“Are we there?” she asked.
“I don’t know where we are!” her mother replied. Her lips now formed a single crimson line.
The train stopped. The doors opened.
“We’d better get out,” Derek said.
A few passengers had got off ahead of them. The Johnsons watched as they disappeared into the gloom at the end of the platform, making their way towards the stairs that would take them to the exit. The doors screamed and thudded shut. A moment later the train moved off, the windows seeming to melt into each other as it picked up speed, until finally they were no more than a brilliant white blur. And then it had gone. The Johnsons were on their own.
“What now?” Samantha demanded. Her voice was a slither of ice in the damp heat of the station.
“Where are we?” Cecily asked. She had only just begun to realize that they weren’t anywhere near the Natural History Museum.
“Your father took the wrong train,” her mother said.
“We’ve just come a little too far up.” Derek took out a handkerchief and mopped at his forehead. It often occurred to him that, in court, he could demolish anyone. But when he was at home or with the family, he had all the power and presence of a wet rag. Sometimes he wondered why that should be. He glanced at his wife, her arms crossed scowling – and at his daughter, towering over him. All in all, it was probably better not to ask.
“125th Street!” Cecily read out the station name with contempt. “That is so not where we need to be, Daddy.”
“I know…”
“Let’s go up to the street and take a taxi back,” Samantha suggested.
“I’m not sure that’s a very good idea, my dear.” Derek had a nasty feeling that they had left Manhattan. They had come so far north that they might be in Harlem. He didn’t actually know anything about Harlem, but he had seen a number of television shows set there, and nothing good had ever happened. It was bad enough being lost down here, but if they went up to street level… “It might not be so easy to get a cab up there,” Derek said, putting worse thoughts out of his mind.
“Then what —?”
But before Samantha could finish, there was a distant rumble and a pair of lights appeared in the darkness, heading back towards them, which was to say – back south. A second later a train burst out and began to slow down. But it was on a different platform. Derek quickly looked around him, taking in the stairs leading up to a corridor that must surely cross over to the other side.
“This way!” he exclaimed and, grabbing hold of his wife, he broke into a waddling sort of run.
There were ten steps up. With Cecily right behind them, Derek and Samantha clambered to the top, and then, without stopping for breath, hurried along the corridor. Below them, they could hear the train come to a halt and the doors open. There seemed to be turnstiles and staircases everywhere. There were signs pointing to the A, the B, the C and the D train – and even to La Guardia airport. Derek ignored them all. He just wanted to get his family onto this train before the doors closed again. He didn’t care where it took them. As far as he was concerned, they could go all the way back to Spring Street and forget all about the stupid Natural History Museum. Why had they wanted to visit the museum anyway? None of them were even interested in natural history.
They reached a staircase. Derek just hoped this was the right one. Taking a tighter grip on Samantha and checking that Cecily was still with him, he hurried down. It was lucky that his wife wasn’t wearing her high heels today. The three of them reached the platform just as the doors signalled their alarm. They leapt on the train, the doors cutting across like guillotine blades behind them. Their clothes were crumpled. They were panting and covered in perspiration. But they had made it.
Nobody had got off the train. Only the three of them had got on.
“What train is this?” Samantha asked.
“I didn’t see,” Derek confessed.
“Did you see where it’s going?”
“I didn’t have time to look.”
It was only now that they realized they were alone in the carriage.
And this train was somehow different to the one they had taken before. It was much older. The seats were brown, not grey and the silver handrails were a different shape. Derek glanced at one of the advertisements.
That was impossible! Cigarette advertising had been banned on the New York subway more than ten years ago. Everyone knew that.
There was no recorded announcement. Nobody told them what the next stop was going to be. But they were going the right way. They had to be. The train flashed through a station and Derek caught sight of the street number – 116th. They were already nine blocks south.
“Let’s sit down,” he said. He was still holding Samantha’s arm and he gently steered her towards the nearest seat.
“We don’t know where we’re going!” Samantha said.
“We’re going back to the hotel,” Derek responded. “And then we’re going to go out for lunch and I’m going to get you the biggest hamburger you can buy in this horrible city. And let’s not forget, tomorrow we’re going home!”
“I wish we’d never left,” Samantha moaned.
“We’re slowing down,” Cecily said.
It was true. They could feel the wheels braking beneath them and as they entered the next station, it was obvious that they were about to stop. 107th Street. It was just like all the other stations with a low ceiling and a sense of being squashed beneath the surface. But the walls were more ornate. The name was written in mosaic. And there were classical pillars dotted along the platform, like something out of a Greek temple.
“I don’t remember a station on 107th Street,” Samantha said.
“Well, we’ll only be here a few minutes,” Derek assured her.
The train stopped. The doors opened. Then there was silence. Nobody got on or off. The engine didn’t seem to be running. They waited a full two minutes. Then the lights went out.
“What now?” Cecily wailed.
