“Mark,” I whispered. “Are you okay?”
His voice was a desperate rattle. It sounded like he was hurt quite badly. “I’m g-going to try and loosen your wrists, Steve. You’ve got to run a-away and w-warn Amy.”
I glanced nervously in his direction as I could sense he was trying to sit up behind me. “But Mark, even if I get away from them, what about you?”
“D-don’t worry about me, just save Amy, please,” he whispered. Then I felt his mouth trying to chew through the restraints on my left hand.
The noise coming from outside of the room got louder. They were still arguing but it sounded like they were on their way back to us. My wrist felt sticky; it was probably from the blood on Mark’s mouth as he kept trying to use his teeth to gnaw on the plastic zip tie that held me to the chair.
“Come on, Twaine, that mirror is the best thing I’ve given you since we raided the bloody museum. At least let us come with you to meet up with the Pleasants so we can work this out.”
“A lot of us got killed in that museum attack, Dan. And we didn’t find anything magical in there either. I’m not making any guarantees to you until Mr. Big and Mr. Bigger examine this thing. It could just be an ordinary mirror for all we know.”
I could feel the zip tie on my left wrist starting to loosen as Mark was able to get his teeth on the ratchet and was chewing it open. My hand was nearly out.
“You can’t just expect us to wait here, Twaine! The whole city is teeming with those Fomorian monsters, at least let us go with you.”
“The firm’s orders are for no one to know where they’re at unless invited, mate. Now will you stop looking over my shoulder and get back there, I’m trying to take a pee, for christ’s sake!”
The restraint had slackened enough that I was able to pull my left hand free. I immediately stood up and rotated my body so I could crouch down and use my other hand on the remaining zip tie. Mark slumped back onto the floor with a pained sigh as he spat out a bloody tooth. I pushed the ratchet that was stuck to the zip tie back and finally got my right hand free.
I quickly bent over Mark’s prone form. His eyes were closed and he was wheezing heavily. “Mark,” I said softly. “Hang on, mate. I’m going to loosen your restraints.”
His eyes opened up and he pushed me away with his shoulder. “Go, Steve. You’ve got to go right now.”
My lips started trembling. “Are y-you sure?”
Mark looked at me one last time and simply nodded before lying back down again. I couldn’t tell if his expression was one of frustration or of regret.
The noise coming from the doorway grew louder. “Are you gonna watch me while I pull up my zipper now? You bloody poofs!”
“What are we supposed to do then, Twaine? Just sit on our arses and wait while either you or the Fomorians come by?”
I looked around for another way out. That was when I noticed a small, boarded up basement window in the far corner of the room. There were some old wooden crates stacked up under it so I ran as quickly as I could and stood on them. The wooden planks that had been nailed over the pane were loose so I started to pull them out. The first panel came out easily enough but the rusty nails made an ear-piercing squeak, like that of a tortured rat. A reassuring shaft of light instantly poured through the gap I had made.
“What was that?”
“The sound came from below. Come on, back downstairs. Your bloody prisoners are probably on the loose, you knobheads.”
I turned for a short minute and saw a shadow over the doorway; they were coming back. As I looked back at the boards still nailed to the window, it was obvious that I needed to get one more slab of wood free so I could squeeze through. I tried the lower plank but it held fast, so I tried the one above the gap and it started to loosen. I gritted my teeth as I pulled with all my reserves of strength. The plank started to give way but the nails still holding it continued to emit a shrill squeaking noise.
“Oy,” a voice at the other end of the room said. I could clearly tell it was Ollie. “That boy is bloody free! He’s making a break for it!”
The next voice was definitely Twaine’s. “What are you waiting for? Get him!”
I heard them running towards me just as I finally tore the second slab of wood loose and started climbing up through the gap in the window. I was able to push my head and shoulders out easily enough, but as I used my hands to pull the rest of my body through, I immediately felt a pair of hands grasping my feet. I had been caught.
“I got him!” Ollie said.
The second voice was Dan’s. “What are you bloody waiting for? Pull him back in here!”
With a last surge of desperation, I bent my knees and started kicking wildly as I kept trying to pull myself out. My left foot got loose from Ollie’s grip as it slid out of the trainer I was wearing and it must have hit Ollie in the face because I felt it connect with a fleshy object, then I heard him scream and felt him let go of my other foot. I grimaced as I used the base of the windowpane to finally pull my legs through and out of the gap. I only had one shoe on but I was now on the outside.
Dan’s screaming could be heard from the gap in the window. “Ollie, you bloody idiot!”
As I stood up and started running across the street, I heard Twaine’s fading voice in the distance. “I’m staying here to watch over this other one. You bloody stupid knobs go out there and get that lad…”
It was daytime, but the streets were filled with a grayish, dense fog as I ran across the pavement towards an intersection. Abandoned cars of all shapes and sizes were just sitting on the roads and there were assorted bits of rubbish lying about everywhere. I could hear some distant shouting behind me as I rounded a corner, hoping to lose my pursuers. My running was uneven since I only wore a shoe on my right foot while my left had nothing more than a wet sock. In all my life I had never seen the city blanketed in such a dense fog as the one all round me at that moment. It seemed so unnatural.
