The Trickster. Muriel Gray
never feel the sun on his face again.
He ran like a child, making involuntary grunting sounds as his feet gouged the gravel, chin high, eyes rolling in their sockets.
When he fell out of the tunnel gulping for breath, the last thing he remembered was the darkness slamming into the entrance, as though the man-made arch described an invisible prison door. He was sure the darkness screamed with fury. No sound again, just a visceral reading of a ripping, hungry, scream.
Joshua was sure he had just preserved his sanity. The brakeman and conductor were not so sure. When they found Joshua, he was lying in the snow jabbering, and the best they could get out of him was the living rock.
He was taken home by road and was back at work in a fortnight. The conductor and brakeman filed a report, recalling that there had been a short power cut in the cab at the time that engineer Tennent ran. Yes, they had experienced temporary darkness, and yes, that’s probably what spooked him so bad. No harm done. Everybody safe, and a whole new joke to pass around the bunkhouses now that the one about Joe’s bear encounter had worn thin.
But even now, a whole year on, and after a hundred nudges and grins when Joshua walked into the canteen, each time the Corkscrews loomed he toyed with trading his railway pension for steady work in a hamburger joint.
Martell was still chuckling as the cab entered the tunnel. ‘Rock still livin’, Tennent? Can’t hear no breathin’.’
He wheezed some more in Joshua’s direction, until he realized that neither his brakeman or engineer were going to respond. Martell was starting to get mad. A man making a joke deserves some kind of answer, even if the joke’s an old one. He’d put up with this silence too long.
The dark engulfed them, the yellow light from the cab flickering on the irregular shapes of the rough rock walls, but the entrance to the tunnel was clearly visible ahead.
Martell leaned forward in his chair.
‘Guess you’re keepin’ it shut ’cause you know that whole livin’ rock thing was a crock of shit, Tennent. That right?’
Joshua kept his eyes on the growing arch of light.
‘Guess so, Wesley.’
It was shaking a stick at a steer, a hoghead calling Martell by his first name.
‘Well let’s us just stop in the upper tunnel and check it out. Clear it up for good.’
Joshua dared not look at him. He sat motionless, his throat dry.
‘You heard. Hit the brakes. Now.’
He heard all right. Why not? Joshua knew it would get him one day. Every time he dreamed of that rushing, hungry darkness, he knew it would get him. Why not now? Now was as good a time as any.
Turning slowly to look at Martell, he pulled back the brake and watched the conductor’s florid face as the train began its laborious process of halting.
Forty-five seconds later, they stopped just inside the mouth of the upper tunnel.
Joshua Tennent held his conductor’s eyes in a gaze like a mongoose holding a snake. Martell twitched. Maybe the engineer was really crazy. Maybe this was where he went Charlie Manson and they’d all end up being stencils for a cop’s chalk outline. But then again maybe not. There was face to be saved here, and when all was said and done he was the guy in charge, and crazy or not, Tennent had better understand that, and understand it good.
Henry was open-mouthed, looking from Joshua to Martell and back again, as though the secret of why a substantial portion of BC’s coal supply came to be stationary in the mouth of the upper Corkscrew Tunnel, lay in the air somewhere between them.
‘Want to get out and say hi to the rock?’ The conductor spat the words.
A pause.
‘Sure. After you, Wesley.’
The delay in the reply was deliberate, the tone of voice imitating Joshua. ‘After you, son.’
Joshua stood. It would get him. Of course it would. He would face it now, it would get him, and the thing would be done. Over.
It would be okay. Better than all those bad dreams, and the feeling in those dreams that someday the sunlit arch might not be enough to stop it. His eyes never leaving those of the conductor, he walked to the cab door behind his seat, pushed down the thin aluminium handle, and opened it. Cold air poured in like syrup.
‘Coming? Or are you scared, Wesley?’
Funny thing though, Wesley Martell was scared. He kept thinking about the rock. The living rock. Even though he knew the whole thing was bullshit, his stomach turned a loop at having to walk out that cab door and stand three feet from the craggy wall. But he was still more mad than scared, and if that crazy shit-for-brains hoghead thought he was going to back down now, then he ate loony flakes for breakfast.
‘Oh sure, Tennent. It’s tricklin’ down my legs and fillin’ my boots. But I’m right at your heels, boy.’
Joshua inhaled a lungful of warm cab air and stepped out onto the metal platform to face the rock. Martell was at his side immediately.
Joshua waited. The two men stood silently, their backs to the light of the window, staring at the icy stone. Nothing happened. Joshua closed his eyes. Nothing. The only sound was that of the massive diesel engine chugging beneath a sheath of steel. Martell felt the cold settle on him like a silk cloak.
Joshua opened his eyes, his breast heaving with a mixture of relief and dismay. Did he really imagine it last time? Was he crazy? He’d dreamed of this so many times in the last year, tossing and sweating in his bed as the nightmare darkness swept him away, and yet he knew there was nothing here but rock. He couldn’t ‘feel’ any sound at all.
He looked at Martell with naked contempt. ‘Happy?’
‘Pleased as a baby at the tit. I guess the livin’ rock ain’t home today.’
He squeezed another laugh out of that box of phlegm he stored somewhere under his shirt and kept laughing as they re-entered the cab, closed the door and returned to their chairs.
The throttle opened and the train made a series of metallic screeches of protest as it inched away. It was the deafening noise of the engine that prevented the three men hearing the other sound.
The sound of two six-foot-long icicles shattering as they splintered onto the metal platform where the conductor and engineer had stood.
Billy broke the laws of physics every time he yelled. How a holler that loud came to be emitted from such a tiny frame would have given Einstein pause to pull his moustache in thought.
‘It’s coming!’
Sam Hunt made a mock ear-trumpet with his hand and leaned towards his son. ‘Sorry? Didn’t get that.’
Billy’s small oval face looked up at Sam and broke into a grin. ‘Sure you did. Feel. It’s coming now.’
Sam bent into a crouch and laid a palm on the freezing rail. He could feel nothing, but Billy, they both knew, was the expert here.
‘Okay then. Bird or Queen this time?’
Billy was thoughtful. He turned the pale yellow dollar coin over in his mittened hand and made a decision. ‘I’m gonna go for the duck. You put yours Queen-up.’
He leaned forward and placed the dollar on top of the rail track as carefully as if he were handling a rod of plutonium. Sam, smiling, positioned his dollar a yard further up the track, the profile of the Queen of England facing the direction of the oncoming train like she knew what she was in for.
From here on the edge of town you could just make out the entrance of the tunnel, looming