The Tunnel at the End of the Light

by Stefan Petrucha

  Remembering Lechasseur’s instructions, Emily climbed down a few tiers of concrete, then started moving to the left, pretending she was retreating from Mestizer out of timid fear.

  Mestizer opened her eyes wide, as if sucking in every detail that made Emily what she was. Then, all at once, apparently shocked by something she saw, Mestizer pulled back and whispered: ‘You can’t be! It’s so absurd! Here? Now?’

  Emily stared at the woman, who seemed dizzy with whatever knowledge she’d gleaned. Mestizer lowered her forehead to her arm and emitted a series of surprised noises that made her sound somewhat like the Subterraneans. Then, almost immediately, she raised her head again and said: ‘And you know Lechasseur! Is he here as well? He must be!’

  This was bad news. If Mestizer could read minds, it might be only seconds before she accidentally gave away Lechasseur’s presence and intentions. But Mestizer, without bothering to wait for an answer, began to cackle, then laugh almost hysterically. It seemed to Emily that the tall woman’s mind couldn’t quite focus, and was leaping from one thought to another.

  The emotional spasm at an end for the moment, Mestizer turned toward Emily, who was now several yards from the sealed drainage tunnel. Mestizer’s nostrils briefly flared, then she managed a slight, pained smile. ‘Do you know, little thing, that had you and I met before, had you simply come to me, all this... all this... extreme effort, would have been utterly unnecessary?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Emily asked.

  ‘Must I spell it out for you? In some ways, some special ways, I’m just like your handsome friend,’ she said. ‘And I need, very badly, someone like you. Understand?’

  She’s a time sensitive, Emily realised. Just like Honoré and that man Radford. And she wants a channeller.

  Mestizer stepped closer, giving Emily an excuse to move even further from the sealed drain. As Mestizer moved, she spoke, eyes wild and wide. ‘Once in a great while, believe it or not, a leader is born among our underground friends here. Someone who helps them to find their way in their little world. Unfortunately, they managed to lose their last one, probably ate him. Ever since, they’ve been looking for a replacement. When I realised that their group Mind perceives time in a non-linear fashion – something Lechasseur must have sensed as well, by now – I saw a mutual solution to our needs. So, I offered to give their communal psyche a physical form through the use of an ancient spell. As you’ve doubtless realised, the partnership has been most successful, though I daresay that the Mind itself is much more interested in the outcome than its subjects are. Where is Lechasseur, by the way? Hiding in the tunnels somewhere? How ungallant to send a girl to do his dirty work!’

  There was only a few feet between them now. Emily could sense a wave of energy crackling from Mestizer, similar to the sensation she sometimes got from Lechasseur, but much stronger and much darker.

  ‘A manifestation of the Mind?’ Emily said, prodding her on.

  ‘Oh, must I spell it out? Since it doesn’t perceive time in the limited way that most humans do, if given form, it would be the perfect...’

  ‘Time channeller.’

  ‘Bright girl,’ Mestizer said, sarcastically. ‘These poor creatures get the king they’ve longed for, I get my atemporal dance partner, all with a little help from the four primal elemental powers of the world.’

  ‘You killed three men for that?’ Emily asked.

  Mestizer widened her eyes and nodded vigorously. ‘Of course, my dear. Morality is different from a wider perspective. One could argue that, given their names and addresses, they were destined to fulfil a greater purpose.’

  ‘And by “greater purpose”, you mean yours,’ Emily said, trying to keep her talking, wondering why Lechasseur hadn’t already made his move.

  Again Mestizer nodded vigorously. ‘My purpose, and, I suppose,’ she added with a sneer, ‘the purpose of being old king log for these frogs.’

  The Subterraneans continued their chanting. Mestizer had stopped talking, and the water had yet to come crashing down. Emily had to say something, something distracting. Mestizer was already looking away, scanning the walls.

  ‘You realise we’re going to try to stop you,’ Emily announced haughtily.

  Mestizer slowly turned back to Emily and looked levelly at her. Emily saw the light from the fires reflected in her eyes. And as she looked, she saw the gold flecks twinkle. Pretty gold flecks.

