The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, volume 15

Pauline E. Dungate In the Tunnels

The platform of Birmingham’s Moor Street Station was crowded. Late shoppers and office workers stood crushed together waiting for the Leamington train. Bernie, who wanted the one that followed, stood out of the way near the mouth of the tunnel. It fascinated him, this dark cavern that ran under the city and disgorged trains at regular intervals. He had walked through it once, just before they had reopened the rail link between Moor Street and Snow Hill, the station at its far end. But there had been too many people on that special trek for him to be able to appreciate fully its echoing magnificence.

Just a minute or so before the train arrived, there was a disturbance. Shouting distracted Bernie from his contemplation of underground places. As he turned he saw a ripple of movement and a child-sized figure belting along the platform towards him, weaving and barging between commuters. Vaguely registering the cries of “Stop, thief!” Bernie prepared to make a grab for the boy. The child slowed, grinned at him and leapt onto the rails.

“Ilyas!” Bernie would have plunged after him if someone hadn’t grabbed him from behind.

The figure disappeared into the tunnel moments before the lights of the train became visible round the curve in the track. He tensed, waiting for the impact. But the carriages drew quietly into the station. Doors banged open as passengers scrambled for seats, emptying the platform of all but those waiting for the Stratford train, and a small knot of people halfway along.

“D’ya know the kid, sir?” the porter who had restrained him asked Bernie.

“Yes… no… it couldn’t have been,” he stuttered.

“But yer got a good look?”

“Yes, but…”

“An’ yer’d know ‘im agin?”

“I think so.”

“Could yer come an’ ‘ave a word with the station manager, then?”

Bernie glanced at the clock. The yellow numbers flicked over to show 17:39, one minute to his train. His mother would hardly notice if he was late for tea. She never did. “If you think I can help,” he said.

There was a policeman in the Station Manager’s office when they finally showed Bernie in. A tearful woman was being led out as he entered.

“Now, young man, the constable would like you to answer a few questions if you don’t mind.”

Bernie nodded and gave his name and address.

“Do you know the bag-snatcher?” the policeman asked.

“No, sir. He just looked a bit like someone I knew at school.”

“What was his name?”

“Ilyas. I can’t remember his other name. He was in my class, that’s all.”

“This lad was about twelve,” the manager said.

That’s why it couldn’t be him, Bernie thought. He wouldn’t recognize most of the kids from school, just the few he saw sometimes down the market, like Javad who’d nick things off the stall if he wasn’t watching, or Shazad who had a club foot. In six years, Ilyas was sure to have grown a bit, and changed.

The phone rang part-way through the interview. The manager listened, nodding his head from time to time. When he cradled the receiver he spoke to the constable.

“He hasn’t come out at Snow Hill yet. And none of the drivers have seen anyone on the track.”

The policeman wrote it down in his notebook.

Finally, they let Bernie go, just in time to catch the 18:40, the manager saying, “Thank you so much for your help, young man.”

It was dark and raining when the train pulled out. Bernie sat staring at his reflection in the window, seeing the round, grinning face of Ilyas as he passed under the bridges that muted the sound of the wheels. Whoever the boy was, he couldn’t have disappeared.

Bernie found himself searching crowds for familiar faces, especially those pushing their way through the market towards the subway leading to the station. He found it easy to superimpose features on his customers at the fruit stall. Once he was sure he caught sight of the small, dark-haired figure of Ilyas disappearing behind an unloading lorry. When the boy re-emerged he could see clearly that it wasn’t. But from the back…

“Stop daydreaming, lad. We’ve got customers,” his boss told him.

Bernie blinked and stared down at the change he was clasping tightly. He grinned nervously and handed it to the old lady who counted the coins carefully before stowing them in her purse.

“Where’s me oranges?” she said.

Bernie passed her the bag, thankful that no one could see his blushes.

“I don’t know what’s got into you recently, lad,” his boss said later when they were clearing away. “You’ve been a pretty good worker up till now. Don’t spoil it.”

Bernie gave himself a mental shake and resolved to concentrate.

At the station, Bernie took to standing as close to the tunnel entrance as he could. He remembered the Station Manager’s words about the boy not coming out at the other end. There were caverns under Birmingham, he had heard. Vast concrete hangars where they had stored supplies in the war. Perhaps there was a way in through the tunnel. He couldn’t remember any side branches on the day he had walked through.

Bernie decided that he had to go through the tunnel again. Instead of heading for Moor Street as he usually did, he set off across town, deliberately choosing a roundabout route to take him through as many underpasses as possible. He liked the enclosed spaces and wished there were fewer people around. He wanted to hear his own footsteps echo from the walls.

There was a busker in the underpass leading to the main-line station, a bald, elderly violinist whose squeaky music followed Bernie as he passed.

