A Bridge of Years (15 page)

He
went to work during this time—he was even punctual— but his
performance suffered; he couldn't deny it, couldn't help it. The act
of selling secondhand automobiles to even the most willing customer
had begun to seem nonsensical, ludicrous. Tom noticed Klein watching
him on the lot, his face screwed up into something like The Frown,
but this was another irrelevancy. During the hot afternoons Tom
achieved a sort of Zen quiescence, as if he were surveying all this
bustle from a hot-air balloon. Abstractly, he understood that he
needed this job to eat; but he could coast awhile even if he lost it,
and there were other jobs. Above all, there was an impossible tunnel
hidden behind the sheetrock in his basement; his home was full
of gemlike creatures the size of his thumb; his bloodstream carried
benign microscopic robots and his TV had begun to talk to him. In the
face of which, it was extremely difficult not to smile cheerfully and
suggest some alternative ways of disposing of that troublesome 76
Coronet.

At
home, he kept the TV unplugged most of the time. He called it the TV,
but he supposed it wasn't that anymore; it was a private phone line
for the creatures (or devices) with whom he shared the house. He
resolved to use it only when he had a specific question—not that
the answers were likely to be helpful.

He
plugged it in one evening and asked what was at the
other
end
of the tunnel in the basement—what he would find if he went there,
destruction
,
the machine replied. The answer was chilling and it prompted Tom to
ask, "For me? You mean I would be destroyed?"

the
terminal has been destroyed

not
you

although
that possibility exists

The
tunnel continued to occupy his thoughts. He guessed it was inevitable
that he would reopen that passage, enter it, follow its distant
curve. He had been postponing the act, fearing it—but
wanting
it,
too, with a ferocity that was sometimes alarming. It had gone
past curiosity. Buying this house had been the beginning of a tide of
events which wouldn't be complete until he followed the tunnel as far
as it would take him.

But
that was frightening, and this razor-thin balance of fear and
obsession kept him out of the basement—postponing what he
couldn't resist.

His
dreams had ceased to beg for help . . . but when he came home Friday
night and found the clock radio on his bedside table pronouncing the
words "Help us, Tom Winter" in the voice of a popular
Seattle AM radio announcer, he yanked the appliance's wall cord and
went looking for his crowbar. He had waited too long already. It was
time to live out this peculiar dream his life had become, to ride it
down to its conclusion.

He
opened the healed wallboard. A line of machine bugs sat watching him
from the lid of the automatic dryer, with wide, blank eyes and no
perceptible expression. He supposed he only imagined their patient,
grim disapproval of what he was doing.

Events
began to happen quickly then.

Within
the next week, he made three separate journeys down the tunnel.

The
first—that night—was exploratory. His doubts came flooding back
when he saw the tunnel again, as its illumination flowed around
him. He took a few tentative steps into its luminous white space,
then stopped and looked back. Here was the frame wall of his basement
standing exposed and absurd, as if it had interrupted this continuous
flow of space almost by accident—as incongruous as Dorothy's
farmhouse in Munchkinland. (But the tunnel couldn't have been here
when the house was erected, could it? The contractors would have had
a word or two to say.) The tunnel itself was broadly rectangular; its
walls were smooth and warm to the touch; the air felt pleasant and
not at all stale. He took a tentative step, then began to walk with
more confidence. The floor was faintly elastic and gave back no echo
of his footsteps. Every few yards, Tom turned and tried to gauge the
distance he had come.

By
his own estimate he had traveled several hundred yards —well under
the Post Road hill and presumably deep in the earth—when the curve
of the tunnel was finally great enough to hide any glimpse of home.
As strange as that sight had been, it had also been a comfort. He
stood a moment while fresh uncertainties crowded his mind. "Fucking
crazy place to be," he said aloud—expecting an echo; but the
tunnel absorbed the sound. There was nothing in either direction now
but this bland curve of wall.

He
walked on. He had no way to measure the angle of the tunnel's
ellipse, but the curve was remorseless—he could swear in fact, that
he had turned a full 180 degrees. He should have carried a compass .
. . but he had a notion that a compass might not work here; that its
needle would swing wildly, or perhaps point consistently
forward.
The
idea was spooky and he thought again about turning back. He was way
out of his depth in this pale, featureless artery. A cold sweat began
to bead out on his forehead. He was taking tiny silent cat-steps,
straining to hear any sound ahead of him—the fear setting in again,
with a strong rider of claustrophobia. The tunnel was a few feet
higher than his head with as much as a yard's clearance on each side:
not much room to turn around. And nowhere to run, except that long
circle back.

But
then the curve eased ahead of him and within a couple of minutes he
saw what appeared to be the end of the line: a gray obstructing mass
rendered obscure by distance. He picked up his pace a little.

