Original Nosleep | Collection #1 - In the Tunnels (Patreon)

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I grew up in is a small rural town. It had a sort of quaint charm to it, the Main Street was lined with old buildings that had been renovate

I grew up in is a small rural town. It had a sort of quaint charm to it, the Main Street was lined with old buildings that had been renovated into shops. My favorite was always the family-run takeaway shop on the corner and the bakery, which had the Best apple pies. But there were also more essential structures like a post office, grocery store, gas station, pub and a central town hall. Past that there was the school, which was small and underfunded, and then rows of houses that gradually faded into farms with rolling hills lush with newly sewn crops.

As a child I greatly enjoyed roaming the streets, it was naturally a safe town and the idea that a kid could get snatched wasn’t even considered. The cautionary warnings we were told included, ‘Stay away from the creepy old man on the corner.’ and ‘Don’t go in the tunnels.’. Which essentially gave my friends and I free rein as long as we were home in time for dinner, and trust me, we were always home for dinner since being late meant we went to bed without.

Now I suppose I should tell you a little more about the tunnels. You see, since we lived in a high rainfall area the storm drains around the town were huge and old. This meant that in the streets they were your basic grated storm drains crusted with rust, however where they let out a little ways out of town they were basically giant round holes in the side of cement blocks that you could easily climb into. There were stories of other kids going into them and getting lost in the supposed labyrinth of underground tunnels, never to be seen again, which is why our parents didn’t want us going into them.

Sadly my friends and I were not graced with common sense or ears that listened to our parents warnings, which is why on one fine spring day all five of us, Brody, Paul, Brian, Matt and myself decided that we were going to be the ones to explore the tunnels. We decided that we would go on Saturday after lunch. Fancying ourselves to be professionals, we planned to ride our bicycles to a set of drain outlets we’d found out past the school and bring with us flashlights, rope/string, walkie talkies, water bottles and snacks.

I was the first to arrive, and throwing my bike to the ground, I ran to look into the tunnel as if I thought glaring into the darkness would make my friends arrive faster. While I waited a light breeze rippled across the grass and a cloud blew into the path of the sun. This sent a chill down my spine, I suddenly felt watched, and as I stared into the abyss of the tunnel I couldn’t help but wonder if there was Something in there staring back at me…

My trance was broken as a hand slapped down hard on my shoulder, startling me enough that I flinched and earned a round of howling laughter from my friends, “Not scared are you~?” Brian taunted.

To which I just muttered a flat, “Whatever, loser.” In response.

Brian was the cocky one of the group, always with a shit-eating grin plastered on his face and something witty to say. He certainly kept us on our toes. Meanwhile, his twin Paul was much more reasonable, the level-headed one of the group. He kept us all in line.

Matt was the next to arrive, his red hair unmistakable even from a distance and with his arrival he brought an excited energy. He was rearing to go onward to another adventure, it had been his idea in the first place to explore the tunnels, the kid was fearless. Following him shortly was Brody who was, as usual, the last to arrive. Sweaty and dishevelled he threw his bike down and began to fervently list off his excuses for being late while we just rolled our eyes and generally ignored what he was actually saying to tell him instead, “Ahah, yeah, sure you were chased by dogs, And hit by a car AND caught in a freak storm.” - p*ssed him off to no end, but we were at least entertained.

With everyone present and once we had settled we ran back through our plan of action. It was decided that since Brody was the last to arrive, he would be the one to stand watch outside the entrance while the rest of us went into the tunnels. The idea was that all four of us would go in together and as we came across forks in the road, Paul and I, as team one, would take one direction. Leaving Brian and Matt, as team two, to take the other.

To stop ourselves from getting lost we tied strings to ourselves and it would also be Brody’s job to keep the reels of thread moving freely. From there we synchronized our watches and radios, turned on our flashlights and were ready to go.

We entered the drainage pipe one at a time crawling on our hands and knees, positively giddy with excitement. I really don’t even remember what we were hoping to find? Anyway, I’m not going to lie; crawling along with a flashlight in one hand and a walkie-talkie in the other wasn’t exactly as easy as we’d anticipated, but none of us complained. The novelty began to wear off as we got to a point where we’d turned a corner and could no longer see daylight shining in.

The change in mood was near instantaneous; our light joking dropped off, the pace slowed, and everyone got quieter. It was as if the darkness suddenly became truly dark, and it sent a ripple of unease through us. When we reached our first crossroad, there was hesitance to split up, though none of us said it; we didn’t really want to anymore. Hell, I think we barely even wanted to continue at all. It was a gut feeling we should have listened to, but like the foolish kids we were, we pressed onward, splitting into two groups as planned so we wouldn’t get called pussies.