I ran through a few more streets and alleyways and I took the first right the moment I saw a turn and kept on going until it was all quiet once more. As I caught my breath and started looking at the street signs, I noticed the rust-colored brick walls of the British Library just a few streets in front of me. That must mean that I was in King’s Cross, just a few miles south of my home over in Finchley. I knew from memory that the massive St. Pancras railway station stood right next to the library compound and they had a shopping centre inside of it; perhaps I could get a new pair of shoes over there.
Seeing nobody around, I used the fog as cover and worked my way slowly towards the railway station. Constructed from red brick back in the nineteenth century, St. Pancras had a massive Victorian clock tower that overlooked the main boulevard, and was recently renovated to accommodate train travelers coming from mainland Europe. I remembered the first time I visited the station with my parents when I was just around four years old, when I asked my dad if the gigantic clock on the station was Big Ben’s little brother. He just answered me with the longest laugh I ever recalled him giving. All this development had come to naught though, ever since the Fomorians invaded. As I got to one of the arched entrances of the station, the whole place looked like a deserted ruin of old brick, steel and broken glass.
The arched interior still had an intact superstructure, although some of the glass that had once been placed in the ceiling had now fallen to the ground floor below. Natural light was still struggling in through the damaged skylights, but the walls along the sides of the tunnel were obscured in long shadows. From my own experience, the Fomorians rarely resorted to subtlety, so if there were any of those monsters lurking about, I would have surely heard or seen them already. I took careful steps as I walked along the perimeter of the shopping area since there were pieces of glass lying about. The last thing I needed was to have a crystal shard go through my foot. I quickly spotted a trainer store to my right and slowly made my way to it. Its front glass display had been shattered so I carefully made my way around un
til I found the door leading into it. I reached into the pocket of my pullover before realizing that the two thugs who nabbed us had taken everything, including my mobile phone. I wanted to scream out in frustration because my phone could not only be used as a torch, but it also had the last pictures of my best mate Ray. In the darkness of the store interior, I silently made a vow to myself to not only recover the black mirror, but to take back my phone as well. Ray had sacrificed his life to save me and the pictures I had in the phone were the only solid proof I had that he had ever existed.
There were cabinets at the back but since I could barely see inside of the place, I used my hands to open them and rummage through the numerous shoe boxes until I found a pair of trainers that I liked. After spending about fifteen minutes going through the entire shop, I was down to two pairs. The first was a pair of all-white Nikes and they looked totally wicked. However, they were about two sizes too big, and I couldn’t find a pair that fit me. The second was a set of black Adidas trainers, but I couldn’t tell their exact colors because there just wasn’t enough light coming through the broken windows to examine them properly. What was clear about the second pair was that they seemed to fit me nicely; my foot was snug and comfortable as I adjusted the laces on it.
Just as I stood up and tested the second trainer while walking around the store interior, I heard the sound of breaking glass outside. I quickly crouched down and tried to peer out from behind the display window as I kept my head in between the racks of shoes in front of me.
It was Raver Dan. He was carrying a hand torch and using its thin beam of light to look around as he stood in the middle of the station concourse. I silently cursed to myself for being so predictable. They must have guessed that I would go for a new pair of shoes since I lost one of my own and they settled on the obvious place to check, which was right where I was. There was no time to choose anymore as I took off the old trainer on my right foot and slipped into the new one. As I tightened up the shoelaces, I could see that Dan had noticed the store that I was in and started to walk towards it. I checked to see if there was a way out back, but it was clear that the place I was hiding in was nothing more than a box with only the front as its exit.
I heard more tinkling of glass as Dan stood in front of the opened door and shined his hand torch into the dark interior. I was crouching right behind the display window, so that meant I was right beside him, but there was a small cabinet by the door that kept him from seeing me. Unless he walked inside and shined the light parallel to his old spot, then it was unlikely that he would even notice me. But he suddenly let out a gasp as he moved the light and it illuminated my old trainer that was just lying on the carpeted floor.
“Ollie,” Dan shouted as he turned to look backwards. “He was here! His shoe is right in this store!”
That was it. If I stuck around they would catch me for sure. I pushed at the display cases ahead of me as I jumped out through the broken front windows. Dan cried out as he tried to make a grab for me but missed. As I started sprinting across the concourse, I saw Yob Ollie come running towards me with a look of grim determination on his face. He had his hands out and he was looking to cut me off. Instead of going straight at him, I veered away and started towards the Euston Road exit and then darted into the London Underground. By this time I had a bit of momentum, but I could sense that he was just a few steps behind me as he kept cursing, saying he would skin me alive the moment he caught me. I quickly ran out through the glass exit, made a quick spin on my heels and ran headlong into the tunnel entrance of King’s Cross St. Pancras station.
As I ran down into the darkness I could hear them arguing with each other.
“Bloody hell, he’s going down into the Tube!” Ollie said.
Dan was heaving large gulps of air. I saw him just standing at the tunnel entrance as I chanced a brief glance backwards. “Get back up here, laddie!” he shouted at me. “If you keep going down there you’re dead!”
