by Mark Morris
The All Seeing Eye
Mark Morris
Prologue
Finsbury Park tube station,
London, England
Sunday, October 21st, 11:45 p.m.
“You know what Finsbury Park is backwards, don’t you?” Lee said, hoping to make her smile. When she didn’t respond, he said, “It’s crappy-rub-sniff, innit?” and he laughed loudly, evidently encouraging her to do the same.
Jo, however, was having none of it. She had moved across to the next row of seats and was sitting with her body turned away from him, arms tightly folded beneath her plumped-up cleavage, grinding gum between her teeth. With her long blond hair and big blue eyes, she was drop-dead gorgeous, but she could be a hard-faced bitch when someone — and that someone was usually Lee — pissed her off.
“Get lost, Lee,” she said without looking at him.
“Aw, c’mon, babe,” he wheedled, alcohol slurring his words. “Y’know it’s only because I love ya.”
They were alone on the platform, waiting for a Victoria line train to Walthamstow Central. Their night out had followed what was becoming a depressingly familiar pattern: down to the pub; one drink too many; a blazing row.
The way Lee saw it, it was all Jo’s fault. A few drinks and she was pushing out her chest, giving other guys the eye, peppering her conversation with lewd remarks. How was he supposed to react when she behaved like that? Hell, sometimes she’d even sit on other blokes’ laps and plant smeary lipstick kisses on their cheeks. Then afterwards she’d claim it was all “just a bit of fun.”
For her part, Jo was becoming sick of Lee’s possessiveness. In her opinion there was nothing wrong with a bit of harmless flirting. Lee had been a great guy at first — funny, sexy, open minded, relaxed. But since she’d moved out of her parents’ house and into his flat six months ago, he’d changed. Now she felt suffocated by him. She couldn’t even smile at another guy these days without him jumping down her throat.
“If you loved me you’d trust me,” she would tell him.
“I do love you!” he’d say.
“Yeah, sounds like it.”
“I do! I’ve never felt this way about anyone before. That’s why it drives me mental, seeing you with other blokes.”
“I’m not with them, Lee,” she would tut, tossing her blond hair, “I’m with you. It’s not like I’m gonna shag ‘em up the alley.”
He’d wince and clench his teeth. “Babe, don’t even joke about that.”
“See what I mean? I can’t handle this. You’re stifling me. I’m a friendly person. I like talking to people.”
“I don’t mind you talking to people,” he would say, “but you take it too far. You give blokes the come-on.”
“Not seriously.”
“Yeah, well ... they might not see it like that.”
The memory of all the times they had had this conversation, or variations on it, made her sigh. She still hadn’t looked at him, was still facing the black throat of the tube tunnel. She hated tube stations late at night: the curved walls covered in tiles the color of old peoples’ teeth; the echoes; the rubbish; the lingering odor of sweat and piss and vomit. It was like sitting inside a giant public toilet. It was bleak and depressing, and sometimes it was enough to make her wonder whether this was what the rest of her life would be defined by.
“I’m sorry, babe,” Lee mumbled. “I do love ya, y’know.”
She could tell by his voice that his body was now succumbing to the alcohol which had earlier filled him with fire. In ten minutes he’d be slumped against her on the train, snoring and drooling. When they got to Walthamstow she’d have to slap him awake, and as soon as they got back to the flat he’d collapse face down on the bed, and she’d untie his boots and pull off his smelly socks. Then he’d start to snore, and she’d leave him to it and sleep on the pull-out sofa. And tomorrow he’d wake up with a hangover and blunder off to work, and the whole endless cycle would start again ...
She saw it all in a flash, and it was horrifying. It made her feel sick to her soul.
Yeah, well, I don’t love you, she thought viciously in response to his words, surprising herself.
Was it the truth? Had she really fallen out of love with Lee? Staring into the tube tunnel, listening to the rumble of distant trains, she wondered whether this was the end of the line for them both.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a rustling sound coming from deep inside the tunnel. Jo stared into the blackness, folding her arms more tightly as a shiver rippled through her. Were there tiny glints of light in the darkness, close to the ground? Seconds later she leaped to her feet in revulsion.
