So Below: The Trilogy

by Matt Whyman

  With a chuckle, Julius Grimaldi holds the lamp over the rail. Down below, dark shapes scurry among the rails. “The rats!” he declares. “If you’re underground and you hear the patter of tiny feet, get out as fast as you can. Don’t wait for the wind rush,” he warns, and leans across to be heard as the head of a train slams out of the tunnel. “It’s too late by then!”

  Had Yoshi ventured this far from the bunker alone, he would’ve been lost at the first turn. From a big old water main, dripping with stalactites, they had crawled into a short tunnel that led to a plundered bank vault blown open on both sides. From there, the pair had swung out into an abyss on a thick, knotted rope and descended to a dark and silted shoreline at low tide. Finally, a short climb through an air ventilation shaft had delivered them onto this long-forgotten platform. Yoshi might have had much to fear from this journey, but Julius picked his way across town with great purpose. Indeed, the boy figured he had only paused here to watch the train clatter under their feet, but the old man doesn’t move on as expected.

  “Is there much further to go?” asks Yoshi. “My back is hurting from so much stooping.”

  “That’s one advantage of growing older,” replies Julius. “At my age, the stoop comes naturally.” Yoshi lifts both arms and stretches, appreciating the space, only to brush the brickwork with his fingertips. A little soot drizzles onto the pair. Yoshi steps away, brushing his shoulder, but Julius seems unfazed. He peers up, hoists the lamp high, and says, “Anyway, it seems we have arrived.”

  “We have?” Yoshi glances one way then the other, wondering what he’s missed out on. “So, where’s the church?”

  “Oh, way above us on the surface,” says Julius, and invites the boy to take a closer look at the vaulted ceiling. The old man brushes at it himself. As more soot falls away, so a familiar pattern takes shape.

  The Faerie Ring. Seven lines scratched roughly into the darkest of bricks.

  “Did you do this?” asks Yoshi.

  “I’m an urban explorer,” Julius replies, sounding almost offended, “not a vandal. I discovered the same pattern under every church, some in crypts, others deeper down in spaces such as this. It leads me to conclude that each one marks a waypoint between ley lines.”

  Yoshi cranes his neck, studying the sooty pattern. “It doesn’t look like much.”

  “Maybe the architect didn’t want to make a big song and dance about it, Yoshi. There’s nothing to see, as such, anyway. It’s all in the mind, until you can open the connection between this point and the next.”

  “Right,” says Yoshi. “And how is that done?”

  “It’s a mystery to me,” Julius confesses, “but I believe you may be able to shed a little light on things. Tell me what you’re feeling right now, Yoshi. Do you sense anything unusual?”

  “Just an aching spine,” he says.

  “Try touching the Faerie Ring.”

  With a sigh, Yoshi reaches up on tiptoe and presses a fingertip to the brick. It feels cold, damp and gritty, but that’s all he has to report.

  “Nothing,” he says, sounding strained, and comes down onto the soles of his feet.

  Julius tries hard not to look crestfallen. “Not even a tingle?” he asks.

  “Not even that.” Yoshi rubs his hands to clean them, only to gasp at what falls away. For it’s as if the soot has broken up into atoms, and come alive in a shower of colour. These flecks tinkle like wind chimes, and glitter in the lamplight. Most strikingly of all, they appear to move one step behind gravity.

  “Good Lord!” Julius drops to one knee and holds out his palm to catch some. On contact, the flecks immediately darken and fade. The old man pushes a finger through what remains. It leaves a dark, sooty smear. He rubs his hand as Yoshi has, sees only blackened brick-dust drop away.

  “What have I done?” asks Yoshi, his eyes wide with wonder.

  The old man rises to his feet again. “It isn’t what you’ve done,” he beams. “It’s what you’re capable of doing that fascinates me. Why don’t we try again? This time, focus on the next waypoint.” He gestures at the tunnel from which the last train had appeared. “By my reckoning, the nearest Hawksmoor church is half a mile due south from here. If I remember rightly, the Faerie Ring under that one is carved into the bed of a shallow, freshwater brook.”

