Tunnel Vision

The well-worn soles of Katie’s trainers slammed down on the gravel track, the cold, damp air that she was desperately swallowing threatening to blow her lungs apart. It was funny to her, what she was thinking about in those crucial seconds, about how she was running so fast she felt like she could almost take off, and about how odd it was that the pounding of her feet had managed to synchronise itself with the hammering of her heart. She was paying less and less attention to the footsteps behind her, the ones that only a hundred metres ago had been like a reassuring distant drumbeat but were now dangerously close behind, having fallen in sync with hers. Steady and strong—the casual footsteps of someone in control.

As Katie turned the corner, the gaping mouth of the tunnel opened up in front of her. There was no choice but to enter, the banks flanking the track way too steep and crumbly to climb, and so into the blackness she flew, the stone walls absorbing the sombre morning light within seconds.

She closed her eyes briefly and pictured her husband sipping his coffee in the cocoon of their kitchen. Imagined him leaning forward in his chair, the light above shining down on his dark brown hair. ‘Don’t go yet,’ Mark had said, looking up from his phone and towards the window as she gathered her wayward hair into a ponytail. ‘It’s Sunday, and it’s still dark. Can’t you wait an hour? Or maybe go a different way?’ Katie had shaken her head, then bent down to tie her laces. ‘I want to go now, and I’m trying to beat my best time. Besides, it’ll be light soon.’ He knew there was no point arguing, but he couldn’t hold back from at least trying to dissuade her, just as he did every day. But trying to stop Katie was like trying to stop water running through his fingers. She was a force of nature, single-minded and determined, the same as when he’d fallen in love with her ten years ago. He should have known from the wildness of her hair that her free spirit would never be tamed. ‘It’s just the thought of you going through that pitch-black tunnel alone. It makes me feel uneasy, that’s all,’ he’d admitted, staring at his feet. She’d laughed gently, at the absurdity of it. ‘You watch too many films. It’s pretty much dead round here at this time of day, and even more dead on the old railway line.’

Katie had glanced at the clock on the oven. It read 7.34. She’d made a note to herself to remember to adjust it later to account for the hour they’d lost overnight. ‘Better go,’ she’d said, brushing his stubbly cheek with a kiss. ‘I’ll be back in…44 minutes if I push myself. Set your timer!' He couldn’t bring himself to look at her, wanting to save that pleasure for when she walked back through the door, so he just waited there for the inevitable slam and then set his stopwatch. He found the countdown reassuring somehow, as if he was almost running alongside her, on her usual route. Always taking a right at the gate, running downhill for a kilometre or so, before turning left towards the vineyard and out into the countryside. She’d told Mark that the only other person she ever saw was the ex-soldier who’d moved into number 305 a couple of months before, and who was always outside tending to his impeccably kept garden. He whistled this and that tune constantly, but these carefree airs didn’t detract from his rigid demeanour, and although Katie religiously raised her hand in salutation, he never reciprocated.

On that Sunday morning, after a few token stretches, Katie had set off down their road, past the smattering of houses still shrouded in sleep. There was no sign of the ex-soldier, so no need for the neighbourly wave. Perhaps it was too dark even for him.

Mark’s absence, on the other hand, along with her increasing sense of vulnerability, were both weighing heavily upon her now, as she ploughed through the tunnel. The surroundings were all perfectly familiar to her, every detail embedded in her mind. In just a few moments, icy drips from a cracked brick would fall onto her head and trickle down her face, then she would have to stride over the pothole that never got fixed and regain her rhythm. Just after that would come the mid-section, only twenty metres or so long, when neither end of the tunnel was visible, and only the ghostly glow of the feeble lights would prevent her from being plunged into absolute darkness. ‘It’s the purgatory stretch,’ Mark always said when they walked through the tunnel, as she clung to his arm, enjoying the frisson of fear, feeling safe under his protection. ‘Why do you call it that?’ she’d once asked him. ‘Well, I imagine hell behind and heaven ahead,’ he’d said, shrugging his shoulders.

There was a truth in it. Katie knew there was something of the devil in the way she was tempted by the tunnel’s irresistible draw. She pretended to be undaunted by it, but deep inside she was afraid, and yet there was no denying that facing that raw and primitive fear, and then running away from it, made her feel alive. When the mouth of the tunnel eventually spat her out at the other end, she felt pure, reborn. It was an overwhelming feeling that would keep her coming back for more, day after day, week after week. Even throughout the humdrum of the working day, the memory of the feeling sometimes washed over her, and kept her barely functioning senses ticking over.

