I tried to control my breathing as I stepped toward the map on the wall. I already had an idea of what it was, and as I grew closer my suspicions seemed to be confirmed. A red circle intersected by a blue bar, and inside it, the word “Underground”. My eyes went to the colored lines snaking this way and that, looking for names for all the different stops along the various train routes the map seemed to be showing. I’d never been to London, but I felt sure I would recognize some names if they were there—but no. While there were little stubs off the main lines where stops would be, no words were there. No words were anywhere other than the one inside that blue bar, and...
My breath caught as I heard a noise from somewhere beyond the wall. Turning, I followed the wall to its edge, the white hallway curving and opening up to a larger area with ticket booths and turnstiles, all empty and silent in the dark. I shined my light all around but saw nothing that would have made that strange, shuffling noise. Fear was thick in my belly now, but I ignored it. I had a job to do, and if Andrea or some clue of what happened to her were down here, I needed to find it. Tightening my grip on the light, I pushed through one of the turnstiles, the metal arms easily turning with only the slightest rasp as I headed further in.
I went down more steps, and when I rounded the next corner, I just stared for several seconds. I couldn’t see everything from this vantage point, but I saw enough to know that I was somehow in a massive subway station. Platforms stretched out to a drop-off, and as I stepped closer I could see the rails of the track below. Further down the track there was a train, its silver body coldly reflecting my flashlight’s glow as it played across its dead face and vacant headlight eyes. I could just make out the lettering of a nameplate above the driver’s windshield—what I guessed was supposed to be the name of the line or destination.
Kaminsky.
How was any of this here? This place was huge. How much time and money would it have taken to build it underground, and why? Walking further down the platform, I saw the first changes to things. Where the upper level and ticket area had been pristine to the point of being sterile, the platform showed more signs of age and use the further down I went. The tiles went from white to a dirty grey, and the floor was thick with grimy footprints and bits of trash. In the distance, piled against a metal bench, was an enormous mound of black garbage bags packed tight and bulging, and a little beyond that the light just seemed to stop, as though it was hitting a wall of impenetrable black fog.
I spun around as I heard a new sound, and while I hadn’t noticed it before, I saw now that the train had one of its doors open. A high-pitched voice in my head warned me it was a trap, but I pushed it away. This whole place was some kind of trap, wasn’t it? And I was already in it. I needed to keep going, see it through, exhaust every avenue. Then when I got out of here, I could do what needed to be done.
Walking up to the train door, I shined my light inside while peering through the windows. It seemed empty enough, though I saw more patches of that black in there like existed at the far end of the platform. Sucking in a deep breath, I forced myself to go inside.
Seats lined the walls of the train car’s interior, divided by doors on both sides and windows above. There were places above the windows where various pictures and signs had been hung—I had the impression they were supposed to be ads, but they were all grey and oddly blurry, even when I drew close and tried to make out a discernable word or picture. Above the seats, hanging like strange fruit, cords ending in black balls dangled from the ceiling, presumably for standing passengers to hold onto when the train started forward or came to a stop.
Not that I thought this train had ever moved. Part of it was the quality of everything in that place, a sense of unreality that made it all feel like it was one thing disguised as another. It gave the station, the train, everything, an off-kilter, almost sneaky feeling that made my skin crawl. But even more than that was the fact that I couldn’t see if the train even continued past the far end of that car—as I walked down, I started to see more and more of that dense black stuff over everything, and before I reached what would have been the door to the next car, it just…stopped, fading into that blackness that my light wouldn’t breach and that I couldn’t quite make myself reach out and touch.
I felt a flash of anger at the panic I could feel growing in my chest. I’d just go check the driver’s compartment, leave the train, and then explore the rest of this place. I shined my light back out at the platform. The darkness was unnerving, but it was the damn noises and these odd patches of…whatever it was…that really set me on edge. I still thought someone might be in here with me, and if they were, so help me God they would…
I stopped, leaning toward the window as I stared out at the metal bench on the far wall of the platform. That…that had been where the mound of trash bags had been before. I knew it was. And now they were gone, as though they had just gotten up and walked away. I shined my light along the wall, making sure I wasn’t just looking at the wrong bench, but no. That was the one.
