Underworld

by Cathy MacPhail

  So long ago.

  Yet, I will never forget the terrified eyes of my Captain as the mouth of the Worm closed on him.

  Loved Underworld?

  Then turn the page to find out about Cathy MacPhail and her inspiration for this gripping story

  Why I wrote Underworld

  I’m a sucker for a scary mystery story, the kind where a group of friends go off for an idyllic holiday somewhere remote, perhaps by a lake, and although when they arrive the sun is shining on the water and the birds are singing in the trees, as soon as darkness falls they start hearing strange noises in the woods. Then one of them goes missing. It occurred to me that framing a story around a school trip would be a great way to apply a similar idea to the type of books I write. My first thought was to have the pupils shipwrecked on an island. Then I realised that storyline had been done before – brilliantly! Yet I wanted my characters to be completely cut off from the outside world. So where could they go?

  I set my story in some caves because I am terrified of being underground – I won’t even use the Tube in London – and I knew if I wrote about a group of pupils trapped down in the caves, in the dark, I would completely understand their fears.

  I am often asked why I chose a worm as the monster. Well, there are lots of legends of giant worms in Britain and when I imagined a giant worm boring underground, creating worm-like caves, it gave me the creeps. Get on the Internet and read all the stories about worms. They might be great for the ecosystem but they are gross. I bet they give you the creeps too.

  I love the characters in Underworld. Fiona is based on how I would like to be, always saying the right thing at the right time. I never do that unless I have time to really think about it and write it down first. Zesh tries to be so perfect all the time that he’s ashamed to admit he’s asthmatic. Then there is Liam, who is devious and yet I can understand why he does the things he does. Axel is as hard as nails, but he carries a terrifying secret. And what about Angie? I’m always asked about what really happened to Angie. What do you think? She appears so suddenly and vanishes into nowhere at the end. But if you have read many of my books, you will know I always leave a question unanswered.

  I enjoyed writing the parallel story about Lothar, the young German sailor. His fear echoes that of the children and the trail he uses to save himself offers the reader hope that the pupils will be saved too. Lothar Goldner was a boyfriend I once had – he was gorgeous! I hope he doesn’t mind that I used his name.

  One more thing you might like to know. This is the first book I wrote in which I used multiple viewpoint. I didn’t want there to be just one main character in the book so I told the story from everyone’s point of view. I wanted to get into the mind of every character, telling the reader how each of them felt. Did you enjoy reading the story from the perspective of all of the characters?

  Meet Cathy MacPhail

  Cathy MacPhail was born and brought up in Greenock, Scotland, where she still lives. Before becoming a children’s author, she wrote short stories for magazines and comedy programmes for radio. Cathy was inspired to write her first children’s book after her daughter was bullied at school.

  Cathy writes spooky thrillers for younger readers as well as teen novels. She has won the Royal Mail Book Award twice, along with lots of other awards. She loves to give her readers a ‘rattling good read’ and has been called the Scottish Jacqueline Wilson.

  One of Cathy’s greatest fears would be to meet another version of herself, similar to the young girl in her bestselling novel Another Me. She is a big fan of Doctor Who and would love to write a scary monster episode for the series.

  Cathy loves to hear from her fans, so visit www.cathymacphail.com and email her your thoughts.

  Q&A with Cathy MacPhail

  What are your favourite things to do when you’re not writing?

  When I’m not writing, I’m usually reading or visiting family – I love spending time with my children, turning up on their doorsteps when they least expect me! I enjoy going on cruises too because it’s the perfect way for me to visit new places. Like most people, I also love going to the cinema. I always have done.

  What are your favourite films?

  Oh, there are so many films I love. It’s a Wonderful Life is one of them. The hero is an ordinary man with just a few problems that are getting him down. Then he is visited by an angel who shows him how life would have been if he had never been born and he realises that his life is worthwhile after all.

  Another fantastic film is The Searchers. A story set in America in the mid nineteenth-century about a man’s struggle to find his niece who has been kidnapped by the Sioux. It explores issues of racism that were common at the time.

  But at the top of my list is Some Like It Hot. Two men pretend to be female musicians to escape gangsters and one of them falls in love with Marilyn Monroe! It’s so funny and it has the best last line of any film I’ve ever seen, ‘Oh well, nobody’s perfect.’