A bristling wave of rats and mice emerged from the darkness and streamed along the base of the rail-well, as if fleeing for their lives.
“Lee!” Jo yelled, her voice bouncing off the tiled walls. “Lee!”
She was instantly and instinctively repulsed by the creatures’ black, glittering eyes, their sleek little bodies, their pink, wormy tails. Even though none of the rodents showed the least interest in her, she leaped up onto her plastic chair like the maid in a Tom and Jerry cartoon.
“Lee!” she yelled again, angry now. She had no idea what she expected him to do, but she didn’t see why she should have to face the flood of vile creatures alone. She turned, and was infuriated to see him dozing drunkenly, oblivious to his surroundings.
The flood of rodents continued for perhaps twenty seconds. By the time their numbers began to dwindle, Jo reckoned she must have seen dozens, if not hundreds, stream past. The experience left her with a dry mouth, a queasy stomach, and a rapidly pumping heart. Though the creatures had paid her no attention whatsoever, she shuddered with reaction. In the sudden silence she told herself she was being a wuss — and yet it still took a gargantuan effort of will to climb down from her perch.
It was only as the soles of her red slip-ons made contact with the gritty floor that it occurred to her to wonder what the rodents had been running from. An approaching train? Unlikely. Rats and mice weren’t generally given to such behavior. Added to which, the digital display was announcing they still had another four minutes to wait before the next train was due.
So, if not a train, what then? The vile little things had been spooked by something. Something bigger than themselves? An animal?
Jo stared nervously into the pitch-black tunnel, suddenly remembering movies where people had been attacked by nasties on the underground. There’d been the one with the werewolf, and the one with the mutant cannibals who lived in the abandoned tube station, and the one with the giant spiders — or was that a TV show?
Licking her lips with a sandpaper tongue, she wondered whether, just this once, the two of them should head back to the surface and treat themselves to a cab.
She backed towards Lee’s slumped form, keeping her eyes on the tunnel entrance the whole time, and jabbed him in the shoulder. “Lee,” she hissed, “wake up.”
He stirred and groaned — and at that moment a sound echoed out of the tunnel. It was a sharp scraping sound, and it caused an immediate and vivid image to leap into Jo’s head. She imagined a series of metal blades — or perhaps a set of huge taloned claws — being dragged across rough brick.
Her throat seized up. She tried to speak Lee’s name again, but only a rasping wheeze emerged. She shook him roughly, and then, when he did no more than offer an incoherent mumble, punched his arm as hard as she could.
“Wassup?” he muttered, scowling. “Whayadoon?”
She licked her lips, cleared her throat. “Wake up,” she croaked. “Wake up, you sod. There’s something in the tunnel.”
Another scrape. Closer now. Pummelling her drunken boyfr
iend again, Jo stared into the darkness.
Could she see something in the tunnel mouth? Something moving? A shape? A shadow? Instinctively she circled Lee’s body so that he was between her and the tunnel.
She saw a glint in the darkness. A gleam of light reflecting off a shiny surface. Oh God, she thought, it is a knife. There’s someone in the tunnel with a big sodding knife!
But then she saw that there was not one glint of light but two. Close together. Hovering in the blackness at the mouth of the tunnel.
Eyes, she suddenly realized. They’re eyes. Someone was standing just beyond the band of light at the tunnel entrance, watching her. Jo was terrified, but adrenaline was making her angry, too. She cleared her dry throat, forced her rusty voice into use.
“Who’s there? What do you want?”
There was no reply, merely the sound of what she could only imagine was something shifting in the shadows. But it wasn’t the kind of sound a fleshy creature would make. This was a harsh sound. Gritty. Unyielding. Like rock on rock.
Trying to hold her voice steady, Jo said, “I know you’re there. There’s no point hiding.”
Maybe it — whatever ‘it’ was — didn’t understand her. She gave Lee another shake. “Come on, you prat,” she muttered, “we need to get out of here.”
