The The Name of the Star

by Maureen Johnson

  This was the kind of thing you should say something in response to, but given our circumstances, I felt it was okay to remain silent.

  “She died on a Saturday. By the following Thursday, my parents sent me back to school and they went to St. Moritz on a skiing trip to ‘get their minds off things.’ That was how my family dealt with the death of their daughter. They sent me off, and they skied. For three years, I just tried to block everything else out. I studied. I did sports. I was the perfect student. I never let myself stop for one second to think about what had happened. Years of just blocking it out. Then, when I was in my last weeks of school and had been accepted to Cambridge, I realized it was the first time I really had nothing to do, nothing to work toward. And I started to think—all the time. I couldn’t stop thinking about her. And I got angry. And I got sad. All the things I thought I’d kept out of my mind, they were all there, waiting for me. I was captain of the rowing team, so I had access to the boathouse. One night in early June, I went in, got a rope, and threw it over one of the beams . . .”

  He didn’t need to go any further. I got the idea.

  “You tried to kill yourself,” I said. “You must have failed. Because you’re here. Wait. You’re not a ghost, are you? Because that would totally destroy my mind right now.”

  “I didn’t fail,” he said. “I was interrupted in the middle of the process.”

  He took the keys from the ignition and put them in a pocket on his vest.

  “The thing they don’t tell you about hanging is how much it hurts,” he said, “and it’s not quick. That’s why it’s such a horrible punishment. The merciful hangmen knew how to break a neck instantly, which is humane. When you hang yourself, though, the rope slices into your neck. It’s agonizing. As soon as I did it, I could see what a mistake it was, but I couldn’t get the rope off. You can’t, once it tightens around your neck and your body weight pulls you down. You kick, you pull on the rope, you fight. I was about to give up when I saw someone walk up to me. Another student, but not someone I recognized. He said, ‘You can see me, can’t you?’ And he just sort of watched me, curiously. Then he put the chair upright and walked away. I got my feet back on the chair and got the rope from around my neck and swore never, ever to take my life for granted again, no matter how bad things seemed.”

  A keening siren in the distance interrupted the conversation.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “I accept what I did, and I won’t do it again. I don’t tell people mostly because . . . I can’t. I can’t tell most people ‘I tried to kill myself because I couldn’t deal with my sister’s death, but I’m okay now because I was saved by a ghost.’ ”

  “No,” I said. “I can see where you’re coming from with that. But how did you get from there to this? To the ghost police?”

  “Another thing they don’t mention—probably because it hardly seems relevant—hanging leaves some terrible bruising around the neck.” He adjusted his collar, as if remembering. “There’s no mistaking it. The next morning, I found myself called to the infirmary, where a psychiatrist was waiting to talk to me. I could have lied to him, but I was still pretty dazed. I told him exactly what I had seen. That afternoon, they transferred me to a private mental health facility where they medicated me and put me in therapy. Two days after that, someone came to offer me a job. She said that I wasn’t crazy. I was depressed, but I wasn’t crazy. And I was depressed for a good reason. She knew what had happened to my sister. What I had seen was real. I had an ability that made me rare and very special, and did I want to do something worthwhile with it? Did I want to make a difference? A week later, I was released from the hospital. I was taken to an office in Whitehall, where a different person explained the rules to me. I would be the first of a newly re-formed and highly specialized squad. Technically, I would be a police officer. I would be trained as such. I would be, to the outside world, a police constable. That’s what I had to tell everyone I was. In reality, I would be the commanding officer of a new police squad.”

  Stephen squeezed the steering wheel so hard, his fingers went white. This was as close as I’d ever seen him come to an emotion.

  “That’s how they used to recruit, you see,” he said. “They’d look through psychiatric records for high achievers who told a similar story—those who had had brushes with death at a young age and then reported seeing people who weren’t there. We were drawn from mental hospitals. I’m the last of that breed. Boo and Callum were tagged at A&E after their accidents. They were both talking about these mysterious people they’d seen . . . Both had been in accidents. Both were athletes. Both were street smart, if not academic. Both were from London and knew their way around. They were identified, and I was sent to recruit them. I’m the last of the mad ones.”

  “You don’t sound crazy to me,” I said.

  Stephen nodded and looked out the window at Regis House, then back at the clock.

  “Three fifty-five,” he said. “Callum’s in by now. It’s time to go.”

  Regis House was a building that should clearly have been locked at four in the morning, but the doors were open when we tried them. The lights in the lobby were on, and there was a security desk that looked like it was normally manned. The guard was ominously absent, the chair pushed back almost to the wall. We saw a half-empty mug of tea on the desk and a computer opened to the BBC news site. Stephen leaned over and looked at the screen.

  “Last updated a half hour ago,” he said.

  I noticed a piece of paper on the desk, the following scrawled on it: “Take the lift down a level. Stairs are at the far end of the hall. Look for the black door.”

  Neither one of us discussed the fate of the guard. There was no point. We took the elevator, then the stairs down into the physical plant of the building—the room with the heaters and pipes and all the heavy stuff needed to run a place of that size. In the far corner of the room, there was a black door. It had a few safety and warning stickers on it, but nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing to suggest where it might lead. Stephen removed his reflective jacket and dropped it to the floor, then carefully tried the handle. The door opened. I felt a rush of cold air come through the crack.