  If you could be a character from a book, who would you be?

  I have thought and thought about this because most books I’ve read have at least one wonderful character that I’d like to be, but I think Elizabeth Bennet has to be my first pick. She is so bright. Then there’s Cathy from Wuthering Heights. I like her passionate nature, and we share a first name! Also, both of them are admired by fantastic men! When I’m really old, I want to be Miss Marple. I will go around annoying people and solving murders.

  Did you do any caving as research for the book?

  One of my worst fears is being underground so it would be impossible for me to go caving. When I was writing Underworld, I was lucky enough to have my daughter Katie, who now works as a teacher, take her class to some caves in Yorkshire. They did my research for me. Through them, I found out about the sounds and smells in the caves and the feel of the walls. And then, of course, there is the Internet, which you can find out just about anything on.

  Cathy’s Choice

  My Three Favourite Monsters in Fiction

  Count Dracula, the vampire from Bram Stoker’s famous story of the same name. I love vampires and I like them to be really frightening. They don’t come much scarier than in Dracula, which is made more real because it is written as a series of letters and diary entries. It was a book that I just couldn’t put down and it got me hooked on vampires.

  Zombies! Don’t ask me why. At the moment, there are lots of stories about them.

  The creature in Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell. This story is about a group of scientists trapped at a research station in the Antarctic who find an alien-type creature in the ice. When the ice thaws, this creature comes alive and has the ability to become any one of them. It terrified me because you didn’t know who the creature was going to become next.

  If you loved Underworld, dive into these books

  Seriously spooky stories guaranteed to thrill every reader

  Catch up with Cathy at www.cathymacphail.com

  Read on for a spine-tingling taster of another story by Cathy MacPhail

  RUN ZAN RUN

  Katie trudged over the dump. This way at least she wouldn’t meet Ivy Toner and her gang. It was the long road home from school, through the patch of waste ground where the city’s tenements once stood. It was growing dusky in the late October afternoon. But Katie wasn’t afraid. Not here. She was safer here, deserted though it was, than she’d be walking through the busy streets and lanes of the town.

  Alone. She was so often alone nowadays. Her friends, one by one, had deserted her. Too afraid to be friendly in case they, merely by association with her, became the target for the bullying, the cruelty of Ivy Toner.

  Katie kicked at a stone and looked around the dismal place. People dumped their rubbish here now. Black bags littered the area – cardboard boxes lay askew on the ground. A dump – a real dump – yet she was safer here.

  She could feel the tears nip at her eyes, but she wouldn’t cry.

  Everyone told her one day Iv
y Toner would grow tired of picking on her and move on to fresher, more fearing ground.

  But when? It had been months since it began. Little things at first, almost comical at times. Pushing and jostling her in the corridors at school, not letting her pass. Chewing-gum on her seat in English. Katie had sat on it, and actually laughed back. Had that been her mistake? She had laughed when she should have fought.

  But she wasn’t aggressive. Didn’t know how to be. She just wanted to be friends with everybody. Once, not so long ago, she had been everyone’s favourite. Katie Cassidy, always with a smile on her face and something funny to say. Katie Cassidy, who used to make everyone laugh.

  Everyone, except Ivy Toner. Perhaps that was what made her notice Katie, single her out for her special kind of attention.

  And usually by Ivy’s side were her two mates, Lindy Harkins and Michelle Thomson. But Katie didn’t fear them. They didn’t look her way unless Ivy was with them.

  ‘You shouldn’t show them that you’re afraid,’ her father had told her. ‘Stand up to them. That’s what these people don’t understand. You’d have no more trouble.’

  It was all right for him. He didn’t have to go to school every day, alone. Never knowing when you were going to turn a corner and find them waiting for you.

  They had trapped her in the girls’ toilet one day. No one else there, except Ivy and her cronies … and Katie. She remembered the day bitterly, with shame. Ivy, trying to force her head down the toilet until Katie admitted, tears streaming down her face, that Ivy was a princess. Princess Ivy … and that she, Katie, was her slave.

  She had run, crying, to the teacher, when they’d finally let her go. Though they had sworn the worst sort of vengeance if she ever told anyone about the incident. And that had only made things worse.

  Ivy had denied any such involvement, providing witnesses to prove she was somewhere else at the time. Nevertheless, her reputation as a bully was well known, and she was given a final warning to leave Katie alone.