Brian and Matt took the right tunnel while Paul and I took the left. For a little while we could hear the sound of them shuffling along and looking back we could see intermittent flashes of light from their torches but after some time we were completely alone. “This isn’t creepy at all.” Paul commented sarcastically as we crawled along. “Oh yeah, walk in the park.” I agreed with equal enthusiasm when ahead of me he stopped.

“There’s a drop off here.” He informed me. “Is it far?” I inquired. “Doesn’t look like it, there’s a ladder down there, but there’s water.” He relaid the information as he scanned the area below with his flashlight, “I”m going to climb down and see how deep it is, hold the light on me.” He instructed. “Alright. Careful.” I agreed, taking the time to shuffle up so that I could hold the torches on him as he shimmied down the service ladder.

As Paul climbed down the ladder carefully I was able to crawl forward to look into the new area. Ahead I could see that before us was a large compartment with an opening at the other end, there were tide marks up the concrete walls indicating that the chamber flooded sometimes and the different levels at which the water had reached. The water that in there at the current however was an expanse of stagnant inky black liquid, the surface perfectly unnaturally still with not even so much as a breath of wind to disturb it.

I found myself shining the light directly down into the water in an attempt to see the bottom, but under the light’s focus I could see that the water was actually a murky brown and that there wasn’t anyway I’d be able to see the bottom through it. Distracted by my thoughts I lost my grip on one the the flashlights and it fell into the water with a hard splash before going out, and at the same time, caused Paul to lose his grip as he slipped on the last rung and crashed into the water shortly after the flashlight.

There was a moment of panicked shouting and general confusing before I regained enough to shine the remaining light down to where Paul was now standing, drenched, and waist deep in water, “Are you stupid!? What’d you do that for!” He yelled angrily at me as I babbled out a weak excuse of being distracted and clumsy. “Sorry, it just slipped out of my hand.. At least we know how deep the water is.” I tried. “Whatever, great. It stinks you know. Hurry up and get down here.” He growled still annoyed as he pushed his hair back out his face.

He wasn’t wrong about the smell, the water was clearly rotting or something, and it was cold too as I discovered when I joined him. We didn’t say much else to each other as we made our way through the water towards the other side, awkwardly holding our hands and equipment up out the foul smelling liquid as we did. There was something profoundly unsettling about wading through stinky water in the dim of only a single flashlight, more than once I psyched myself out believing that something had brushed past my legs and subtly hurried to keep up with Paul.

We had almost made it across when Paul stopped, holding his hand up for me to be quiet as I opened my mouth to ask what was wrong. That’s when we heard it. A long, low pitched wail. It wasn’t like anything I had ever heard, it was inhuman and echoed through the tunnels to reverberate around the chamber making it impossible to tell the direction from which it came. “What was that?” I whispered to Paul. “I don’t know.” He answered quietly. I imagine the look of fear on his face mirrored my own, neither of us had any idea what it was.

“Do you think it’s Brian and Matt messing with us?” I asked trying to rationalize. “..Yeah.. I mean, yeah.” Paul agreed, with a relieved nod, “Let’s just get out of this water and see what’s on the other side, then we can go back.” “Okay, yeah.” I agreed easily, I didn’t want to say that I actually wanted to turn around on the spot and leave. However we made it to the other side much more quickly with adrenaline fueling our progress, and once there wasted no time in climbing out of the putrid water.

It was also fortunate for us that when we reached the top of the ladder the new tunnel was large enough for us to actually walk through instead of crawl. This filled us with renewed courage and we pressed on for sometime more. By then we had no idea how deep in the tunnels we were and checking our watches proved pointless as they had both stopped working after our water crossing, this made me anxious. It felt as though we’d been traveling for a long time and I wanted to turn back, so I was relieved when Paul suggested just that.

With both of us in agreement we turned back to follow our string trails out, however we didn’t get very far before we heard, or at least thought we heard, the faint found of screaming..? It sounded as though someone were screaming or help and the sound of their voice as only ever so lightly being carried to us. “Did you hear that..?” I questioned uncertain. “Yeah.” Paul answered now alert and focusing on the direction we thought it had come from.