  ‘That’s right, little thing,’ whispered Mestizer, in a voice like honey. ‘Look into my eyes.’

  Emily looked, and found she could not look away. Mestizer’s gaze pinned her, and the woman’s eyes were the most beautiful thing she could ever remember seeing.

  At that moment, there was a scuffle of movement behind her as Lechasseur leapt up from where he had been hiding, caught the wheel and, with a few quick turns, started to open the drain. A wall of murky water cascaded from the opening, growing with every moment as the hatch swung open. It crashed down into the room, drenching Cionadh, pushing most of the cardboard and kindling away into the drains, and pouring around the demon statue.

  The Subterraneans, though some were swept into the pool, mostly held their positions and kept chanting.

  Shaking her head to free herself from Mestizer’s hypnotic gaze, Emily thought for a brief instant that they’d won. But Mestizer simply stretched her back and smiled.

  ‘Try to stop me? Yes, my dear, I realised that, I realised that all along.’ Mestizer rolled out her arm toward the remaining water-soaked pile of kindling, as if unfurling a scroll. At once, despite the water, the pile burst into furious flames of gold, silver and bronze.

  Cionadh started to scream, but by the time the sound made its way to his mouth, most of his flesh had been consumed by the unnatural fire.

  ‘But you have to realise,’ said Mestizer, still smiling, ‘that you’re entirely too late.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  Emily could scarcely take in what happened next. The ebon statue suddenly began to glow with light, brighter and brighter, until it hurt her eyes to keep looking at it. But still she could not tear her gaze away. And as she watched, the figure also started to grow bigger – much bigger – until it almost filled the entire chamber.

  Eventually the dazzling radiance faded, and the demon stood crouched before them, no longer fixed in the form of a statue, but very much alive. What had once been a group Mind, a complex mass of thought housed piecemeal across the bodies of an entire species, now had in its own singular, gargantuan body, wedged into a space that seemed tiny by comparison, although it had just recently held over a hundred individuals.

  Uncertain of its new, corporeal home, the demon foolishly straightened its curved, hairy, powerful back, sending its head straight up through concrete and steel support girders. Shocked, cut and bruised, it quickly resumed a crouched, almost foetal position, pulling its huge hands in, prodding at its wounds with index fingers several feet long.

  ‘Still! Still!’ Mestizer cried, trying desperately to attract the demon’s attention. ‘You must be careful! You’re not used to having a body!’

  Lechasseur had by now managed to regain his footing on the ledge by the entrance to the chamber. ‘Why’d you conjure that thing into such a small space?’ he called down to Mestizer.

  Mestizer whirled round. ‘Fool! I didn’t realise it was going to be this big! The ancient tongues in which these spells are written are difficult to decipher!’

  ‘And you’re calling other people fools?’ Emily snapped back.

  Before Mestizer could respond, the giant shifted, sending huge chunks of stone crashing down to the flooded floor. Mestizer looked at her creation in something akin to horror, clearly not sure what to do next. Then she closed her eyes, took three calming breaths, smiled pleasantly and opened them again.

  ‘Not a problem. We will stay calm. We will succeed.’ Edging along the wall like a long b
lack spider, Mestizer pulled herself up next to Emily, then snatched up a chunk of her dark hair in a fist.

  Emily cried out in pain and tried to wrench herself free.

  ‘Quiet!’ hissed Mestizer. ‘This will take only a minute, then my creation and I will be gone.’

  The white-skinned woman turned back to the dark, squirming monster and held out her free hand to it, palm up.

  ‘My hand, darling,’ Mestizer called to the beast. ‘Just touch it. Go ahead. Otherwise, you’ll be left behind! This way, we’ll leave together and reappear elsewhere in this stupid child’s life. I’ve already picked a spot! A nice green field. A park. Kensington Gardens two weeks ago. A beautiful cloudy night! We’ll be outside, you and I. Then we can plan!’

  ‘You can pick where to go?’ Lechasseur asked, voicing the same question that had popped into Emily’s head.

  Mestizer turned to him briefly, shook her head and said only: ‘Tch.’

