THE TUNNEL

I had no sooner set foot on the threshold of that last bar than I knew it was not a good
idea to go inside. In tow with my friends on yet another evening of wine and good
times, I found myself standing before a doorway hung with dark, heavy curtains: The
Cavern, it was called - although whether the name was more tireless Fab Four homage
by yet another tragic Beatles fan, or simply an excuse for the expense undoubtedly
spared on the decor, I remain unenlightened. At any rate, with my senses dulled by the
abundant quantities of alcohol consumed during the evening and my confidence
bolstered by the presence of my friends, I decided I could manage to keep my fears
walled off in some remote part of my brain. Besides, I told myself, The Cavern's
undoubtedly hokey interior would most likely prove to be a source of ridicule rather
than terror.

So I screwed up my courage and, incoherently proclaiming myself leader of that

merry, motley band of bar-flies, I drew aside the curtains with a theatrical flourish and
went stumbling inside the tunnel. My momentum carried some three or four steps into
the long, dark and stony interior before I fell to my knees and began to scream in terror,
covering my face with my hands while the old nightmare throbbed again inside my head
like some obscene and blackened heart. Far from giving me courage, the alcohol in my
veins made me even more exposed and defenceless, amplifying my panic until I was left
lying paralysed on the floor. I screamed all the more when I felt the hands grab hold of
my arms and begin to pull me along the ground, until the rough caress of the curtains in
the doorway made me realise that someone was dragging me bodily outside. While they
sat me on a nearby bench and tried to calm me down I could still hear the drunken
giggling coming from behind the door, as my friends in their ignorance continued to
celebrate my latest practical joke.

When I finally regained my composure, I took my hands away from my eyes and
found myself face to face with Rafa, good old reliable Raphael. Most responsible and
wisest of friends, my sudden access of panic had dragged him rudely away from the
arms of Bacchus and his train, obliging him to join me in a short and most unpleasant
journey back to sobriety. He was looking hard into my eyes, his face set in that mask of
perplexity and concern I knew so well - perhaps because I was the person who most
often made him wear it.

- Hey, you alright now kiddo? You know maybe it's time you gave up on your solo
attempt to drain the Rioja. Want me to call a taxi?

Little by little I managed to steady my shakes and trembles until I was able to return
Rafa's gaze. We went back a long way, Rafa and I, to the days when our backsides had
warmed the same seat in school, and our friendship had remained intact over the
intervening twenty years. We still saw each other regularly, and I had often stopped to
wonder just what it was that kept our friendship going. Somehow the two of us were
like the core of an onion around which, like layers, the rest of our group just kept
peeling away - the kind who later on would try and slink off if they saw you in the
street, or at the most would mutter an embarrassed hello in their confusion at a meeting
as unwanted as it was unexpected. But Rafa and I still kept up. I suppose that on my
part I had an unconscious yearning for a little of the stability that ruled my friend's life -
a guy so happy, centred and focused that there've been times when I've felt like
mercilessly beating the secret of his disgusting contentment out of him - while I suspect
that Rafa could still see the same irresponsibility and immaturity he'd had at sixteen
preserved intact in me at age thirty-four. If now and then he liked to indulge himself by
tying one on with his old mate Tony, retracing our steps around the old dens of iniquity
and houses of ill repute that still formed the centre of my existence, I'm convinced that
those ostensibly fun evenings really served to reassure him of the pathetic nature of my
existence and my condition as willing and (un)conscious loser. Satisfied, he could dump
me off the next morning at my place, leaving me half paralytic and talking incoherent
drivel to the already fading photographs of the last decent girl who'd had the momentary
misfortune to cross my path - and whom I'd failed dismally for her trouble - while he
waltzed off home to his wife with enough partying on board to last him another couple
of months.

