Tunnel Creatures
The Inky-Black.
That was the name that Dane and his older brother had devised when they were kids, for the murky, visionless tunnels which connected the underground stations of the subway. With the resolve that only a child could muster, Dane had decided that those tunnels were his sworn enemy. He was an anxious boy growing up, suspicious as well, and as such he despised the dark and the many creatures he knew it hid. His mother, a tall, undisturbed sort of woman whose bocote skin cracked only for the quiet smile that occasionally danced across her lips, had unreserved bales of patience to offer her young son. However, his enmity for the Inky-Black was a point of endless contention during the family’s daily travels across the A train line. On each weekday’s morning, Renée, a name Dane would never dare call his mother by, would stride out of their chipped front door with the rusty lock that locked whenever it was in the mood. In one hand, her seven-year-old’s tiny fingers wrapped up in Spider-Man mittens, and in the other, her eldest, ten-year-old Raymond, whose proximity to double digits made him more reluctant to return her grip. Yet still, Renée held on tight. Her steps were brisk and measured as she lead them through the buzzing Harlem sidewalks. Decades living in the city had refined her movements to a swift dance, for she effortlessly weaved in between the cacophony of multi-colored faces on her path to the nearest train station. Once they reached the mouth of the station, and began their descent down the dusty staircase into that pungent pit they called a train stop, the protests from Dane would inevitably flare up.
“But Mama,” he would chirp, looking up from under a plaid beanie that engulfed his little brown head, “the bus stop is closer, why can’t we take the bus?” An appeal to logic, this was a typical opening play for Dane, yet Renée was a staunch opponent.
“D, don’t start.” She would reply without even looking up, rummaging through her purse for a MetroCard with enough cash on it to pass through the turnstiles three times. “You know how late ya’ll were to class last time we tried the bus, and you know I don’t like late.” It was true, she didn’t. It was also true that the bus was not nearly quick enough to manage the hectic task of getting both kids to school and Renée to her job before the morning clock hit nine. But those little details were far from enough to make Dane concede his daily ritual.
“Ok but what if we wake up, like, super early so that we won’t be late?” He had once argued while the group stood waiting at the subway platform. This got the oft-unspeaking Raymond’s attention.
“No way, we already wake up wayyy too early. I’d die for real,” he quipped.
“Your brother’s right,” Renée cooed, playfully tugging on her youngest’s beanie, “growing little boys need sleep.”
To Dane, that seemed like condescension, which he did not appreciate. However, it was at this point when he would yield that his words would get him no further, as the train had begun to pull into the station. He felt an icy finger slide its way down his spine as he heard the low growl of the incoming metallic behemoth from deep within the shadows. The cold blue “A” sign marking the lead car came into view soon afterward; piercing, like the hungry gaze of a predator slicing its victim through the blanket of night. Dane flinched as a wave of screeching steel and hot wind washed over the tracks in front of him, and wondered how his mother and brother could stand at the same platform peering calmly at the chaos before them. Yet, as abruptly as it entered, the chaos then ground to a halt and opened its doors to a flood of bodies swarming in and out. A captain, guiding her ship through the nastiest of maelstroms; such was Renée as she pulled her sons through the swarm and past the automatic doors of the subway car.
Many days would see the A train so overflowing that the family would have to stand for their entire ride. Such was often unavoidable, as the locomotive was duty-bound to carry all travelers who wore their same masks. Mothers and children, workers and students, glistening Brown and Black faces exhausted before the day has even started. But today was different. There was a miracle, three empty seats, left open as if they could sense the painful boils that dotted Renée’s feet from hours behind a cash register. The boys, too, were able to rest their sore shoulders, which had been compromised by the weight of Pokémon bookbags filled with math exercise books. The frigid, concrete seats were far from first-class, but the refreshing blast of air conditioner that blew through the car more than compensated. Gone was the stifling, oily air that plagued the subway station, as well as the grungy grey titles littered with the discarded remains of the entirety of New York City. In the subway car, the air was brisk with the faintest taste of fermentation, and stained tiles were replaced by glitzy advertisements decorated with penciled-in graffiti.
In this environment, Renée allowed her shoulders to hang for the first time since sunrise. Her morning routine was not one that typically allowed much downtime. She woke up at seven, usually to the arm or foot of one of her little bundles of joy bumping against her cheek in their sleep. Their apartment was petite, and technically not an apartment, but one room in a brownstone that Renée was renting out. Thus, for both space and financial considerations, one king-size bed seemed to be the most efficient. Dane never minded the closeness, having his mother and brother around helped him through his night terrors. Raymond was more indignant on the matter.
“None of my friends have to sleep with their mom. It’s not fair, I’m not a baby!” Even as a boy Raymond felt entitled to his privacy, to him the constant contiguity was suffocating. A stone-cold glare from Mom was enough to end the discussion whenever it reemerged, usually around bedtime or over dinner on their plastic folding table. Not to say that Renée did not sympathize with her son’s plight, however. Raymond’s three years over his brother meant that he had a richer memory of what life was like before it was confined to this room. A life of two beds, two bedrooms, and two adults in the house.
Adult.