  Then her focus was back on the giant. ‘Do you understand? Just touch my hand! We’ll leave your subjects to feast on these two!’

  The giant, if anything less human in appearance than the Subterraneans, nevertheless watched Mestizer as she spoke. Now, perhaps unwilling to ram its head upward again, and sensing little other alternative, it seemed to want to obey. It looked at her tiny fingers, then at its own huge hand, then back at her again.

  Mestizer nodded, frantically, excitedly. ‘Yes! Yes! Your hand!’ She held her own hand out, rubbed it, fanned the fingers, then pointed toward its colossal appendages. ‘You’re not unintelligent! I know! Just a little disorientated! I can help that! I can make you understand faster! Just give me your hand!’

  A spark lit in twin brown corneas the size of manhole covers. The demon King shifted its shoulder, loosening the ceiling still further. A chunk of reinforced concrete the size of a motor car hit the wall barely two feet away from Lechasseur, then smashed into the pool below, its surface forming a small island in the swirling muck.

  Then the King slowly stretched its arm out towards Mestizer.

  The woman was beside herself. ‘Yes!’ she cried. ‘Yes!’

  As if sensing something was about to happen, but not realising it would mean the disappearance of their King, the Subterraneans began to hoot, growl and jump up and down excitedly, apparently returning to their more bestial state.

  The huge neo-simian hand moved steadily closer to that of the eager, black-clad woman. Mestizer stretched forward, pulling Emily’s hair tightly, making her scream again, as she tried to reduce the distance between her and her goal.

  Lechasseur knew that he and Emily wouldn’t survive ten minutes with the Subterraneans if Mestizer and the giant vanished, to say nothing of what would happen in Kensington Park when they arrived. As his leather coat flopped wetly against him, he again worried that it would never be the same. But an open fold at the pocket gave him a glimpse of the extra electric torch, and, more importantly, the spare chocolate bar.

  He slid out the bar. Soggy from the sewer water, it half-clung to the pocket’s lining. Using his fingernails, which he was grateful he hadn’t clipped in a while, he scraped the paper off, then held it aloft and began calling: ‘Here! Here!’

  If he could get the Subterraneans to see it, or smell it, the ensuing rush might give him and Emily a chance to escape.

  At first, everyone ignored him, even Emily. The collected eyes were all trained on the vanishing distance between the King’s and Mestizer’s hands. Lechasseur yelled louder and longer, finally pricking the ears, not of the Subterraneans, Mestizer or Emily, but of the unholy King.

  Freezing its hand a few feet from Mestizer’s, it sniffed the air, then rolled its eyes toward Lechasseur. It knew what it was smelling. It knew that it was good. It knew that it should have it.

  Lechasseur’s own eyes went wide with terror as the huge thing began to try to force its way bodily toward him, crushing stone and luckless Subterraneans as it went. Without thinking, just as Mestizer and Emily were turning to see what the giant was reaching for, Lechasseur hurled the chocolate bar at the King.

  It raised both its hands to try to catch it, sending stone and iron support beams raining down. But, of course, its over-sized fingers were hopelessly ill-equipped for the job of snatching a tiny rectangle from mid-air, and it failed.

  The bar bounced off its chest, then tumbled down along its oily skin. It fell through the air into the whirlpool of muck on the floor, where it was quickly sucked below the surface.

  Not understanding why it had been denied what it wanted, the King flew into a rage. It raised its hands through stone and masonry, kicked its feet down through the solid floor.

  As the walls and floor swayed and began to shatter utterly, the Subterraneans skittered away, and Emily used the opportunity to knee Mestizer hard in the side. Caught off guard, the stronger, more powerful woman released her grip and found herself slipping down to the small concrete island in the centre of the pool.

  ‘YOU!’ Mestizer bellowed, grabbing her hurt side with one hand, pointing the white-skinned index finger of the other at Emily.

  But Emily could barely hear her above the chaos. The floor cracked beneath her as the mad King continued trying pull itself up into freedom. More debris tumbled into a widening pit. One minute Mestizer had the block of dislodged stone beneath her feet, the next it had shifted and there was nothing holding her up but her anger and will. The last thing Mestizer shrieked before disappearing into the whirlpool of cracked stone, concrete and sewage was: ‘If only I’d met you sooner! This is all your fault!’