The
wall, when he reached it, was not a wall but a ruin. It was a tumble
of masonry, concrete blocks and dust spilling over the pristine white
floor. There seemed to be no way through.

destruction
,
the
machine bugs had said.

But
not, at least,
recent
destruction.
This collapse had scattered dust in a broad fan across the
tunnel floor—Tom's runners left distinct prints in it—the only
prints, he was relieved to note. Nothing had come this way for a long
time. Not since the
destruction.

Experimentally—and
still with that prickly sensation of playing at the feet of a
sleeping giant—he pulled away a chunk of concrete from the
collapse. A haze of dust rose up; new rubble trickled in to fill the
vacancy. Some of this was the stuff of which the tunnel itself was
made; but some of it appeared to be commonplace concrete block.

And
on the other side—what?

Another
basement? Somebody
else's
basement?
He might be as far away as Wyndham Lane or even the shopping center
near the bypass. He checked his watch and thought, /
could
have come that far in forty-five minutes.
But
he suspected—well, fuck it, he pretty much
knew
—
that
this tunnel didn't lead to the storeroom under the Safeway. You don't
build a tunnel like this unless you have a destination somewhat
more exotic than Belltower, Washington.

Gnomeland,
maybe. The pits of Moria. Some inner circle of heaven or hell.

Tom
pulled away another fragment of brick and listened to the dusty
trickle behind it. No way through . . . although he felt, or imagined
he felt, a whisper of cooler and wetter air through the tangle of
masonry.

Speculation
was beside the point: he knew what he had to do.

He
had to leave here, to begin with. He was tired, he was thirsty—he
hadn't had the foresight to bring so much as a can of Coke. He would
have to leave, and sleep; and when he was ready he would have to come
back. He would have to bring a picnic lunch, which he would pack in a
knapsack along with some tools—his trusty crowbar—and maybe one
of those paper masks they sell in paint stores, to keep the dust out
of his nose.

Then
he would pick and pry at this obstruction until he found out what was
behind it—and God help him if it was something bad.

Which
was possible, because something bad had definitely happened here:
some
destruction
.
But
the matter had passed beyond curiosity. He had clasped both hands
around the tiger's tail and braced himself for the ride.

He
came back the next day fully equipped.

Tom
decided he must look more than a little strange, hiking down
this luminous mineshaft with his prybar and thermos bottle and
his sack of ham-and-cheese sandwiches, like one of the dwarfs in
Disney's
Snow
White.
Of
course, there was no one to see him. With the front door locked, the
house a mile away, and this end of the tunnel securely barricaded, he
was about as alone as it was possible to get. He could take off his
clothes and sing an aria from
Fidelio
if
the spirit so moved him, and no one would be the wiser.

After
three hours of dirty, sweaty work he managed to open a gap between
the piled rubble and the abraded ceiling of the tunnel. The space was
approximately as large as his fist and when he aimed the flashlight
into it the beam disclosed a mass of vacant, cool air. He could
see dust motes moving in the light; and farther on he could
distinguish what appeared to be a cinderblock wall . . . but he
couldn't be certain. He forced himself to stop and sit down with a
sandwich and a plastic thermos-top of coffee. The coffee was
gritty with dust.

He
ticked off the discoveries he had made. One, this tunnel had a
destination. Two, that destination had been violently closed.
Three, there was nothing on the other side waiting to jump
him—nothing obvious, anyhow.

All
this would have been much more frightening except for his conviction
that whatever happened here had happened long ago. How many years
since the last tenant had vanished from the house on the Post Road?
Almost ten—if what Archer had told him was true. A decade. And that
felt about right. Ten years of dust on this floor. Ten quiet years.

He
balled up his empty lunch bag and plastic wrap and tucked them into
his knapsack.

He
worked steadily and without much conscious thought for another three
hours, by which time there was enough room for him to wedge his body
over the pile of rubble.

It
was late afternoon back at the house. But the word was meaningless
here.

Tom
straddled the rubble and probed the inner darkness with his
flashlight. In the dim space beyond:

A
room. A small, cold, damp, unpleasant stone room with a door at one
end.

Ploughing
through this barricade had not required much courage. But at the
thought of opening that ugly wooden door just beyond it—that, Tom
thought, was an altogether different kettle of fish.

The
tunnel itself was antiseptic, very Star Wars; this cinderblock room
was much more Dungeons and Dragons.

You
could pile all these stones back up,
Tom
told himself.
Pile
them up and maybe add a little concrete to buttress everything.
Seal the wall at your end. Sell the fucking house.

Never
look back.

But
he
would
look
back. He'd look back for the rest of his life and wonder about that
door. He would look back, he would wonder, and the wonder would be a
maddening and unscratchable itch.

Still,
he thought, this was serious business. Whatever had destroyed and
barricaded this wall could surely destroy him.

that
possibility exists
,
the
TV had said.

Life
or death.