  “One question,” I said. “Did you tell me all that because you think I’m going to die?”

  “No,” he said. “It’s because you’re doing something brave, and I felt I should too.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” I said.

  Before I could hesitate another second, I put my hand on top of his and pulled the door open wider.

  34

  THE SPIRAL EMERGENCY STAIRS, MADE AROUND 1890, hadn’t been improved since then. A string of yellow work lights wound down and down and down, with no bottom in sight. Somehow, this twisting, descending string of bare bulbs made it worse. They didn’t produce that much light—just enough to show the old tile work, dirty and often missing in patches, and the rough and worn condition of the steps.

  I stood there on the top step, my toes hanging over the edge, not ready to move. I could already feel the cold seeping in around my neck, freezing my hands on the old handrail. The air had a hard, mineral smell. The only warmth came from Stephen, who was right at my back.

  Without my conscious effort, one of my feet moved, and suddenly I was going down the steps, away from the world, from everything that was safe. A few steps down, I heard the dripping for the first time. This got louder and louder as I went. The only other sound was a strange, faint whistling—the echo of air passing through from ventilation fans and air-conditioning units and the other tunnels that made up this vast network under the city. This was the true Underground. I started to get dizzy from the spiral, from the sameness of it all. Then the spiral stairs stopped and turned into a straight set of stairs, maybe twenty or twenty-five in all.

  “Please come down,” said a voice. “Be careful on the last steps. They aren’t in very good condition.”

  I froze in position. Now my brain remembered that it was supposed to be af
raid. Stephen was still just one step behind me—he put his hand on my shoulder.

  “No point in stopping,” the voice said.

  He was right. I was so deep now that going back wasn’t an option anymore. This was the point where Stephen had to let me go on my own. He nodded to me, removing the flashlight from his belt and gripping it together with his terminus.

  I took these last steps very slowly. They widened as I got nearer to the bottom, and they ended in what must have been the old entryway, where you bought tickets. The old ticket stalls were boarded up. Some of the tiling had been stripped away from the walls. There were a lot of modern safety notices stuck around, along with much older notices about smoking and nerve gas. Two arches opened in front of me. Pointing at each one was a crumbling cartoon picture of a hand, a little bit of the original Victorian decoration to direct the flow of traffic on and off of the platform. They probably looked nice at the time, but now they were unspeakably creepy.

  I couldn’t see Stephen anymore—he was hiding just out of sight up the steps, waiting. I passed through the arch on the right and stepped onto the old platform. It was a large space, with a high vaulted ceiling. The sunken bit where the trains used to pass had been raised up to the platform level, so it was one large room. Part of the space had been converted into a two-level structure with a set of stairs. The rest was chopped up strangely. There were random walls and doorways and halls. The train tunnels were now dark passageways, leading on to more strangely shaped rooms in a place that wasn’t supposed to have any rooms. Heavy bundles of wires, a foot thick or more, ran along the walls and the edges of the floor. There were some posters left over from the days when the station was a bomb shelter, filled with slogans like CARELESS TALK COSTS LIVES and cartoons of Hitler hiding under tables. There were notices about smoking and being courteous to your sleeping neighbors.

  A figure emerged from behind one of the walls. Now I understood why people thought ghosts floated. They moved with a strange ease. It looked like they had normal arms and legs that made them walk and reach, but there were no muscles in those arms and legs—no weight, no blood, none of the things that gave ordinary humans their individual ways of moving.

  Aside from his silent approach, Newman was disarmingly normal.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Don’t stand there in the doorway,” Newman said. “Come through.”

  “I’m fine here.”

  Newman was carrying what looked like an old-fashioned doctor’s bag. I’d seen these bags. They were Ripper-style prop bags, sold at stands all over the city. He set it down on an old metal worktable and opened it up.

  “Well done with your message,” he said. “I’m not sure how you managed it, but it was very effective. ‘The eyes will come to you.’”

  He produced a long knife with a thin blade from the bag. He was still far away from me. I’m not good at measuring distances, but it was far enough that if he ran for me, I could still turn and make a break for the stairs. But he made no indication that he intended to run at me. He poked through his bag in a leisurely fashion.

  “How many of them are there?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “Remember some time ago, when we met?” he asked. “When I threw your friend in front of a car? I asked you if you’d ever met anyone like us, and you told me that you knew some . . . I think your words were, ‘some weirdos at home’? You were lying, weren’t you?”

  I didn’t reply.

  “There’s no need to deny it,” he said. “I certainly hope you didn’t come down here alone. It would be terribly irresponsible to send you on your own. Whoever’s out there—why don’t you come out and play as well? We’re all friends down here.”

  Nothing. Just the dripping noise.

  “No?” he called. “Don’t want to? Look around you. Do you see this? This is the old headquarters. A good place for us—the Shades. Scotland Graveyard. Not a hint remains of what went on down here, all the work we did. When the government decides it no longer requires your services, it makes you go away. If you don’t come out of here, do you think you’ll get any recognition for your bravery?”

