Hasty for the Dark: Selected Horrors

by Adam Nevill

  I go past the squat woman with the big suitcase on wheels; her luggage is still on the first step and she’s just staring at it now.

  Tough shit. Why bring something that size down here? I’m supposed to put my back out heaving it up the stairs? Those cases are always heavy enough to be carrying an anchor, or an anvil. You might be on holiday, but some of us have to get to work, dear.

  The crowd eager to get on the Victoria Line Southbound are still as they were when I passed them minutes before. Still huddled together, with their heads lowered, the wedge of bodies stretches from one side of the staircase to the other. The only difference I can spot now is that they are packed even tighter together and a sense of brittle impatience has risen to the point when someone will soon start shoving.

  Maybe I should return to the Bakerloo Line East platform and walk to its farthest end. Why didn’t I think of that before? At the far end of that platform I will be able to cut through to the Victoria Line Southbound, and then arrive on the opposite end of the platform to the crush on the stairs here.

  I turn about and re-enter the darkened tunnel. Mercifully, there is no sign of the three old figures I confronted. And anyway, in the lightless tunnel, they will not recognise me as I pass. But halfway along I become aware of voices close to the floor. A muttering. I look down and in the thin light I see the suggestion of a group of bodies huddled together and moving slowly. They are pressed against the wall and on all fours, groping forward as if searching for something that has been dropped.

  Nothing has changed back on the Bakerloo Line platform either. The crowd of thwarted commuters standing about the open doors of the stationary train has not moved. Those I brush past at the rear of the platform mumble and totter.

  Inside the carriages, the same indifferent faces stare out of the same open doors, arrogant as if they are members of a superior social class because they are actually inside the train, while those on the platform can only look in at them with envious eyes.

  No one inside the train moves at all. They are perfectly motionless but still expectant, like manikins; dishevelled parodies of people in formal working attire, standing under the dusty yellow lights of a warehouse.

  All of the benches at the rear of the platform are full of those tired of standing. Some lean into their neighbours, mouths open, eyes vacant. With no room on the seats, I am soon stepping over those sitting on the dirty tiled floor. Men in two-piece suits sit with their legs thrust out, socks showing, laces undone. They have such thin ankles. Scuffed briefcases are clutched by white fingers.

  Ahead I can hear the monotonous beat of a drum. A sound too hollow and feeble, like something old and worn in the music room of an impoverished school.

  A busker makes the noise. He stands at the mouth of the interconnecting tunnel from the Bakerloo Line South to the Victoria Line South, no doubt getting in everyone’s way.

  An elderly man, stooped over. He wears a black overcoat that once complemented a smart suit. His feet are wrapped in dirty bandages and he steps from one foot to the other, in time to the beats of a stained tambourine that he strikes with a wooden peg. His hands resemble cold chicken with see-through skin. The knuckles are so swollen I doubt he could manage anything but the hopeless banging of the wooden stick against the tambourine.

  What I can see of his head is the purple colour of a hairless baby mammal, save for a crown of white wisps at the base of his skull that tendril over the collar of his overcoat. It must be the light that discolours his skin, or alcohol. An enamelled mug is positioned before his shuffling, side-to-side stepping feet. I peek inside and see the dull brass of a twopence coin.

  Ahead of me in the connecting tunnel, a group of scruffy people walk in a rocking side-to-side fashion. They barely move forward, as if they are caught in the busker’s primitive rhythm. I fall into the same pattern of steps, and then wrench myself out of it, feeling hateful.

  I strike out for the end of the tunnel. Pick up my pace until I am nearly running to the Victoria Line platform. The drumming follows me.

  Under the arch to the Victoria Line platform, a figure is slumped on the floor. Looks like a woman has fainted. I can’t see much beside a hand, liver-spotted with age. It trembles. Her body seems to be shivering too, or is she crying? I don’t have time to stop and check, and there are two people bent over her anyway, talking to her, so she is being looked after.

