The Collection

by West, Sam

  At last, she felt the pressure of the train slowing, tugging her sideways in her seat. Welcome light illuminated the black window and soon she saw the signs for Aldgate flashing past the window at an ever-decreasing speed.

  The train came to a lurching halt in a hiss of hydraulics and the doors slid open, the comforting beeping noise filling the empty carriage.

  Oh, thank God. I see people…

  “Please mind the gap,” came the tinny, female voice over the tannoy speakers, and the normalcy of it went some way to soothing her jangled nerves.

  A group of people stepped onto the train and she breathed a heavy sigh of relief. Thank God she wasn’t going to be alone for the duration of the journey home. She was beginning to feel like she was the last person left alive on earth.

  Her relief was short-lived.

  What the…?

  The six men that had traipsed onto the train weren’t right. At first glance there was nothing wrong with them; all they were guilty of was silence and the fact that they had chosen to sit opposite her, filling up the long, side-facing seat.

  Every one of them sat with a bowed head, each set of hands clasped meekly in their lap. They were all dressed the same, in long, black, buttoned up coats that came to mid-shin.

  Maybe they’ve come back from a goth club or something. So what if we all share the same taste in coats?

  But she found she was trembling uncontrollably. She hazarded another glance at them through her heavily mascaraed eyelashes. In a rush it hit her what her problem with them was. And it wasn’t their coats.

  They all look the same. Fuck this, the bunch of freaks. I am so getting off at Tower Hill...

  From their dark hair, to their pale skin, to their oddly non-descript bone structure, to their build, to their black trousers and clumpy black boots much like her own… To just about bloody everything.

  In unison, all six of them raised their heads just as the train entered a tunnel. The lights flickered for a second, making a strong buzzing sound that she felt in her toes.

  At the same time, they smiled. Six identical smiles. Her breath hitched in her throat and she clutched her chest, the frantic thumping of her heart reverberating against her palm. The exact same shade of icy-blue eyes glittered above the stretched-taut mouths and she lurched to her feet, the pretence that they were ‘normal’ entirely over.

  “Who are you?” she asked the grinning men before the overhead lighting blinked out completely.

  The blackness curled around her, she felt the pressure of it against her skin, a tangible thing that caused her mine to lurch. The dark was total and try as she might, she couldn’t catch her breath.

  The sound of heavy breathing reached her ears and she realised that the sound was coming from her.

  “Who are you?” she gasped once more.

  Her question was met with throaty chuckles and heavy breathing – and this time she realised that the sound wasn’t coming from her.

  There was a hot blast of air on her neck and she spun round, swiping at thin air.

  Someone fucking breathed on me.

  She lunged blindly forwards in what she hoped was the general direction of the train door, holding her arms straight out before her.

  The lights came back on and her relief at this fact lasted for less than half a second. She found herself in the middle of the carriage with the six men surrounding her.

  Except they weren’t men anymore. Fuck only knew what they were.

  The reflections I saw in the window… They were fucking real.

  She turned on the spot, staring in disbelief at the demonic faces that leered down at her. For what else could she possibly describe them as?

  Demons. They’re demons.

  Their human skins had been shed, their masks discarded. Or perhaps they had never been in disguise at all, and some infernal magic had forced her to see what had simply never been there in the first place.

  Each thing was tall – at least seven foot – and they towered over her in the confined space, crowding her like she was in a tiny clearing in the woods. Because somehow that was exactly what they reminded her of: trees. Their clothes were gone – if they had even been there in the first place – and their naked bodies were horrifically and impossibly twisted, skinny and bent.

  Gnarled, like trees.

  Their skin, if you could even call it that, was closer to leather or bark. It was a blotchy brown, tinged with glistening red. Their arms were a canopy over her head, as thin, long and crooked as branches.

  But it was their faces that frightened her the most. Any trace of humanity was dead and gone. Their eyes were still that same shade of glittering blue, but those eyes were sunk far back into their heads, making them seem almost reptilian. Their faces were lumpy and misshapen, the colour of grey, rotten meat mixed with fresh shit. Some of those lumpy foreheads looked like they were sprouting horns.

  One of the creatures licked its lips, and the red tongue that flickered briefly into sight was long, skinny, and forked.

  At last, Esther found her voice and let out an almighty howl of despair. The tears that streamed in great rivers down her cheeks thankfully blurred her vision, and her chest hitched with her sobbing. She couldn’t catch her breath; it rattled noisily in her throat like an asthmatic running a marathon.

  She staggered sideways, almost careering into one of the hateful creatures before righting herself in time. Only then did she notice that the train was stopping.

  Oh, thank God, I’m at Tower Hill, surely someone will help me...

  Beyond the wall of demons she could hear the train-doors slide open.

  “Help,” she half-screamed, half-wheezed. “Somebody help me!”

  “Please mind the gap,” the recorded voice said, and Esther screamed so hard that the sound cut her throat.

  Around her, the creatures chuckled and panted and wheezed.

  “No, no, no,” she sobbed, cradling her face in her hands.

  Behind her, she felt strong hands grip her shoulders. “Look,” a harsh voice whispered.