But at that moment he was sitting right in front of me, and I knew I had to tell him: I
was long past caring whether he might think my brain had finally slipped its moorings
and sailed permanently for lala-land, it didn't matter if he believed me or not, if he told
me it was all hogwash and pointed out for the umpteenth time that I'd been messing
with my own mind for far too long... I was already coming to a decision as I heard Rafa
saying in a worried voice:

- Shit, snap out of it will ya? You're giving me the heebies!

I heaved a long sigh and motioned for him to relax, and then almost to my own
surprise I found myself letting it all out, my voice slow, even and steady - any
anxiousness about gaining Rafa's belief swamped in the relief that came with finally
being able to publicly parade the monstrous entity that had been blighting my existence.
It was only an occasional glance up at the entrance to "The Cavern" that brought a chill
running back down my spine. And so I spewed it all up in front of the only person I
knew who could have believed me, the tale taking shape with each misty puff of breath
I breathed into the frigid, razor-keen night air...

"Rafa, I'm going to tell you something that's been tormenting my soul for months,
and this time it's got nothing to do with women or booze" At this Rafa pricked up his
ears, sensing he was in for something other than the normal round of mopey confessions
from his flaky friend. "Lately I've been even harder to find than usual; the break-up with
Paula left me feeling pretty shattered, and I didn't want anything to do with anyone who
could remind me of the whole thing - not even you." Rafa gave a shrug: he had the
situation down right off the bat, as always. "Anyway I found a job in a bookstore in the
city centre, something where I didn't need to think and that brought in just enough to
pay the rent and keep me in the rarefied company of that select band of Counts, Dukes
and Marquises who lend their names to those delightful vintages I love so well. Now, as
you can well imagine, given my brilliant academic record and numerous doctoral
qualifications - Rafa grinned at my laboured irony - I was consigned immediately to the
storeroom as the principal, and in fact, sole manager of the Bulk Movement of
Enormous Boxes of Books Department, which itself in turn headed up a series of other
departments, all equally concerned with tasks of an eminently physical nature and of
which I was again sole manager and employee. The storeroom was located two floors
below street level: a huge warehouse space with two wide passages that ran to the plant
room on one side and, on the other, workrooms and offices. My job had me in the
warehouse area in the middle of hundreds and hundreds of books, which although I
found fascinating when I first started - you know how much I love to read - I eventually
wound up ignoring, or trying to at least, since my habit of buying two or three of them a
week was playing havoc with my pathetic pittance of an income.

My hours were from two in the afternoon right up until closing time at ten in the
evening. It was a shift that allowed me to freely indulge in those little self-destructive
nocturnal escapades of mine, and sleep off enough of my hangover to turn up to work
next afternoon in a more or less presentable state. The office staff used to leave at seven,
and during those last three hours I was the only person left in that enormous place,
lugging boxes of books around with only the constant buzzing of the air conditioning in
my ears for company. Occasionally one of the sales staff from upstairs would come
down for a book or a bit of a chat - more to escape the drudgery of dealing with
customers than for my scintillating conversation I'm afraid. But for the most part I was
down there alone; it was a boring job that pretty much allowed me to remain isolated
from whatever went on outside the storeroom's big steel door. I could just plod along
mechanically at my work, smoke myself a few cigarettes and, occasionally, chug down
some of the cheap spumante they served up at book launches and which some
irresponsible individual had left in my charge - but it was rough stuff, and its taste was
enough to counteract any kind of ethylic euphoria I ever managed to get out of it.

All that aside, by holding down that job I'd managed to create a small speck of order
- however fragile and unstable - inside the chaotic mess my life had turned into. Like I
already told you, every now and then I got a visit from upstairs and it wasn't always on a
strictly work-related basis. The one I saw most in my subterranean realm was J., who
had a broad and fairly blurry job-description that allowed him to wander around as he
pleased, without having to give too much account of his movements. We'd established
an almost instant rapport, and he was one of the few people who could coax a smile out
of me on even my roughest days.

