As the months passed and morning and night converged, Cornelius and Cassandra spent more and more time together, drawing close, running a gauntlet of paranoia and distrust. Their first encounter with the tunnels occurred almost by accident. Tripping and stumbling they fell into a ditch, the creaking stems groaning in sympathy with Cornelius’s arthritic knees. Briars scratched him. The river gurgled nearby. The ground was damp.
He looked about. Columns of oak and ash rising through the cathedral. Neurotic hazel in the undergrowth. Spiny hawthorn. Alder, like outsiders, huddled together by the water’s edge, the river providing inspiration for their melancholic rambling. They rounded a holly and stumbled against a wall of ivy that separated before the darkness of a cave’s mouth. “In here,” she said, grabbing his arm. They pushed through into the darkness.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She was shaken but otherwise fine. She looked at him, his form reduced to a silhouette. Somehow he seemed even bigger. “Did he see us?” she whispered.
He stared out through the gap in the ivy, his finger to his lip, indicating silence. Kevin Clony passed. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.” The ground squelched as he turned, the floor soggy from where rain had entered. He felt his shoes grow heavy, his steps awkward and uneven, the mud in the bridge of his shoes having raked mats of dark leaf litter. His feet itched, his socks sodden, rippling towards his toes. He stumbled in the dark and put his hand up to steady himself, gripping a knotted root. He could barely see her.
“This is stupid, hiding here like this,” he muttered. The gentle weight of her hand rested on his arm. He felt constrained. “Almost seventy years old,” he grumbled, as he kicked about, his foot striking something solid that clattered against the wall. He sought it out even as he grumbled. “Fought in two wars, I have, and here I am hiding like a child in the dark. For God’s sake, we’re not even doing anything. I’m just a crazy old man in love, out looking for butterflies.”
He found the thing he had kicked and turned it over in his hands, round and worn in the darkness, shallow holes like smooth depressions, hard but not too heavy. Somewhere, in a part of him unheeded, he knew what it was, but the contents of his grumbling distracted him.
“Con, please,” she whispered, her voice so low, she was barely heard. “You’re in love with someone else’s wife.” He didn’t need the light to see her arching plea. Nor had her words, spoken so matter-of-fact, passed unnoticed. It was the first time either had spoken of their growing bond. Yet neither was young enough to feel awkward. “You’re not crazy either.”
“Just disturbed.”
“That maybe,” she laughed.
Stepping into the light, he immediately understood his familiarity with the object. His hand fell limp. A bone rolled onto the soft moss.
°
When next they approached the tunnels it was with purpose, although only Cassandra was aware of the tunnel they entered. It was Cornelius that suggested it first, or so he thought, the finding of a cave, let alone a bone, having spurred his inquisitive instincts. But for some curious reason Cassandra had been even more delighted. She hadn’t been too keen at first, or so she led him to believe, but she’d allowed herself to be convinced, and in doing so, carefully cultivated his sense of adventure. She relished their exploits. She’d barely been able to step outside throughout the winter, and on each occasion it was with an awareness of the eyes that followed her steps. Her husband had grown quite threatening in recent days. He’d begun banging things, walking about with closed fists. He’d arrived home just two days ago with a bloodied neck, teeth marks exposing the softness of his flesh. He’d smashed the bathroom mirror upon her approach. She’d shrank into her timid space, desperate.
A bitter March day, the ground crunched underfoot as they trundled to where the earth opened, entering carefully into the gully that lay concealed in dense briars. Using his cane, he removed the thorns from her path, and followed her past an unseen souterrain of the old estate. Burrs caught his coat. His frozen feet protested each step. Vapour, rising from his mouth, condensed in the crisp air and hung. Looking about he marvelled at what he’d previously failed to notice. A tapestry of emerald moss. Trunks speckled with khaki and drab lichens. Clumps of scutch in the slick-leaved carpet. To his right lay a bed of granite. Brown thatch through the threadbare weaves of a worn valance. Ivy curtains against perennial night into which a rat scurried. “Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked. She nodded, her lower lip caught between her teeth.