  Still nothing.

  “I know this place better than almost anyone. I know all the ways in. I didn’t see anyone come down with you, so I can only assume they are coming through the tunnel from London Bridge.”

  He extended his arm to his right, toward one of the yawning openings into the dark.

  “The other way in is the way you came, Aurora, right down those stairs. And I watched you. You came alone. Unless there are people on those stairs, waiting to make their entrance. Don’t wait too long, for her sake.”

  “Hey!” called a voice from another part of the station. “Jack the Wanker! Over here! I want your autograph!”

  Callum stepped out of the darkness of the tunnel, holding out his terminus.

  “Ah,” Newman said. “You’re young. Makes sense, I suppose.”

  “That’s right,” Callum called. “I’m a kid. Come see my toy.”

  “Here’s something I know about your toys,” Newman said. “There are three of them. Are there three of you? I certainly hope so.”

  “I don’t need any help,” Callum replied.

  “Telephones,” Newman said, stepping closer to Callum. “Very good. We had to carry torches and Walkmans. They even tried to put one in an umbrella. Very cumbersome. The telephone—that’s very good.”

  As Newman was turned away, Stephen made a dash from the steps, across the small ticketing room, and threw himself against the wall between the arches, right next to me.

  “You seem keen,” Newman said to Callum. “It’s a good thing I have this knife. Which one of us do you think would win in the end? I can slash your throat as fast as you can turn that terminus on me. Should we try it and see?”

  He whipped the blade in an arc in front of him and took a few more steps toward Callum, who didn’t move an inch.

  “Oh, I like you,” Newman said, approaching Callum. “You’re a brave one.”

  “Stop,” Stephen said, pushing me aside and stepping into the doorway.

  “Here we go,” Newman said. He didn’t sound at all alarmed. “Two. One more, surely.”

  “You can’t take both of us,” Stephen said. “Make a move for one, and the other will get you. You may be a strong ghost, but we’re still stronger.”

  “The dead travel fast,” Newman said.

  “Not that fast,” Callum said. “Believe me, I can outrun you.”

  “He can,” Stephen confirmed.

  “Well then,” Newman said, with a smile. “I suppose I’d better give myself up.”

  “Just put the knife down,” Stephen said.

  “You know . . .” Newman stepped back a bit, toward the twoleveled structure in the middle of the platform. “I did learn something very useful during my time down here—”

  And with that, darkness—a darkness so absolute, my eyes had never experienced anything like it. My brain had no idea what to make of it. Now I truly understood where we were. We were deep underground. I had no sense of space, no sense of distance, no perspective at all. I couldn’t have found my way back to the steps. I didn’t have my cell phone on me—that had been taken away when they were tracing the texts.

  “The location of the light switch,” he said. “Funny how frightening the dark is.”

  His voice bounced around in all directions, off the curved ceiling, off the bricks and the tiles. He could have been thirty yards away, or he could have been next to me. Two tiny points of light appeared—the glow of the phones. After a moment, this was joined by a thin beam of light from Stephen’s direction, and then from Callum’s. The flashlights.

  “Two lights,” Newman said. “Where’s the third one? Come out, come out . . .”

  I saw Callum’s flashlight beam swing around wildly.

  “Where’d he go?” Callum yelled. “You see him?”

  “Just keep your terminus out,” Stephen called to him. �
��He can’t go near you. They’re more powerful now than they used to be.”

  “Is that a warning for me?” Newman said. “I still see only two of you. There must be more.”

  “There might have been a larger squad if you hadn’t murdered everyone you worked with,” Stephen replied.

  “It never had to happen that way. I never intended to kill anyone. It was all very unfortunate.”

  “Murdering five people you worked with was unfortunate? Taking on the role of Jack the Ripper was unfortunate?”

  “A means to an end,” Newman said.

  I was pretty sure Stephen was trying to make him talk to get a sense of where he was, but it was still impossible to tell. The acoustics sent the sound of his voice in far too many directions. Stephen reached over and grabbed me, putting his arms around me. He maneuvered us both over to the wall, then slipped from behind me and pushed the terminus into my hands.

  “Hold this,” he whispered. “Keep pressing one and nine. Do not stop. Stay against the wall so he can’t get behind you.”

  I wanted to ask him what he was doing, but I was too afraid to speak. I heard him move away, then there was silence. Nobody said a word. A full minute went by, maybe more, with nothing happening at all. I dug my fingers so hard into the number pad that I could feel my nails slicing into it. It provided a small ball of light around my hands, a glow extending six or eight inches at best.

  The lights suddenly came back on. My pupils contracted in shock, and it took a moment before I could see clearly. I was against the wall by the entryway arches. Callum was flat against the opposite wall, where the platform area was. We stared at each other.

  “Stephen!” he yelled.

  “Here,” Stephen said quietly.

  Stephen was speaking from inside the ticket area, just behind me. The noise didn’t bounce around so much in there. And from the calm way he spoke, I had a terrible feeling that something very bad had happened. Callum came running in my direction, and I slowly peeled myself away from the wall and looked through the arch.