I have heard the rumours of course, but tonight it appears that I have stumbled across it. The infamous Victorian tunnel!

It was actually very easy to find if you read the clues properly - it could be that no one has tried too hard to find it. The stories of the accident were pretty scary but surely, no one took them seriously, did they?

Having decided to try to enter, it takes me some time to attack the accumulated rocks, plants and rubbish that block the entry - but I persevere. I clamber no further than six feet into the void when, at a snap, the warmth and light of the summer evening's sunshine is translated to pitch blackness - with its attendant cold. An absolute piercing zero degrees!
Violently shivering, I reach for my mobile phone with the intention of breaking through the darkness with its built-in torchlight. To no avail! No light, no signal - my phone is dead.
There is silence - such silence that my brain is reacting with roaring and ringing in my ears, the only sounds being those of my own bodily functions. My heart begins thumping fast and loud! This is so not funny, no funny at all. I feel all around with my feet: the ground, which appears to slope downwards in all directions, feels relatively smooth. Tentatively I move forward in the blackness.
Crump! Within two steps I strike an obstacle; a very hard obstacle - I feel the warm sweet blood from my nose flow down over my lips and onto my chin. Swiping the sticky mess from my face, and keeping the panic at bay, I carefully grope around me at shoulder height. I am shocked to discover that there is only only one way forward. Common sense is telling me that forward is, in fact, the way I have come in. But which way is that?

This is not funny. I need to get out of here. Battling to keep the stories that I have heard about the tunnel from my mind I move cautiously, arm outstretched, in the only direction allowed to me - downward. Something moves across my foot, I feel it brush my knee - my body begins to shudder with the thumping of my heart. I feel the thing - or could it be, things - wrapping slowly around my legs.
In the deafening silence I hear a scurrying, scratching noise - to pacify my racing heart, I tell myself that it must be rats. Big rats but rats all the same - and rats are nothing to be frightened of.

However, this is not funny. I need to get out of here as soon as possible. Willing myself forward and praying that the direction that I am stumbling, is the way out of this place I thump my arms wildly around my torso to restore some warmth into my shivering body. The walls of the tunnel remind me of the narrowness of the place by painfully grazing the knuckles on both hands. Near to tears I drop, in submission, to the tunnel floor - is it time to give up? Why am I thinking like this?

As I lay, in misery of the darkness I feel that something has changed: the scuttling and scraping around me has ceased and I feel a new noise ahead of me. The air is warming. Only minutely but it is definitely warming. Encouraged I raise my head from the frozen floor. Yes, the air is warming. Bur cooling again. Disappointed I lower my head. A draft of warm air followed by a draft of cold envelopes me. The temperature seems to change in time with my now laboured breathing - I am reminded of a doctor's visit: breathe in - breathe out. But it isn’t my breath that is causing the soft repetitive movements of warming and cooling air, its source is somewhere ahead of me.

Should I go ahead towards the breathing? Why didn’t I take notice of the stories, the warnings? This is not funny. I think I hear a soft giant's breath - or could it be my own? I lay, inert but hopeful as the 'breathe' envelopes me. It must be late now. I seem to have been in here for hours - I wonder if it’s dark outside?

Recovered, I crawl forward, seemingly towards the breath; the floor of the tunnel seems rougher now. The breath, although still soft, now seems to take on a hollow echoing form; something is changing.
Encouraged at the change in the atmospherics, I continue forward but remain low to the floor - it all feels very strange. I discover another sense: smell. The breathe in, breathe out air now smells very musty. Very musty indeed. A sudden, scream fills the air as I tumble forward. I am falling. Falling.

It seems a long time until I finally come to rest. My landing is met by what sounds and feels like a clattering of wooden sticks. I shall lie still and silent to recover my breath and wit in the hope that the owner of the scream does not have evil intent.
I hear nothing more but my own breathing. The all enveloping tunnel-breath has stopped and all is silent and dark. As if blind, I reach around me; the floor of the pit into which I have fallen appears to be formed entirely of dry sticks. The common feature of the these sticks is that most have knobbly, misshapen ends. My heart beats faster. I know where I am lying - bones. Hundreds, maybe thousands of bones! This suspicion is confirmed by the discovery of many globular dry spheres - My shaking fingers feel their way around and, inevitably, into eye sockets and jaw openings, complete with teeth.
My breathing slows, my heart rate drops. I feel each reducing beat as it shakes my body. The stories were true - I am now to join the many 'disappeared' never to tell this story. I lay, with no regrets, no fear, amongst my newly discovered colleagues, to be part of an unknown history.

I, with my new housemates, await the curiosity of the next curious explorer!

[THE END]

© scrapyardsummer 2020