He walked through Old Square. They were just locking the basement doors to Lewis’s. He could see the security man of the department store through the heavy plate glass as he slid the bolts into place. Then down the ramp and past the toilets. Bernie hadn’t realized there were so many small men in the city centre. There was another of them leaning on a broom in the entrance to the gents’. He looked like a gnome.

Bernie glanced at his watch and began to hurry. He didn’t want to miss the train.

The trip was a little disappointing. He managed to get a seat at the front so that he could see through the driver’s cab and out onto the track but it was difficult to watch both sides at once. There were lights strung all along the tunnel and although he could see the shadows of archways set into the walls he missed any dark opening leading away.

Under Colmore Circus, he saw Ilyas again. Bernie had taken to staying later and later in the market area, taking the most circuitous route he could devise to the station and lingering in the empty subways. Some were shabby and rubbish-filled and stank of urine. Others had murals painted on them or incised in the tiles. He was surprised how little graffiti was added to those pictures; the street artists seemed to confine their efforts to the railway, scarring the walls along the lines with their spray-on paint.

Sometimes a subway would open out into an oasis of green.

The walls of the Horsefair had a delicate mosaic depicting the old market, and plants grew unmolested in the centre. Bernie had almost forgotten his search for Ilyas in his growing delight at the variety of underground passages.

Then he saw him. The small figure had his back to him as he crossed the open space under the traffic island. Ilyas disappeared behind a supporting pillar. Bernie hurried after him.

“Ilyas!” he called.

The boy stopped and turned. Ilyas was exactly as he had been six years before, when they had both walked out of school for the last time. They had never been friends, and Bernie remembered him most for his broken front teeth and the fact that he only ever seemed to wear wellies to school.

“It is Ilyas, isn’t it?” Bernie said.

Ilyas grinned.

“It’s me. Bernie Robinson. From school.”

“Hi,” Ilyas said.

“What are you doing these days?” It was an inane question but Bernie couldn’t think of anything else to say. He couldn’t very well ask if the other boy had been stealing handbags.

Ilyas shrugged. “Working for my uncle.”

“I’ve got a job in the market,” Bernie said. “Selling fruit.”

“That’s nice. See you around.” And Ilyas disappeared into the shadows so quickly that Bernie hardly saw him go. Bernie started after him, reluctant to lose him after all this time; but the doorway he thought Ilyas had gone through was only a locked service duct. Bernie looked round, expecting to see Ilyas hurrying up one of the ramps. There was a movement to his left that quickly stilled when he turned that way and an echo that might have been laughter, or the tail end of a whistled tune. The only other person in sight was an old tramp whom Bernie was now used to seeing around town. He believed he slept on the steps outside the NatWest bank.

People didn’t disappear into walls. Only ghosts did that and Bernie didn’t believe in ghosts. Ilyas was real. The more he thought about it, the more he was convinced that there was a way underground. Probably several ways.

He made up his mind and bought himself the most powerful torch he could find, and some spare batteries. He chose a Saturday night for his exploration, after the trains had ceased to run on the branch line, and caught the night-service bus into town. If graffiti artists could get onto the railway line so, Bernie reasoned, could he.

The subways, now totally deserted, resounded to the echoes of his footsteps. Bernie was torn between increasing the resonance of the sounds by stamping his feet and a desire for silence — since he was about to break the law.

The station was locked up as expected but next to the old part was a rutted car-parking lot surrounded by a high chain-link fence. Bernie glanced around quickly before sauntering in through the gate. He had expected to have to climb the swaying fence but it lay trampled in the dirt by other feet. He crossed boldly. To his left the old part of the station was secured from intruders, the fencing topped with vicious twists of barbed wire.

Bernie stepped over the rusting rails and walked round, past the sign that warned NO PASSENGERS BEYOND THIS POINT.

Finally, he stood between the rails, looking into the maw of the tunnel. It was lightless. A solid wall of dark, facing him. Beckoning. His heart thudded with excitement — and with fear. Bernie took two steps inside, then another two. The sound of the gravel beneath his feet was loud but muffled, as though the black air tried to erase his presence while the curved walls wanted to advertise it. He felt everything was being focused back on him.

He looked back and was reassured by the paler arch that marked the cavernous mouth, an orange-tinted grey fed by the lights of the city above. Bernie switched on his torch and began to walk slowly, swinging the beam from side to side, scanning the soot-coloured brickwork for doorways, anything that would suggest a way underground. A rat, startled by the light, scuttled along the bottom of the wall and vanished into a recess. Bernie ran his hands over the brickwork, hunting for an opening. Nothing.

He went on.

At one point he switched off the torch and just stood. The darkness was total. Out of sight of either tunnel mouth it enfolded him gently. Far above he could hear the occasional rumble of passing cars. There was the odd tick of metal and mortar contracting. Bernie shivered. It was cooler than he had expected. It was supposed to get warmer, the further you went underground.

