Half a Tangerine (Part 1)

In full moonlight the towpath was easy enough to trace, but it was a stumbling gait that moved him unsteadily forward in the warm afterglow of ale and whisky. At his back the faint sound of a final song could be heard, the raspy voice joined by the regular diehards and then the half-shout of a familiar chorus that turned to laughter. He paused by the low bridge, his fingers unconsciously tracing the worn grooves cut years before by the towing ropes. Confused, he thought he caught the low murmur of drums, a rising thud and echo, but it was just the heavy beat of his heart in his throat and ears after a hundred yards of toil.

"Christ." 

He smiled, but eased the pace all the same and soon found his footfall the only company to the flat water and fields. Oddingley Church rang out the hour ahead and he could hear cattle in the field blindly stamping and snorting. He let his mind wander...

She was nearly as drunk as he was, blocking his path to the Gents, mouthing something he could not hear over the noise of the bar behind. He leaned closer.

"I'm sorry, what was that?" 

"...don't fight it...if it comes...remember...he'll see you there."

She'd touched his face and then just wandered away, back to a group at a table he didn't know, chatting easily and sipping a drink, but not looking back. Once inside the toilet, he leaned his forehead on the graffiti above the steam of his ablutions and enjoyed its coolness. He tried to place her, but his brain was dulled now and so instead he hummed along to the muffled song. The floor was surprisingly dry for so late in the evening, some Fridays you needed waders in here. At the sinks to his right a couple of lads were shoving each other and laughing, their hands full with urinal cake. 

"You first fucker!" 
"A tenner says..." 

He didn't know what a tenner said, the roar from the crowd greeted a favourite song and he made his way out and to the bar. He looked for her, looked over for her friends, but they'd been replaced and he spent time scanning the room for her black hair. He couldn't remember the colour of her top though - was it green or grey, an orange logo? Never mind. He squeezed an elbow on to the counter and managed to order whisky and beer between shoulder blades - just one more for the road...

"Shit!" He staggered and swore, falling to his knees, a tree root or rock again. The moon had left him and he searched without hope in his pockets for the torch that lay on the formica table in his kitchen. A fish startled him. Or maybe a rat or otter. Or maybe he startled it. 

It was a funny thing to say though when you think about it, drunk or not and she'd been sincere enough - held his gaze. She wasn't beautiful - he was no oil painting either, that was for sure - but she had been once. "We were all beautiful once", his Mam used to say, "even if we didn't know it." He touched his cheek where her hand had rested briefly. He would have liked to ask her name...

He stopped suddenly. A low whistle filled the silence and then reeds shifted too heavily to his left hand side. Was that footsteps? Cows often strayed on the towpath here and he'd stumbled into them more than once over the years, but it sounded nothing like the wandering ruminants he’d come across before. To his surprise he found he could not move - fear clamping his knees fast, shivering with the sensation and not believing it - but half enjoying it all the same.

The long path through Black Monk's Tunnel was just up ahead. He'd been trying blank it out, as he always did on this same journey. Another whistle sounded then, followed by a scraping sound on brick or stone and then another low whistle. Again. Then again.

"Who's there?" His voice echoed back and he realised he was closer to the tunnel entrance than he'd first thought. "Hello?" 

The moon reappeared. He could see the path bend just in front of him and then disappear into blackness. He knew what the sign said:

Black Monk's Tunnel, Built 1823. 530 yards long. Reduced headroom. Mind your footing.

He listened, waited for the thump of his pulse to leave his ears, leaned against the sign to stop the swaying. There was movement in the water by the far bank, ducks or moorhens; a train thundering some distance away, but nothing more than that. 

He knew the history - the countless drownings here, tunnel collapses and navvies trapped and suffocated; long before that a monastery sited on the hillside above, burned to the ground, the monks slaughtered, their charred remains discovered days after when the carrion had had their fill. The macabre name given to the tunnel because of a ghostly legend said to wander hereabouts, and seen by many. He'd never tried to go through without a torch before, and even with one, the darkness always seemed to drain the light in there, to suck it up greedily, as though it wasn't enough to hold it back - the air, foul too within the first few feet, was acrid at the heart. He'd been caught out many times by the cloying chill in short sleeves on summer nights. Always easier with company, although the stride in was never longer than the stride out - alone or not. 

It was a long way round though, over fields, treading into who knew what. He wanted his bed and his cocoa, and after all, he was an adult and an atheist. It was probably just kids messing about, or more likely some innocent beast startled by a stumbling drunk. And anyway, those excellent chaps of the BWA had installed a lovely safety railing years before, so idiots like him could avoid a deadly soak after too much beer.

"Fuck it."