  Now she did, mostly, but only at school. She was clever enough to know that the school could do nothing about what happened outside its jurisdiction.

  Now she lay in wait for Katie as she walked home, as she left school. And now, to make matters even worse, Katie was a ‘grass’ to be despised. Even others in the school turned from her, as if she was the one who had done something wrong.

  She had never been so unhappy or alone in all her life.

  She stamped the ground angrily and cried out. ‘But I’m not even fourteen yet. It’s not fair!’

  And it wasn’t. She didn’t know how to handle all this. her teachers, her parents, her friends, none of them really understood what she was going through. None of them could do anything to help her.

  She was alone.

  Here on the dump she could cry and scream and vent her anger. There was no one to hear her. Here on the dump, she was safe.

  At least, she had been until now.

  ‘So this is where you’ve been getting to?’

  Katie whirled around, wiping her tears with her sleeve as she did.

  That voice chilled her. It was Ivy’s.

  There she stood, her dumpy bulk outlined against the grey sky, her lank black hair hanging over the collar of her jacket. Behind her, as always, Lindy and Michelle.

  ‘Hidin’ frae us, are you?’

  Katie’s throat went dry as she tried to speak. She felt clammy perspiration on her brow.

  ‘I wish I wasn’t so afraid,’ she thought. If Ivy was ever alone she would at least try to fight her, but Ivy was never alone.

  ‘You picked a nice quiet place anyway,’ Ivy said, and the words sent another chill through Katie. Her eyes darted around her. Isolated, and deserted. What was it she had thought only a moment ago?

  Here on the dump there was no one to hear her.

  The realization of how alone she was made her gasp. The dump was no longer the safe haven it had once been. It never would be again.

  Why had she come here? Katie took one step backwards. Ivy sneered. She looked all around the dump, lifted her hands and shrugged.

  ‘There’s no’ anywhere you can hide here, hen.’

  She took one menacing step towards her and Katie turned and ran.

  ‘Get her!’ Ivy screamed, and Lindy and Michelle began running too.

  Katie darted one quick glance behind her. She’d never get away from them. There was nowhere to run, and when they caught her …

  She let out a scream as she lost her footing, toppling down a bank of bin bags and rubbish and broken bits of furniture. She rolled over and over and finally landed at the bottom, sandwiched between the bags.

  She could hear their voices, their footsteps thundering towards her. Any moment now, they would reach her. Any moment now, they would find her. She was done for.

  Nothing could save her now.

  Suddenly, a cardboard box nearby moved into life. All Katie could make out written on it were the words … Zan … Automatic Washing Machine. It was definitely moving.

  Rats, thought Katie, there are rats here. As if Ivy wasn’t enough. There were other rats here too. Only she wasn’t so afraid of the four-legged kind.

  And then, suddenly, out of the cardboard box, she emerged. As if by magic.

  A girl, her hair almost the same colour as Katie’s but without her healthy sheen. This girl’s hair was matted, her face smudged with dirt. She was wearing a red shirt and trousers much too big for her … and a long overcoat. A man’s overcoat.

  Katie gasped …

  A ghostly new thriller featuring Tyler Lawless, a brave and feisty sleuth with a very special gift

  OUT NOW!

  To order direct from Bloomsbury Publishing visit www.bloomsbury.com

  Acknowledgements

  Special thanks to 7K 2002–2003

  All Saints Catholic High, Kirkby, Liverpool

  Also by Cathy MacPhail

  Run, Zan, Run

  Missing

  Bad Company

  Dark Waters

  Fighting Back

  Another Me

  Roxy’s Baby

  Worse Than Boys

  Grass

  Out of the Depths

  Secret of the Shadows

  The Nemesis Series

  Into the Shadows

  The Beast Within

  Sinister Intent

  Ride of Death

  Copyright © Catherine MacPhail 2004

  Bloomsbury Publishing, London, Berlin, New York and Sydney

  First published in Great Britain in June 2004

  Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  50 Bedford Square,

  London, WC1B 3DP

  This electronic edition published in 2012 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  All rights reserved

  You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise

  make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means

  (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying,

  printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the

  publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication

  may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  eISBN: 978 1 4088 1662 2

  www.cathymacphail.com

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