He found it almost by accident. A streamer of paper had caught on the cable that was strung between the lamps. It stirred in a ghostly breeze as the torch beam flashed past it. Bernie looked upwards, expecting to see some shaft burrowing from the tunnel’s roof to the surface and creating a draught. There was none. Neither was there a discernible wind blowing through the tunnel itself. He stood still wondering if his own movements had caused the fluttering. But no — the strip still jigged about in the torchlight.

Bernie crouched next to it, feeling for the airstream. He traced it to a crack at the base of the wall in another of the alcoves. He pushed tentatively. The brickwork seemed solid until he tapped it. It had a hollow ring. There was no fastening that he could see. He pushed harder, in all the places and directions that he could think of.

He grinned in the darkness as a panel slipped suddenly sideways. He shone the torch through the opening. It was a service passage running parallel with the tunnel and connected with it by a short linking corridor, five paces long. Cables and pipes stretched in both directions, but there was room for a small man to move carefully between them.

Bernie jumped as the panel slid and snicked back into place. He felt a momentary rise of panic as his beam caught the blank, closed wall. A quick check showed how easy it was to open again.

Bernie turned right towards Snow Hill. It was damp here, condensation forming and dripping from the ducts to form intermittent puddles. Some pipes gurgled with the passage of water through them.

There was a grille in the wall a little way along that slid to the side like the door of an old-fashioned lift. Peering through, Bernie could see steps spiralling down. The passage was tiled with pale blue. It reminded him of the steps leading down to the lower levels of some of London ’s Underground stations. He’d spent a week’s holiday there two years ago, haunting the network and wishing he could follow the trains that burrowed into the earth like giant worms.

The gate was secured by a rusted padlock. Bernie stared longingly into the inviting gloom before searching for something to break it with. The penknife he always carried was too flimsy, the blade bending as he twisted it in the catch. He needed a more sturdy length of metal, like a screwdriver. He cast around, without much hope, for something suitable. The piece of wood he found snapped the moment he applied force to it.

Bernie tugged viciously at the padlock in his frustration. The loop snapped. It lay in the palm of his hand for a few moments before he realized what had happened. Then he carefully put it in his pocket. Passing through the gate, he pulled it almost closed behind him, satisfied that he could get out easily.

His footsteps echoed, the sound bouncing and reflecting from the curving walls, continuing after he stopped. It was almost as if there were someone simultaneously in front of and behind him.

There was someone behind him. Another pair of shoes keeping time with him. But not quite. The click of the heels was slightly different to the slap of his trainers.

“Who’s there?” Bernie called. The cry stretched. Amplified by the stairs, it was returned to him altered: “Hoos sair”.

Bernie dithered, knowing he was trespassing. As long as he remained still, so did the other. He tried tiptoeing down, then, flashing the torch suddenly behind him, miscalculated and bashed it against the wall. The light flickered.

“You don’t scare me,” he whispered into the darkness.

“Scairee,” it came back.

The torch went out.

“Scairee,” the echo repeated.

Bernie froze. Being underground wasn’t quite so much fun any more.

He started to creep back up the steps, fingers of one hand touching the tiles, the other holding the torch up as a club.

He encountered no one.

He stumbled on the top step and sprawled across the floor, hitting his head on the gate. He hauled himself to his feet and pulled at the grid. It didn’t move. He tugged again. And heard laughing.

He thought it was just the gurgle in the pipes above him, but it continued. Chuckling at first, then louder. A demented sound. Bernie shook and rattled the gate.

“Let me out,” he shouted.

“Ow, ow, ow,” came the reply from behind him.

He clasped his hands over his ears to shut out the sounds.

He could wait, he thought, wait until morning. Until someone came.

But perhaps no one ever came.

He brushed a tickle from his cheek. It was wet. A tear. He wiped his face on his sleeve. Men didn’t cry. And there must be another way. Besides, whoever it was had been behind him.

Without light, Bernie picked his way down the stairs again, feeling for every step with his toes before committing himself. It made his legs ache. But there were no echoes.

As he descended he became aware that he could see. Not clearly. Just the dim outline of his outstretched hand. There were lights below. People.

Bernie stopped. People had locked him in. His throat was dry, his head sore and he could smell his own sweat. He edged round the last bend.

It wasn’t much of a light. A pale glowing in the distance, its source blocked by a dark shadow. Bernie sank down, his back to the wall, shivering. He was in a cavern, he realized, the roof held up by massive columns.

The wartime caverns. Now empty. What was it he had read in the newspaper? If the idea had been to convert them into a huge bus depot then there must be another way out. And the light must be a bonfire lit by vagrants. They would know.

