The Light at the End of the Tunnel

Tommy Harrison sat in his bed morose and resentful. Six months ago, his life had been tragically altered forever. It was the summer before he started high school and his family had been on vacation for two months by then. School was due to start in three weeks and they had stopped at the Grand Canyon for a week of hiking, fishing, and camping before heading back home to Tacoma. Those two months had been some of the best of his life. It had been just him and his family; Dad, Mom, and his little sister Lucy.

His parents were partners in a small prosperous private legal firm. They had both taken a three-month sabbatical from the firm at the end of last school year in order to make the trip possible. Even though both his Dad and Mom were eminently successful attorneys they were also extremely devoted to their children and went out of their way to make time for them as often as possible. Unfortunately, due to the nature of their jobs that time would just as often get cut short. So, this trip had been their way of reconnecting with Tommy and Lucy.

               His parents had the means to travel with the whole family in relative luxury, nonetheless this trip was not to be about the places they were going so much as about the connections they would make along the way. Which is why they had bought an RV and opted to make an adventure out of it instead. Meeting people along the way or taking detours as their hearts desired. It had afforded his Dad the opportunity to help Tommy understand that people were just people no matter their station in life. He had explained to Tommy that just because they had money that did not make them better or worse than anyone else. He attempted to teach Tommy to judge people based on their actions towards others not on the size of their bank accounts.

               They had made frequent wonderful connections along the way. The single mother and her little boy traveling from New York to San Francisco for a new job. His dad had filled her gas tank for her, and they had shared a campfire with them one night. The young married couple still in their dress and tux, cans on strings attached to the bumper of their car. His Dad had helped change their flat tire and his Mom gave them five hundred dollars as a wedding present. The elderly couple who were traveling in an RV as well. Crisscrossing the country for the past three years ever since they had both retired. They had spent four days visiting with them sitting around the campfire at night listening to the most wonderful stories about their travels. The three men in a truck stranded on the side of the road whom they had spent an afternoon with. His Dad had used his triple A to help them out and get them back on their way.

               They stopped at a little river to camp for the night after they had spent the morning marveling at the magnificence the Grand Canyon. The weather that morning had been pleasantly warm in the sun with just the slightest of a breeze to prevent it from getting to hot. By the noon however the breeze had quieted and the heat from the sun was making everyone uncomfortably irritable. His parents had agreed to allow them to go play by the river to cool off so long as they stayed near the edge. And promised to not attempt to swim in it.

               Lucy started to get hungry and Tommy realized it was almost two o’ clock. He was starting feel hungry as well so the two of them decided to head back to camp for some lunch.. The wooded area that separated the river from the campsite was sparsely populated with pine and fir trees scattered with patches of underbrush. The ground was covered with years of detritus from fallen needles and cones. They made very little sound as they approached the campsite from the river.

               As they got closer they started to hear loud angry voices that were obviously not their parents and Tommy put a restraining hand on Lucy’s shoulder. He put his finger to his lips and silently bid her to keep quiet. He motioned for her to follow him and remain silent. They took cover in a patch of underbrush and listened to the voices. They were still too far away to make out what was being said, but it was unmistakable they were extremely upset. Tommy wanted to know what was going on, he wanted to move closer so he could hear what the voices were saying. But what about Lucy? He couldn’t just leave her cowering in a random patch of underbrush all by herself. She was only ten years old and his parents had made him responsible for her. If he was going to hear what was being said he would have no choice but to bring her along.

               He tried to convey to her in silent hand motions that he wanted to move closer so he could hear better, but she didn’t seem to understand. The more he tried to explain it the more confused she seemed to get. She finally waved her hands at him in frustration and grabbed the side of his head.

               She put her lips right against his ear and whispered, “I can’t hear what they are saying. Can we move closer?” He just stared at her in bemused silence for a minute, grinned, and nodded his head.