I tell you that guy was practically born in that store: he knew all its nooks and
crannies like the back of his hand, and it was him I was with the day I found out about
the tunnel. We were in a little room in a corner of the warehouse area - just opposite the
offices and the exit up to the shop - working together shifting an enormous mountain of
boxes stacked right to the roof. As the pile of boxes grew smaller I found that instead of
the patch of wall I'd been expecting, we'd uncovered a short flight of stairs that went
down a couple of metres to a small landing. At the bottom I could see the mouth of a
crudely dug tunnel which ran off to the right and whose end was lost to view; there was
an unpleasant odour coming from its entrance, a smell of putrid mud and stale air
crawling out of its gloomy insides... J. must have noticed my surprise and puzzlement,
and he shot me a grin as he launched into a thoroughgoing exposition of all the many
and varied ideas he'd come up with to explain the existence of the tunnel, before finally
admitting that he had absolutely no idea what it was doing there. All he could tell me
was that the tunnel ran parallel to the rear wall of the storeroom, underneath the street,
and came to an end in a stair just like the one we'd uncovered, its opening also blocked
up by boxes and plastic bags. About ten metres in from the entrance on the left hand
side, went on J., you could see the beginnings of another little tunnel that struck out
perpendicularly to the main one, but it was a blind opening that stopped after barely a
couple of metres, as though its diggers had been suddenly interrupted in their task...
Now I'd always felt a bit nervous around caves - whether big or small, natural or
artificial - but this time my curiosity got the better of me, and I pushed past the thick
cobwebs that shrouded the opening and went a few steps inside. The evil muddy stench
was immediately stronger.

The tunnel's interior was narrow and crudely dug, without any kind of lighting,
electrical wiring or airshaft that might justify its existence. It was nothing but a long,
damp grotto whose claustrophobic squalor made a dramatic contrast with the huge,
antiseptically clean warehouse space that lay just behind the wall. I felt oppressed by the
sense of desolate loneliness and abandon that came from its depths, and I remember
thinking to myself that being shut up alone in there for even a few minutes would be
enough to bring me seriously unhinged. When I turned to my buddy J. I saw that he too
was staring at the entrance with the same uneasy expression I felt certain was mirrored
on my own face. Then, as we were turning back towards the storeroom, I spotted a
detail that at the time I considered merely curious, but now fills me with absolute
horror: for as far as I could see into the gloom the tunnel walls were sooty and
blackened, as if there had been a tremendous conflagration inside. But at the time this
fact seemed as inexplicable as the presence of the tunnel itself.

For my part I would have been perfectly happy to stop up the entrance with tens,
dozens, hundreds of bags and boxes, and I'm absolutely certain J. would have been with
me one hundred percent, but as the boss was in a hurry for a stock inventory we were
forced to leave the mouth of that stinking tunnel wide open. It definitely had me feeling
nervous and uneasy, but I figured it would only be for a couple of days and anyway,
what were two more negative emotions compared to all the others already galloping
around inside my head? So I resigned myself to lump it for the time being and we left it
the way it was.

It all happened the next day. I'd always thought that kind of thing needed to take its
time - you know, build up the suspense with little clues, playing slowly and surely on
the victim's nerves until he begins to doubt his own senses, then unleash the hideous
finale... So much for that idea. It came suddenly, without warning, and I was hardly a
victim: I was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, as usual. That particular day
it had been raining since dawn, but not with those fresh, heavy downpours that leave a
sweet smell of wet earth behind them, even in the dirtiest big-city streets... Instead, thick
gloomy clouds hovered overhead, sweating out a warm, thin drizzle that formed a
slippery, oily film on the sidewalks and a sheen of irritation on the faces and souls of
the passers-by.

I went down to the storeroom at two p.m., flustered by the muggy July heat and with
my clothes clinging to my body like a warm, clammy shroud. The air conditioning was
on the blink, and the absence of its familiar hum made the storeroom a gloomy and
ominous kind of place, like a giant tomb, with the silence only broken now and then by
the sound of water running through the plumbing in the ceiling above. I could see the
doorway to the little room away off in the corner, and I felt a shiver run down my back
as my mind's eye again recalled the image of the four steps leading down to that tunnel
with its scorched and blackened walls.