“Should we call through?” I asked and with a nod form Paul took one of our walkie talkies to try and call Brian and Matt. Tense seconds passed with no answer before we heard the shout again and this time Paul took off running, “That’s Brian!” He told me briefly as I scrambled to keep up. He had the flashlight and I found myself following it’s light more than the movement of his body. As we drew nearer we could hear with more clarity that it was indeed Brian screaming for help, his tone getting more and more desperate with each passing moment causing Paul to run even faster.

I soon found myself struggling to keep up, Paul was always so much faster and his determination to help his brother was propelling him with more vigor than usual. At first he was only a little ahead, then slightly further and finally I was running after only the brief glimpses of light ahead of me before they disappeared altogether. When this happened, I finally stopped. The sound of my own breath and the blood rushing though my ears was nauseating. I couldn’t even find the breath to call after him so I merely stumbled along blindly through the darkness in the general direction he had last been In.

To my relief I managed to catch sight of the glow of lights ahead after only a few moments, it seemed Paul must’ve stopped running, so I guessed he’d found Brian. I slowed my pace and moved to continue towards the light but something told me not to, my body suddenly wouldn’t move. There was a wet crunching sound resonating though the tunnel back to me and I realised that Brian had stopped screaming.. My heart began to race all over again, what was that sound? Where had Paul gone? I thought to myself.

Summoning all the courage I had left I tiptoed forward silently. A morbid part of me wanted to know what was going on, while the more sensible part of me didn’t want to find out. I reached the corner and stopped, all I needed to do was turn it to see, but I couldn’t. Instead I stood frozen, I could hear a soft whimpering and the wet crack of bones accompanied by the velvety tearing of flesh that was unmistakable. Steeling myself I crouched down with my heart in my throat and slowly began to peek around the corner.

What I saw next is something that will stay with me forever.. The scene was illuminated by flashlights abandoned on the floor and contained within the expanse of cement hallway, the first thing that caught my eye however was the mangled remains of a person hanging from the ceiling. It looked as though his own bones had been broken in his arms and legs and used to anchor him in place, his insides where hanging loosely down dripping coagulating blood onto the floor from his exposed rib bones. The face was mangled beyond recognition, but I could tell this unfortunate was Matt from the tuffs of red hair still visible on what remained of his scalp.

On the ground was Paul, standing over him was Something. It was crouched, it’s knees bent upward besides it’s face in the same way a humans would if someone was squatting awkwardly. It had four arms, long and spindly as they were, it was using two to hold Paul down while the other two were digging into his chest before bringing chunks of flesh to it’s mouth and chewing in relish. Paul’s eyes were rolled back in their sockets lifelessly and I knew he was gone.. But that’s when I noticed Brian..

He was slumped away just past the creature, he was looking at me and mouthing the words ‘Help me’ repeatedly. Tears streamed down his face but one look at him told me there was no way he’d be able to walk let alone run on his own.. I shook my head at him helplessly and he wailed in pure terrified desperation, something that regained him the creature’s attention and it turned back to him. He screamed in panic but the sound was now no more than a gargling mess that erupted from his damaged throat.

I couldn’t’ watch any longer and shakily turned back to return the way I’d come.. I crawled with agonising slowness to remain silent through pitch black darkness, guided only by the rope tethered to my waist for hours and hours. By the time I finally crawled back out it was dark and the area was bathed in the red and blue lights of police. For the last part of my journey it had actually been their voices through blow horns that had guided me..

I was the only one that made it out that day, Matt’s and Paul’s bodies were washed out of the tunnels with the next flood. The damage to them was attributed to falling and being tumbled about in the flood waters while Brian’s body was never recovered.. No one believed me when I told them what had happened. I was sent to a shrink for years after, I think that everyone was expecting that some day I’d change my story but that’s the truth of what happened.

Brody did believe me, but we lost touch. Or more rather he avoided me, he had heard the screams from outside the tunnel and run to get help after tying our life lines to a nearby tree. He briefly and quietly mentioned to me only once that he had seen something moving in the tunnels not too long after we had gone in. He assumed it was us, and although the way its eyes glowed back white in the darkness made him uneasy, he never radioed back what he saw through to us, just as he never mentioned this to the cops or to anyone but myself. I think he blames himself just as much as I blame myself. Or maybe he’s not telling me the whole truth..

Either way, it’s been years now. I only thought to write this out because I recently returned home to visit my parents, the town was just the same as ever.. Only that storm drains are now inaccessible, I saw them installing massive metal grates to stop kids going down them. Apparently, another group of kids disappeared in those tunnels a week before I returned; authorities say they’re still hopeful of finding them. They won’t.

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