  As I rush past the commotion, the Samaritans sound as if they are making the cooing sounds of people feeding their pets.

  ‘Passengers are reminded to stand behind the yellow line.’

  The Victoria Line Southbound platform is crammed with commuters at this end too. Every one of them has turned their head to the left and is staring into the dark tunnel from which the train will come. Their mouths hang open and are as dark inside as the tunnel they watch. They must all be hoping to see the distant headlights of the train, and are desperate to feel that sudden unnatural wind against their unsmiling faces, and to hear the distant scream of the tracks while static snaps beneath their soles.

  There are far too many people on this platform for it to be safe. As I squeeze down the rear of the platform, I have a sense that a few figures have dropped from the edge and on to the tracks. It must be an illusion because I hear no sound of them landing on the gravel and rails below, and those figures that appeared to topple didn’t even flail or put their arms out.

  Everyone here must be worn out by the wait because no one is talking at all for the entire length of the crowded platform. I look up in desperation at the electronic information board. The glass could do with a good clean, because the amber letters and digits are hard to make out under the dross. Eventually I figure out its information: ALL STATIONS TO BRIXTON – 1 MIN.

  I wait for a lot longer than one minute, my head turned to the left, with all of the others, staring at the black mouth of the empty tunnel. I wait long enough for my neck to ache and for someone to faint further down the platform. I hear what sounds like a sack full of sticks rattling to the floor. There follows a brief commotion as if the fainter has taken at least three people down with them.

  My eyes start to burn and smart and I have so little energy I do wonder if I should just stand here for a while longer and try to regain some strength.

  ‘Due to a signal failure at Blackfriars, the District Line is suspended in both directions. Passengers are advised to seek other forms of transport.’

  I close my eyes for a while. My chest tightens, my teeth grind. I need to make a call to the office to tell them that I just can’t get through.

  I’ll have to go up to street level to get a signal on my phone. And I’m getting nowhere here; it’s time for a change of plan.

  The Northern Line.

  I need to get out of this station and walk down Oxford Street to Tottenham Court Road station. From there I can travel south on the Northern Line to Embankment and pick up the Circle Line to Victoria.

  I bump my way from the Victoria Line platform, apologising quietly as I go, but no one acknowledges me. I re-enter the tunnel between the Victoria and Bakerloo lines. The busker is still stepping from side to side on his dirty cloth feet and those in the tunnel seem unaware that they are performing basic, imbecilic, dance steps to the beat of his filthy tambourine.

  I sidewind through them, and then rush through another arch that leads into another tunnel that also seems to have problems with its lights. These flicker, cut out, then sputter back to life for a few seconds. I look up and spot a sign that says WAY OUT.

  A tall blonde woman strides out of the darkness toward me. She is wearing a tight-fitting suit. The tipped heels of her stilettos click-clack a staccato that fills the tunnel and echoes beyond it. Even in the unstable light I can see the definition of her sharp bone structure, and the imperious cast of a face set with a purpose no greater than self-importance. Some eye-candy nonetheless and something to relieve this interminable search underground. I get ready to discreetly admire her before she strides away.


  As she draws level the flickering light strikes her. But under closer scrutiny she is not the young firefox that I presumed she was. With that posture, that chin held so high, those cold beautiful eyes, that tight tapering skirt and those feet mounted on pedestals with heels like blades, how could I have been so wrong?

  Her hair is not blonde, but white. The dead white of the pantomime wig. That haughty catwalk face is actually more like a skull too, with aged parchment stretched across it; a dry surface freshly painted with a palette more suited to the circus clown than the city girl.

  Appalled, I peer closer and see a shrivelled ear, a neck loosely papered with brownish skin. She must be some kind of drug addict or former vamp with an eating disorder, because I have never seen legs so thin. The manner in which her bracelets clatter about her bony wrists is disquieting.