Upon lighting his Tilley they pushed the ivy aside and entered. Palmate shadows parted before them. Knotted roots spread wide and long through the arch, wooden polyps amongst fine threads dangling moist. It was as if they’d entered a body, the cavernous opening, a maw in the rocky earth, the granite walls and earthen ceiling stretching broad before a rapid descent, a narrowing path into some subterranean abdomen.
Craning her neck as she spun about, she gasped. She ran forward two spaces, halted, and spun about again. She’d heard of this tunnel before. It was spoken of with reverence in her family, but she’d never imagined this.
“Amazing,” Cornelius agreed, equally flabbergasted. He ran his hand over the cave’s wall with what seemed almost like affection. Stepping forward a few feet, he gawked about. “Amazing,” he repeated, stunned speechless, his fingers tipping the stiff fibrous strings. Everywhere whorls and snags. Vesicles. The walls were carved. The roots pruned by air. Curving and lignified.
Venturing forward, they got a shock. Dripping water glistened like liquid crystal running. Bones that like a talus rose from the base. Cranium and tarsus, femurs and sternum, pelvis and fibula. All rotting, fractured, mingling together in the perforated earth. They were in an unknown tomb.
“Who were these people?” he whispered, reverent with fear. He racked his brain, scouring the stories of his youth. He didn’t know. Tongue-tied for a long moment, transfixed on a mandible with molars deformed in their casing, he pondered that very question. He looked over to her as she eventually spoke.
“Us. They’re us.”
Nervousness gripped him. It was a sobering thought, the perils of the earth. “We don’t have to do this,” he said quietly. “This cave could go quite deep.”
“It’s okay. I’m okay.” Her eyes caught his. She nodded towards the darkness. There it was: that plea again. He felt spooked.
°
That feeling didn’t lift as they set off. Nor did the bones disappear. For some distance they remained, lining the wall’s base as though they passed some isthmus between worlds. A short while later he stopped, his legs trembling, his mouth salivating, warning of the nauseous churning of his stomach. Breathing deep for a long few moments, his unease only ebbed upon remembering his training. His eyes read design. They were no longer in a cave. They’d entered a tunnel. Everything was regular.
“Are you okay?” Cassandra asked, watching as he fought to quell his alarm. Moments later she was smiling with amusement, his goose-step march and swinging cane comical in the enclosed surroundings. Happy with relief from their eerie passage, she followed and stayed silent. Eventually her curiosity got the better of her. “What are you doing?”
“Pacing. Don’t you have two sons in the army?”
“Sure, but they never tell me about it. I always just assumed that was all for show.”
“In part it is, in part.” A few steps later he stopped to shift a stone from one pocket to another. She noticed. “Just keeping records,” he informed. Repeating the exercise, he checked his compass. “Aha, just as I suspected: this way to town.” He quickly marched onwards, his bluster doing little to hide his concern.
“Con, relax,” she called as she scurried after him.
°
The tunnel shrank as they walked, narrowing to where a dense matt of string-like roots stretched from ceiling to floor, entangled in a fine trellis of fluorescing mycelia. He tested their strength, recoiling reflexively from their rubbery wetness. Neither elastic nor strong, the vine-like tendrils parted easily so that he squeezed through and then pulled them wide. She stepped through with comfort. Strands of white chequered his clothes as he pulled free. Loosened from their moorings, the roots fell slack behind him.
To his disappointment the tunnel didn’t widen on the other side, nor rise as they advanced, but instead continued at the reduced height. Nonetheless, they pushed on, pilgrims enduring the monochrome wilds of their dark descent so that he savoured the cold dampness on his skin from where the interlocking mesh had proved slick, providing him with sensation. He checked the compass and placed his right foot forward. Then his left. Slow steps, steady and even. Each breath an inquiry. His stooped frame aching.
