or guilt about doing this, because her husband hadn't upheld his part of the bargain when they had first married. And then, to cap it all off, Dr. Burrows, the chronic loser, had had the gall to walk out on her, taking away what little she did have.

  He had ruined her ruined life.

  She loathed him for this. And all this loathing fermented away inside her, never far below the surface.

  "Your visitor," the matron prompted her again.

  Nodding, Mrs. Burrows tore her eyes from the television and rose wearily from her chair. She shuffled out of the room, leaving the matron rearranging some boxes of puzzles on the sideboard. Mrs. Burrows didn't want to see anyone, least of all a social worker who might bring unwanted reminders of her family and the life she'd left behind her.

  In no hurry to reach her destination, she slid her slippers lethargically over the highly buffed linoleum as she passed "Old Mrs. L.," who, at twenty-six, was ten years Mrs. Burrows's junior, but had shockingly little hair. She was in her habitual pose, fast asleep in a corridor chair. Her mouth was open so wide that it looked as though someone had tried to saw her head in two, her prominent larynx and tonsils displayed in their full glory for all to see.

  The woman let go an almighty rush of air from her gaping mouth, with a sound somewhat akin to air escaping from a slashed truck tire. "Disgraceful!" Mrs. Burrows declared, continuing down the corridor. She came to a door with a crude plastic label in black and white proclaiming it to be The Happy Room and pushed it open.

  The room was at the corner of the building and had windows on two of its walls that looked out onto the rose garden. Some bright spark on the staff had come up with the idea of encouraging patients to paint murals on the other two walls, although the final result hadn't been quite as anticipated.

  A five-foot-wide rainbow composed of brown strands of varying hues arched over a strange assortment of humanoid figures. One end of the rainbow curved down into the sea, where a grinning man stood on a surfboard, his arms outstretched in some form of clownish greeting, as a large shark's fin cut a circle through the water around him. In the sky above the dun rainbow, seagulls wheeled, painted in the same naïve style as the other pictures. They had a certain charm to them, until one noticed the droppings shooting from their rear ends in broken lines, much as a child might draw gunfire in a battle scene, which strafed the heads of a group of figures with bloated human bodies and the heads of mice.

  Mrs. Burrows didn't feel at ease in the room, as if the fractured, mysterious images were trying to communicate hidden messages. For the life of her, she couldn't imagine why it was used to receive guests.

  She turned her attention to her unwanted visitor, staring disdainfully at the woman in nondescript clothes, who had a folder on her knees. The woman immediately got to her feet and looked at Mrs. Burrows with her very pale eyes.

  "I'm Kate O'Leary," Sarah said.

  "I can see that," Mrs. Burrows said, looking at the visitor's badge clipped to Sarah's sweater.

  "Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Burrows," Sarah continued, unperturbed, forcing a perfunctory smile as she offered her hand.

  Mrs. Burrows murmured a hello but made no move to shake it.

  "Let's sit down," Sarah said as she took her seat again. Mrs. Burrows looked around at the plastic chairs and intentionally didn't pick the one closest to Sarah, but chose another by the door, as if she expected she might want to make a quick exit.

  "Who are you?" Mrs. Burrows asked bluntly, sliding her eyes over Sarah. "I don't know you."

  "No, I'm from social services," Sarah answered, briefly holding up the letter she had retrieved from the doormat in the Burrowses' house. Mrs. Burrows craned her neck to try to read it. "We wrote to you on the fifteenth about this meeting," Sarah said as she quickly put the creased letter on top of the folder on her lap.

  "N
obody told me anything about a meeting. Let me see that," Mrs. Burrows demanded as she went to get up, one hand extended toward the letter.

  "No… no, it doesn't matter now. I expect the manager here forgot to inform you, and it won't take long, anyway. I just wanted to make sure everything's OK for you and—"

  "Not about the fees, is it?" Mrs. Burrows cut in as she settled back in her chair, crossing her legs. "As far as I know, the health insurance pays a top-up on the government's contribution and when the insurance runs out, the money from the house sale will cover me."

  "I'm sure that's all right, but it's not my department, I'm afraid," Sarah said with another transient smile. She opened the folder on her knees, took out a pad of paper, and was just slipping the cap off her pen when she caught sight of the painting of a coffee-colored teddy bear on the wall a little way above Mrs. Burrow. Around the bear were carefully painted dice, all in bright colors such as red, orange, and royal blue, and all showing different numbers. Sarah shook her head and turned her attention to Mrs. Burrows again, her pen poised above a clean sheet of paper.

  "So tell me, when were you admitted here, Celia? Do you mind if I call you Celia?"

  "Sure, anything. It was November last year."

  "And how have you been getting on?" Sarah asked, pretending to take notes.

  "Very well, thank you," Mrs. Burrows said, and then added somewhat defensively, "but I've still got some way to go after my… er… trauma… and I'm going to need much more time here. More rest."

  "Yes," Sarah agreed noncommittally. "And your family? Any news of them?"

  "No, none at all. The police say they're still investigating the disappearances, but they're hopeless."

  "The police?"

  Mrs. Burrows answered in a forlorn monotone. "They even had the gall to come to see me yesterday. You probably heard what happened a couple of days ago… the incident at my house?" She flicked her eyes lethargically at Sarah.

  "Yes, I read something about it," Sarah said. "Nasty business."