The Tunnel (2)

Last year, when I was 14, two of my friends and I used to walk down to 'The Tunnel' every weekend. The tunnel is in the middle of the bush; it used to be a train tunnel. When it was first being built, it had fallen down, killing the workers. They are buried under a large rock across the road from my house.

The first time I walked there with my two friends, we got a creepy feeling as we approached the dark entrance (the tunnel is bent in the middle, so you can't see one end from the other). Of all the graffiti on the walls, we were drawn to one, which said 'Rest in peace b**ch' in red paint. When we looked at it, the walls seemed to quiver and sway, wriggling like a million cockroaches. Everything darkened, illuminating the words, which stood out bigger than before, in blood red. Looking away dizzily, the darkness faded and the walls settled. When we touched the walls we got a vision of the tunnel crumbling and men with dirty faces trying to escape the falling concrete. An indented archway in the wall has the words 'gate to hell' in red paint. Touching the words, we felt something crawling over our hands, like hundreds of claws, a sensation of falling and our hand seemed to sink into the wall, we had to pull each other out of it.

One night I dreamt I was at the tunnel at night, and was standing in front of the gate to hell. The concrete wall opened up, and I saw a human silhouette with horns, surrounded with fire. The next day I went to school and said to my friend that I had a weird dream. Before I could describe it to her, she told me of HER weird dream, which was exactly the same as mine! That weekend, I walked there with one friend; and on the whole walk there (about a half hour) we kept seeing a black dog following us in the corner of our eye, and hearing its footsteps on the dead grass. When we turned around there would be nothing there. At one point we both heard the sound of a woman crying, and I got the vision of a woman crouching in the bush, hugging two small children, crying. Ten minutes later, we both froze at the same moment. My friend had seen something white moving down in the gully to the right; I had seen a black creature rolling down the dusty hill to the left. Not long after that, the ferns beside the path started rustling. Something was under the huge thick blanket of leaves. Something about two metres long, and it was moving closer! We started running, a feeling of dread following us.

I still go there. Something strange always happens. I usually bring my dog. She won't take a step into the tunnel. if I drag her in, she howls and whimpers and shivers, she can't wait to leave. Smart dog!