°
Upon stopping, he cursed. He’d been drawing almost a straight line, marking out in intervals the points of measurement along with direction, and any branches that might appear offering diversion. Occasionally he’d tie a piece of coloured ribbon to some protrusion, marking the route taken when the choice was not entirely obvious. But something had altered. The path had grown thinner and with each step thinner still. Scattered bones strewn haphazard littered his imagination. Panic swelled. He had an overwhelming urge to retrace their steps, but a point had been passed. He looked back, saw the fell darkness devouring light, a gravitational vortex where time itself curved involute, light inflecting along some shallow concave lens so that retreat signalled advance and all paths closed but one, inviolable in determination. Swallowing hard, he scarcely contained his whimper.
°
He looked at the compass and cursed again.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
He pointed to a rich line in the rust-brown earth. “There’s an iron pan here. The compass is no use… But if this tunnel stays on a straight course we’ll be okay.” He’d hesitated offering assurance. They were still in the woods, though judging by the shrinking size of the roots they were almost at the edge. The soil had also changed. It was less compacted, drier, and to his relief devoid of bones. But he struggled, and turning the stones in his pocket with incessant zeal counted out the distance they’d already travelled, as though in focusing on the stones he could displace the haunting shadow trailing his steps.
It was a weak assurance, she was aware, but she didn’t mind. Strangely, she felt an affinity in this darkened underworld, as though she’d inherited a cold regard for the earth. There was something familiar about the solitude of being underground, the feeling of imprisonment, as if her senses deprived of stimulation constantly strained to see what lay ahead. She would jump from time to time, as though hearing non-existent sounds or words no voice had uttered. Ghosts lingered, fleshless sprites following their progress, filling her mind with putrid odours and ammoniac urges. She giggled anxiously, revelling in the dread stillness of the rank air. Tales of horror, spun by her mother, twisted in her mind, merging seamlessly with their passage. She’d always enjoyed those tales.
°
A steady temperature with a damp chill accompanied their steps. They ventured onwards, exploring forks and branches passing left and right in a frequent but irregular manner. Most ceased in a dead end, though some led back to where they started so that the design seemed at once perverse.
It was Cornelius who eventually snapped, seeking once again to return. As before, no floor nor walls nor ceiling lay visible. Only darkness. This time, however, Cassandra ran ahead of him, stepping with her torch into the vacant space as though some creature of the afterlife diminishing with each step, a dismembered voice evoking movement from oblivion. Moments later she returned, growing larger, taking his hand like some revenant inviting passage. He blanched and pulled back roughly, dizzy, disoriented by the vast expanse of emptiness. Exhausted, he felt overwhelmed. He was trembling, his face contorting with loss. Warmth girded his loins, his cheeks moist.
She studied him, his face, for the first time she could remember, vulnerable. “You’re looking at yourself,” she eventually declared, his tears nestling in the crook of her fingers where she’d raised her right hand to his cheek. “Let go of yourself down here,” she whispered.
“I can’t.”
She pondered their situation. So afraid of herself in the world of light, she’d welcomed the dark. Now, a man who showed no fear of the world trembled at the loss of clear sight. And yet, only looking back did he waver, as if the past held some great horror he couldn’t confess. “What do you see here?” she asked.
He looked at her for a moment and then looked away, taking care to step forward into her torch’s wide beam. He could see the body, sitting still against the smooth stone wall where the tunnel kinked and continued, arms stretching cardinal as some bizarre loadstone settled on its declination, fingers pointing towards outcrops of quartz that held viscous fluid. He was dead, all colour exhausted in the steady loss of corpuscle, skin stiff in its slack position, lined as rocks are carved by erosion, merging with the granite in some seamless fusion of stone and petrified flesh. Eyes bulging, two fossilized eggs set rigid in fear. A scar tracing his left cheek. His mouth toothless, gaping wide, stuck in a moment of terror, as though his final gasp bespoke utter surrender.
