Nightmare Revelation
Nightmare Series Book 3
Written by David Longhorn
Edited by Emma Salam
Copyright © 2018 by ScareStreet.com
All rights reserved.
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Table of Contents
Prologue: Underground, London
Chapter 1: Over-ground
Chapter 2: Impostor Syndrome
Chapter 3: Fake News
Chapter 4: City of Illusions
Chapter 5: Revelations
Chapter 6: Closer Encounters
Chapter 7: Revelation, Two
Chapter 8: Pre-emptive Strike
Chapter 9: Survival
Epilogue: End game
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Prologue: Underground, London
“Don't go down there!” Cristina jumped back in alarm, almost colliding with two young women emerging from the entrance of Hobs Lane station. The man who had shouted at her was shabby-looking, his hair long and disheveled, his face half-covered by an unkempt beard.
“Don't go down there! It's not safe!” he shouted, voice breaking with emotion.
“Another bloody nutcase,” muttered one of the girls. “Ought to round them up.”
Her friend shushed her. They walked on. But Cristina could not go away from the entrance to the Tube station. Her work lay inside.
“Please, sir, let me pass,” she said firmly, keeping her voice level, trying to soften her accent. Sometimes people reacted badly if you sounded foreign but she had never managed a convincing English accent, even in small phrases. “Please. Sir. I must get to work now.”
It was ten after midnight, but in the streets of central London, there was never total darkness. In the glow of streetlamps and passing headlights, Cristina could see that the man was not merely poorly dressed. He was obviously homeless, his feet wrapped up in newspapers that concealed any shoes he might be wearing.
The man frowned at her, then seemed to get an idea.
“You're from Poland, right?” Cristina sighed, started to protest, then thought it might antagonize the man, who could well be mentally ill.
Always, they assume I'm Polish, she thought. But if I say Romanian, they call me a bloody gypsy. If I'm lucky.
When she said nothing, the man stepped forward, looming over Cristina. He was close enough now for her to smell his bad breath, and the scent of sweat and urine from his clothes. Even in the cold February night, the odor carried. Cristina wrinkled her nose and took another step back.
“You lot from Eastern Europe,” the strange man went on, “you know there are monsters, like vampires, werewolves? Your church teaches you to shun the doings of evil spirits!”
I'm a qualified science teacher working as a bloody cleaner in this big, dirty city to make money to help my sick child, she thought, anger rising. Who are you to make assumptions about me, smelly Englishman!
But instead of speaking her thoughts, she nodded mutely, still keen on not angering him.
“Well, then,” the vagrant continued. “You should know there are things like that in this city, now. Demons! Monsters! Unholy creatures from the Pits of Hell!”
The man waved his arms, and Cristina saw his knuckles were scarred. She glanced past the stranger, calculated that she could duck past him, run for the station entrance, and call security.
“I've seen them on the tracks, under bridges, in the old, abandoned sidings!”
The man was ranting now, arms flailing ever more wildly. She could see the whites of his eyes, looked away, but then saw the gap-toothed mouth with its ropes of saliva, gobbets of spittle flying towards her as he went on and on.
“What's this about?” Cristina looked over her shoulder to see a young police officer. She had been raised to fear and mistrust the police in her homeland, but in England, she had not found officers corrupt or brutal. She started to speak but the homeless man started scolding the officer.
“The government knows about it! How could they not know? Those things are using the tunnels–”
“All right, pal, that's enough.”
The officer waved the man back, and it worked. Suddenly Cristina's personal space was free. She realized that she had been holding her breath. But the tense situation seemed to have been defused as suddenly as it had started. The gangly homeless man started to shuffle away along the street, muttering to himself. The police officer looked down at Cristina, smiled. She felt her face flush and hoped he could not see it in the poor light.
“He's harmless, miss,” he said. “Take care. There's plenty around who aren't.”
She stood watching for a moment as the policeman walked off after the vagrant, taking his time, showing that he was confident, in control of his territory.
A good-looking young man. Kind eyes. Nice rear, too.
She shook her head to dispel pointless thoughts and hurried into the station, then made her way around the ranks of ticket machines to the small storage room. There, she changed into her overalls, collected her mop, and filled her wheeled-bucket with warm, soapy water. She almost forgot to tie up her long, dark hair, and tuck it under a soiled canvas cap. Despite rushing, she was still a good ten minutes late when she reached the platforms via the service lift.
The last Tube train had gone nearly twenty minutes ago, and security had finished their final sweep. There was nobody else around. The silence was profound, the escalators and air conditioners had been switched off automatically. She glanced up at the closed-circuit TV camera, and wondered – as she always did – if anyone was actually watching over her. From what she knew of security guards, the answer was almost certainly ‘No.’ Cristina began mopping the platform, sweeping smaller items of garbage off onto the track. As she worked, she felt an all-too-familiar weariness begin to weigh down her limbs. She was trying to hold down four cleaning jobs, all with different contractors. She had gotten up at four that morning, grabbed a sandwich at lunchtime, another at six.