Bernie bent his head to rest it on his knees. To calm down. To still the fear. He would walk across to them. Warm himself, ask the way. It was nothing to get fretted about.

He was right up to them before he saw them. Grey figures stooping over a pile of burning sticks. One picked up a brand and straightened. He was no taller than a twelve-year-old boy. None of them were. Slowly they reached for the flaming torches. The flames illuminated only their faces. They were round and wrinkled and ugly. Like goblins.

One smiled. His teeth were small and sharp and pointed. Bernie spun round. They were behind him too. He panicked.

He screamed. He ran, heedless of the fact that he couldn’t see.

He hit a pillar with his shoulder. He held his arms out before him and ran into another.

“Bernie, Bernie.” Someone was shaking his shoulder.

“The alarm’s not gone off,” he muttered trying to pull the blankets over his head. There weren’t any. He was cold.

“Bernie.”

His head throbbed. His shoulder ached and there was pain in one of his wrists. He knew his eyes were open but he couldn’t see.

“It’s Ilyas, Bernie. Do you remember me?”

“I can’t see you,” Bernie said.

“What are you doing here?” Ilyas asked. There was a babble of unintelligible voices around him.

“Exploring,” Bernie said.

One of the other people spoke to him. He couldn’t understand. Ilyas answered in his own tongue, then spoke to Bernie in English. “I’ve told them we were at school together. That they cannot have you.”

“What do you mean?” The feeling of panic was coming back, seeping through the pain of Bernie’s hurts. He remembered the leering faces, the pointed, eager teeth.

“You must go,” Ilyas said. “Can you stand?”

“I’m locked in. Someone locked the gate.” Bernie heard himself whining.

“I’ll show you the way.” Ilyas put his arm under Bernie’s shoulder and helped him to his feet. Bernie swayed, disorientated. He felt invisible walls pressing in on him and the weight of Birmingham descending slowly to crush him. He whimpered.

The voice in the darkness spoke again, sharply, insistently. Ilyas replied and began to lead Bernie forward.

Bernie felt hands pawing him, long nails touching his face. Ilyas spoke and they withdrew. Bernie could hear feet shuffling after them and somewhere a squeaky sound as a violin began to play. It was a dirge.

They splashed into water, which became deeper, soaking his trainers and numbing his legs inside wet trousers. The sound changed as though they were entering a narrow, enclosed space.

“This is the river Rea,” Ilyas said. “It runs underground here, down through Digbeth.”

“What’re you doing here?” Bernie asked, partly to drown out the sound of the scuffles of their followers. He felt slightly safer now. The air around was a bit warmer, though it smelt a little of sewage.

“I live here. My people always have. We steal from above when we have to, and eat what comes down to us.”

“But we were at school together.”

“Times change. We have to adapt.”

Progress was slow. Bernie staggered when he tried to walk unaided. He blundered into the tunnel wall. Pain shot up his arm from the damaged wrist.

He leant heavily on Ilyas, though it was uncomfortable due to the other’s lack of stature. There were splashings and squealings from the water.

“Just rats,” Ilyas said, “squabbling over food.”

Bernie shuddered. He would have felt happier if he could have seen the animals. Something soft brushed by him. Far behind he thought he heard howling, the kind that could emanate from human throats.

Then Bernie could see. The end of the tunnel was a small orange-grey circle in the distance. It looked much too tiny for him to get through. The shaft they were traversing began to narrow. Old brick was replaced by smooth concrete. The water, concentrated into the compressed space, was deeper and swirled faster, tugging at his legs.

“You will have to crawl,” Ilyas said. “There was no time to fetch the raft.”

He tried, but his wrist gave way, throwing him into the water. He screamed with pain and swallowed foul-tasting liquid. He surfaced, spluttering and sobbing.

“I can’t,” he said.

“You must. I can’t keep them away for ever. There’s a grid at the end but it lifts up easy. I used to come this way to school most days.”

Bernie dragged himself through the tube. Cold and soaked, he kept watching the patch of light.

Ilyas started back the other way, whispering a hasty, “Goodbye.”

Bernie peered through bars set about nine inches apart. Beyond them the river ran between steep banks, above which were silhouetted buildings outlined by sodium lights. The fringes of the water were studded with the debris of city life. He could hear the sound of an occasional car.

A piece of chicken wire stretched across the bottom of the bars, catching paper, twigs and gnawed bones as the river flowed out of he culvert. The gate itself had been repaired recently and was held in place by shiny new bolts. By reaching through, Bernie could just reach them. He had drawn one when he heard the snuffling behind him, and a whispering. He stretched for the other. Refusing to glance behind, he stared out at freedom, and at the four men who were walking towards him.

A street lamp created a brighter pool of light, illuminating the round wizened face and the pointed teeth.