The Tunnel of Dreams

by Bernard Beckett

  They found ways of keeping themselves clothed and fed and mostly safe: begging, digging through dumpsters and stealing from shops and washing lines and strangers, and finding anywhere warm and dry and out of sight to shelter. The haunted house was a perfect solution. They found it one day while they were scouting for unlocked sheds and open windows. But it was still dangerous. They knew that if they were seen and reported, their troubles would start all over again. That winter was a cold one, made worse by the broken windows and lack of heating, and their eleventh birthday was as miserable as any the girls could remember.

  So when Mr Williams arrived one day, just as the first hint of a second winter on the run brushed the air, they were in the right mood to make a deal.

  The way Alice figured it, Mr Williams must have been watching them closely. He started off by leaving a food package in the house, with their names scrawled in black marker on the outside of the bag, and a promise of more. Alice remembered a feast of fresh cream doughnuts and crisp apples and a cooked chicken the girls devoured with their hands, sucking the bones clean. They were suspicious, of course, but hungry too, and in the third week, when the mysterious donor made good on his promise to connect the electricity so that they could make a hidden safe house in the kitchen, with the single window covered over and even a heater to warm them, they were ready to talk.

  He told them in his usual messy handwriting he would offer them a deal that would ensure they’d never want for money again in their lives. They weren’t so stupid as to believe that, of course. The first thing they had learned on the streets was to be careful who you trusted, and that the more someone offered you, the more careful you needed to be. They arranged to meet Mr Williams in the old house at night-time, for they could move through that darkened place as stealthily as two cats.

  They sat one on either side of the room while he talked. They both had knives hidden in their socks. Their bags were already packed and stashed in a garden three houses up, so that if they had to flee there would be no need to return.

  Mr Williams was a large man, heavy and slow to move, with kind eyes and fingers that never settled. He was constantly picking things up, wiping his brow, tapping on a knee or the side of the couch. His offer, when he made it, was so preposterous that both girls simply laughed.

  ‘Come with me tomorrow night when the moon is full, just after midnight, and stand on the far embankment. A tunnel will open up that will take you to another world. When you get there, stay hidden, and wait for a man to contact you. You will recognise him from the fact that his eyes are different colours, one blue, one brown. Escort him back through the tunnel and your job is done. Do it and you will each receive a thousand dollars every week for as long as you live.’

  The man was mad, they were sure of it. What else could he possibly be? And yet, at the end of the story he produced two carefully folded bundles of cash made up of fifty dollar notes, twenty in each pile.

  ‘This is your first payment,’ he told them. ‘It is yours even if you choose not to help me. If you want to you can take the money and run and I will never see you again. That is your choice. But I know you are both resourceful and brave, and I hope you will consider this a deal too good to pass up.’

  They took the money, of course, and said their goodbyes. At first the girls couldn’t agree which was the better plan. Obviously there was no such thing as a secret tunnel leading into another world, and two thousand dollars was more money than either of them had seen in their lives, but perhaps, Jackie argued, they could find a way of tricking the poor mad man out of more money if they showed up. Jackie was like that, always the one to see the bigger possibility—all her life Alice had had the job of reining in her crazier plans.

  In the end it was curiosity that got the better of them. Somehow they couldn’t live without seeing what would happen, and so the next night, just after midnight, they crept across the dark street and huddled beside a real-estate sign.

  ‘But, as you know’—Alice shrugged, looking as if she herself was still having trouble believing the story—‘there really was a tunnel, and it led here. Mr Williams had told us a little of the world we would encounter, but the details were sketchy. The thing he was most clear on was that there were no identical twins in this world, and should we ever be seen together people would know we didn’t belong and we would be taken prisoner. That seemed too strange to take seriously, but then everything seemed too strange to take seriously, especially when the tunnel opened up before us.