Renée suppressed a sardonic chuckle when she thought of the word. It was certainly a generous one to describe the father. Yes, he tried his best to be present, and yes, he did care for those boys, but Renée was tired of being speechless. Tired of being at a loss of words to explain to her kids why Daddy had to be locked out because he was too sweaty and glassy-eyed to set foot near her children. Or why strangers with one hand on their belt straps were pounding on their doors at three in the morning demanding that Daddy pay back what he “borrowed”. Renée hated the idea of her boys growing up without their father, but she could not live with being speechless in her own home, so she let two searing words fly from her lips with resolve, “get out.” And still, after all her back-bending labor, white-knuckled battles, and emptied tear ducts, she found herself without the words she needed. Words that explain why they couldn’t have all the nice shoes or video games or tik toks or whatever it is that kids beg their befuddled parents for now. Or especially the ones that explain why Mommy is working harder and harder every year yet the paycheck cuts the exact same as last year. God, wouldn’t she love to hear the answer to that one. She could never explain to Raymond why Daddy’s face was dark, his eyes foggy glass as he held baby Dane, whose little brown face was red from crying, face down in unsteady arms. While his other son pushed as far back as he could on the other side of the couch, his legs up and hugged tight, Raymond created his own explanations for who was there that night. From then on, Renée swore no matter how many jobs she had to take she would never again work so late that her children would be forced to battle darkness on their own.
Akin to his mother, Dane too found himself smothered by his anxieties as he sat on his slab of concrete. His arms were folded tight around his chest as he sat, a show of his still simmering discontent at having his salient points completely dismissed. But he could not retain the anger for much longer — he had a far more pressing issue now, surviving another round of the Inky-Black. He turned to his right, where his mother was seated. “Mama, you tell me if you see any tunnel creatures, okay?”
“I told you D, there’re no tunnel creatures here, or anywhere. They aren’t real.” Renée replied effortlessly, this was another frequently relitigated topic in this family. “Look, if they were real I would’ve seen them already right? You know I’ve been riding these trains since dinosaur times,” she teased, getting a sliver of a smile out of Dane despite his attempts at maintaining gravity.
“That’s just because only the people the tunnel creatures are gonna eat can see them!” Raymond jumped in, never missing an opportunity to terrorize Dane with the story that he himself only somewhat still believed, he hadn’t encountered a tunnel creature in years.
“Ray, come on now. Your brother is already scared don’t add to it.” Dane appreciated his Mom’s sentiment, but the damage was already done. After all, it made a whole lot of sense. According to Raymond, the most repudiable source Dane knew of, tunnel creatures were the deadliest creatures in the universe. Their skin was an impenetrable mass of dripping black ink, and their teeth were sharp enough to tear straight through a train car so that they can devour the sweet fruit inside. And sometimes they could even trick adults by looking human. Looking at it logically, why would such a deadly predator allow itself to be seen unless it wants to be? Dane’s face folded into a solemn grimace as he steeled himself to do what needed to be done. The train ride was approximately 45 minutes long, which meant that he would have to keep watch outside the train window for 45 minutes to keep his family out of a tunnel creature’s belly.
Normally Dane would clamp his hands over his eyes whenever the train left its stop and entered one of the tunnels, in order to shield himself from the Inky-Black. But this time, something about the tunnels seemed different, more visceral. He could almost feel something stalking just beyond the bounds of his eyesight. Steeling himself, he then started to kneel on his seat so that he could turn around to face the window behind him. One stop passed, then another and two more. They had been on the train for around twenty minutes at this point, and Dane’s knees were aching, but he would not give the tunnel creatures the satisfaction of seeing him falter. Renée, kept an eye on the kneeling boy, but was far more engrossed in a little crime-thriller in her hands that she barely ever had the time to read. Similarly Raymond, though mildly amused by his brother’s antics, was ultimately preoccupied with the neon-colored advertisement banners that filled the car. In other words, they were off guard in case of an attack, so Dane needed to pick up the slack.
One stop, two stop. Their final destination was fast approaching, and Dane was almost ready to exhale, convinced that he had survived another morning. Dane almost jumped when he felt a hand grab onto his side, before realizing it was his mother, steadying him because the train had abruptly screeched to a premature stop in the tunnel itself. This was a common occurrence when trains got caught in traffic, something Dane knew was an obvious lie, traffic was for cars, the stops were because of wandering tunnel creatures blocking up the inky black. He turned back around to face the darkness, in this vulnerable position, now more than ever his family needed him to keep watch. A sliver of light cut through the tracks on the other end of the shadows, sometimes a train from another line mockingly zipped by. However, rather than the screaming steel of another car, Dane witnessed an even deeper. He didn’t believe it. He couldn’t. But once he took a closer glimpse it was unmistakable. Long, black arms extended from the sides of the train like wet, black streamers. One arm was mostly out of view, clamped over the top of the train, holding the being’s weight. While the other flowed freely off the end of the car, extending outwards as if the creature were trying to reach out and grab infinity itself.
Dane tried to move, to run, scream but he could not. His mouth held agape silently, completely paralyzed by the beast before it. The tunnel creature turned its head, which had been pointed towards infinity, to face him. Rows of glassy eyes filled Dane’s vision, followed by a toothy smile that held a finger up to its mouth. Dane tried to call out to Raymond, whose legs were curled up on the hard bench, but he couldn’t manage anything more than an infantile whimper. He thought heard the valley of teeth whisper something like “Don’t cry, D,” but it sounded more like his mother or a brief memory.
