The Tunnel at the End of the Light

by Stefan Petrucha

He lifted one to his face and sniffed, immediately wrinkling his nose. There was saliva, sharp and unsavoury, still on the wrapper. It was recent. Either the creatures had already returned from their nightly raid, which was unlikely, or they’d just gone out.

  After chaining his bike to the lamppost, Lechasseur sighed and went over to the manhole cover. Part of him prayed he wouldn’t be able to get it open, but the cover came free with a tug. The smell from the wrapper had been bad enough, but the stench of waste from the sewers made his head swim. It brought to mind a newspaper piece that Emily had read to him once about London’s early problems with sewage. In 1858, the ‘Great Stink’ from a backed-up Thames, had caused thousands to flee the city. At that moment, as he climbed down into the smell, Lechasseur knew just how they’d felt.

  He had no idea what he was going to do once he was down there, other than perhaps be sick. As it turned out, the concrete walkway at the bottom of the ladder was moist, but not submerged. After a few minutes, his eyes could make out some of his surroundings, mostly thanks to the weak light that filtered down from the regularly-placed grates and manhole covers above.

  It was this light that revealed another wrapper, floating in the muck. Five yards later there was another, clinging to a mossy wall. Before he knew it, Lechasseur had followed the haphazard trail a hundred yards through what seemed more a bad dream than a physical place. Then, abruptly, the trail of wrappers ceased.

  He stood there a moment, hoping that wherever Emily was, it smelt better than this, and wondering what to do next. The creatures were not here; or, if they were, they made no sound. Given that even his softest steps echoed endlessly, he doubted that anything living could move down here without making a noise. Why, then, had the trail gone cold?

  They must have surfaced, he reasoned, briefly thinking of them as a U-boat. Looking up, he realised that he stood directly beneath another manhole cover. He berated himself for not seeing it sooner, but the smell, he realised, had made his head even fuzzier than usual.

  Straining with the effort, Lechasseur shifted the heavy circle of metal. With a loud grating noise, it lifted up and slid to one side. Lechasseur poked his head up out of the hole and found it opened onto a quiet street. There, on the ground, a few yards away, was another chewed wrapper. Beyond that was a small garden square, nestled between the walls of three two-storey buildings, with a large, white stone fountain in the centre. To the right of the park, a well-dressed man was trying to comfort a slender woman.

  The woman was screaming hysterically.

  Lechasseur clambered out of the sewer. His sudden appearance caused the couple to turn and face him, which only made the woman scream more. Lechasseur held his hands out, to try to indicate that he was not a threat, and stepped quickly into the light near the gate. It was then that he noticed a shadow moving swiftly among the bushes in the park. Something had been hiding there, and, with Lechasseur about to block the park’s only exit, had now decided it was time to leave. It rose and skittered, half on the ground, half along the iron fence. By the time the couple saw the expression on Lechasseur’s face and looked toward where he was looking, it was somewhere else.

  Lechasseur could still see it, though. It raced along the wall of one of the buildings that bordered three sides of the park, using invisible finger holds, four feet up. Then it hit the ground again, leapt, rolled, and dived for the far wall, all the while moving closer to the exit where Lechasseur stood, dumfounded.

  With no more than two yards between them, the shadow bounded off one of the concrete posts of the gate, directly towards Lechasseur. He braced himself, prepared to be knocked off his feet. Instead, he felt a heavy paw, or hand, press against his shoulder for leverage. The thing shot over and above him, then clambered off into the street. As far as Lechasseur could make out, it looked like a combination between a chimp and a fast-moving lizard.

  As it made its way toward the open sewer, Lechasseur realised it was not alone. Two or three others, moving so quickly, camouflaged so well, that he hadn’t noticed them at all, slipped down into the sewer along with it. He felt a sudden relief that he’d not run into them down there in the dark.

  Unwilling to follow without a weapon, and perhaps a small army, Lechasseur turned back towards the fountain and the terrified couple. The woman’s screams had muffled into sobs. A growing police siren wailed in the distance, but underlying it all was the bubbling of the fountain, which Lechasseur saw clearly now. Its pulsing water was dark red.