There was a sudden squealing clatter of movement from the tunnel. Jo’s head jerked up. She saw the yellowish glints of light rise a meter or more into the air. Which meant they couldn’t possibly be eyes, because they were now three meters from the ground.
She was still trying to work out what the “eyes” were when the thing came out of the tunnel. First, something that resembled the clawed scoop of a digger, albeit black as coal and barnacled as a sea wall, emerged from the shadows and curled around the edge of the tunnel opening. This was followed by the squealing grind of tortured rock or metal, and then the rest of the body hauled itself into the light.
Jo’s mouth dropped open. Abruptly she wet herself. She was half aware of her mind frantically telling her that what she was seeing was impossible.
The thing crouching in the rail-well was crudely humanoid, albeit massive and twisted. It seemed to be composed of clusters of jagged black crystals, all of which were cemented together with rough, spiny lumps of oily rock. The thing’s face was a slablike mask, its mouth a yawning, crooked hollow. Jo couldn’t avert her gaze from its eyes, which were burning lumps of molten lava — pitiless and inhuman, but blazingly alive.
The monstrous figure ducked through the tunnel opening and straightened up with the crunch of shifting rock. Jo reached out and grabbed a handful of Lee’s jacket. She shook it almost subconsciously, still gazing at the behemoth. Wake up, she mouthed. Wake up.
As though it could hear her silent words, the thing tilted its massive head towards her. When it lifted one vast clawed foot to step up onto the platform, Jo ran.
———
British Medical Association, Tavistock Square,
London, England
Monday, October 22nd, 8:16 a.m.
The meeting of the Medical Ethics Committee was scheduled for ten thirty a.m., which gave Kirsty plenty of time. She knew Darren found it endearing that she often left home much earlier than she had to, but he was a guy who thrived on crisis management. He actually got a buzz from leaving things to the last minute.
Not Kirsty. She liked to be organized and prepared. And if that meant sacrificing some of her “quality time” at home, then so be it. Getting to work early meant she could have everything set out in the Council Chamber — briefing notes, stationery, refreshments, audio/visual equipment — by nine-fifteen at the latest. That would give her time for a coffee and a few leisurely minutes of small talk with her arriving colleagues, before catching up on paperwork left over from Friday and e-mails that had stacked up over the weekend.
She knew that if she and Darren ever took the plunge and moved in together, their different attitudes to time management, and indeed to the way they ran their lives in general, was something they would have to address. She half suspected his chaotic nature was one of the main things she found attractive about him, but how that would work long-term she wasn’t sure. Her hope was that their different natures would complement one another, but her niggling worry was that they might very quickly drive each other round the bend. Much as Kirsty found Darren’s recklessness exhilarating, at heart she was a list maker, a five-year-plan sort of girl. She couldn’t cope with instability. She liked to know not only where she was going, but exactly how she was going to get there.
BMA House was an impressive building, beautiful even. It was neoclassical Palladian in style (its designer, Sir Edwin Lutyens, had described it as “Wrenaissance” in deference to Sir Christopher), and in the sunlight the Portland stone and red-brick facade gleamed like new.
Not only was the sun shining on this October day, but it was also unseasonably warm. Sporting large brown sunglasses, a cream cotton suit and pale-green blouse, Kirsty felt elegant, sophisticated, as she stepped from the car. All she needed was a wide-brimmed sun hat and she fancied she’d resemble one of those willowy diplomats’ wives from back in the day when Britain had an empire. She could see herself surveying the Serengeti plains with a cocktail in her right hand, or strolling through the markets of New Delhi.
“Morning, Miss Reece,” said Adam, the doorman, after buzzing her in. She always liked the way he tipped the brim of his cap with his forefinger — ironic but playful, as if he was acknowledging that he looked like a performing monkey but was happy to share the joke. He was a beautiful, angular man with a smoothly shaven head and a tuft of dark hair, too slight to be termed a goatee, beneath his bottom lip. At weekends he attended fetish clubs with his statuesque girlfriend, Helda.