I stayed still for several moments, waiting for some sneaky noise or flicker of movement at the edge of my flashlight’s roving beam. But when there was nothing, I forced myself to turn back toward the front of the train and head toward the driver’s cab. I half-expected the door to it to be locked, but it wasn’t, and the door slid aside easily. Shining the light ahead of me, I stopped mid-step. Most of the driver’s compartment was covered in the same darkness that was at the far end of the train car. Retreating, I went to move outside when I saw a scrap of paper laying on one of the seats near the door. I would have sworn it hadn’t been there before, and unlike much of the trash outside, this piece was neatly folded in half, only its rough outer edge betraying that it had been torn from a larger page. Heart pounding, I reached down and picked it up. The paper was thick and felt greasy in my hand, my sweaty fingers staining it as I fumbled it open one-handed and read what was written there in the short, harsh strokes of a black pen.
My father wasn’t a scientist, but he was a smart man. He spent his life growing things, and I remember him telling me that the most important thing about growing was how you treated the seed. How you store it, how you plant it. What soil you put it in. What you feed it. He said that you aren’t just nurturing the seed, but the tree it will become and the fruit it will bear. If only he could see the fruits of…
The sentence ended at the edge of the ragged page. Frowning, I started to reread it when I sensed more than saw motion at the edge of my vision. Lifting my light, I shined it out through the doorway to the platform beyond.
Outside, a figure stood watching me. Its shape was misshapen and bulbous, the black trash bags that made up its arms and legs, its massive torso and comparatively small head, all shivering and shuddering as something underneath its plastic skin shifted uneasily. Instinctively I pointed the light up to look for a face, some sign that this was a person, that this was all still just a bet, a fucking game.
The plastic there was featureless as well, but as I watched, a small opening appeared in its surface. Grey sludge poured from the hole like drool, sliding down the pulsating chest of the trash golem even as something else began to explore the ragged mouth above. Thin red worms began poking out from the inner dark of the head, waving like bloody tongues crowding each other for a taste of the dead air. At first there was only a few, but in moments there were dozens, some over a foot long and none of them fully out of the bag that held them.
Assuming they were worms, of course, and not that it mattered. None of this could be happening, but my mind didn’t care about luxuries like reality or rational thought at the moment. It cared only about survival, and whatever that thing was, what it represented was horribly clear.
Death.
My first impulse was to run out the door and try to get past it, run up to the door and bang on it to be let out. Maybe it was slow, or it couldn’t move at all to chase me. Those hopeful thoughts died as it took its first steps forward.
It wasn’t running, but moved toward the open door with a quick and steady gait that spoke of greater speed and agility when it was needed. Each lurching step was heavy and squelching, the rustle of whatever lay beneath those bags growing louder as it grew near. I looked at both ends of the car, but nothing had changed. They both terminated in unknown and terrible darkness that I was afraid to touch, and I could see no way to close the open door either. I really was trapped and it was only a dozen steps away from the door now and…I suddenly turned toward the door on the other side. Maybe if I couldn’t close the one door, I could open the other. I thrust my fingers into the rubber seam between the two door panels and yanked at it savagely. At first, it barely moved, but I braced my foot against a nearby seat and pulled harder. I could hear the thing outside the door, starting to push itself inside with me, and my heart felt like it would burst in my chest if I didn’t get away from it. I couldn’t let it touch me, I couldn’t…
The third frantic pull opened a bigger gap and I shoved myself through it, my left shoe raking off my foot as I cleared the door and fell against the curved far wall of the station tunnel. Grunting in pain as I tumbled to the ground below, I sucked in a breath and grabbed up my flashlight before forcing myself to my feet. It would be fully in the train car now, and if I didn’t get away from the door it might…
But it was gone. There was no sign of it at the partially opened door or through the windows of the car. Where had it gone? I started forward, slow and limping, my breath ragged as I shined my light ahead, below, above. I was making my way around the front of the train when my flashlight flickered once, twice, and then died.
“Marie? Whereeee’s my…Marie?”
The voice was barely a whisper, but in the utter black the thick, wet-sounding words seemed to pour down across me like a flood. Pour down on me from some…where…up…
The thing hit me all at once, driving me to the ground. Wet slickness slimed against my cheek even as small tendrils began pushing their way into my ears, my nostrils, my mouth. I heard another gasp of noise that might have been “Marie” and then the gunshot pop of the bags splitting in half a dozen places as something poured out hungrily across my back and legs. I was trying to scream, but my mouth was full of writhing fingers pulling themselves down my throat. I felt the questing tongues going under my clothes, invading every crevice, every orifice, and I knew I was about to die. But that was fine. Anything would be better than this.
Then I felt something shift behind my eyes, and I began to fall.
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Credits
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