The Tunnel

Nathan's journey through darkness

Image generated by Midjourney

“I’m going for a walk,” I said. 

“Good!” Grace yelled back, her voice rattling the living room windows. “And while you’re at it, why don’t you walk over to the construction site and tell them to cut the racket out? It’s nearly midnight.”

“Fine!” I replied, ensuring my voice was at least ten decibels louder than Grace’s. “And when I’m back, maybe you’ll tell me what you’re really doing at the office on weekends.” I slammed the front door to punctuate my sentence. 

Despite my outburst’s implication, I didn’t think Grace was having an affair at the office—or anywhere. I was annoyed. Annoyed at Grace for spending all her waking hours working and annoyed at myself for not bettering our marriage when I could have—or at least trying to. Years ago, it might have made a difference if I said, “You don’t need to make partner. Let’s carve out time for ourselves; that’s more important.”

I also didn’t care if she was having an affair. 

Grace's pursuit of partnership kept us from taking a vacation. Saturday and Sunday were spelled Monday and Tuesday. 

When was the last time we made love? 

Months ago, I replaced our wedding photographs on the living room table with photos of cities and landscapes, places I wanted to visit. Grace didn’t say a word. 

We met for dinner every night courtesy of Uber Eats, sharing superficial chit-chat. We spent one minute conferring about what cuisine to order, thirty minutes waiting for the order, during which time Grace worked and I scrolled Instagram, ten minutes eating, and fifteen seconds sorting the trash. 

But Grace was right about one thing: The loud, interminable construction noise was driving us batty. 

They'd been building ever since we moved into our house eleven years ago. How long did it take to make a tunnel? Certainly not over a decade. 

“Hey, you guys,” I shouted so they could hear me over the cement mixer and pickaxes. “People are trying to sleep. There’s a law against construction after 9 p.m.” I didn’t know if that was true or if it was after 8 or 10 o’clock, but I was pissed enough to make stuff up. I could feel steam rising from my head. “Can you let us sleep?”

“We’ll be done for the day soon,” replied one of the five workers, a man in the least dirty clothes, who I took to be the foreman. 

“When’s soon?” 

“Whenever you want.”

“How about now?” I narrowed my eyes. “I think now is a good time.”

The workers rested their tools on a wooden, rectangular table several feet from the tunnel’s entrance. One of them flipped a switch, silencing the mixer. Like synchronized swimmers, they took in deep breaths of cool night air. The four workers leaned against the tunnel’s exterior while the foreman, who looked to be in his mid-forties, with close-cut hair that was almost, but not quite, a crew cut, thick black glasses, and oddly for a worksite, khaki pants, and penny loafers, faced me. 

“Thank you,” I said as I spun and turned back to home. After two steps, I stopped. Why bother going home? Nothing awaited me there except for meaningless screen time. 

"Where does this tunnel go?" I asked. The tunnel's oval entrance, made from reddish stones and wide enough for a person but not a car, stood ten yards into the woods behind the town library. 

The foreman handed me his flashlight and said, "Why don't you take a look? But don’t exit the other end. Lean out if you wish—and you will wish—but keep your feet inside the tunnel. Got that? Feet inside the tunnel."

I clicked the flashlight on and said, ''Why do I need to stay inside the tunnel?" 

The foreman said something about structural incompleteness and how it’s safer for me not to take that final step. I didn’t follow the explanation but replied, “Yeah, okay.” 

The flashlight’s wobbly beam petered out at ten feet. I squinted to help spot spider webs—or worse, spiders. I concentrated on my hearing, scanning for the scritch-scratch of rats before any ran into my feet. Claustrophobia and nyctophobia gnawed at me, but I pushed forward. Even a spooky tunnel was better than a home devoid of love. 

I walked carefully through the serpentine passageway. I expected a straight tunnel—aren’t all tunnels mostly straight?—but this one twisted hard left, then right, then left and left and right, and back the other way every several yards.

I rubbed the side of the flashlight and uttered a prayer: Don’t die on me.

Snowflakes landed on my head. I shone the flashlight up, half-expecting to see the sky, but I was still encased by the tunnel. And it wasn't snow. Multifaceted crystals made of some soft, whitish mineral fell on my head and shoulders, tickling my skin. When I aimed my flashlight at the crystals, they tinkled like wind chimes. 

I finally reached the tunnel’s exit, which opened onto a broad cobblestone street. I saw men and women on horseback, pedestrians in big hats and long coats, two lines of railway tracks, and four-story brick buildings. Lines of laundry hung outside every window. Gas street lamps bracketed the sidewalks.

I glanced at my watch: 12:12 a.m. But the sunshine proclaimed it was mid-day. 

I stuck my head out of the tunnel but kept my feet planted inside like the foreman instructed. The air smelled of grilled meat and chestnuts. Smoke wafted up from a wooden food cart in the middle of the sidewalk, tended to by a man in his fifties with a deeply wrinkled face and handlebar mustache. A child around ten years old passed the man some coins, and the man gave the smiling boy a small paper bag.

I blinked hard several times, but the vision remained. I felt dizzy. I pressed my hand against the tunnel wall to keep from falling. 