I kept running down the steps until I was in the darkened platform. I quickly made my way to the edge and jumped down onto the side of the tracks. I nearly fell on the ground when my left foot landed on the edge of the rail, but I was able to steady myself in time. I couldn’t see anything, but my hands could feel the edge of the platform, so I ducked down beneath it and stayed hiding in the dark.
Ollie’s voice was a distant shout as he called out from the top of the escalator. “We’ve got to go down there! We won’t get a torc if we don’t get that boy back up here!”
Dan’s voice was faint, but I could still hear him. “I’m not bloody going down there, there’s nothing but Fomorians in the Tube now! If he wants to stay down there, they’ll get him sooner or later, that’s a bloody fact, that is!”
Beads of sweat began to run down my forehead. They were right. My only choices were to go back up and let them take me, or to try my luck and attempt to find another way out in this dark, subterranean world. The only illumination came from the top of the stairs. If I was to go to another part of the Underground, then I would be fumbling in the dark.
I could still hear them talking up above as I poked my head out from underneath the side of the platform. As I looked around, I noticed a faint green light up ahead, emanating from one of the deep tunnels that snaked through the bowels of the city. At first I thought it was a train traffic light that was still operating, until I realized that it wasn’t blinking or anything, it was more like a faint, steady glow. My fears of the surrounding darkness slowly dissipated and a strange, morbid curiosity overtook me. That was it then. I made my choice as I started walking slowly into the dark subway until the last remaining light behind me was gone.
Chapter 2
You tend to walk slowly when you can’t see what’s ahead of you. I remembered playing a game in Ray’s house when we were younger and we took turns blindfolding each other. We would have to use our other senses in order to find the one who was hiding. I’ve always noticed that anytime I couldn’t see anything, I would use my touch and hearing to try and compensate for the loss of my sight. I guess this was why animals like bats had a heightened sense of hearing since they lived in those dark caves. The only problem was that I didn’t exactly have the sensitive ears of a bat, nor could I emit a high-pitched sonic scream like they could.
As I started walking deeper into the tunnel, I nearly tripped over the tracks several times, despite trying to move as slowly, and as carefully as I could. It was by sheer luck that I was able to regain my balance at the last moment, otherwise my face would have been bruised after falling headfirst and hitting the metal rails. In a worst-case scenario, I might have lost some teeth or maybe even broken my jaw. So in order to lessen my chances of an accident, I decided to walk alongside the wall with my right arm held up to my shoulder, continuously touching the tunnel walls with my fingertips while I moved along. Since the passageway seemed more or less straight, I could sort of walk in a steady line and be reasonably certain that I would not end up tripping over the tracks again. I wasn’t quite sure how far away those green glowing lights were, but I figured they could be no more than a hundred yards away at the most.
By now I was totally surrounded by darkness as the distant sunlight that had been coming from the Tube entrance was gone. What bothered me the most was the eerie silence as I kept making my way forward. The walls along the track were caked with dust and my fingertips were thickly coated with a layer of dirt. A half hour must have passed as I got closer to the green glow. My ears slowly became more attuned to the darkness around me and I could soon hear the sounds of dripping water and an occasional distant echo that might have been coming from a far away station. When I finally got close to the green illumination, I realized that it was a patch of lichen that was growing along the sides of the tunnel walls. I had never heard of any fungi that glowed in the dark like this patch of moss was doing, so it must have come from somewhere that was not part of the real world.
So it looked like a dead end. What I thought was someth
ing that might be useful for me was really nothing more than just a minor distraction. While I just stood there, trying to decide what to do next, I heard the sounds of movement nearby. It didn’t seem like the scurrying of rats, more like the patter of humanlike feet. I instantly froze in place as the onset of fear began to establish itself in my mind.
Even though it was dark, my eyes were wide open as I turned around to see if I could quickly make my way back out, but I could no longer see where the end of the tunnel was. It must have curved slightly as I moved through the passage and I never realized it until it was too late. My breathing started to increase as a feeling of terror came over me. I couldn’t see, and I was trapped.
I was straining my ears to see if I could pick up the slightest noise while I kept my back as close to the wall as I could. Then I heard it again. It was a definite movement, a series of steps that seemed uncomfortably close. I was helpless as I didn’t have any sort of weapon on me at all. Whoever was here with me pretty much had me dead to rights.
A crunching noise to my right, like someone stepping on the graveled floor, made me turn my head and peer out into the darkness, even though I couldn’t see anything. “Who’s there?”
There was another series of footsteps somewhere to my side. It was like someone was moving back and forth, just at the other edge of the tracks. My heart was pounding and ready to leap out of my chest as a cold sweat started to drip down my back. Whoever it was could either see in the dark or had memorized the exact layout of the rail tracks since I didn’t hear any sort of stumbling around.
My voice had gotten louder, I was almost shouting. “I can hear you, please show yourself.”
The voice that answered me was clearly that of a man. But it was high-pitched, and had a whimsical spin on it. “Darkness all around, like in the depths of a faerie mound. One cannot show himself to a blind lad. Only when there is a little light, can one see a tad.”
The Fomorians Page 2