I threw myself into my work, thinking that by keeping busy I could keep my fears at
bay, but I couldn't stop myself from dwelling on that black wound piercing the earth
behind the storeroom wall, scarcely a couple of metres from my desk. Being summer,
half of the shop staff were on vacation, and those who were left were either too tired or
too run off their feet to come down and socialise. Even J. had the day off, so there I was
with the whole storeroom to myself on the very day I least wanted to be left alone.

Around nine p.m. I traipsed up the two flights of stairs to the bookstore with a bundle
of cardboard to throw in the dumpster outside, and discovered that the afternoon's sticky
drizzle had turned into a raging storm. Sweeping curtains of water seemed to hang from
the menacing black clouds perched just overhead, while vicious whiplashes of lightning
announced a regular succession of earth-shaking thunderclaps. It was a display that had
me casting my memory back a long way in search for an equal, and I remember
thinking how it was more like a night-time air-raid than a storm; I even found myself
musing idly for a few moments about where I would go for shelter if bombs suddenly
did start falling around me. In hindsight now those thoughts seem uncannily prescient.

I headed inside around nine-fifteen, and by then the shop was half-empty; there were
only two or three temporaries who'd been hired on to cover for the staff who'd taken
their summer holidays. The storm wasn't letting up, and back downstairs in my work
area I could still hear the sound of the thunderclaps coming muffled through the two
floors above... The blackout would have hit around nine-thirty, with only a half-hour
left to go to quitting time, and the storeroom was plunged into almost total darkness -
the only illumination coming from a small emergency light above the entrance to the
tunnel-room. It was an eerie, unnatural looking light, and in its soft, milky glow I could
only vaguely make out the silhouettes of the boxes stacked around it.

Back then I was trying to give up smoking via the highly scientific method of hiding
my cigarettes and lighter in weird places. The theory was that when the nicotine
cravings finally got too strong I'd have forgotten where I put them - although I never
actually did of course, it was about the only thing my memory was any good for. But
not this time: I turned my work trays inside-out in a frantic bid to find my lighter and
make it over to the main door without crashing into half the stock along the way.
Meanwhile my skin was literally crawling as I tried to ignore the ghostly-looking
entrance to the little room. I was in the grip of a mounting panic that was gradually
switching off all those parts of the brain where logic and reasoning are supposed to
reside. It was while I was scrabbling around for the lighter that the horrible smell
penetrated the room, rooting me to where I stood: it was a burning smell, but at no time
did it suggest a short circuit or housefire. I only wish it had. No, the smell that was
making me gasp and tremble was the smell of roasting flesh. I could only think of
human beings in flames, of fires in discotheques, of gas explosions and the horribly
burned and twisted bodies in that campground that went up in a ball of flame, of
heretics at the stake driven mad in their agony, of mothers and children leaping like
living torches from burning buildings...
 A thick, acrid, chemical smoke began to flood the storeroom, and then suddenly
through its midst a vivid light came shining from the mouth of the tunnel. It danced and
flickered, as if projected by an enormous bonfire blazing inside, and it slid through the
smoke creating a ghostly, fluorescent mist that blurred objects and rendered them into
vague silhouettes. It was then the things began to emerge from the room, scarcely
visible amongst the thick clouds of smoke: tiny, black, horrible parodies of the human
form with twisted smoking limbs. I hardly noticed the hot flow of urine running down
my legs, my eyes fixed on those terrible things that were advancing towards me,
painfully pushing aside the boxes with their charred and flaking fingers. Two glowing
coals shone blood red inside what had once been heads, and from a horrible bloody gash
beneath them came moans and whimpers of pain like an animal in unimaginable
torment. I managed to retreat a few steps before I was again paralysed by terror, and
then they were right in front of me, dozens of red points staring at me as maddening
notes of pain swelled inside the storeroom in a symphony of agony and insanity. I
thought they were going to attack me, tear me apart and drag me back with them inside
the cave, to some pit that opened into hell itself, but no. Instead they began to take each
other by the hand, painfully linking their deformed and twisted fingers: they were
falling into line, and in a few seconds had made three or for neat ranks in hideous
mimicry of a company of soldiers waiting for inspection or drills, or... Sweet Jesus!
Suddenly I understood!!. I screamed and screamed in front of those unfortunate
creatures, half mad with the truth that was forcing its way into my mind, and my cries
brought me sufficiently back to myself to get away from that cursed place, running
blindly into boxes, pylons and who knows what else on the way. I somehow got the
storeroom door open and made my way through the thick smoke that was already filling
the bookstore.