Kirsty’s feet clacked on the marble floor as she approached the Great Hall. Her first task was to collect the agenda and handouts for that morning’s meeting, which she had left carefully stacked on the chairman of the Medical Ethics Committee’s desk before heading off for the weekend.
The Great Hall was a magnificent room. One hundred and thirty feet in length, it had been converted into the main library in the mid-1980s. The high ceiling was supported by rows of peacock-blue marble columns, and the various committee rooms occupying the roof space were accessed by a number of elegant spiral staircases. Redolent with the delicious musk of old books, the vast room was nevertheless bright and airy. Kirsty loved it, particularly at this hour of the morning, when it was still and empty, the air languid and somehow expectant.
Halfway up the central aisle she turned left, between bookshelves so high that each was equipped with its own set of ladders and browsing platforms. She climbed the staircase at the end of the row, her feet clanging softly on the iron steps. A door at the top led into a long, plushly carpeted corridor with paneled doors on both sides. The room Kirsty wanted was just over halfway up on the right. She strolled towards it unhurriedly, unsnapping her black leather shoulder bag and delving for her keys.
There was no indication that anyone had been here before her, nothing to alert her to the foul discovery she was about to make. When she unlocked the door and entered the office, she did so with no sense of foreboding whatsoever.
For several seconds after clapping her eyes on the thing propped in the chair behind the wide oaken expanse of the chairman’s desk — the desk on which were still stacked the papers she had come to collect — she could only stare in disbelief, her mind momentarily blanked by the sheer impossible awfulness of what she was seeing.
It was a naked human body. Or rather, a naked human torso, from which the head and limbs had been removed. Surprisingly there was no blood. The exposed meat of the ragged stumps was a dark salami-pink and relatively dry.
Before her legs gave way and she started to scream, Kirsty registered two additional details. One was that the torso was male, albeit almost hairless aside from a few wiry tufts around the blue-gray nipples, and the other was that it bore a fuzzy blue tattoo of
a hovering hummingbird just above its left breast.
———
John Saxilby Funeral Services, Shoreditch High Street,
London, England
Monday, October 22nd, 10:41 a.m.
That nice Mr. Saxilby had made a lovely job of Arthur. Lying in his coffin in his best suit, Flo couldn’t remember when she had last seen him looking so well. There was a bloom to his cheeks, and a serene expression on his face. He even looked as though he’d put on a bit of weight.
In the back of her mind, however, Flo knew that none of it was real. It was all the result of carefully applied makeup and morticians’ putty. But it made her feel a bit better nonetheless. It leavened the memory of her beloved Arthur’s final days in the hospital. And when it came right down to it, surely that was all that mattered.
Fifty-three years she and Arthur had been married. Sitting on a chair next to her husband’s coffin in the Chapel of Rest, Flo recalled her wedding as if it were yesterday. It had been a bright day, but windy. Her veil had flapped around her head as if it had a life of its own. Her dear old dad, a chubby giant of a man, had clutched her little hand in his great paw and had sobbed in the car all the way to the church.
Dad had been the local butcher, and the neighborhood kids had been scared of him with his bald head and his bloodstained apron, but he’d been as soft as a brush. Flo and her mother had always had the ability to twist him round their little fingers. And perhaps best of all, he’d adored Arthur. To Flo’s delight, the two most important men in her life had got on like a house on fire.
A solitary tear wormed its way down Flo’s wrinkled cheek as she pictured Arthur on that late-spring day fifty-three years before. He had half turned towards her as she’d walked down the aisle, and he had looked so proud and happy and handsome, tall and lean in his best demob suit, his black hair gleaming with oil. He had smiled at her and winked, and his apparent confidence had stilled the butterflies in her stomach. Later he had confessed, in the privacy of their hotel’s honeymoon suite, that he had spent the day feeling like a rabbit in the headlights. How they had laughed as they had munched on a plate of chicken sandwiches, glad after the emotional whirlwind of the day to finally have some time alone together.