Dead on my feet, she thought. That's what the English say, dead on your feet.
“Crissi.” Cristina stopped, leaning on the mop, head tilted. She had been dog-tired many times before, and nodded off on a bus or in a cafeteria. But she did not think it was possible to dream when you were actually working.
“Help me, Crissi.”
The words were spoken in Romanian. They echoed down the empty platform. The voice was familiar.
Impossible. Cristina began to mop vigorously at the worn tiles, carelessly slopping gray water over her trainers. The voice was familiar, but the person the voice belonged to was long dead. She reasoned the voice was a symptom of her terrible fatigue. She would finish up quickly.
Yes, I will do what they call a 'half-arsed job', she told herself. And if I lose this gig, there are plenty of others. Always plenty to clean in a big, dirty city.
“Help me, Crissi.”
The voice repeated the phrase, over and over, and it sounded so plaintive that she had to stifle a sob. She flung the mop down, the crash of the plastic shaft on the tiles drowning out the voice. It paused, as if startled by the racket, then resumed its plea, its tone even more urgent.
“Shut up,” she said, quietly at first, but then getting louder as she felt herself growing angrier. “Shut up, Constantin!”
&
nbsp; As soon as she said the name, the voice stopped. As if Constantin is a magic word, she thought.
She had not seen Constantin since he had left their provincial home and gone to the capital to be, in his words, a businessman. A few months later, his emails and phone calls had stopped. When Cristina had gone to try and find him, everyone had claimed ignorance. The police had not cared. There were too many missing persons. Eventually, an old police sergeant had told her that Constantin had been involved in drugs and was probably dead, buried in the foundations of an office building or flyover.
But maybe he came to London instead, she thought. To flee from his enemies, creditors, gangsters.
“Crissi, I need your help.”
This time the voice was weak, hesitant. She looked up towards the platform at the gaping tunnel mouth, a vast round O of blackness. It was the only place that Constantin could be. She walked up the platform, slowly at first but then gathering pace as hope took possession of her weary mind. She stopped by the tunnel entrance, leaned out cautiously over the track.
“Constantin? Is that you?” she hissed.
In the darkness, she could just make out a pale shape. She was a little shortsighted, and the figure could have been anyone.
“It's me, Crissi. It's your brother.” Cristina felt her heart miss a beat, then start hammering wildly.
“I can't see you properly. Can you come closer?”
“No! I can't let them see me.”
Tiredness left her struggling with her thoughts until she worked out what he meant.
“You mean the cameras?”
“Yes,” said the voice from the darkness. “But you can come to me. They turned off the power, Crissi, it's safe.” Cristina looked down at the track. The third rail gleamed dully silver.
“What are you doing in there, Constantin?”
“Hiding, of course! Easy to hide in London. Lots of places underground. You know that.”
She was puzzled for a moment, but then it was as if a doorway had opened and let a host of new ideas into her head. She saw the familiar London she walked through every day, but now the concrete and tarmac beneath her feet was transparent. Underneath ran cables, conduits, water mains, and the myriad tunnels of the Underground network. And there were older tunnels, plus medieval cellars, wartime shelters, secret government bunkers, hundreds of hidden places once useful, now forgotten. And all beneath the vast, bustling city.
Of course there are lots of places to hide, she thought. That must be what that homeless man saw. People like Constantin, the smarter outcasts and fugitives, seeking warmth and safety under the earth.
“Okay,” she said, sitting down on the edge of the platform. “Wait there. I'll come to you.”
Once her feet struck the dirty ground between the rails she knew she could not turn back. She began to step carefully along the tracks, squinting into the gloom. In the uncertain light that spilled from the platform, she could just make out a pale figure crouched low against the curving tunnel wall.
“Constantin? Oh my God, are you naked? What has happened to your clothes?”
Overcome by emotion, she rushed forward, almost tripping on the rails, desperate to embrace her brother again. But as she drew nearer, she saw that the body before her did not look very much like that of a young man. In fact, its small stature and soft curves were more feminine than anything else, as was the mass of dark hair hanging down the crouching figure's back. She hesitated, her hands falling to her side. The desperate belief that she had found her long-lost sibling evaporated.
“I … I don't understand. Where is my brother?”
Without replying, the pale shape sprang up, moving with extraordinary speed. Cristina screamed, reeled backwards, and tripped on a rail. She fell painfully, onto hard metal, and gasped as the wind was knocked out of her. The pale creature that had mimicked Constantin leaped forward, landed on her chest. Its long, sinewy fingers fastened around her throat.
Dark hair brushed her face as Cristina fought for life, all weariness forgotten in the struggle. She tried to pry the gripping hands loose, but in vain. Desperately, she clawed at the half-hidden face, but her arms were not quite long enough. She only succeeded in sweeping aside the thick veil of hair.
No, no, it cannot have my face.
“Oh, but it does.”
They were the last words Cristina heard.
***
“Hello there, darling,” said the security guard. “Knocking off early, are we? Bit naughty!”