It wasn’t too dark in the train. The platform lights were reflecting through the windows. But it really did feel like it was here for good; that it would never move again. None of them were quite sure what to do. Should they just stay here and wait for a guard or perhaps a driver to appear? Or was this the moment to head back up to street level? Another minute ticked past.
“There is no 107th Street station,” Samantha said.
“What do you mean?”
Samantha had taken a New York guidebook out of her handbag. Derek wondered why she had only produced it now. If she’d had the guidebook all the time, wouldn’t it have been better to consult it while they were still at the hotel? She had opened it to a map on the back cover. It showed a map of the Manhattan Subway. “There’s 103rd and 110th – but there’s no 107th,” she said.
“But look at the wall, Sam. We’re at 107th. It says it in black and white.”
“And red, green and gold,” Cecily added.
It was true. The tiles were all different colours. But Derek scowled at her. This wasn’t going to help now. “This must be a new station,” he said.
“It doesn’t look new.”
“Maybe your guidebook’s out of date.”
“Derek…”
“We can’t just sit here,” Cecily exclaimed. “This train isn’t going anywhere.”
“She’s right,” Derek said. “Maybe we can find someone to give us a little help.
But there was no one … not on the train, not on the platform. Even the driver, if there had ever been one, refused to appear.
“Let’s find the exit,” Samantha said. She was speaking in a whisper without knowing why. She could feel the emptiness all around her.
There was no exit.
No stairs led up from the platform. There didn’t seem to be any signs pointing to other lines. The station could have been abandoned a week, a month or even several years ago. The air down here was sluggish. The neon lights, long rows of them, burned down,
turning everything grey and white. The train they had just left seemed to have died. It was hard to believe it had ever moved at all.
“There!” Samantha shouted and pointed.
There was a single man at the end of the platform. Or it could have been a woman. The figure was too far away to be seen clearly and anyway he or she was concealed inside an ill-fitting coat … it was almost like a cloak. There was no face, no arms. Just a shape that was vaguely human, a wrapped up bundle on legs that staggered slightly, as if drunk, towards an archway and disappeared.
“Who was that?” Samantha asked.
“It must have been the driver.”
“He didn’t look well.”
“Maybe that’s the way out.”
“I don’t want to be here,” Cecily wailed. “I wish we’d never come.”
“Don’t worry, Cece!” her mother crooned. “Everything’s going to be all right. Daddy will look after us.”
Keeping close together, they edged their way down the platform, following the one other human they had seen. At last they arrived at an archway. And there was a sign.
About fifteen steps led down and then turned a corner. Derek looked back. As far as he could see, there was no alternative.
“Come on,” he said.
“Derek. There’s no J train in my guidebook,” his wife muttered.
“There’s no 107th Street either,” Derek reminded her. “But that’s where we are. You need a new guidebook.”
“We need to get out of here,” Cecily whimpered.
“South,” Derek said. “We’ll take the J train south. That’s all we need to do.”
They followed the staircase down. There were another twenty steps after the corner, then another corner and twenty more. By the time they emerged onto another platform, they knew they were far beneath the level of the road. They could feel the great mass of earth and concrete above them. The weight of it pounded in their ears.
Another train was waiting.
“Derek…” Samantha began.
Derek looked up and down the platform. The figure they had glimpsed had gone. He realized that there was no lighting at all down here. The only illumination came from the train itself. If the doors closed and the train moved off, they would be left in pitch dark. It was that thought that spurred him on.
“Get on the train,” he said.
“But Derek…”
“Just do it, Samantha. Now!”
They climbed onto the train and it was as if an invisible driver or controller had been waiting for them. At once the doors closed. The lights flickered out, and for just a second the three of them could imagine themselves trapped in the inky darkness, unable to see as they were carried to an unknown destination. But as the train jerked forwards and began to pick up speed, the lights came back on again. At least they could see. And by the time they had plunged into the next tunnel, they were aware of two things. The track was slanting down, taking them deeper and deeper into the belly of the earth. And this train – the J train – was like nothing that could possibly exist in any modern city. It had to be at least fifty years old. The outside had been painted dark green. The seats in the carriage were made of wood, not plastic. There were no advertisements. The wheels creaked and groaned. The whole thing looked like something out of a museum.
The journey took about ten minutes, which felt like ten hours and during the whole time, none of them spoke. Cecily sat with her head slumped, her long hair dangling between her knees, her artificial fur jacket drawn around her shoulders and her legs crossed. She had never looked so miserable. Derek was clinging to one of the strap handles as if he would collapse without it. His tie was crooked and the collar of his shirt was unusually crumpled. As for Samantha, she had already decided that she wasn’t going to speak to him again for a week. Her eyes were tight little pearls of anger.
The train emerged from the tunnel. But the family saw at once that they weren’t in a station. This was like nothing that could have ever belonged to the Manhattan Subway. It surely couldn’t belong to the real world.
A cathedral. That was Derek’s first thought as he nervously poked his head out of the doors, which had once again opened. The ceiling rose improbably high above him. It was carved out of natural rock and glistened with strange crystal formations that caught and reflected the blue light that washed over the place. Where was the light coming from? There were no electric lamps, no sign of any machinery apart from the train itself.