  Then she, along with most of the room, was gone.

  Delighted, the Subterraneans hooted and howled, gracefully leaping from one part of the falling walls to another. Some were crushed in mid-celebratory grunt. Others dared actually climb atop their mighty King – who seemed to have as little regard for them as it did for Mestizer, and shook them away as it might uncomfortable drops of sweat.

  Finding a series of foot- and handholds, Emily managed to climb to Lechasseur’s side. As the Subterraneans dived, chattered, screamed and died in a frenzy before their King, Emily and Lechasseur reached what was left of the entrance tunnel, then clawed, stumbled and half-ran out as quickly as they could.

  A roar of shattering sewer, coupled with intermittent sub-human howls, followed them as they lurched through the hellish darkness, each praying that the other remembered the way out.

  ‘I think it’s here!’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I feel the rungs!’

  Minutes later, they threw open a manhole cover and emerged into a more familiar, more human night. But it was not to remain familiar. As Emily and Lechasseur stumbled along the deserted street, the King’s arms breached the buckled tarmac. Then its full mass clambered up into the cool night air, the bodies of several of its subjects crushed flat against its torso. Howling, it swung its arms left and right, fingers scraping the sides of buildings on either side of the street.

  ‘So what happened to your Carl Jung theory?’ Lechasseur asked Emily. ‘I thought the hive Mind was supposed to be brilliant! This ‘thing is acting like a refugee from a horror film!’

  Emily shrugged. ‘It’s used to seeing the world in four dimensions, through hundreds of eyes! I guess it’s maddening to be stuck in one body with three dimensions.’

  As the creature stretched, the top of its head rose up above the roofs of some nearby four-storey buildings. Emily and Lechasseur realised for the first time that it must be over a hundred feet tall.

  Perhaps simply because it had been stuck in any body at all, the King was still very, very angry. With a howl that shook the windows in the surrounding buildings, the King started smashing at the walls with his fists. A few more blows and it looked as if a whole building might come down straight on top of Emily and Lechasseur.

  ‘We’ve got to get to Crest!’ Emily sh
outed.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Hurtling bits of grey and black concrete mingled with giant swathes of hairy ape flesh as Emily and Lechasseur tumbled and ran in search of cover.

  ‘Crest?’ Lechasseur called, his damp leather coat flapping against him in a series of small thwacks as he raced along. He sounded vaguely disappointed to hear the name again.

  ‘Of course,’ Emily answered, only a few steps ahead. ‘Don’t tell me you haven’t guessed yet? It’s why we were drawn to him from the start. He’s the centre of all this.’

  ‘Actually, I haven’t guessed anything of the sort,’ Lechasseur growled.

  An animal yowl made him look back over his shoulder. The King was beating his head with his fisted hands, as if trying to crack open his huge skull and free his mind from its new bondage. The hands tore hair, raked leathery skin, but still the King didn’t seem to understand why it hurt so much.

  Lechasseur found himself slowing as he stared, then coming to a full halt. Emily was ten yards ahead before she noticed he wasn’t beside her.

  ‘What is it?’ she called back. She took a few more steps from momentum, then stopped herself. ‘This really isn’t the time to take in the sights.’

  ‘It’s... strange,’ Lechasseur said, realising how silly he sounded as he spoke.

  ‘Yes, a giant ape is trashing the buildings! Now, come on!’ she shouted, waving him frantically forward. She was about to run towards him, with the thought of pulling him along with her forcibly, when a piece of building, half the size of a car, crashed onto the road between them.

  The King, head bloody from the pounding he’d given himself, had turned to taking out his frustration on the buildings.

  ‘Honoré?’ she cried. ‘Now would be good!’

  But the tall black man could not comply. Something in his mind, in the darker reaches of his psyche that he dreaded, was forcing him to stare at the nightmarish behemoth. For a moment it seemed to Lechasseur that there was not one, but two Kings, then three, then four, then a whole blur of them, mixing into a rolling, hairy brown tentacle.