The young woman with long, dark hair said nothing, simply continued to walk toward the exit. The guard walked after her, keeping a few yards behind so he could take a long look at her figure.
Weird, the guard thought. She's normally one of the chatty ones. What's her name again? Maria? Most of them are called Maria. Damn, now if I call her Maria, she'll be peeved.
He picked up his pace to overtake the woman, noting that she was still wearing her overalls. And one of her shoelaces had come unfastened. He pointed this out to her and she stopped, bent down, and started to fasten the lace again. Her hands, he noticed, moved clumsily, as if she were suffering from severe cold. Yet it was not particularly chilly indoors.
“In a hurry, are we?” he said.
Again, there was no response. Instead, the woman stood up and walked to the exit where a large sliding door sealed Hobs Lane off from the rest of the city. The guard hurried forward again, taking out his key card.
“Here you go, love,” he said, swiping the card, then tapping in a code on a keypad. An electric motor whined and the door began to lift slowly, revealing the sidewalk. The guard looked down at the woman, who was staring blankly ahead.
“Long day, I bet?” he offered. “Mine's just starting, of course.”
“Yes,” she said, without looking at him. “Long day. I go home now.”
The guard felt suddenly resentful of her attitude. He had been kind to this woman in the past, offering her cups of tea, overlooking her occasional tardiness. And now she was treating him in such an offhand manner.
Stuck-up bitch, he thought. What's she got to feel so superior about?
“Well, don't do anything I wouldn't do,” he grunted. “So that leaves you free to do just about–”
His hand was almost on the woman's right butt cheek when her hand shot around behind her and grabbed his wrist. The small, delicate-looking head spun, dark hair flying.
“Hey,” he protested, “it was just a bit of fun.”
The woman stepped forward, her small, cool hand still gripping his wrist like a vice. Now he could see her face more clearly, her eyes were great, dark pools with no apparent boundary between pupil and iris.
Did she have those eyes before? Of course she did. I just didn't notice, is all.
He began to struggle against her grip, brought his other hand up in a threatening gesture, only to have her seize that one too. The guard felt a sudden terror, an awareness that he was alone with this apparent madwoman.
“So alone,” she murmured, and a small, oddly dark tongue flicked across her lips. “So frightened.”
Then, as quickly as it had begun, the weird confrontation ended. The woman freed his arms and ducked under the still-rising door. He cursed after her, feeling brave again. The door rose up a couple of feet higher and revealed an empty street. He closed the main door and went back to check on the cleaners' store room.
“Bloody hell!” he exclaimed. “She didn't even put her damn bucket away.”
He set off back to his desk to fill out a report.
Chapter 1: Over-ground
Denny was floating in a warm, tropical ocean. The blue of the sea was so beautiful that she smiled at it, sure that she was in paradise. Other people around her were mostly drifting but a few swimming languidly, kicking themselves along with oversize fins. One swimmer moved a little closer, giving her a thumbs up. She looked through the plastic snorkel-mask to see that it was Frankie.
Hey, she mouthed. Thought I'd lost you.
Frankie mouthed back, I know, then gestured upward, at the shimmering ceiling of the ocean surface. Denny returned her friend's thumbs up, and kicked out. But her feet did not propel her forward. Instead, she felt her feet pinioned, trapped in some unyielding substance. She looked down. A dark, mountainous object was rising beneath them. She could make out a vast, corrugated mass of roiling protoplasm. Dotted here and there, on its surface bulge, huge, distorted faces. Each face was a bulbous expanse of cartoon-like despair. Denny knew these to be the faces of its victims, the beings whose essence the vast entity needs to survive and grow.
Soul Eater. It found us again.
Denny kicked more frantically, but instead of freeing her ankles the action seemed to draw her deeper into the colossal body. She sank to her knees into the semi-transparent tissue. She looked over at Frankie, but her friend was also caught. One by one, all of the swimmers in the warm sea were snared, sucked into the nightmare monster.
Nightmare! That's what this is. Not real at all. Just a bad dream.
The knowledge did not free her. The awareness that she was dreaming only seemed to make her sink faster into the glutinous tissue. Soon the sticky outer layer engulfed her head and she was inside the Soul Eater. Around her, through the semi-transparent flesh of the creature, she saw other bodies in attitudes of panic and despair.
A gigantic quivering wave in the protoplasm that held her spun her body around, and she was now facing downward. Small glowing patches grew larger, until she could make out roughly human outlines. Denny didn’t want to look, but couldn’t close her eyes. The shapes were the earlier human sacrifices the Interlopers made to this hideous quasi-deity. The beings of the Phantom Dimension, almost driven to extinction, had found that offering humans to the greedy colossus bought them more time until the creature grew restless again.
These victims had been consumed skin and muscle first, then organs and skeleton, leaving only the brain and nervous system. The Soul Eater needed their minds, hijacking them to keep its own vast, alien organism functioning. Their brains, Denny knew, could live for years within the living mountain.
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