Raising his eyes, he saw the night, the heavens bedecked by exploding shells that in sequential brilliance blotted out the stars. The land heaved, peds and clods of earth flung from shattered horizons as it crumbled beneath the force of exploding mortars. Beams, still standing, creaked, many snapped under the weight of bursting earth. He put his hand to the wall of the tunnel, steadying himself, thankful that his loosening bowels were empty. He felt light-headed, but alive, trapped in a sullen world, tetric and merciless in its hunger for death, each moment a chance encounter, transient and witnessed. He saw her watching him through those intense eyes.
°
They fell silent for a while, each walking in step to their own thoughts. “I remember a conversation I had with my brother once,” she suddenly said and then hesitated, already regretting breaking the silence.
“Go on,” he urged.
“He was recounting an experience in these tunnels. It was this very tunnel actually… well maybe…. He said he’d met this man that he knew almost immediately wasn’t alive, but wasn’t quite a ghost either. He didn’t really describe him much at all. Said he was some kind of inchoate creature, dead but not departed, emaciation hidden beneath bent shoulders.
“He said that he’d sought to surprise him and so moved up behind him soft as down. But the man had been expecting him, waiting for him in this vacant nave where there were no walls or floors nor ceilings, nothing tangible or visible, only this strange anomic creature that had once been human, but was now all contorted and bent over and rough in manner.
“He was really shaken telling me about it. ‘The dream returns to the dreamer,’ the man had said to him, and that in all this time they’d been merely making room for the dead.
“I thought that he was having me on. You know how some people like to wind you up, think you’re naive, and Robert was a joker in his own way. I’d even thought that he was just trying to scare me. It was weird, because he’d always kinda stayed away from me, even when we were kids. Actually, he’d made me feel more than a little paranoid. But I’d kept listening to him. I’d kept trying to understand, for he really did seem earnest.
“You see, this man had killed his son. He’d been watching him starve, watched as the days and weeks passed without food, and the boy turned old and weary, and then scrawny and macerated. Said he’d seen neighbours and friends succumb, some to the hunger, some to the fevers, some just sat down on the road and ceased living. It was as though a quake had struck the land; a long slow quake passing unfelt for year after year, but that had shaken the very roots and raised whole villages. ‘He’d seen the dogs eating the corpses of the neighbours,’ he said. That was before he was evicted, pushed onto the road with his son. But then a temporary reprieve: he got work digging these tunnels. It was part of the welfare of the time, but the pay was miserly, and gruel priced high, and they worked as slaves. Anyway his son got typhus, a burning fever that racked his body in convulsions. It was too much to watch, too much for any father to bear. So one night when the boy mercifully slept, he placed his hand over his mouth and nose. The kid was so weak that it didn’t take but a minute.
“Now, to Robert, this man proclaimed God cruel. Said that with all the suffering of Christ he’d sought peace upon heaven, and that upon death there would be no betrayal. But betrayals are born from dilemmas, and so when he died he found there was no true death after all, only a dream. Always a dilemma. Always a dream.”
“What dilemma?”
“The dilemma of peace.” He remained silent as she considered her words.
“He died in here, the man, and yet never departed. He said the truth of God’s judgments lies empty. That when called before God to surrender, only absence awaited, a cage of awareness devoid of sense, only mindfulness and nothing more. He said that if we were made in God’s image, then He presents Himself in our own. He claimed to have been abandoned, left alone to judge his own reflection, to see himself at his most broken, racked with guilt for choices made. It made him fearful, and at once angry, and he felt that anger writhe, latching on beneath his skin, molding itself, mutating like some viral messenger of angst and hate, fixing on that one thing at first, fixing with this passionate loathing, as if in its limited form all rage could be held. But fury has neither place nor master, and eventually it overwhelms, rises up like a rash on the skin, leaves welts and bruises, excoriates the mind and burns it raw. There was no peace in his mind for there could be none without forgiveness. But some things just can’t be forgiven without being forgotten also. And therein lay his dilemma. To forget was unforgivable, and to desire such forgetfulness only compounded the original sin and all its torment. He was caught in a trap of conscience.