  The suit she wears was once chic but is now a dirty relic, and she must have recently sat in something foul, because the scent of things left forgotten in the moist spaces beneath old houses drifts from her stained clothing. And that wig, or whatever it is that she has upon her mottled head, smells of something recently burned.

  The woman teeters down to the drummer, and before I turn my head I suffer the illusion that she has thrown her thin arms into the air, as if with joy, and shaken that terrible head about.

  I’m so tired now my breath is too loud about my own head and if I don’t drink water soon I am sure I will hallucinate and then faint. I think of the shrivelled organs of Pharaohs inside canopic jars up at the British Museum. That’s what my insides must look like.

  ‘Due to a security alert at Barons Court, the Piccadilly Line is suffering severe delays in both directions.’

  Illuminated signs read WAY OUT all the way to the broken escalators. A loosely assembled crowd stands and stares upward in disbelief at the motionless iron stairs. Halfway up there is a seated figure, surrounded by bags. He’s either collapsed or sat down with exhaustion, and isn’t moving at all. You see a lot of that down here.

  Beside the escalator, a temporary sign indicates that we should PLEASE USE THE STAIRS, referring to the adjacent spiral staircase ascending to street-level. There is an additional warning that 139 STEPS will have to be climbed to leave the underground by this route.

  I bend double and place my hands on my knees. Can my journey get any worse? And this is not the first time this has happened; I have lost count of the times this scenario or a similar one have repeated themselves. The infrastructure seems to have collapsed in this city. And yet we still pay these prices.

  I begin my ascent, slowly, with one hand clutching the cold rail on the inside of the staircase. With a monotonous and solemn slap of feet, a stream of people descend from above. Others join me in my ascent and stand too close behind me, as if to hurry me upward. Round and round we all go.

  I mostly look down at my shoes, which need a good clean and polish. The toes are scuffed like the shoes of a schoolboy who kicks stones about a building site. Even this exhausted and thirsty and tired, I’m still able to feel shame at how I’ve let my footwear go. But with all of this travelling and the hours I work, I don’t have the headspace to even engage with such chores.

  And when I do look up, the grey and miserable faces and the expressions so long with worry that solemnly bob down the spiral staircase towards me just lower my spirits even further. Why do we go through this? Have we forgotten what quality of life is? No one is smiling on the stairs.

  I stop a few times to get my breath and there are moans of irritation from those close on my heels. Inside my suit, my back is wet with sweat. It is the last of my body’s moisture leaking out. Little white dots speckle my vision. I feel dizzy. It passes.

  When I eventually reach the top of the staircase, I trip over my own scruffy feet and stumble into the gassy yellow light of the station entrance. Can I not even walk in a straight line any more?

  The ticket office is in darkness and I can’t see the station assistants. On the other side of the turnstiles, a thin, bald man feeds coins into the ticket machine. He watches the coins ejected into the refund slot, and is mesmerised by the sound of a seaside amusement arcade. He feeds the coins in again. The shoes he is wearing are far too big for his feet. They are a tan colour and clash with his navy suit. They have either come from a different decade or have been taken from another man’s feet.

  A long queue has formed behind him. A woman looks over his shoulder and bites her bottom lip, as if impatient to see what it is he has won from the machine.

  A thick huddle of commuters stand at the foot of each of the two staircases leading up to street level. They are silent, but I can tell they are impatient by the way they stretch their necks upwards and by how their mouths hang open.

  I swipe myself through the turnstile and go and join the back of the crowd. ‘What now?’ I say out loud and surprise myself with the volume of my own voice. No one is listening to me.

  At the top of the stairs the steel grille is down. An emergency measure designed to regulate the flow and volume of crowds when too many people crowd into the station during rush hour. There is a large crowd up there. Between a backdrop of dark sky and the people on the stairs queuing to leave the station, the silhouettes of many heads are visible, close together. Pale fingers press through the grille from the other side. Commuters are trying to get inside the station. They have raised their arms to hang on to the gate.

  I pause to marvel at how dark it remains outside, long into these London winter mornings. I thought the sun would be up by now.