  A hand jutted from the surface, the wet sleeve of a coat clinging to the skin. Its lifeless fingers were stretched out, as if to try to grasp onto the last moments of life.

  Lechasseur realised that this attack was not quite like the others. There was no obvious food to be had here, and the victim had been drowned, on purpose.

  Maybe, Lechasseur reasoned sadly, these things are more human than I thought.

  Chapter Five

  The next night, half an hour after an eggy orange sun plopped below the smoggy grey cityscape, Mr Jerome Windleby of 14 Bath Court leaned forward across his makeshift dining room table and deeply inhaled the wafting aroma of his freshly-cooked, hard-won cut of prime beef.

  Heat from the kitchen pressed uncomfortably against his wide back, raising some sweat beneath his white, button-down shirt, but a cooler breeze from the open windows, just across from the crate at which he sat, hit his face and mixed quite pleasantly with the smell of his first steak dinner in years.

  Half in hell, half in heaven, Windleby mused, delighted to be half anywhere and very pleased that, in the end, his cooking skills had turned out to be not quite so bad as his late wife had believed. As he’d guessed, procuring the meat had been much harder than preparing it. Usually, he sold his meat ration tickets to cover more immediate bills, but over the last few weeks, he’d had a good streak at the impromptu book stall that he ran along the iron railings of Green Park on Piccadilly, and had even sold a rare hardback edition of Tarzan of the Apes, signed by Burroughs, for a few pounds.

  After staring for hours at the extra money, as though it was a little green man from Mars, or, perhaps more accurately, a lamp-locked genie, he’d decided to treat himself to a slap-up steak dinner, followed by apple pie and custard. That was when the hard part had begun. Despite running a book stall, he had no knack for bargaining. His little pencilled-in prices on the inside covers were not negotiable. The world of spivs and black market goods, however, was based on a nearly Middle-Eastern system of haggling. Simply to pay the asking price was practically to invite tainted goods. One had to show strength, knowledge and intuition. Mr Windleby had none of these, and upon meeting his first spiv, he’d mumbled a few words, coughed, then run off.

  By and by, the desire for a good meal had driven him back, and he’d hemmed and hawed his way into the prize that now lay before him – mostly by pretending to be a man of more means than he was, and promising repeat business. He was quite certain he’d still paid too much for it, but the fact that the meat smelled fresh made him quite proud.

  He’d thought briefly of reading the paper with dinner, as he’d done before Doris had been killed during the Blitz. He’d hoped that returning to such an old habit might bring to mind the sound of her reprimanding ‘tch’ – which, in life, had always made him lay the paper down to talk with her. But, seeing as how there could no longer be any such conversation, coupled with the fact that the paper was full of the dreadful death of Mr Lemuel Waterman, who had been bludgeoned and drowned in a fountain by a gang of hairy ruffians that some claimed were underground monsters, he decided to forego the trip down memory lane and concentrate fully on his hard-earned meal.

  He rubbed his hands together boyishly, then filled them with cutlery. Reaching forward, steak knife in one hand, fork in the other, he noticed for the first time that the hairs on the back of his hand had started to turn white. Funny, he still remembered himself as young. Now why would memory lie about a
simple thing like that? With a nod to whatever gods happened to be looking in, he raised the piece of dripping meat to his mouth, and hoped memory hadn’t lied about the taste of a good steak.

  The succulent morsel was just about to touch his tongue when a scraping sound from the hall made him close his mouth and turn.

  The sound came again, louder, closer to the door.

  A dog?

  Not bloody likely. Windleby lived at the top of a four storey building. The only flat here was his. The only way up was via a long flight of steps. Not the sort of trek one would accidentally make with a pooch.

  But then the sounds came again.

  Squirrels?

  Perhaps some of the little buggers had made their way down from the roof. Sometimes as he lay awake at night, he could hear them skittering about, looking for nuts, nesting in the attic, or simply falling, having misjudged the distance to one of the tree branches that overhung the building. Still, the furry interlopers tended to be an autumn or winter occurrence. In the high summer, they kept to the outdoors.