“So against that terrible dilemma he made a choice and abandoned faith. He said that there is no conscience but what is learned, none discreet, but social. Mores may be owned by any person, but first by all, by a broad church, and this broad church kept him bound to his sin. You see we are told that to separate oneself is to void the right of God’s mercy, to lose all clement appeal. That we all sin, sure, but that redemption comes, we’re told, from understanding, and that there is no understanding without conscience, without surrender to self-consciousness, to the eyes of faith, to the ears of prayer. Abandon faith we’re told, and nothing is forgiven, nothing can be forgiven. But this man could neither forget nor understand. It was he who had to forgive himself.
“But what really freaked out Robert was what the man said next. He said he, Robert, was but a dream of atonement, making room for the dead, for those not yet departed. He said that where they stood all time gathered, both limitless and nonexistent, where the dream would return to the dreamer as all dreams must. And so Robert looked at the man and in that moment saw himself.
“Well, I had nothing to offer Robert, and so he left me alone with that thought. And that thought has stuck for all these years: that we might be nothing more than the dreams of our ancestors, returning always to those horrors too great to resolve.”
°
“It’s funny,” Cassandra said. They were leaving the forest and were on a sort of highway, a central branch spreading out in a root-like fashion and from which all other paths were derived. There was something different about the main tunnel from the rest. It was older, ancient even. The roots protruding were of an age. They were too well formed. Nonetheless, they were giving way to supporting beams.
“What is?”
“You fear the past, whilst I fear the future so much I keep my eyes on the earth when I walk. At least up there I do.”
Cornelius pondered that admission as they walked. They were approaching the village, albeit from an acute angle. St Brigid’s grew southwest of the town, but the tunnel ran too far north before turning east. Other than their own markings, little evidence existed to suggest that the passage they were walking in was still in use. That it was in good repair was something to consider so that they didn’t assume that it was completely abandoned, nonetheless, that he was spooked was entirely due to being in a world where only darkness and the creatures of his imagination waited. He spoke to her frequently, to relieve his own anxiety more than anything else. The remains of the dead were an omen no man could afford to ignore.
“Tell me why we’re doing this again?” he asked, remembering only that it had seemed like a good idea at the time. It now seemed ridiculous. He put the thought from his mind. “I remember moving arms about down here some forty odd years ago, but this complex is of an entirely different magnitude. Nor were the tunnels so large, nor so ancient.”
Not for the first time she pondered what he meant to her. She wasn’t in love, of that she was certain. He really was too old. But she loved him nonetheless. He was her guide, the one that took her through her void of inexperience, who showed her butterflies she’d never seen in her garden. Though she didn’t quite understand why, that mattered to her. That there were none beneath the earth disturbed her. She wanted to be out in the open, but the open terrified her more than the dark. Somehow, despite the enclosed space and damp musty air, and all Cornelius’s paranoia and fears, she felt secure. “I feel safe down here,” she said. “No one can find me.”
°
The tunnel narrowed once again, the walls converging, the ceiling low. There was barely enough space for two abreast. A growing sense of claustrophobia permeated their movements. The sound of water filtered into their consciousness. Algae gleamed, translucent on the damp walls. Everywhere the tunnel seemed in disrepair. The supporting beams creaked. Some appeared to be rotting. Like the walls the floor was soggy. Shoes squelched in the mud. “This isn’t safe,” he muttered, a cursory glance being enough to know they were in danger. He pushed the thought aside. They were close to somewhere, he hoped. The ground was rising.
“So you have two sons in the army?” he prompted after a long few moments, his compass returning to purpose offering some relief, although its use was somewhat negated by the circular path the tunnel took. The ground dried a bit as they climbed.
“The British Army,” she said, sounding disappointed with the fact. “Both alienated, looking for adventure and a whole new family.”
He looked puzzled, but happy for the distraction of conversation, the temptation to return hindered by a precipice of fear. To return through the warren was to walk twice where the dead had trodden, twice through remembrance. “Is that why they join up these days?” he asked. “Some go to war because they’re alienated. Others wait to leave for that to occur. But you’re not alienated then. You’re crazy.”