  “Should I focus on that?” asks Yoshi, still shaken up by what has just happened.

  “My boy, you can focus on whatever comes to mind. The beauty of ancient mysticism is the fact that it really is very simple, and yet we have barely begun to understand it. All we can do here is recognise that there are powerful energies running in a ring under the city. Touching this waypoint has given us a taster. Now we need to find a way to tap right into it.”

  “You make it sound easy,” says Yoshi. He looks up again at the pattern scratched into the brick.

  “Just let it flow through you, my boy. Forget about spells and strange brews. This is about having some faith in abilities you never knew you possessed!”

  “If you say so.” Yoshi cracks his knuckles before trying again. “I’ll think watery thoughts, even though it’ll probably make me want to pee.”

  He reaches up, touches the cold stone. A little soot drifts free, but this time it stays quite black. With his eyes squeezed shut, Yoshi tries hard to imagine a bubbling brook. In response, he feels a breath of air on his face, and another distant tremor.

  “There’s a train coming,” he says, struggling now to stay on tiptoe. “Maybe we should wait.”

  “Just focus on the brook,” says Julius to remind him. “Try touching the ring with both hands. See if that helps.”

  “This is crazy,” says Yoshi, but does so anyway.

  The breeze strengthens once again, but now the boy has summoned up a clear image – water. Lots of it. He can almost hear it in his mind, in fact. Growing louder like the incoming train.

  “Oh dear,” says Julius quietly.

  “What is it?” Yoshi opens his eyes. The image he has conjured up disappears. Unlike the sound of a crashing deluge.

  He glances at Julius, unsure whether his ears are playing tricks. It’s the look in his eyes that tells the boy this is no illusion. For what they can hear is crystal clear now, and rising behind the rattle of the incoming train.

  The pair turn to face the tunnel. The thunder is still building within, and sounds unusually loud. They can even feel it. Soot sieves over the platform, dislodged from the bricks. Even the footbridge starts to shake. With a tightening sense of dread, Yoshi grips the rails with both hands. He glances at Julius, who struggles to keep a brave face. He smiles nervously, as if this kind of thing is an everyday occurrence, but his wide eyes say it all.

  Just then, two headlights tilt out of the dark semicircle – coming out of nowhere, it seems. Yoshi sees the driver behind the train’s windshield. He could be at the controls of a runaway, judging by his expression. The boy only steals a glimpse of his hounded-looking eyes, before the train thunders under the footbridge. It’s what follows that explains his terror.

  “Hold on!” yells Julius, the tails of his patchwork jacket flapping behind him now.

  The first drops spray forth around the middle carriages, and then comes the surge – filling the tunnel from top to bottom. In a blink, the tube train looks more like a ride in a log flume. Foaming water laps at the platform and the train windows, spitting at the two figures watching, aghast, from above. And yet it isn’t the flood that takes their breath away so much as the shoals of pulsing colours shot through it.

  They could be looking at creatures from the deep, the way these blobs of light spiral with the current. It’s enough to illuminate the space they’re in, and wash the tiled walls with dazzling hues. The final carriage ploughs underneath the footbridge just then, trailing two fins of spray. They might as well be looking at white rapids, such is the water’s ferocity. The old man yells something about getting away, but as he does so the din from the passing train begins to drop. As does the weird
light, followed by the torrent, which skids into shallows and then pools to a halt.

  With his heart in his mouth, Yoshi watches the ballast bed gleaming under the lamplight. The stones crackle as the water drains away, and then silence is restored. A ghost station at rest once again.

  “So we need a little practise,” admits Julius with a shrug. “There was definitely some energy going on there. We just could’ve done without the rest of it!” He brushes a speck of soot from his lapel, and smiles sheepishly. “At least we didn’t get our feet wet.”

  13

  SUN IN MY EYES

  Everyone learns new tricks through life. From the moment we’re born, it’s vital that we pick up how to smile, crawl, talk and walk if we want to survive. Once we’ve mastered the basics, all kind of stunts can tickle our fancy. It may not be much – like working out how to squeeze the last curl of toothpaste from the tube, or whistling, using two fingers. Even in such small ways, it can be deeply satisfying to sense that we have pushed ourselves. For a brief moment, it helps us to feel special.