I pulled my head into the tunnel, like a turtle withdrawing into its shell. 

I took my time walking back so I could make sense of the sights. Were they illusions? Projections? Was the tunnel some kind of new movie theater that showed hyper-realistic films? Or, ominously, did I hallucinate? Were those falling flakes a drug that passed through my skin? Was I an unwitting guinea pig in somebody’s mind-control experiment? 

After a dozen twists and turns and after passing through another crystal snowfall, my flashlight finally reflected off the workers’ safety vests.

I spoke to the foreman, who stood several feet beyond the tunnel with his hands clasped together. “What is that tunnel? What happened there? Where does it go?” 

“Where do you think it goes?” the foreman replied. 

“I don’t know, which is why I’m asking.”

“1910.”

“What do you mean, 1910?” 

“Like I just said, the tunnel extends to 1910.” He sighed. “It wasn’t easy to build because the time between now and then expands. That’s why we work all night long.”

“What?”

“Imagine how hard it would be to build a tunnel under a river that grows wider every day. If you wanted to build a tunnel under an ever-enlarging waterway, you could, but you’d have to work non-stop to keep ahead of the river’s growth.”

My jaw hung loosely and I nodded, even though I didn’t understand.

“Once we complete the tunnel, it’s locked into place 112 years into the past because the laws of temporal physics only let us build 112 years back. If you want to go farther than 1910, you must find the next tunnel, which will take you back another 112 years to 1798. But here’s the thing: Time expands and the river always grows wider. So come January 1, 2023, our tunnel will take you only as far as 1911.  Next year, that second tunnel will terminate in 1799.” He pulled a pocket watch out of his pocket. “It’s only May. You have until December 31 to get to 1910 or 1798. After December 31, 1910 and 1798 will no longer be destinations; 1911 and 1799 will.” 

What is he talking about? That’s crazy. And yet, I saw something. “Are you telling me these tunnels take you back in time?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. We build time tunnels.” He pulled out four cigars from his front shirt pocket and passed them to his coworkers. “Take ten, boys.” He flicked open a gold lighter and lit the cigars. 

“I don’t believe you.”

“Didn’t you see 1910?”

“I saw what looked like an antique city, but what you’re saying is impossible.” I shuffled my feet as I searched for my next words. “You guys are nuts.”

He shrugged. “Suit yourself. But you look like a man who could use a change of scenery.” He pulled another cigar out of his pocket and passed it to me.

“I don’t smoke.”

I took a closer look at the five men. Except for their reflective vests, each dressed differently, a mishmash of clothes and accessories: A pinstripe vest with a silver chain leading out of the side pocket to a belt loop; a topper hat, monocle, tall boots with spurs; a knee-length coat with wooden buttons, blue velvet striped breeches; a jacket pin made up of two miniature vacuum tubes that counted up from zero-zero to ninety-nine and then started over again. The men looked like they picked random clothes and props from a Hollywood wardrobe room. 

He slipped the unlit cigar back into his pocket. “No sense in wasting a good smoke. Besides, you’ll get to enjoy other aromas and tastes. I’m sure you already noticed the smells in 1910.” He paused a beat. “Don’t you want to try tastes, too? Food back then will ignite taste buds you never knew you had.”

The smells were an illusion. And yet, so real. 

The foreman took a step closer to me and lowered his voice. “You want to leave this place. You want to start anew, but don’t know how, and you’re too caught up in what you call your life to try. You feel like you’re stuck in the molasses of time. This is your chance for a fresh start, Nathan.”

“How do you know my—?”

“Personally, I like 1910. It’s a decade of great joy, of technological advances, of society moving in a hundred different directions at once. Sure, there’s a war coming, but you know it ends well. There will be good years and sometimes not-good ones, but that’s true for any era, isn’t it? But if 1910 isn’t to your liking, find the next tunnel.” 

“To 1798.”

“Yes. If 1798 doesn’t suit your fancy, give 1686 a whirl. Keep in mind that every December 31, the next tunnel takes you back one less year relative to your starting point.”

“Because the river expands.”

“Exactly.”

“How many tunnels are there?” I sounded like a believer. Was I?

The foreman scratched his chin and glanced at his coworkers, who shook their heads in unison. “I can’t say precisely how many tunnels there are, but there are many, extending tens of thousands, millions, perhaps billions of years. The tunnels might go back to the beginning of time, and from there, who knows? Perhaps the tunnel after the one that connects to the dawn of the universe circles back to the end of all things. I’m a worker, not a designer, so I can only speculate.” 

He put his hand on my shoulder. “Just one thing. It’s a one-way ticket. You can journey into the past as far as you want, but you can never return to the future once you exit the tunnel.”

Images of Grace and me in Hawaii on our honeymoon flashed through my mind, of us kissing as the azure Pacific lapped around us. I remembered jumping up and down when we closed the deal for our house ten years ago. I remembered shopping for our bed, dining room table, sofa, and everything—and how those days promised so much. 

“A one-way ticket is fine.” I stepped into the tunnel. 

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If you liked The Tunnel, I think you’ll enjoy my story, How Hallie Discovered Time Travel.