The books and shelves began to burn behind me as I ran through the deserted shop,
but I knew I was safe from the smoke and flames - it was something infinitely more
subtle that would choke and burn me for the rest of my days. Finally, a fireman's gloved
hand grabbed my shoulder and I was hauled out into the street, where my frightened
workmates stood gaping at the sudden, intense and inexplicable blaze that was razing
the store to its foundations. Given the circumstances the state I was in must have
seemed entirely comprehensible. As they were carrying me to the ambulance I'm sure I
was the only one who saw the band of black things wandering disoriented through the
flames, as they searched for the exit in a building that had changed beyond their
recognition."

I'd barely managed to mouth the final words before collapsing into great heaving
sobs. Rafa sat in silence, watching the tears rolling down my face while he waited for
me to regain my composure.

- Well that's it. Like I told you before, just pretend you believe me, even if you think
I'm crazy. Just help me cope with this hideous thing.

- I believe you, mate - if he was putting on an act, it was a good one - at least I
believe most of what you've told me. But there's just one thing...

- Yeah, I know what you're going to say. I didn't think you'd bring it up, in fact I
really wish you hadn't, but I can see that curiosity has got the better of your fears. It was
the same with me. Although I already had a pretty good clue from the behaviour of
those things I wanted to find out more, so I've been doing some digging around of my
own, looking for facts to confirm my suspicions. I'm sorry I did. That building wasn't
always a bookstore, or any kind of store; true, fifty years ago it did contain books, but
they were schoolbooks belonging to the children at the Mosén Jacint Verdaguer school.
- Rafa's face suddenly went very pale as the terrible truth began to dawn -. I've seen its
photo in old newspapers from those days, during the Civil War, and I've spoken to a
couple of the teachers who, unfortunately for them, lived through that horrific event.
The Falangists kept it all hushed up of course, like a lot of other things. Back then most
of the students at Jacint Verdaguer were the children of Republican leaders, and when
the Nationalists took Barcelona there were around forty still at the school - their parents
hadn't had time to flee to the countryside, and since they were worried about reprisals
they thought it safest to stay away from their kids and leave them in school a while.

It was a tragic mistake. A unit of militiamen drunk on victory and grappa got in there
and ran amok, they beat the daylights out of the teachers and marched everyone down to
the basement: the same basement which would later become the storeroom. One of them
had a flame-thrower - my friend's eyes started in terror -. The children were half dead
with fright, standing huddled together in the air-raid shelter that had been hastily dug
over the last month, and the teachers pleaded with the soldiers to let them go. But they
were too drunk, too fanatical, and they laughed at them and shouted fascist slogans and
yelled about how they were going to wipe all the red whelps from the face of the earth.
The one with the flame-thrower was down there for half an hour, hosing out the tunnel
with flames. The teacher who told me about it was crying as it all came back to him, he
said the screams of those children hadn't allowed him a moment's sleep in fifty years...

How could the poor devil have known he was giving me a glimpse of my own
future? Of course by now you too must have realised what those charred things were,
and why they came marching from their shelter and lined up in rows in front of me, like
a school assembly: to them I was simply the long-awaited teacher who had come to lead
them to safety.