  ‘We should have waited, I see that now. But look for yourself, look at how strange this place is. With its old-fashioned technologies and its bizarre magic, and the way you keep seeing people you recognise from our world, only it’s not them, they just look like them. They look exactly like them. We were told to wait, but we didn’t. We went exploring. We were stupid.

  ‘We thought we were careful. We stuck to the bushes and moved one at a time. We didn’t think anybody was watching us. But then, out of nowhere, four guards, dressed in bright red suits, jumped on us. They were no older than we were, and just as small. I thought they’d be no trouble, but I underestimated them. The had uncommon powers and fought as viciously as anyone I’ve known. I barely got away.’ Alice paused, and her eyes filled with tears. ‘Jackie wasn’t so lucky.’

  She stopped and stared hard at the ground, as if daring the tree root at her feet to say the wrong thing, so that she might take her anger out on it. Anger at having been careless, at having deserted her sister, at not having been strong enough to fight off four children in dress-up uniforms. She sat perfectly still, her shoulders barely rising with each breath.

  Arlo moved cautiously towards her and placed his hand on hers. ‘We’re going to help you, you know,’ he said. ‘We’re going to help you get her back.’

  Alice sniffed loudly and wiped her sleeve across the bottom of her nose. ‘I know you will,’ she said, too bravely. ‘When it’s dark and we won’t be seen I’ll take you to a camp I’ve made. Then we’ll go to where they’re holding Jackie.’

  She looked at the two boys and her face softened. She must have noticed the sadness in their eyes. ‘I’m sorry. I forgot to tell you the most important thing of all. Like most of the things here I cannot explain it, but although I had to stay hidden for a full month before the tunnel reopened for me, when I returned home, no time had passed at all. You will be back in your beds before your parents notice you are missing.’

  That seemed impossible to believe, but then there was a long list of impossibilities in the boys’ heads waiting for an explanation, and they would all have to wait.

  THEY WAITED UNTIL darkness had fallen and travelled without lights. Alice led the way over the next ridge and then down into a forest. She seemed at home there, pushing through the undergrowth and stepping over tree roots as if it were daylight. All the boys could do was try their best to stay close, tripping and stumbling as they went, with their backpacks jostling on their backs. The forest smelled just as it did back home: the rotten sweet smell of old dirt and decaying leaves, and the subtle sharp scents of the undergrowth. Stefan’s lungs burned and his shoulders ached from keeping his hands high in front of his face to push away unexpected branches.

  They finally stopped beneath a huge tree, and it was only then that Alice allowed them to turn on their headlamps. The forest moved with the beams of their light, and disappeared into darkness far higher than their lamps could reach. Next to them, a small, fast-flowing stream gurgled and chattered. Alice dropped to her knees at the water’s edge, splashed her face and then dipped her mouth into the current, lapping greedily the way a dog might. Arlo and Stefan copied her actions. The water swirled about Arlo’s face and bubbles tickled his nose, but he didn’t mind. He had never known water to taste so good, so sharp and fresh. He could feel it spreading through his body, revitalising every part of him.

  ‘How far to camp?’ Stefan asked, water dribbling down his chin and cooling his neck.

  ‘Not far at all,’
Alice said.

  ‘That’s not an answer,’ Stefan complained. ‘You’re very good at not answering questions.’

  ‘We’re here,’ Alice grinned. ‘This is it. This is our camp.’

  Arlo and Stefan looked about, their faces full of doubt. ‘It doesn’t look much like a camp,’ Arlo said.

  ‘I know,’ Alice replied. ‘That’s the point. Okay, follow me.’

  She turned to the huge tree. Its buttressed base was as wide as a small house, and she took two steps to her left and then disappeared.