Narrow metal walkways and spiral staircases clung to the rock face – tiny in the distance. And now that he examined his surroundings more carefully, Derek could make out doors everywhere … natural arches and narrow fissures in the rock with passageways leading into an inner darkness. A cathedral or a station – or even a hospital? Lower down, at the level of the train, a platform stretched out in both directions, although it had cracked and crumbled away about half way along. A machine that might once have dispensed chocolate bars, empty now, the glass broken, clung to a tiled wall. And there were beds. Dozens of them. Lined up a few metres apart, some with wooden cabinets, chairs, folding screens.
“Where are we?” Samantha whispered.
Derek hadn’t even noticed her beside him. He pointed at another sign, faded but still legible: 58TH STREET. COLUMBUS CIRCLE.
What had happened here? It was as if an old subway station had got itself tangled up with a cavern out of Jurassic Park. It didn’t belong to one world or another. Derek had once seen a film where the world had been destroyed by a nuclear war and the survivors had huddled together in the ruins that were left. It was a bit like that here. And hadn’t they been ruled over by talking monkeys or something? Derek wouldn’t have been at all surprised if an ape in a suit hadn’t come strolling up to them now.
Someone was indeed approaching.
“Derek…” Samantha whimpered.
It wasn’t an ape. It was a man, perhaps the same man they had seen at 107th Street. He was dressed in an old raincoat that might have come out of a charity shop, tied round the waist with a piece of rope and so baggy that it was almost impossible to tell if the man was fat or thin. He had a knitted hat, a scarf around his neck and mittens on his hands. He was limping slowly along the platform, and as he got closer they saw that his head was almost completely covered with bandages. It was only when he reached them that they saw why.
His face was rotting away. What skin they could see was grey and pitted with blisters and sores. One of his eyes was covered with a patch, but the other one was in a bad way too, red and swollen with some sort of liquid oozing over the lid. Part of his upper lip had been eaten away so that all his front teeth showed, giving the impression that he was either smiling continuously or howling silently in pain. His throat had partly caved in. Derek and Samantha could see the sinews stretching down beneath his chin.
The three of them stood frozen in the doorway, not wanting to leave the train. Derek had dropped his hat. Cecily was crying. And yet the man didn’t seem to want to harm them. He raised a hand in greeting. Derek noticed that it was missing two fingers.
“You are welcome,” the man said.
“I…” Derek swallowed hard. As the man spoke, his sinews visibly rose up and down as if they were the cables that controlled his voice box. Derek couldn’t tear his eyes away from them.
“We’re not staying!” Samantha screeched. “We’re not leaving the train!”
“I’m afraid that train’s not going anywhere,” the man told her. “Not for a while.”
“Mummy…” Cecily was crying harder than ever. Tears streamed down her cheeks and dripped off her chin.
Two more people approached. One was dressed, vaguely, as a nurse – but her dress and jacket were torn, a dirty off-white. She had no nose. The centre of her face was a black, gaping hole, which seemed to be trying to suck the rest of her features in, like water down a drain. Ginger hair sprouted from one side of her head. The other was bulged and shaped like a cauliflower. With her was a child in a dir
ty tracksuit, younger than Cecily, bald with bulging eyes and skin covered with boils. It was impossible to tell if it was a boy or a girl.
“Hello and welcome,” the nurse exclaimed. “If you’d like to come through to registration, we’ll find you somewhere to stay.” She waved the stump of her arm at the row of beds. She had lost her hand well above the wrist. “I’m afraid you’ll have to use the public dormitory tonight. We hate doing that, especially for a family of three. But … you know! The paperwork!”
“Step out, folks,” the man added. “We’re not going to hurt you and the sooner we get you registered, the sooner you can grab something to eat and get a well-earned rest.”
Clutching hold of each other, Derek, Samantha and Cecily shuffled forwards. Cecily was still carrying her iPhone but of course it had no signal down here. They were aware of people everywhere, shuffling out of the mouths of the caves, standing on the walkways, peering round the corner of the train. But these were mutilated people, missing arms or legs, supporting themselves on crutches or old invalid chairs, rotting away even where they sat or stood.
“Look,” Derek began, struggling to find the right words. He had never felt like this before. Words were his currency. Words were his power. They were his life. “There’s been a mistake…”
“We can sort this all out in the office,” the man said. “By the way, I’m Tom Callaghan. I should have introduced myself. And this is Sister Wendy with her daughter, La Toyah. She’ll be looking after your medical needs.”
“Who referred you?” Sister Wendy asked brightly.
“Nobody referred us,” Derek replied.
For the first time, Sister Wendy and Tom Callaghan exchanged a look of doubt. “But you came in on the J train,” she said.
“We were going to the Museum of Natural History!” Samantha wailed.
There was a long pause.
“We’ll talk about this in the office,” Tom Callaghan said.
Scared to Death--Ten Sinister Stories by the Master of the Macabre Page 18