               He followed her lead by whispering directly into her ear, “follow me, stay close, and stay quiet.” She grinned at him, nodded her head, and got to her feet. When she did she almost exposed herself by standing up out from the brush. Tommy quickly snatched her back down and motioned for her to stay low, sheepishly she nodded assent. He stood up into a low crouch and had Lucy do the same. He slowly peered out from the bush to make sure the coast was clear and to select a different brush patch closer to the campsite that might afford better hearing. With Lucy in tow he quickly led the way to the new patch and hastily took cover again.

              They were closer now and the voices were definitely louder, but they could still not make out what was being said. They moved again and this time they were close enough to make out a few of the loudest words.

               A man, clearly angry shouted, “where is it!” A muffled response was swiftly followed by the loud slap of a hand to a face and a scream of pain. There was more muffled talking and the slam of the door to the RV.

Tommy moved closer to the front of the bushes to try and get a look at what was going on. He could feel Lucy following close behind him. When they made it to the front they laid on their bellies and slithered forward until they were just behind the very front of the bushes. Carefully they peeked out of their hiding spot.

A strange man was stomping around the campsite rummaging through all their things. It was apparent that this was not the first time someone had done this. The whole site was in disarray. Camp chairs were turned over, bedding was strewn about, and all their luggage appeared to be outside and splayed open. Clothes thrown about as if someone had discarded them in haste. As they watched the man turned in their direction and Tommy could feel the shock register in Lucy which was no surprise because he was feeling it too.

It was one of the men from the stranded truck his Dad had helped with his triple A. That’s when Tommy noticed the truck pulled over to the side just as Lucy started to get up fury evident though out her tiny ten-year-old body. Tommy hurriedly threw his arm over her back to restrain her from exposing their hiding spot. She silently struggled to break free and just as she was about to yell at him he clamped his hand hard over her mouth.

He pulled her head close to his and angrily whispered in her ear, “they would want us to stay safe!” She stopped fighting him at that point and dejectedly settled back down.

They could still hear muffled voices coming from inside the RV with occasional sounds of clarity. None of this made any sense. Why would people they helped come back to hurt them? What were they looking for? What did they want from their parents? They needed to get closer if they were going to learn anything useful. The problem was there were no more patches of underbrush between them and the campsite. The only place left to go was underneath the RV itself.

Just as Tommy made the decision that they were going to need to move the man ransacking the campsite picked up a camp chair and in frustration flung it in their direction. They hurriedly backed up to avoid being hit and giving away their position. It landed inches from where Lucy had been laying, and they stopped moving. Tommy took a few moments for them to calm down before making the attempt to reach the RV.

After spending some time retracing their steps and working around to the backside of the campsite and RV they had finally managed to get themselves underneath, but now they wish they hadn’t. They could hear everything clearly now and all they could do was silently listen and hold one another. They heard the men demanding to know where it was. They heard their parents profess to not understanding what they were looking for and worst of all. They were silent witness to the frustrations of the men finally boiling over and killing their parents.

They laid that way for hours and wept in one another’s arms. Too terrified and traumatized to even move. They were still there hours later when a park ranger happened upon the scene and found them, Tommy still holding Lucy in comfort. Nobody had ever been able to tell them what the men had been looking for or why that it was so important their parents had to die for it.

That had been six months ago and now they lived with their Aunt. She was their Mom’s older sister, but she was nothing like her. She worked all the time and barely paid any attention to them. She was far more interested in the idea of caring for her dead sister’s children than actually doing it. Tommy did most of the caring for Lucy himself.

He made sure she brushed her hair and her teeth. He was the one that would comfort her when she woke up in the middle of the night soaked in cold sweat screaming as she relived it all over again. He took care of her because he knew that is what his parents would want him to do. He tried to be both a mother and father to her when he knew he was falling short because he was only her brother, and no one could ever replace what they had lost that day.

He laid in his bed just staring at the wall holding the book that he was supposed to be reading for school angry at what had become of his life. Angry that his stupid Aunt would not even let them say their Mom’s name anymore claiming it would only dredge up terrible memories. Angry that people seemed to expect him to be over it already telling him that he should start moving on and make plans for his future. He had had plans for his future, and they had all been destroyed in one horrific afternoon, and nobody could tell him why or seemed to care. In resentment he hurled the stupid reading book at the wall with all the force he could muster.