  The twins looked at one another then rushed forward. The gap Alice had squeezed through was all but hidden from the outside, appearing to be little more than a bulge in the trunk. The hollow was wider at the bottom and the boys crouched, crawling on all fours until it opened out into something like a small cave. Alice had hung her headlamp on a branch overhead, making a sort of lantern. The walls were hairy with tree fibres, and underfoot was a frame of branches covered with ferns. Along a twisted root that served as a kind of shelf, was a row of tinned food, an old pot, eating utensils and a water bottle. Alice crouched by an old canvas pack and carefully unzipped it.

  ‘Get all your food out,’ she said. ‘I’m not going to eat it. We just need to keep it locked away, or rats will come looking for it, and that will keep us awake.’

  There was a lot to learn.

  ‘How long have you lived here?’ Arlo asked her.

  ‘I had to wait for the next full moon before the tunnel reopened,’ Alice answered. ‘It gave me a chance to look around.’

  It was one of those sentences that hinted at a hundred more to come. ‘How did you have enough food for a month?’ Arlo asked.

  Alice shrugged. ‘Mr Williams made sure we took supplies with us. I think he knew we might be trapped here. It wasn’t enough, but I’m used to not having enough. This is your bed for tonight, by the way.’ She kicked at the ferns. ‘It’s not too bad, as long as it doesn’t rain.’

  We should have brought pillows, Stefan thought to himself. She should have told us to bring pillows. He opened his backpack and pulled out his tightly rolled sleeping bag. His watch was no good to him here, it kept time for a world that for now didn’t exist, but they’d been walking for hours and he could have slept on concrete if he had to.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Alice asked.

  Stefan paused. ‘Um, just getting ready for sleep. Or do you want us to take turns keeping watch again?’

  ‘We’re not sleeping yet,’ Alice said, as if she considered the idea ridiculous. ‘We have work to do.’

  ‘What sort of work?’ Stefan asked.

  ‘Scouting. But you’ll need fuel for that. Here, have one of these.’ She pulled down three cans from her small stash, handed one to each boy and kept the other for herself.

  ‘What is it?’ Stefan asked.

  ‘Food,’ was her only reply. ‘I hope you remembered spoons.’

  The food was, in fact, rice pudding, which Arlo had tried only once before and pronounced disgusting. This time its thick creamy sweetness was delicious. He ate it too quickly, not thinking until the last mouthful that he should be savouring it.

  ‘Good, right?’ Alice said.

  ‘Amazing.’

  ‘Arlo, you’re on dishes. Wash the cans out in the stream. Take your light and let me know if you see any eels.’

  ‘Why,’ he asked. ‘Are they dangerous?’

  Alice shook her head. ‘Tasty.’

  With the cans washed out, and the eels sensible enough to stay hidden, Alice explained their next task. It occurred to Arlo that she liked drip feeding them information, that it kept her feeling in control. They were older than her, by at least six months, and bigger, and there were two of them, and they were the ones doing her a favour—yet still there was no doubt she was the leader. He knew it made sense, she was twice as tough and determined as they would ever be, and it was her sister being rescued, but still he resented it a little bit. Just as he resented hearing that they would be walking for another hour through the bush, cutting back behind the swampland and then down to the docks, where they would somehow make their way across the harbour to the headland.

  ‘Where there’s a big tent,’ Arlo said.

  ‘Yes,’ Alice nodded. ‘Where they’re keeping Jackie.’

  ‘Are we rescuing her tonight?’ Stefan asked. ‘Wouldn’t it make sense to wait until we’re more rested?’

  Alice gave a small laugh, weighed down with sadness. ‘If it was that easy, she would already be free. Tonight I just want to show you where they’re keeping her, so you can see what we’re up against. We’ll get back before sunrise. It’s safer if we do most of our sleeping during the day. That’s the most dangerous time to be moving about. And the Academy carriage doesn’t come until late afternoon.’

  ‘What’s the—’

  ‘Later. We’ve got walking to do.’

