“Ta-da!” Mack declared.
The gap was barely big enough to fit a small child through, never mind a fully-grown man. The extra weight he’d packed on over the last few months wasn’t going to help; the result of all that takeaway food he’d grabbed instead of going through the lonely process of cooking for one while Abby stayed at David’s side in the hospital.
“If I try to squeeze under there, you’re going to end up making a call to the fire department to have me cut out.”
Mack rolled his eyes. “Don’t be such a drama queen.”
Still on his hands and knees, Mack twisted around so he faced away from the railings. The older man shuffled backwards and his feet went through the gap, his legs following. He paused for a moment while he squeezed his butt beneath the railings, but then lifted his hands above his head, pressing his shoulder blades together, and slid the rest of the way through, dropping the eight feet or so to the gully floor.
“See,” Mack called up to him with a grin. “Easy!”
“Fine,” Tom said, reluctantly getting to his hands and knees. He’d never get through the hole—he was much fatter than Mack. He almost wanted to get stuck; at least being wedged in a hole would give him an excuse to forget the whole thing and go back to the hospital.
“If I get stuck, don’t you dare desert me!”
“Scout’s honour,” Mack said, raising two fingers to his forehead.
“If you were a scout, I was a girl guide,” Tom muttered.
He started to edge backwards. His feet and calves slid through easily, but, as soon as the railings reached his thighs, the squeeze grew tighter. Still, he kept going. The bottom of the railings poked painfully into the flesh of his backside. Thank God for his jeans—anything thinner surely would have ripped by now, leaving him exposed and humiliated.
Tom’s shoulders hit the railings. They were the widest part of his body and he reached above his head, trying to narrow his frame, his fingertips still holding onto his bag, not wanted to leave his things behind. He realised he should have thrown the bag down after Mack. He almost shook his head at his own idiocy, but decided this wasn’t the best moment for self-reprisals.
Tom now dangled down the embankment, wedged in around his shoulders. He was no longer holding onto anything and it hurt like hell.
“Can’t you help?” he called down to Mack, not liking the high-pitched tone of his voice.
Hands wrapped around his ankles and an irrational fear that the hands didn’t belong to Mack gripped him. For a moment, some other creature—the monster from his childhood nightmares, the thing that lived under his bed—had grabbed him.
The hands pulled and then the only thing Tom knew was the pain shooting through his back and shoulders. Surely he was going to be flayed from the shoulders up. Then a clod of earth gave beneath him and he half-fell, half-slid down the rest of the way.
Mack stepped out of the way and Tom landed heavily, jarring his ankle. His bag followed, thumping him painfully on the arm.
“Thanks for catching me,” he grumbled, getting to his feet. He hopped a little on his sore ankle, testing out his injury before trusting to put any weight on the leg. It was a little tender, but he hadn’t broken anything.
“Anytime,” Mack said, laughter behind his voice.
Fronds of ivy hung down over the entrance to the tunnel and thick blackberry bushes grew up from the ground, the thorns a natural warning to trespassers to keep out. The remains of a fire—stones arranged in a circle, the ground grey with ash—sat in front of the entrance. Old plastic cider bottles with the labels long gone, littered nearby.
Tom nodded at the mess. “Remnants of your lot?”
Mack shrugged. “Possibly, but more likely just kids looking for a place to get wasted. Most of the Underlife wouldn’t want to be this close to the surface and some of the gangs who live between, well, let’s just say there would be the remains of much harder stuff.”
Tom shivered and he wondered why the hell he was going into this world.
David, he reminded himself. You’re doing this for David.
Mack started to walk towards the entrance, picking his way through the litter. Tom sighed and followed in Mack’s footsteps, his stomach churning.