  Discovering you have a unique gift is a different story altogether. You might feel special, but it doesn’t guarantee you’ll feel good too. If your trick defies all nature and reason, it can leave you wondering where on earth it came from – and what you’re supposed to do with it now.

  What just happened in the ghost station is a very big deal. This is clear from the way Julius Grimaldi chatters about the episode as he retraces their footprints along the dark, sludgy riverbank. It’s also evident from the fact that Yoshi remains silent. He follows the old man with his head down and arms tightly folded, as if keeping his hands from making mischief. It’s cold down here, and damp. The silt is thick and sucks at their shoes, but Yoshi looks as if he’s brooding on other matters. Julius holds the lantern high. He’s so caught up in reliving the moment when that supernatural surge of water washed through the tunnel that he doesn’t once turn to check on his young charge.

  Right now, in fact, something could surface quietly in the black water beside the boy – say, a snout, two beady eyes, a scaly back and tail – and he just would not notice. Indeed, when Julius hisses “What was that noise?” and swings the light out over the river, Yoshi promptly bumps right into him.

  “There!” The old man points at the water, but there’s nothing to see. Just an eddy turning oddly against the current, which swiftly tapers away. “Did you see it?” he asks. “Something big!”

  Yoshi shrugs, pushes his hands into his pockets. “Perhaps you imagined it,” he suggests. “I expect when I get back up into the real world, I’ll find it hard to believe some of the things going on down here.”

  With a sympathetic sigh, Julius brings the boy into the light of his lamp. “You should be very proud of yourself,” he tells him. “Unlocking ley lines is a rare gift. We might have peeped at some surprises, but there’s so much more to see. Whoever controls the ring controls London’s psyche, remember. For the sake of the city, what we need to find out is whether you really have that ability.”

  “There’s a lot I need to find out,” mutters Yoshi. What happened had amazed him, but also stirred up a sense of great frustration. The mystery of his background just couldn’t be ignored. Something from his past must explain how he could summon a deluge through a tube tunnel just by thinking about water, and why a bald-headed brute in a white mink coat was hellbent on tracking him down. And yet without his memory, the boy remains lost to himself. Until the missing pieces from his personal puzzle appear, thinks Yoshi with a sense of resignation, he must remain dependent on this wise but deeply weird old man in front of him.

  “We should keep moving,” suggests Julius, as the water stirs again. “The surface dwellers have a saying, you know. They believe that wherever you are in London, a rat is never more than a metre away.”

  “Is that true?” asks Yoshi, and decides it might be best to keep up with the old man.

  “Maybe on the surface.” Julius steers him towards the top of the shoreline where the climbing rope awaits. He reaches for the lowest knot, only to glance nervously behind them with his lamplight. “Down here it isn’t just rats you need to watch out for.”

  Gingerly, Yoshi picks his way from one knot in the rope to the next. Unwilling to look over his shoulder now, especially after what his guide has just shared, he focuses instead on the climb. Hand over hand, foot over foot, he follows Julius without a word, and dwells upon the matter. The rope appears to be tethered high above them. Indeed, he can just make out a small, slotted square of daylight up there. It might well take him to ground level, and even a place called home, if only he knew which way to turn at the top.

  Despite this glimpse of the outside world, Yoshi is mightily relieved to leave the rope on reaching the gash in the bank vault. As the boy hauls himself to safety, his dog tags strike the ragged concrete ledge. He glances at the nickel plates dangling from his neck, and then at the old man’s walking boots, right there under his nose.

  “Take my hand,” offers Julius, reaching for him.

  The boy looks up, but chooses to stand without help.

  “When you first saw this chain around my neck,” says Yoshi, testing it between his fingertips, “you said I was lucky to be alive. You also told me it was a blessing that I couldn’t remember what I had escaped from.”

  “Did I?” Julius looks momentarily surprised. “Oh, so I did.”

  “Julius, you’ve shown me a hidden side to this city that you know more about than most. I’m thinking you also know more about me than I can remember. If there’s anything,” the boy pleads, “then surely I have a right to be told?”