  Alice made them change into clothes she had stolen—from where she didn’t say. The fit was imperfect but she assured them that didn’t matter. The important thing was that these were the clothes other children their age would be wearing: button-up shirts, long sleeved and made of a coarse off-white material, tucked into heavy itchy trousers. She had a cap for each of them too, and heavy-soled boots that pinched at the sides of Arlo’s feet, while Stefan said his were too broad.

  Arlo’s legs ached and he could feel blisters beginning to form at his heels. His shin throbbed from a collision with a fallen log and his cheek stung with scratches. Most of all he was tired. His whole body was heavy. He remembered the time his father had taken them to the top of the local mountain ranges, how he’d promised them they’d find a second wind, but that had never come. This felt like that, only without the chocolate or daylight, or sense of safety. But he didn’t complain, and neither did Stefan. There was something about Alice that made complaining feel silly.

  The walk was no easier than before, but somehow the pain grew less sharp with the hours, until it was like a simple blanket of discomfort to carry with them.

  They finally emerged from the trees and into the smells of farmland. Alice dropped to the ground and pointed to the harbour below, still and sparkling in the moonlight. Stefan tried to match the view with the world he knew, tracing in his mind the motorway, which at this hour would form a fairy necklace of yellow lights stretching northwards, and the point where the railway bridge crossed over the deep swift waters of the inlet. The moon itself was strange, he now realised. Not in size or shape, but in the dark markings of its surface. Not that he’d ever looked at the moon that closely before, but he could tell this was different.

  ‘Yeah, weird eh?’ It was Arlo’s voice, not in his ear, but inside his head. Stefan gave a start and looked at his brother, who did not appear to have noticed anything unusual.

  Apart from the moon, the only detectable light source was the distant tent, which glowed faintly yellow on the raised horizon.

  ‘It would take five hours to walk around the harbour,’ Alice said, ‘and we’d be trapped on the headland in daylight. Our only option is to go across the water.’

  Neither boy spoke, the obvious ‘how?’

  Alice answered anyway. ‘I know where there’s a rowboat we can borrow,’ she told them. ‘We just have to be very very quiet.’

  ‘By borrow you mean—’

  ‘Steal. Yes. We’re going to steal a boat.’ Her voice was curt and impatient. ‘Hurry up, the moon’s already peaking.’

  The rowboat was tied to a small wooden dock connected to the main port area by a series of walkways of various sizes and states of neglect. Alice said it was too risky to walk openly along the jetty, or even crawl, and insisted they remove their boots and socks, roll up their trousers and wade out to the boat.

  The mud was silty soft and oozed between their toes, and sharp shells dug into the soles of their feet. The depth, predictably, exceeded the height of their rolled-up trousers and they were soon wet to mid-thigh and, despite the mild night, beginning to
shiver.

  Alice urged the boys up into the small wooden dinghy and set about untying its mooring rope. Further along, on a neighbouring jetty, a dog barked and the boys ducked down in the boat, frozen.

  Alice continued working the knot, apparently unfazed. ‘Just a dog,’ she whispered, as if dogs couldn’t cause any trouble.

  ‘Done!’

  There was a sudden splash and she rolled into the boat.

  ‘Okay,’ she grinned. ‘Pass me the oars. Or would one of you prefer to do the rowing?’

  I’m glad she’s on our side, Stefan thought, and immediately Arlo’s voice reappeared in his head. ‘Same,’ it said. Quite distinctly, and yet utterly silent.

  Are we—?

  Reading each other’s minds? Yes. I think so.

  That’s so strange.

  Everything here is strange.

  For the first time since the tunnel had opened, Stefan found himself smiling. Arlo took his hand and gave it a short sharp squeeze. He was right. Whatever happened, they would have each other.

  The theft proceeded without incident. The owner of the boat, along with every other resident of this strange settlement, was apparently asleep. They quickly crossed the calm stretch of water. Alice’s rowing was as steady and purposeful as everything she did. They hauled the boat up onto a shingled beach and dragged it further into a small clump of bushes and out of sight. Alice pulled the boys close for their last instructions.