Sunlight penetrated the first few feet of the tunnel, but then the darkness took over—a thick, solid black, swallowing everything it touched. Tom didn’t want to become part of that darkness, even the thought made him sick with nerves. Sweat slicked his palms and his stomach clenched in anxiety. His fears weren’t irrational; he wasn’t just a grown man still scared of the dark. He knew now this innate fear stemmed from something deeper, from something he’d experienced as a child. In a strange way, things seemed to make sense now—the strange dreams he’d experienced most of his life and his child-like fear of the dark must have all stemmed from his childhood.
Mack must have seen the fear in his face.
“Being below the surface gets easier,” the man reassured him. “I know you won’t believe me, but you’ll get used to the dark. Your eyes adjust and your other senses take over. After a while, you start to forget what daylight is like.”
“I’m not planning on staying down here long enough for that to happen,” Tom said. “I need to get back to my family.”
Something in Mack’s gaze flickered. Without bothering to reply, Mack turned and continued into the tunnel.
Tom chased after him, then stopped and fished around in his bag.
“Hang on,” he called, causing Mack to stop. His hand closed around cylinders of weighted metal and he pulled out the two large Maglites and offered one to Mack.
Mack looked at the torch, but made no attempt to take it. “I don’t need a torch and I don’t think you should use one either. Your eyes won’t adjust properly.”
“I won’t need my eyes to adjust if I’ve got a torch.”
“The torch is limiting—you’ll only be able to see what’s in the beam.”
“That’s an improvement on not being able to see anything.”
Mack shrugged. “Suit yourself,” he said and started off towards the tunnel again, stepping over old, tattered clothing, empty cigarette packets, crushed beer cans.
Tom took a deep breath and said a silent goodbye to the warmth and the sunshine, unsure when they would meet again. Carefully, he picked his way towards the tunnel and stepped into the black hole. Stone walls curved overhead, enclosing him. Daylight lit the first few feet, but darkness soon took over, leaving the light behind.
The hard metal bars of old train tracks, leftovers of the tunnel’s days as a running train line, pressed against the soles of his shoes. Tom prayed Mack was right about this being a disused tunnel. He imagined the panic if the lights of an oncoming train appeared in front of them.
The thick beam of his torch cut a swath of light ahead, lighting Mack’s back as he walked away. He still wore Tom’s blue sweater and the material hung from his skinny frame like a child wearing his father’s clothes. Red brick made up the tunnel walls, but a thick, black dust coated them—another reminder of the trains that once ran through the tunnels. A network of cobwebs strung across the ceiling like Halloween party streamers. Spiders—their bodies fat and bloated—darted away from the light as though the beams would cause them harm.
Is this what the people who lived underground would be like? Tom wondered. Creatures that thrived in the dark and shied from the light? He thought he knew the name of them from one of the documentaries he used to watch—photophobic. Would they be like the creatures in the documentary? Would they be freaks?
Tom chewed his lip nervously. Did he once live down here? Did his own mother bring him down here to live in the dark? What was so bad on the surface to make her want to hide from the light like a vampire?
Mack, used to the tunnels, moved much faster than Tom, increasing the distance between them. Tom wanted to catch up, but he was unsure of his footing, the different levels of the train tracks and the debris caught beneath.
&n
bsp; “Hey, slow down,” he called, his voice echoing back to him in the confined space, sounding as though he were underwater. But Mack didn’t slow down.
Panic gripped his chest, constricting his lungs, and he realised he could be left down here, left alone in the dark. His breathing became shallow and he struggled to inhale.
He was cold and alone, his thin arms wrapped around even thinner legs. Water trickled somewhere close by and, in the distance, something shrieked...
Tom shook the memory from his head.
Behind him, the entrance was now only a pinprick of light and Tom had to stop himself from launching back and running as fast as he could to his life above ground. He forced himself to take deep, slow breaths.
It’s only a tunnel, he reasoned with himself. The only thing to be afraid of down here was other people. The tunnels themselves couldn’t hurt.
There are things down here you don’t want to remember...
Mack’s words echoed in his head, but he pushed them away and willed his legs to move. As he continued to follow Mack down the tunnel, the torch shook in his hand and the beam of light trembled in response.