The book spiraled through the air and hit the wall with such force that the cover fell off. Tommy came up off his bed in a panic, he had not intended to destroy school property. He scrambled down to the floor to retrieve the cover and stack of pages still stuck together at the spine. He examined the two pieces trying to decide if with a little judicious gluing he might be able to fix it before Monday morning. While he was sitting there asking himself what else could go wrong in his life he noticed a faint green glow coming from under the dresser.

He laid on his belly to glance underneath it, thinking he did not want some stupid toy casting weird green reflections all over his wall in the middle of the night. He couldn’t see under it very well, so he got his flashlight from his nightstand to get a better view. When he shined the light under the dresser the green glow disappeared, and he couldn’t see any toy either. He turned the flashlight off and the glow returned, now he was really curious.

He took all his stuff off the top of the dresser, chucked it on his bed, and pulled the dresser away from the wall. There was nothing there, except for the green glow. It seemed it was coming from under the wall. It couldn’t be coming from under the wall. He crouched down to get a closer look, when he did he braced himself against the wall. As he went down to his knees the wall seemed to shift ever so slightly. Thinking he had broken more than just his schoolbook he swiftly sprang to his feet. When he stood up the wall seemed to be ok. He stepped forward to examine it closer, he didn’t see any damage, but he could swear that he had felt movement.

He put both his hands on the wall this time and gently pushed, nothing happened. He tried again, only this time he gave it a real shove and he felt it move again. He put his shoulder against it, braced himself, and heaved for all he was worth. The wall shifted in almost a whole foot that time. He did it again, this time the wall gave completely away, and he fell flat on his stomach knocking the wind totally out of him.

  He laid there for what seemed forever gasping for breath and holding his elbow which had banged on something hard and sharp as he fell. When he finally was able to take normal breaths again he examined the space he had fallen into. The light from his room illuminated his immediate surroundings and what he saw made no sense.

He was in some type of cave or grotto with his room in one direction and the green glow in the other. He decided it would probably be ok to inspect a little deeper in to see if he could discover what was causing that glow. Afterall his room was right there, and he would only go as far as he could without losing sight of his room. Besides he still had his flashlight in his back pocket in case something went wrong. He walked a little deeper into the cave and when he did he noticed the glow appeared to get just a little bit brighter as he came to a bend in the tunnel.

He really wanted to see where that glow was coming from but if he went any further he would lose sight of the light from his room. He tried shining his flashlight down the tunnel but all he could see was more tunnel. He fretfully glanced back in the direction of his room then anxiously tried his flashlight once again in the tunnel with no better results than before. He decided he would try just a few steps around the corner, maybe his light would work better without the backlight from his room.

He took two steps when his foot landed unsteadily on loose stone strewn about and he lost his footing entirely. He went down hard banging the same elbow as before, as well as both knees and his head too. He landed on a slope and started to slide uncontrollably down deeper into the tunnel. Bumping and banging every hard or sharp surface along the way. By the time he came to a rest he was bruised, bloodied and totally lost. He had dropped his flashlight in the frantic headlong plummet and had no way of knowing if it even survived the tumble down.

The only light in the tunnel came from that same green glow which had started this whole mad caper in the first place, so he started in that direction. Since he had no idea where he was it really didn’t matter which direction he went anyway. As he rounded a corner the tunnel opened into a small cavern with a pool of shimmering green luminescent liquid at its center.

The reflections cast by the pool on the walls and ceiling of the cavern were mesmerizing and he stood transfixed. In a trance he slowly ambled towards the edge of the pool his eyes drawn to it as the liquid started to oscillate in waves towards the center. Enchanted he stepped into the liquid and as he did the cold wetness woke him from his trance, but by then it was too late he was already ensnared. The liquid was no longer the consistency of water but rather more like quicksand and it slowly pulled him under.

He tried to fight it, but to no avail. His last thought as the viscous liquid covered his head was, now Lucy truly would be alone, and one single tear rolled down his cheek.