No one remembers when they built the Beyoungo Tunnel. It’s just always been there — carved through the low mountain between the old industrial district and the northern suburbs. A single lane each way, concrete ribs streaked with grime, yellow sodium lamps that flicker like tired eyes. It’s only two miles long according to the city’s plans, but ask anyone who’s driven it and they’ll swear it feels farther every time.

It starts as a faint unease — the kind that makes you glance at the odometer, certain you’ve already covered this stretch. The same pattern of leaks on the wall. The same graffiti: **KEEP LEFT** in dripping white spray paint. The same abandoned emergency phone with its handset hanging loose, swinging slightly though there’s no draft. You check the clock, and it’s somehow ten minutes later than it should be.

People laugh it off as road hypnosis. A psychological trick. But truckers whisper otherwise. They say the tunnel doesn’t stay the same size twice. That some nights, the radio goes to static halfway through and doesn’t return until you see daylight again—if you ever do.

The first story that made the news came from a city bus driver named Hollins. He claimed that while driving the midnight route, he entered Beyoungo Tunnel at 12:02 a.m. with a full set of passengers. Halfway through, his headlights dimmed. The tunnel lights went out, one by one, swallowed in the dark ahead. When they came back on, every seat behind him was empty. He drove the rest of the way trembling, hands locked on the wheel, and burst out into the dawn light at 6:30. His supervisor told him the route was only scheduled for twenty minutes.

The footage from the dash camera showed something stranger: six hours of video, but the tunnel’s shape never changed. No curves, no slopes. Just a straight corridor of gray walls repeating endlessly, the same twenty meters over and over again.

The department confiscated the tape. Hollins quit the next day. The bus was later scrapped for “mechanical corrosion,” though it had been new that year.

Since then, the stories have spread. A cyclist who swore he rode all night without reaching the midpoint sign. A delivery driver who found his fuel gauge rising instead of falling. A couple who entered during a storm and emerged fifty miles north with a car full of seawater.

I drove it myself once, before I believed any of it. I was coming back from a late shift, half-asleep, the road slick with rain. My GPS marked 2.1 miles. The tunnel sign read the same. I turned on the radio—AM fuzz, no stations. The lights overhead buzzed in uneven rhythm, like heartbeats too far apart. After what felt like ten minutes, I glanced at the GPS again. 3.4 miles. No exits, no side roads, no sense of movement except the vibration under my tires.

Then came the smell—wet earth, deeper than concrete should smell, like freshly dug soil after lightning. The air felt heavy. I rolled down the window; the noise that came in wasn’t echo, wasn’t wind. It was whispering—thousands of faint voices overlapping, syllables breaking into static.

I slowed to thirty. My headlights caught a shape on the wall: a handprint in black soot, smeared downward. Another beside it. Dozens, forming a trail like a climb that had gone the wrong direction. I kept driving, too afraid to stop.

After another eternity, I saw the end ahead—a bright circle, pale daylight. Relief hit so hard I nearly laughed. But the circle didn’t get bigger. The closer I got, the smaller it seemed, like a coin held at arm’s length. The radio crackled once, and a voice identical to mine said, *keep left.*

The car jerked. My wheel brushed the divider. I blinked—and suddenly the exit was there. I burst out into clean sunlight and slammed the brakes. My watch said 4:43 a.m. The tunnel sign behind me said **Beyoungo 1.9 MI.** My fuel tank was still full.

When I told friends, they shrugged it off. Maybe I’d nodded off. Maybe I’d missed a turn. Except every photo I took inside the tunnel shows the same section—same cracks, same stains—even though I drove miles of it.

Two weeks later, the city closed Beyoungo Tunnel “for maintenance.” The notice didn’t list a date for reopening. Satellite maps still show it, but there’s no live view. Truckers say the detour signs keep changing direction. Some nights, if you drive the back roads, you can still see headlights sliding into the dark where the entrance used to be.

The rumors have deepened since the closure. People say it’s not a tunnel at all, but a wound. That every city has one—some kind of opening where time and distance collapse into hunger. A place that measures you while you measure it. The longer you’re inside, the longer it becomes, until you both forget what ends are for.

The city denies everything, of course. But on quiet nights, when fog sits low and the streetlights flicker yellow, I still see a faint glow on the hillside where the entrance was. It pulses once every few seconds—slow, steady, like something buried alive trying to breathe.

And sometimes, when I drive late, the radio loses signal for exactly two minutes.  

In the static, a voice whispers, *keep left.*  

And when I glance in the rearview mirror, the road behind me looks a little longer than it should.