Jack, Week 8

The nights in the tunnel were the worst.

Jack had walked far enough down the seemingly unending tunnel to have lost track of the day and night cycle; what kept time for him was the sound of the wind. It kicked up during the night, and howled through the tunnel. The sound was deafening at times, and absolutely horrifying. Jack managed to fall asleep relatively quickly each night, but the moments when the wind would keep him awake were trying on his resolve. Coupled with the paranoia of something – the thing that seemed to be causing fires – following him, night was a terrifying concept even in the total darkness of the tunnel.

At first the tunnel was just like the previous section with abandoned cars. The emptiness was unsettling and unnatural feeling, but nonetheless – it was nothing particularly out of the ordinary. After two days of that, however, the tunnel became unnaturally smooth. It was much smoother than the manmade portions that had preceded it, and the stone had a bit of a reflective sheen to it, making Jack’s flashlight shine brighter.

Most unsettling of all, however, was that beyond that point, there began to be strange marks on the floor. Specks of blood would appear, and sometimes a long stain as if something had been dragged across the floor (or, in one case, the wall). At times, a single crack would appear in the otherwise flawless floor and walls of the tunnel. It would spiral around for a brief period, and then just end.

Jack soldiered on, however, growing simultaneously intrigued and horrified by his mind’s wanderings. The mystery of what lie at the end of this tunnel continued to drive him, as well as the knowledge that near a week’s journey back to the front awaited him otherwise, and beyond that? He had no real purpose in the world at the moment; this gave him something to do, something to explore.

One day he found something on the side of the wall. It appeared to be a shadow of a person – but an unnaturally tall person, with elongated arms and legs. But it was permanent – there was no person in the beam of Jack’s flashlight, but the shadow was still projected on the wall. Jack touched the shadow with his fingers, but the material felt the same as the rest of the wall. He bashed it with the butt of his rifle to see if the material would crack, but it was very resistant to the shock. It puzzled him, and unnerved him, but he continued on.

The shadows became more frequent, and appeared on both sides of the wall after a time. Eventually, the entire wall was littered with the shadows, one after the other, arranged in a terrifying line on each side, lining the path. Jack was growing increasingly concerned with what lie ahead.

But where else was he going to go?