  “Look, look, look,” the other voices echoed around her.

  They didn’t sound human; but then, why would they? The strangest thought slammed into her mind:

  This is what death sounds like.

  She gasped as she was pushed forwards and her eyes snapped open. The demons had parted before her and she had an uninterrupted view through the opened doors.

  The first thing she noticed was the Tower Gate sign; her gaze latched onto it. Because it didn’t read Tower Gate, as it should have done, but Hell.

  She blinked, but the words remained the same.

  What is this shit?

  The concrete platform floor with the yellow line painted along the edge to ‘mind the gap’ looked the same as it always had. But it was what lay beyond the platform that was the problem. The back, brick-wall that curved into the ceiling was gone. In its place was an uninterrupted view of what could only be described as Hell.

  The sight defied comprehension. A vast, red landscape stretching as far as the eye could see assaulted her vision. Briefly, she was reminded of Australia’s barren landscape – a place she had backpacked around in her early twenties – with its seemingly endless, orange and brown-hued outback.

  Except the main colour theme here wasn’t orange, it was red. And even though Australia was prone to bushfires, it didn’t have roaring flames that erupted upwards from huge holes in the earth that could have been many miles wide, although it was impossible to tell in her frazzled state how close or far away those vast fires were.

  Her gaze shifted upwards, following the tendrils of black smoke curling against the blood-red sky.

  All of a sudden, the stench of the landscape hit her nostrils, and she gagged.

  Dear God, the stink.

  It smelt like burst sewer pipes.

  No. It’s sulphur. I am in the fiery pits of Hell.

  A giggle escaped her lips, although it came out as more of a strangled sob.


  The foul landscape scratched at her retinas and crawled in her brain. Vast. Flat. Fathomless.

  Without warning, she bent double in the grips of a fierce stomach cramp and puked up all over her boots. Dimly, she was aware of those bony hands still gripping her shoulders. She hadn’t finished retching up the contents of her guts when she felt herself being tugged upright. She coughed and choked on her sick as it burnt a trail into her lungs.

  “Look,” those infernal voices whispered in unison.

  Hands fisted her long, dark hair and she felt her head being wrenched backwards in time to witness the train doors sliding shut, severing the view of the alien world beyond.

  The train jolted into movement, and even though it made no sense, the train continued on its journey through the London underground.

  Beyond the door’s windows, all was black. The demons were clustered behind her now, outside of her field of vision.

  Over and over, they repeated that one word:

  “Look.”

  She did; she had no choice for hands held her head firmly in place, forcing her to look at the black window opposite. She became aware of more hands on her, roaming her body. She was still weak from throwing up, and every breath she drew in wheezed and rattled in her chest and made her want to hack. She became aware of how hot it had become in the train carriage, of the sweat mingling with her tears.

  Dizzy with terror and panic she stood there hyperventilating as the demons’ groping grew more insistent. Hands moulded her breasts, her buttocks, between her legs. So far the assault remained on the outside of her clothes, but she could sense that but it wouldn’t be long before those same, hideous hands went under.

  Oh God, please let me pass out, please let this all be a horrible nightmare…

  To her surprise, the black window lightened. For a second she thought they were pulling into the next station

  the next station in Hell

  but it was just the glass itself that was lightening. Before her very eyes, images appeared on the glass, as clear as a picture on a television set.

  It was herself that she saw, struggling with the man in alleyway, with the man she only knew as ‘Greg’. She watched him pull out the knife and slide it into ribs. She watched herself crumple to the ground.

  She squeezed her eyes tightly shut, and when she opened them again, the scene on the glass remained, a macabre film staring herself as the dead woman lying on the ground.

  “Look at the truth,” the demons whispered. “Look, look, look.”

  She watched the unfolding scene on the glass in morbid fascination, and she understood.

  So that’s what really happened.

  She hadn’t kneed him in the groin after all. He had stabbed her and she had gone down like a sack of shit. As she had died and her soul had left her body, she had dreamt that part about fighting back.

  But why? How?

  But deep down, she already knew the answer to that.

  To protect myself from the truth. To fool myself I was still alive for as long as I could.

  So that’s why the streets of London were so empty, she thought to herself in a flash of understanding. Because the fucking streets were no more than a projection of my psyche…

  Helplessly, she watched the unfolding scene on the window; the film of her death.

  Oh, you fucking, scumbag bastard, she thought in disgust as she watched Greg crouch down next to her, yank down her jeans and knickers and force himself inside her cooling corpse.

  As Greg raped her on the window, so the demons tore at her clothes with their clawed hands.

  “You can’t die,” they echoed around her, “because you’re already dead.”

  Searing pain exploded in her torso from rump to head as she was shoved roughly to the floor. She found herself lying on her back on the hot train floor, staring up at the monsters that crowded over her. Their grotesque faces were twisted into grins, revealing sharp, misshapen teeth.

  When they had stripped her bare, so they tore at her flesh. She howled in agony in the face of the relentless pain. She felt clawed fingers on her and inside of her. Her legs were shoved roughly apart and white hot cramps in her lower guts accompanied the tearing agony in her vagina.

