Росс Макдональд: Dark Tunnel

In the nightmare sequence of events that had seemed to grow out of each other, meaninglessly and malignantly, like cancer cells, I saw the push of giant uncontrollable forces on weak men, the waste of breakable wills and stout fragile bodies fractured in the clash of continents. But underneath the tired, cold impersonality of my vision I mourned for Alec Judd. I yearned steadily to plant the Schneider seed six feet deep.

When the sun’s rays came straight through the opening at the bottom of the blind and lay horizontally across the room, a nurse brought me dinner. It was a good dinner, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding and mashed potatoes and gravy and a quarter of a lemon pie. I ate it with my left hand, watching the window. My right hand held the gun under the sheet.

The sun faded out of the room and darkness seeped in slowly. I was glad that night was falling. I was more likely to have a visitor at night and I was lonely for someone to shoot.

The nurse came in and took away my tray. It was so dark I could barely see her face. The door opened and I could see a man’s head and shoulders black against the light from the hall.

“Don’t shoot,” Sandiman said. “How’s it going?”

“Fine. The dinner was excellent.”

“I’ll tell the dietitian. Well, see you later.”

“No sign of Schneider?”

“No.” He closed the door.

Now I could see only the dim outlines of the room, the walls which seemed more distant than before, the pale ridge my legs made under the sheet, the dark roses beside the window. I lay and watched the black mass of the roses, red in the sun and black at night like blood, rich and delicate to the touch like a loved woman, drowsy and dark like sleep and death. The rich, dark cloud of roses expanded and engulfed the room and the whole night.

I opened my eyes with a start and saw her standing in the room, a blurred figure glimmering faintly in the darkness by the window. No, it was a nurse. I could see her white uniform and cap. I must have been asleep. Thank God, he hadn’t come when I was asleep.

I realized that he could have. The nurse was there by the window and I hadn’t heard her enter. She seemed to be raising the shade.

“Leave it down,” I said.

I could feel her start, but she said nothing for a moment. Then she said, “All right,” and drew the shade.

Her low voice echoed in my mind. I closed my hand on the revolver under the sheet but there was no feeling in my fingers. I had been half-lying on my arm and it was asleep.

As I reached for the gun with my left hand, the white blur slipped towards me and I saw the gleam of a face and the white shadow of an arm stretched out. In the split-second it took me to throw off the sheet I thought of several things: the evil whiteness of Melville’s whale, the whiteness of sunless plants, the white bandaged head that had been on my pillow, the white look of death, and the bundle of caps and uniforms which the nurse had left in the room where Vlathek had been.

I caught the hand as it descended and tore the sandbag out of it. It wrenched free and took my throat. I drew my right knee to my chin and kicked out against the silent thing above me. It staggered back across the room, jumped up before I could free my other leg from the sheet, and crashed through the blind out the window.

The gun was lost on the floor but I felt life in my right hand again. I dived out the open window through the wreckage of the blind and landed on all fours on the ground. There were shouts from somewhere and I saw the white shape streaking across the lawn towards the trees at the edge. I went after it.

Before he reached the trees, Nurse Schneider fell over his skirts and I jumped him with my knees in the small of his back. He twisted over and I caught a glimpse of his pale contorted face before his heel came into my stomach and sprawled me backwards on the grass.

I got up fighting for air and saw him crouched with his right hand under his starched skirt tugging at something. The hand came out with a black gun he had given birth to.

I heard men’s voices and the sound of running feet somewhere behind me. He started to back away into the shadow of the trees and I walked towards him against my will faster than he retreated. The gun flashed and coughed.

I felt a freezing blow in the right thigh where the bullet struck but I got him by the wrist with my left hand and forced down the gun. His other hand tore my face but I kept hold of the twisting wrist. I circled his arm with my right arm and grasped my left wrist with my right hand and lifted.

The tendons in his shoulder tore softly like damp cardboard, and the gun dropped to the ground and lay impotent. He screamed on a high monotone and bit my arm. I let go of him with my right hand and hit him on the temple with all the will left in my body. He fell forward into the grass with his face turned sideways.

The ground shook under heavy feet and Sergeant Cummings came up beside me with a late gun in his hand. He turned a flashlight on the quiet face and said:

“It’s him.”

I said, “Yes,” between gulps of air.

Above the dark-headed trees the stars began to waver and flare like torches at a celebration a long way off and I sat down in the grass because my right leg was made of rubber. My mind flew out like smoke in empty space and I rode a vertical wind through moving stars like fields of arcing fireflies. The earth was a small, forgotten thing, a withered apple for which black ants and red ants fought together. The diastole of exhaustion ended and the systole of unconsciousness closed on my head, narrowing the universe to a warm, dry tunnel where I ran lightly and easily in the friendly darkness. The terrible things had died in the dark behind. At the end of the tunnel Ruth was waiting with hair bright as sunlight and no sword in her hand.