  But this is just hopeless; no one can get in or out of this station here. I march across to the ticket office. Nothing clearly visible behind the glass of either counter. There might be someone in the chair. I’m not sure. Maybe someone in the murk, slumped over or looking at the floor between their legs.

  ‘Look. I need to get to Victoria. Is anything working today?’

  I notice the sign for POSITION CLOSED at the foot of the glass screen.

  I return to the turnstiles. In the free newspaper stand, a few yellowing copies of the Metro remain. RECESSION ENTERS EIGHTEENTH YEAR shouts the headline. Those must be weeks old because I remember that headline a long time ago. Or do I? Maybe it was something very similar.

  I swipe myself through the turnstiles, run to the broken escalators descending to the Victoria Line Southbound. I clatter down the steps, losing my balance just before the bottom to knock aside a sign informing people to use the stairs.

  I’m going to have to find some water.

  I take a different tunnel that promises to deliver me back to the Central Line platforms. Central Line West will bring me out at Marble Arch. I can get any number of buses from there to Victoria Station.

  Inside this tunnel is a cleaner, a tall, spindly man in a luminous bib, pushing a mop at the floor. He’s cordoned off the affected area with a barrier of canvas tape stretched between four plastic poles. Someone has dumped a pile of rags in a London Underground tunnel. Or perhaps this is the nest of the homeless, one recently abandoned. The Tube mice are certainly active about it; scraps of food have been left inside the rubbish. My mouth fills with saliva.

  A woman in high heels leans over the barrier tape. Her head is bowed and the thin wrist that emerges from the sleeve of her suit jabs a bony hand at the grubby pile on the tiles as if she has spotted something of value.

  I rush past them; who has the time to mess about like this on their way to work? The lack of urgency down here never ceases to amaze me. I just wish everyone would damn well step aside; their thoughts and movements are as slow as the transport service we’ve all come below to use. Like this fellow here, drunk at this time. On all fours and dragging that dirty sheet of cardboard behind him. Stand up straight, man! Tuck your bloody shirt in!

  The chap ahead of him is moving much faster, faster than me, and he’s on crutches. Swinging those wooden poles back and forth and moving like he’s on stilts. But when a man has lost that much hair on top, he really s
hould get his hair trimmed at the sides. The top of his head looks like a greasy eggshell with freckles, fringed with that wispy stuff that hangs off tree branches in swamps. He makes me shudder.

  At the end of this passage the lights are out in the arch. Something rushes across the mouth of the exit and catches a bit of the flickering illumination from the one working striplight. Disorientation must account for what I think has crossed the arch: something moving on all fours, quick as a dog, thin as a greyhound. Couldn’t have been a dog; there had been a tie about the wizened throat.

  At the Central Line Eastbound platform I’m exhausted. My feet burn, my throat is cracked; I doubt I can speak.

  A few others seem to be taking time out on this platform. They are all packed on to the benches. They’ve had enough. Anyone can see that. They can barely sit up straight, and those that are able to keep their spines upright are just resting their heads against the dirty walls, eyes closed, mouths open. In this dim brownish light they resemble the inhabitants of an ossuary under a cathedral, or something the Allies found at the end of the war, piled behind barbed wire.

  I put my briefcase on the floor beside a crowded bench and sit upon it. I’m too tired to feel any shame at sitting on my arse like this, as if I’m some kind of crazy art student. I laugh out loud. It echoes.

  My briefcase could do with being replaced too; I can see the metal frame poking from two corners. The case was a present.

  A shoelace has come undone. I don’t have the strength to tie it. I just need to sit here and get my breath back. Close my eyes. Calm down.

  Something brushes my face. I snap awake, sticky eyelids tearing apart. Surely I couldn’t have seen a shape slipping over the edge of the platform to the tracks. So whoever just touched me must have made off pretty quick down a side tunnel.

  Did I miss an announcement? My head feels heavy and my neck aches.