  Feebly, she raised her head and saw a forked tongue flickering over her nipple, followed by sharp teeth that clamped down on the pouting pink bud, ripping it off her breast in a fountain of gore and blood. The back of her head flopped backwards, smacking against the train carriage floor. Brilliant white-light flooded her vision, but instead of blacking out, her vision cleared to perfect sharpness.

  She became aware of a tugging sensation deep in the pit of her stomach, and long, brownish-pink coils of glistening meat were tugged up towards the carriage roof.

  My intestines, a distant part of her mind realised.

  Every time she should have, by rights, passed out or died, she came to again in a screaming blaze of agony. Each breath that she thought was her last, proved not be to so.

  In and out, in and out, her breaths kept on coming.

  “You are ours,” they echoed around her. “Forever and ever.”

  She stared up at the hateful, demon-faces crowding her, her mouth wide open in a silent scream; silent because one of them had slit her throat and with it her vocal chords.

  I want to die. Let me die…

  But she couldn’t, because the dead can’t die.

  She felt something in her mind snap as surely as an elastic band pulled too-tight.

  And still she kept on breathing.

  The train bore her away, into the pits of hell, and hers was a one-way ticket.

  X

  Helen stopped reading, her heart hammering.

  A train ride to hell, she thought. Like that’s never been done before.

  Even so, there was no denying that the story had frightened her. There was just something about it that had crawled under her skin. As with the previous story, the writing style unfathomably resonated within her with its familiarity.

  What a strange and horrible little story.

  She closed the book and held it loosely in her lap.

  I shouldn’t be reading this.

  The thought was sure and true, and a horrible feeling curled in her guts. An idea danced on the edges of her mind, but it disappeared before she’d had a chance to explore the possibilities of it.

  She closed her eyes for a moment, listening to the rain lashing against the windowpane. The imaginary landscape of Hell popped into her head, and for a second she saw it in all its glory, from the fiery pits, to the blood-red sky.

  Her eyes snapped open and she shook her head at her ridiculous flights of fancy. Since when did she believe in God, yet alone all that nonsense of Hell’s fire and brimstone?

  I’m just spooked, that’s all.

  Outside, the thunderstorm showed no signs of abating. She frowned over at the window, the thin book clasped loosely in her lap. The shadows of the trees through the flimsy, vertical blinds in the long, thin window swayed back and forth. For a moment, she thought of the demons in the story she had just read, of how the author had compared them to trees. She imagined that the branches were long, bony fingers, tapping against the glass…

  Cut it out, for Christ’s sake woman.

  Sighing, she got to her feet to draw the curtains, closing the book and placing it gently in the middle of the sofa. Once there, she was unable to resist peeking through the blinds. A flash of lightning illuminated the black night and she recoiled from the blinds as if it had bitten her.

  Her heart hammered painfully hard against her sternum, and she pulled the grey fleece she still had draped over her shoulders more tightly around her body.

  My God, for a second there that tree by the window really looked like some kind of monster.

  She let out a shaky laugh.

  “I’m cracking up,” she said to the empty room.

  A loud clap of thunder rumbled, making her flinch.

  Briefly, she
thought of Roger, out on this stormy night.

  He’s gotta be soaked.

  The thought cheered her a little. I suppose every cloud has a silver lining.

  Stealing herself and holding her breath, she reached out a trembling hand for the blind…

  The tree was just a mere tree; not a terrible creature from the depths of Hell with outstretched arms.

  Well of course it is, you stupid cow.

  A glance at the wall-clock told her it was eleven forty-five. Surely Roger would be home soon? He had promised her that he wasn’t going to go clubbing, that he’d be home by midnight, or one at the latest.

  Well, I’m not going to bed before he gets back. I want to know if he comes home smelling of perfume….

  She stopped herself right there. This really wasn’t like her at all to be so paranoid.

  I guess this dark and stormy night is getting to me…

  She was trying – and failing – to make herself smile at her own absurdity, but the truth was, she was frightened by the thunderstorm. Not even as a child had she been afraid of thunderstorms – quite the opposite in fact, she had always found them exciting.

  Not tonight, though. Oh no, not tonight.

  Her gaze latched onto the book on the floor. That was weird, she was sure she had dropped it on the sofa when she had got up to draw the curtains. And by complete chance, the book was open on the last page she had read. She was so sure she had shut the damn thing.

  Retracing her steps, she scooped up the book, settled back down on the sofa and flicked through the remaining pages.

  Well, it looks like there’s only one more story left. I should be able to read it before he comes home.

  This one was called ‘DINNER PARTY’.

  No, a little voice whispered in her mind. Don’t read it.

  As the thunderstorm continued to rage, she began to read the final story…

  XI

  DINNER PARTY

  “Will you just play nice? This is really important to me, I need you tonight.”

  “Honey, you never need me, you ain’t the needing type,” Chris told his girlfriend.

  “Please,” Vera Anne Lewis, or ‘Ronnie’, pouted, straddling him on the sofa in her knock-off designer, little black dress. “I’ll make it worth your while.”