  The sound came again. It was now nearly right behind the door. More than that, in the distance, he thought he could hear someone quickly climbing the steps. He briefly considered putting down his food-laden fork and going to have a look, but in a rare burst of self-esteem, decided: No, I’m going to eat my dinner!

  With that, he stuffed the forkful into his mouth, bit deeply and let the juices wash about his tongue. His eyes rolled into his head. He let himself gurgle with pleasure.

  The scraping, distant though it now seemed in his mind, was actually beginning to make the door shake a bit. Windleby had just managed to stuff a second, larger bite into his mouth, when it splintered.

  Still chewing, saddened at the thought of leaving his tiny bliss behind so quickly, he turned just in time to see three figures careening madly into his humble home, knocking over what minor furnishings he still possessed and tearing his few pictures from the wall as they amazingly climbed along its sheer surface.

  He wished they had been dogs. Had they more hair, he might have thought them apes. Had they less, he might have thought them human. As it was, there was little he could think as they threw themselves at him, sending the lit candles and his plate flying.

  He felt a rapid heartbeat (his own?) and smelled foetid breath as he tumbled backwards onto the floor. Hands (and feet?) tore at him, fumbling for a hold on his old muscles and flesh.

  ‘Help, help...’ he said, quite softly, unwilling to truly believe this was taking place, tonight of all nights. When, though, they began dragging him across the floor, not towards the door, but towards the open window, a voice deep down inside him, that sounded remarkably like that of his deceased wife, insisted he would be wise to raise his voice as much as his aging throat and lungs allowed. Unable to disagree, he screamed at the top of his lungs.

  ‘HELP! HELP! THEY’RE KILLING ME!’

  As if the shouting didn’t hurt enough on its own, a greasy hand wedged itself into his wide-open mouth, briefly stifling his cries. Gagging at the horrible taste of oil, salt and an odd sweetness, Windleby bit down as hard as he could, cutting flesh and drawing blood. Accompanied by the sound of a fierce, bird-like yelp, the hand withdrew. Windleby was free to begin screaming anew, which he did. Unfortunately, he was almost to the window.

  As he realised he would likely die, his chest began to hurt. A pounding filled his ears that he thought was that of his over-burdened heart. It turned out, instead, to be the heavy steps of someone storming into the room. Twisting his head, opening his eyes, he saw, though the image was a bit blurred, a tall Negro in a black leather trench coat and fedora. The fellow rushed in, swinging a piece of what looked like Doris’s favourite end table over his head.

  There was a sound of splintering wood, some barks, some human shouts; and, at some point, a second person, a young woman with long, dark hair, had also entered the flat. Of more importance to Windleby, the creatures that held him let go, leaving him to cough, sputter and roll in pain on the floor. Seconds later, he heard the sound of breaking glass. The creatures were exiting, not through the door, but through the window.

  By the time the young woman switched on a lamp, Windleby was wheezing and terrified, but otherwise healthy. He watched her scan the wreckage of the flat, which mere minutes ago had been perfectly neat, and heard her say to the Negro, who was out of sight behind him: ‘Not exactly random foraging, was it?’

  ‘For certain,’ the man replied, still breathless himself. ‘They targeted this place. Headed straight for it from the same spot I saw them at last night. But these last two attacks just don’t fit at all with the pattern reported in the papers. It’s almost as though they’re working to some plan now.’

  ‘But how?’ the woman said, as she walked over to Windleby’s shivering form. ‘From what I could see and sense, they don’t seem to have the ability to speak.’

  ‘An animal trainer then?’ the man asked.

  Windleby felt her hand wiping his hair from his eyes, improving his view. Her touch calmed him a bit.

  She looked Windleby in the eyes and said, warmly: ‘Looks like you’ll be all right. Just to be sure, though, we should see about getting you to a doctor.’

  ‘W-who... are you?’ Windleby said, weakly.

  ‘And what’s the connection to Crest?’ the man asked, more to himself than to anyone present.

  ‘Maybe none, but I can’t help but feel there’s a link,’ said the woman. ‘A strong one.’

  ‘Who are you?’ Windleby repeated hoarsely. But he couldn’t be sure they heard him at all.