  Julius focuses on the floor. When he looks back, levelling with the boy, it’s clear he has a confession to share. “You’re not the first lost soul to come here with tags,” he says quietly. “And I doubt you’ll be the last, either.”

  Yoshi stares at the old man, burning to know more. This news threatens to knock the boy right out of the hole and onto the riverbed below, but he remains stock still, waiting for more. “Go on,” he whispers finally.

  “It happened long ago,” sighs Julius. “Years before any of this crew arrived. In fact, I seem to remember this vault was state of the art at the time. A seemingly impenetrable fortress where playboys and royalty stashed their valuables.” He turns with the lamp, casting light around this long-forgotten space. All the deposit boxes in here have been plundered. Many of the trays hang open, some still feathered by bank notes. As if to demonstrate that this isn’t worth getting excited about, the old man prods at a nest of old money, which promptly crumbles to dust. What doesn’t give way is the upturned safe, which Julius perches on now to face Yoshi directly. “You remind me of that kid in many ways,” he continues. “He had the same fierce sense of determination, and dog tags just like yours. The only difference was the number sequence, and the fact that he didn’t knock himself out when he arrived.”

  “So he knew where he had come from?”

  “And he didn’t want to go back. Ever.”

  Yoshi swallows uncomfortably. “And where was that?”

  “I swear by the seven steeples, I do not know the exact location. He was a freaked-out kid, Yoshi. He couldn’t even speak. Every time he tried to find his voice, the words just vaporised. The poor lad clearly knew how to talk, but something had left him mute. We provided him with shelter and food, of course, and a chance to get back on his feet. Indeed, over time he ventured out to practise street magic with the crew. He even incorporated mime into his act, and learned to make an audience howl the way he clowned around with his cards. It was only when he showed us a special trick of his own that we found out what had caught his tongue . . .”

  “Go on,” says Yoshi, when the old man falls silent himself.

  “He started making sketches,” he says eventually. “Lots of them.”

  “What’s so special about that?”

  “He didn’t draw what was in front of him, or even make stuff up.” Julius breaks
off there, taking a deep breath for what follows: “When this lost soul put pencil to paper in the bunker, he could picture what was happening above us at precisely the same time. Yoshi, this kid was like a human street cam. We would send a crew out to perform in Covent Garden, and he could sketch us what they were up to without any access to a monitor. He could pinpoint their precise location on a map, and even scratch out a portrait of what the target looked like.”

  “This kid,” Yoshi says suddenly. “Did these visions come to him in a weird kind of flash?”

  Julius narrows his eyes, reading him closely. “This has happened to you, hasn’t it?”

  Yoshi reaches for his dog tags. Nervously, he rubs a plate between his thumb and forefinger, then decides to share an account of the two strange moments when the man in the mink had come to mind. “It feels like the sun in my eyes,” he explains. “It blinds me to everything, then this clear image of him comes through. The last time it happened, in the market, he showed up for real just seconds later. It really did feel like I had seen him coming.”

  Julius nods to himself, stroking his whiskers as if his suspicions have been confirmed. “The flash you describe is often reported by people with your gift. I would imagine it’s a kind of psychic surge that occurs as the mind’s eye opens. It’s known as remote viewing.”

  Yoshi grins, despite himself. “Remote viewing?” he repeats, stressing each word. “Isn’t that what kids do from the sofa when it comes to switching channels on the telly?”

  “The boy who came under our wing didn’t need a screen or a control unit,” says Julius gravely. “Nor did he feel safe sitting about in one place for too long, which is why he took off from us before we’d had a chance to help him. The powers that be all over the world are fascinated by this unexplained phenomenon. It makes anyone with this ability quite a catch. Some remote viewers might be able to ‘see’ into a nearby street, which is what happened when your man in the mink coat came to mind. Others have been known to reach across continents and pinpoint details with frightening clarity. It might be a lost child, a hostage in a farmhouse or a military base. There have even been rare cases of remote viewers visiting other planets in the solar system, and describing the terrain there before the first satellites have beamed back pictures to confirm it.”