Moments later, he realised Mack had stopped.
“What’s wrong?” Tom asked, his voice horribly loud in the silence.
Crossroads split the tunnel ahead. Another tunnel crossing through the one they stood in.
“This way,” Mack said, heading to the tunnel on their left.
“I hope you remember how to get back again,” said Tom.
Mack carried on walking and didn’t respond.
The tunnel had a distinct slope, a definite sense of heading deeper underground. The train tracks still ran underfoot, but now they were missing in places and bits were dislodged and lying across each other, catching Tom out and making him stumble.
This part of the tunnel felt older. The place had an atmosphere, like stepping into a three hundred-year-old house and being able to sense the presence of its past inhabitants, as though their very being was somehow secreted into the walls.
Suddenly, Mack stopped again. He reached out his hand and swiped Tom’s torch, knocking its beam to the ground.
“Switch it off,” Mack hissed.
“What is it?”
“Switch off the damn torch.”
With fumbling fingers and a thumping heart, Tom did as he was told, plunging them into darkness. His breathing sounded too loud and he consciously tried to make it shallower, inhaling and exhaling though his nose. Tom had no idea what was happening, but Mack’s hand gripped his forearm tightly, the arm holding the now dark torch.
“That you, Shamus?”
The strange voice penetrated the darkness and Tom’s breath froze. A man was ahead of them, he could tell that much, but because of the strange echo in the tunnels he couldn’t tell how far. He waited for Mack to call something back, but, when he stayed silent, Tom guessed the two men weren’t friends.
Something flew past his ear, cutting through the air.
Tom ducked out of reflex and glass smashed against the wall behind him. He grabbed Mack’s arm in panic and just managed to stop the scream threatening to burst from his throat.
“I know someone’s there!” the man called out, anger sharpening his voice. “Don’t bullshit me!”
Tom stood straight and flicked the torch back on.
“Yes, yes,” he called out, holding his free arm up in surrender. “We’re here. Please don’t throw anything else, okay? We’re not here to fight.”
The man stood farther away then Tom had expected. Just behind him, the tunnel curved away and Tom guessed this was the reason the man hadn’t seen the torch sooner.
The stranger shielded his face with his forearm, his eyes squinting.
“Get that fucking thing out of my eyes!”
“Oh, sorry.” Tom pointed the torch at the ground just in front of the stranger.
The man looked young, in his early twenties, with an almost bald head, except for a couple of millimetres of re-growth. The light cast by the torch only served to deepen the shadows on the man’s face. Vast bags hung under his eyes, his cheeks were hollowed, and his jaw jutted sharply. Tattoos covered his hands and arms like bruises.
Tom realised this was exactly the sort of man he wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley.
The man narrowed his eyes at Mack. “I know you, don’t I?”
“Not any more, you don’t,” Mack said, walking towards him.
Tom hesitated for a moment and then followed. He hoped they’d avoid a fight. The last time he was in a fight, he’d been eleven and he hadn’t come off so well.
Mack brushed past the skinhead and rounded the corner. Tom had to stop himself from apologising as he walked past. He felt the man’s eyes boring into the back of his head. They rounded the bend and Tom noticed a ledge, a large nook built into the tunnel wall, about four feet above the ground. The alcove measured about six-feet long and three-feet high, a cranny where the workmen on the track would have wedged themselves if a passing train came along. An old, dark blue sleeping bag, a kerosene lamp, a stack of dirty magazines, and a couple of old cider bottles all sat on the ledge.
This is where the man lives, Tom realised.
The man saw Tom staring and shoved past him, moving to stand in front of his “home.” He folded his arms across his chest and glared at him.
“Problem?” he spat.
Tom quickly glanced away.
The man sneered, revealing broken and blackened teeth. “I’ll assume you’re not a local?” he said with a raw chuckle, looking Tom up and down. “Fresh blood.” He stepped back out to the middle of the tunnel, blocking the way. “So, what am I going to get as a passing fee?”