  ‘Me, too,’ the man said. ‘Of course, your recent encounter with him makes it a little awkward for us to ask him.’

  Taking his observation as a reproach, she stiffened and turned towards her friend. ‘It wasn’t my fault, you know. I don’t have a lot of experience with tailing people, at least as far as I know. And he hasn’t fired us, not officially.’

  ‘I know, I know. I just never expected you’d break into his home. I asked you not to do anything dangerous.’

  ‘Well, too late for that. It was already dangerous.’

  ‘Why? What was he going to do while you followed him? Sweat on you?’

  ‘I don’t think that’s fair! That was a horrible neighbourhood, full of recently-released convicts and alcoholics!’

  ‘Right. Sorry.’

  ‘I insist,’ Windleby interrupted, beginning to recover more fully, as he propped himself up on his elbows, ‘that you both tell me immediately, who you are!’

  Suddenly hearing, the man pushed air between his lips apologetically and answered: ‘Sorry, sir. I’m Honoré Lechasseur... I...’

  Recognising the name, Windleby’s face turned red as he saw the Negro clearly for the first time. ‘You’re that spiv! I told you, sir, that I did not want your meat and had made other arrangements! What kind of petty creature are you to have your ruffians attack me in my home?’

  ‘What?’ Lechasseur said, shocked. But then Windleby’s face jogged a small memory, so his protests were tinged with a sort of sputtering confusion. Emily suppressed a giggle.

  ‘I’m... we’re... not with them!’ Lechasseur said. ‘We came here to save your life, sir!’

  A light rustling came from outside the window; nothing more, perhaps, than the wind moving through the trees. Ignoring it, Windleby pushed himself to his feet, adjusted his shirt and barked: ‘Sir, I believe that’s a matter for the police to sort out!’

  The mention of the police did little to calm Lechasseur. ‘Do what you like, of course, but let me point out that you’re quite lucky we got here when we did! Those... things don’t scare easy!’

  The rustling came again. This time, Emily cast a glance towards the broken lattice work.

  ‘Nor do I, sir,’ Windleby said. Having felt so helpless ten minutes ago, embracing his sense of
outrage gave him a sense of strength.

  Unfortunately, at that moment, he saw, from the corner of his eye, the creatures returning, in force. Like large, humanoid insects, they swarmed in from the night. Three... five... seven and more, pushing in, crawling along the walls, floor and ceiling. Windleby saw Lechasseur and Emily trying to reach him, but they were pushed back by sheer dint of numbers.

  Hands and feet again surrounded him, and this time there were oh so many more. This time, they did not drag, but lifted. His felt his back sag as they hoisted him, his old vertebrae cracking into and out of place from the hitherto unexperienced position. He saw the high ceiling of his flat grow closer, then move as they carried him along. He felt splintered wood scratch at his sides as they took him out through the window.

  The smell, the breathing, the clawing was more, Windleby thought, than he could possibly bear. As he flailed helplessly against his attackers, he found himself nearly in tears, wondering why the cosmos had been so cruel as to not allow him the small comfort of the fine meal he’d prepared for himself.

  Then, all of a sudden, as if in answer to his pleas, he was freed of their suffocating embrace forever. The very last thing Windleby saw was the inlaid brick floor of the courtyard in front of his building, rushing up with the full force of the earth to meet his frail human form.

  Chapter Six

  Mid-morning the next day, as Emily padded across the bare floor of his flat, Lechasseur tried to get a glimpse of the wounds under her clothing. From what he could tell, the blood had already dried into long, thin protective scabs along the scratches on her body. He watched, feeling her foul mood, as she stepped over to the curtains and yanked them open. He dared not make a sound when the dark, rainy cityscape was revealed, but her expression indicated she knew exactly what he was thinking.

  Still exhausted from the previous evening’s events, he was sprawled in his easy chair, rubbing the central knot of a huge, white and blue bruise on his left forearm. It had swollen considerably while he slept. Cautiously, he stretched his arm out and winced. Nothing broken. If he worked it a bit, he might even get some use out of it by the end of the day.