Today was the first time, though, that she’d truly felt the devil on her shoulder. The certainty of it dawned on her as she jumped over the pothole and entered the purgatory stretch. He could have overtaken her ages ago, not least because she was slowing down now, her ever-weakening muscles drained of all energy. And the purgatory stretch was slightly uphill. Why had she never noticed that before? ‘I’ll attack it better tomorrow,’ she vowed, before quickly erasing that unnecessary thought and braving a glancing at her watch. It was 7.06am. And her GPS watch had no signal, not in here.

Back in their kitchen, Mark looked at his stopwatch. Katie had been gone for 32 minutes. He would put the kettle on soon so her tea would be just the right temperature when she got back. Perhaps he would have tea as well, having been unable to stomach his customary second coffee. A ping on his phone made him jump. It was just a message on a group chat, something about a deadline at work the next day, but in order to avoid the back-and-forth pings that would follow, he switched his phone to flight mode. He needed to concentrate on the time, focus on the minutes ticking down. A momentary surge of anger passed through him, clouding his usually sunny countenance, though it would be imperceptible to anyone but her. Why couldn’t she see how her choices affected him? That he worried about her being out there alone, in the dark? But then he berated himself. He wanted her to be happy. It was her life, her choice.

Katie was barely jogging now. She had always thought that in desperate times a new spurt of energy would be unlocked from somewhere deep inside. When it didn’t come, she momentarily cursed all those stories that had suggested just that. How she had the luxury of anger, of frustration that she was in this position, she couldn’t fathom. Her steps were uneven and faltering, and the roof and walls of the tunnel swam in her befuddled vision. The things that she once found so beautifully quaint—the dark recesses and the metal hooks that were remnants of the railway’s former glory—seemed abhorrent to her now. Even the flickering lights, once a nod to this place’s splendid isolation, were like little flashes from a camera that was documenting her helplessness. But it was the damp smell that got to her the most. No longer a reminder of the cool retreat of the dark tunnel, the air invading her nostrils was now dank and rotten.

Behind her the man had begun whistling. It was a slow and mournful tune, perfectly executed, and Katie couldn’t decide if she was grateful or not that she didn’t recognise it. There was a nightmarish beauty to it, and it brought tears to her eyes. One of them escaped and ran down her face and into her mouth, and she relished the salty taste as if it was the last thing that might ever pass her lips.

A fleeting image flashed through her mind, of a random, rather mundane thing she had intended to do later that day, and this hint at a future made her lift up her leaden head, and she saw it then, the end of the tunnel and all the promise it held. There was a house just within reach. The energy that had deserted her suddenly re-emerged, and she bolted forward, though the cadence of his crunching steps remained the same. Perhaps the risk was too great now? That few seconds of perceived freedom allowed her to glance at her watch. GPS. Her shaking fingers sought out ‘home’. ‘Answer, Mark, please!’, she implored under her breath. But the scene played out in typical horror-film fashion, and her call cut straight to answerphone, his smooth, bright voice at odds with the staccato panic of hers as she left a desperate message.

It was 7.18. Katie should be coming down the road now, Mark reasoned, stepping outside into the calm stillness of the day that was still waking up. There was no sign of her, not even a speck on the horizon, so he checked the time again and flicked his phone off flight mode. He came across Katie’s voicemail last, having taken a few minutes to wade through the sea of largely trivial messages from the group chat. Finally, at 7.23, he pressed play and put the phone to his ear. ‘Katie…’, he whispered, his mobile dropping from his hands and bouncing into the wet grass.

Just metres from the tunnel’s exit, Katie felt a blow on the back of her head, or at least she thought that’s what it was. It was so hard to tell, as all her senses had smudged into one another. Nothing made any sense at all. Even time itself had ceased to hold meaning, as she froze between the heaven ahead and the hell behind. Her fingers moved instinctively, to wipe what she assumed was a bead of sweat trickling down her forehead. She looked at her hand, stained deep red. ‘Mark…’, she whispered. The whistling had stopped. There was complete silence, one that not even her heartbeat could break. Katie stared, first at the red on her hand, then at the blackness of the tunnel, and then she shifted her gaze to the warm white light at its end, which pulled her inexorably towards it.