He glanced at his watch and started the last leg of the patrol.

Sykes Road split from Croglin Way before it reached Isherwood, directly across from the “Welcome” sign, and cut to the west. It rolled through farm and field for the first mile and forest for the second. But it was the next stretch that was popular. Especially at night.

They called it the Tunnel. It was almost a mile of poplar and dogwood and oak and elm that crept right to the edge of the ill-maintained pavement and reached out over it with groping limbs. Those limbs in turn formed a canopy so dense that even in losing their leaves they still held the light at bay and kept the roadway in a perpetual gloom. Daylight there was spooky enough; riding into the Tunnel was like entering some nether realm, haunted and surreal. Children were fond of riding their bikes out there. It was a test, actually, to see who could stay there the longest before their imaginations went too wild. Before the wind became a man’s voice, crying for help, before the looming trees took on human form and began to uproot themselves to give chase. Bicycles left the Tunnel much faster than they entered, but their pale riders would conquer their fears long before they reached town and already begin planning their next trip out there.

Bean mounted the next rise and the Tunnel came into view, at least what he could see of it. In the dark it was amorphous, an amoebic void blacker than the night around it. It swallowed Sykes Road whole and refused to spit it out. As he drove toward its gaping maw his mind conjured images of a great cave or, worse yet, a monstrous serpent, and then he was past the jaws and into its throat, leaving the starlight behind. It was in that instant before his eyes had time to adjust to the gloom, when his headlights were the only lights in the whole world, that he felt a communal twang of panic. Afraid of the dark. He could never be completely free of it. No one could.