“A what?” Tom said in surprise
“Call it a toll for using my track.”
Mack took over. “Fuck off man,” he said, his voice hard. “Stop being a prick and get out of the way.”
Tom’s wallet weighted his back pocket. The wallet contained about forty pounds and a handful of change. He didn’t care about the money—this guy probably needed it more than he did, even if he only bought drink and drugs. If paying him meant they got past without a fight, it would be the best forty quid he’d ever spent.
“It’s okay,” he said, reaching into his back pocket. “I’ve got—”
Mack rounded on him, his normally creased, friendly eyes suddenly fierce and dangerous.
“Shut the fuck up!”
Tom shut up.
Mack walked up to the younger man until he was only about a foot away and stared him directly in the eye. “I’m taking this man beneath to the Watchmen. You’ll have them to answer to if you interfere.”
The younger man stared back, but a muscle just below his eye started to twitch and he clenched and unclenched his fists. The moment seemed to stretch on forever and Tom was waiting for the man to pull a knife. He’d never thought of himself as a coward, but in his mind he was retracing his steps to the entrance and trying to figure out how quickly he could get back in the dark with a skinhead lunatic on his tail.
The young man finally took a step to the side and Tom breathed a sigh of relief.
“Go ahead,” the guy said with a scowl. “There’s a hell of a lot worse than me in these tunnels.”
Mack gave a tight smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “I think we can handle it.”
Feeling like a child, Tom followed on Mack’s coattails as they brushed past the skinhead. As they walked farther down the tunnel, Tom sensed the man’s presence, his anger radiating down the tunnel. For the first time, he wished he had taken Mack’s advice and switched off the torch. At this moment, disappearing into the shadows appealed.
Tom knew Mack was protecting him, but he couldn’t shake off the feeling that Mack had his own agenda. He doubted Mack was protecting him out of the goodness of his heart; there was something bigger in this picture, something that Tom couldn’t yet see.
When he thought they were far enough away, he started to sp
eak. “Are there going—”
Glass smashed behind them and they both ducked.
“You’ll die, you bastards!” the man screeched from back down the tunnel. “It’ll get you, you just see!” More glass smashed, this time closer.
“Oh, shit,” said Tom, his heart taking up a fast, familiar pace.
“Keep going,” Mack advised. “He won’t chase after us.”
But the missiles kept coming. Something heavy landed farther away and Tom realised the man must be throwing bricks or bits of the old track.
“Whoop! Whoop!” the man screeched manically.
The sound echoed down the tunnel, followed by more breaking glass. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Tom wondered where he was getting it all from.
“It’ll suck you up and spit you out,” the guy screamed at them. “You fucking losers!”
More glass smashed and the man screeched again, the sound bouncing off the curved walls.
“Keep moving,” Mack said, keeping his voice low, and ushering Tom down the tunnel, away from the crazed man. Together, they picked their way down the side of the tracks and the man’s manic yells grew fainter.
“Are there going to be more like him?” Tom managed to say in a half-whisper.
Mack gave a derisive snort of laughter. “Him? He’s nothing. What he said was true—there’s a lot worse than him down here.”
“Like what?” Tom asked. “Junkies? Crackheads? Psychopaths?”
Mack laughed, but the sound was cold and sent chills down Tom’s back. “Is that the worst you can think of?”
“I don’t like the sound of that.”
“If you have to ask, then you don’t want to know. Not yet anyway. Trust me.”
Tom stopped walking.
“Enough already,” he said, trying to sound determined. “I didn’t exactly plan to spend my day being attacked underground by drug addicts and all you’re doing is giving me the run around. I’m not going any further until you tell me what the hell is going on.”
Mack looked at him, his eyes wide in amazement. “What did you think was going to happen? We’d come down here and all sit around having a nice conversation over a cup of tea? Bad shit happens down here. I mean, we’re in the dark, for fuck’s sake!”
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