North End

by Jason Nevercott

  Chapter Fourteen

  The creatures were not happy. With the young female escaping, they had lost their food supply. They were supposed to get some on Friday, in two days, but this was too long to wait for them. But they still remembered how to hunt...

  The creatures were descended from the original tunellers of the underground system. These people had been poor and began to live underground when doing their work but when they lost their jobs stayed there as they could find no other employment on the surface. At first they used to go above ground to steal food but gradually they grew afraid of doing this and ate leftovers at stations and even mice and rats to survive.

  But as time went on they started to eat the bodies of suicides and then when these became hard to find began to hunt vulnerable people late at night at tube stations. They knew the tube system intimately and would scurry along its tunnels, avoiding tubes, at night when their victims were mostly available.

  It was now ‘quiet time’ on the Underground, when the electricity to the lines was turned off. This was when the creatures were most awake, and when they normally ate their food.

  It was also the time when the maintenance workers began their shifts on the tube, checking and repairing any faults with the tracks.

  Micky Ford had been doing this job for over twenty years. A 55-year-old, short, and wiry man, he was nevertheless fitter and stronger than his small frame looked. Like his other colleagues, he had his safety hat with torch on, orange luminous safety vest, and tools. It was just after 1 a.m., when they all began to walk down the Northern Line’s northbound tunnel at Hampstead.

  Just under an hour later, when they approached North End, John, the foreman, said to them, ‘Be careful, lads, the Ghoullies might get you if you’re not careful’. The other workers let out a laugh but Micky only half joined in; like them he knew there was something weird about North End but he had also seen ‘something’ moving there one night, something which was not quite animal but not human. The memory of this made him shiver, and as they passed through the disused station with him at the back, he constantly looked behind him, just in case.

  The creatures slowly crept through the passageway separating the north and southbound lines, as they heard the workers pass. They then entered the northbound tunnel. The only prey they could now ‘hunt’ were the workers with ‘bright lights’. This would be risky but they knew that the tube platforms were watched at night by ‘glass spies’, and so they could not hunt there anymore. They also did not particularly want to go up above ground, a world they knew little about but where the people would catch them and hurt them. No, the tunnels around North End were their territory and here they did the catching and hurting.

  They could see the workers’ lights in the distance, bobbing up and down. The eldest male and elder female creature led followed by the other remaining female and two males – they all hunted together as a family.

  Micky got up after making a minor repair to the track and quickly looked down into the tunnel he had just come from. What was that? he asked himself; he was sure he had seen something move. He looked at his colleagues who were in front of him further up the line; he was always taking slightly longer than they in doing his job, for he liked to be thorough. He then looked back again.

  There it was once more. Now he was definitely sure he had seen something; he had been underground for too long for his eyes to be deceived. He quickly got his tools together and moved off closer to his colleagues. He was scared but he did not want to embarrass himself by telling them anything; he just wanted the security of their company. He reasoned that whatever ‘it’ was, it would not attack a team of workmen; he had not recalled it doing so the last time he had seen it.

  He and his colleagues moved further down the line, and eventually, nearly an hour later, Micky lost his fear and relaxed. This was to such an extent that he again allowed his colleagues to get quite far in front of him.

  It was now just after 3.20 a.m. and his work on the tracks would end in less than an hour. The electricity was turned back on at 5 a.m. for the first tubes and Micky and his team had to be off the lines before then. They would finish up at Golders Green. In fact they would soon be out of the tunnels and into the open air above ground near to this station. This also made him feel better.

  Micky continued to inspect the tracks but was so bent down at one point that he could not defend himself - when the first creature attacked.

  The elder female put her arm around Micky’s neck and then her hand around his mouth before he could make any noise. The eldest male creature then grabbed Micky’s legs and the remaining creatures his body.

  Micky was too shocked to say anything and just froze. This is not happening to me. No way, he thought. This is north London...

  But as he realised ‘they’ were taking him back down the tunnel he had come from towards North End, he began to struggle with his arms and legs. ‘G...off..m..’, he tried to mouth out past the female creature’s dirty hand with too long fingernails. But ‘they’ were too strong for him.

  ‘Quiets, man, or we kills you,’ the female creature whispered to him in a hideous raspy guttural voice.

  This made Micky even more scared but he continued to struggle and then bit her hand. She let out a horrible scream, ‘EEEEYYYWWW!’

  ‘Help! Help! Hel...’ Micky then shouted before the female’s bloody hand eventually shut him up again. It tasted disgusting and he felt like being sick. ‘They’ continued to try to move him down the tunnel, now with a greater urgency it seemed to Micky.

  But the other workers must have heard the creature’s and his screams, because Micky could now hear them behind him, coming towards him, shouting his name. ‘Micky, Micky, where are you, mate?’

  Micky felt the grip on him becoming less strong as the creatures tried to run faster with him. He could also hear his colleagues catching up. Micky made a final effort to break free with his remaining strength.

  He succeeded. But he landed badly and fell unconscious.

  He woke up and quickly looked around him. With relief he realised he was in a hospital. His wife was by his side and soon told him what had happened to him. His colleagues had found him on the track with a bloodied head and mouth. They then took him to Golders Green station, where an ambulance took him to the Royal Free hospital in Hampstead. The time was now 7.15 a.m.

  ‘Did they catch them?’ Micky asked his wife.

  ‘Catch who, dear?’ she asked in turn.

  ‘The things...creatures that tried to kidnap me, who else? Micky responded angrily.

  ‘Creatures? Have you lost your mind, luv?’ asked his wife.

  ‘How do you think I got injured? I was attacked...they tried to take me’ Micky said almost having a fit. He then realised his wife must have thought that his bang on the head had affected his sanity. He knew it sounded crazy but it did happen. He calmed down as he realised people were starting to look at him and that no one would believe him anyway.

  In fact, most of the other patients and people in the room were now looking away from Micky, but one of them approached his bed. It was a journalist from the local newspaper.