She smiled weakly at his sarcasm. She didn’t like discussing it.
°
They spoke softly to each other as they walked. She sniffed a lot, her nose irritated. Before long they were speaking louder, their words mingling with the growing presence of trickling water. They were soon drowned out as the sound turned decisively noisier, indicating a relatively large mass moving up ahead. The ground grew slippery, the din more intense, the closed nature of the tunnels amplifying the roar. They pushed on warily only to meet a dead end. “I knew we should have gone left,” she muttered, her words drowned out by the water that was moving just behind the wall. Stumbling as she turned back, her sense of adventure shrank into the lurking menace of darkness. She held her nerve and pushed on until they encountered the fork, unsure if they were brave or foolish, or completely and utterly insane, a question she’d been asking for some time now.
“They should have called it the River Styx,” Cornelius muttered. He kept expecting to encounter a boatman up ahead.
The walls of the tunnel grew progressively damper as they descended along the now steep decline. The noise of cascading water accompanied their steps, drowning out her thoughts and any other concerns. The sheen of water on the walls scared her. The earth was saturated and probably eroded quite heavily on the other side. Forgetting about her headache, she squeezed her torch as though it was a hand of support and winced as her uncut nails dug into her skin. The tunnels she passed grew in size as the level of the floor abruptly rose and left the water behind. A cool draft caught her attention as fresh air blew in from somewhere ahead, providing a welcome relief. “Where are we?” she whispered to him.
His short reply chilled her, for its frank tone seemed so much more fearful for the darkness. “We’re near the village centre.”
Resisting the temptation to turn back and search for an exit, she pressed on, half dragging Cornelius. He was moving slower now. The draught grew steadily into a stream, even as a chink of light illuminated a corner, and an indistinct murmuring caught her attention. Stepping forward cautiously, she stayed close to the wall, her guard raised. He followed her lead.
The tunnel opened out, not so much cavern-like for the roof was too low, having reduced in height even as the floor had risen. The sound of men approaching filled her with dread. Her brothers had warned her never to go down there. Two men came into view, almost noticing her and Cornelius, though they didn’t have much of an opportunity, for they scurried past. As more followed, she was startled to find that some she recognised and even knew quite well. It was beginning to feel like a family reunion. Rubbing her eyes, she looked harder, trying to ensure that the flickering torchlight wasn’t deceiving her. It wasn’t supposed to be this way.
Unaware that she’d held her breath, the depth of her exhalation surprised her. Her heart thumped. Falling stones struck her as she turned on her heel. They fled.
°
A short while later they breathed deep in relief. With the ground almost level, the branch they were on abruptly ended its wide upward spiral. “Ah, this is an exit,” he said in realization, just moments before arriving at a concrete hatch. Feeling an awkwardness between them, he didn’t wait about. He put his body under the structure and pushed. “For a pair of young shoulders,” he groaned. It grated and sat heavy, but slowly gave way. Earth trickled through the widening gap. Daylight flooded in. Peering out, he froze. Something most definitely wasn’t right.
“Where are we?” she asked. He didn’t answer. “Well, where are we?” she insisted.
Reluctantly and with great effort, he pushed the hatch completely open and to the side. His chest heaved with huge breaths. A cascade of earth fell about their feet. “Have a look for yourself,” he finally said upon catching his wind.
Climbing up she gawked about, wondering at his shock. They were in someone’s back garden. The brittle branches of fuchsia framed her view. Staring through the mesh, she saw a butterfly’s paradise. A patch of young nettles sprouting. Buddleia growing from the cracks in the walls. Overgrown grass. Through the grass, a box, vented and painted white. Everywhere she looked was wild. Even the old house standing at the top of the lawn showed jagged lines. Paint peeling from wooden window frames. Pebbles lying scattered, loosened from their dashing. A gutter hanging half removed in a state of decay. It was rugged, weather-beaten, reminding her of its owner.
“This is your house,” she declared, in understanding. He said nothing.