Dark Tales From the Secret War

by John Houlihan

  “On the third day I was determined to solve the mystery. I arrived at the station with half an hour to spare, paid my way through the barrier. I had noticed on previous days a fellow in the Station vestibule collecting for the Auxiliary Fire Service with only an arm-band and a collecting tin to distinguish him. I had decked myself out in similar attire having paid a visit to a costumiers on Shaftsbury Avenue, and I’d also acquired a false moustache and beard while there. I began collecting at the bottom of the escalator with a good view of either direction of the tunnel, the southbound platform to my left and the north to the right.”

  “And you were not worried he would recognise you?”

  I shook my head. There is no better disguise to adopt than one of someone who is asking for money. Most people do not look them in the eye for fear of being made to feel guilty, and so it was with Buckle.

  “At seven o’clock I was there with my collection tin and I saw him coming down the escalator in his coat and hat, carrying his little case. For the sport of it, I rattled the tin right under his nose but he passed on by without lifting his head. He walked a short way up the tunnel though he did not get as far as the platform. Instead he came to a stop at a door that had, for some reason thus far, entirely escaped my notice. He took a key from inside his trouser pocket, unlocked the door, slipped through it and was gone.”

  “And why had you not noticed this door before?”

  “There were various signs upon it. ‘No Entry’ read one, ‘Maintenance Only’ another, and a plaque in its centre declared it to be ‘Private’. It was the sort of door that goes unnoticed, simply out of habit. I assumed it was a storage cupboard or that it led to the workings of the escalator. Anyway, I removed my A.F.S. armband, pocketed the contents of my collection tin…” Hamilton shot me a look upon hearing this, but I could only shrug in reply. I am a thief, after all. “The door had locked behind him. I would have to pick my way through it. Fortunately, the lock was of a familiar make and model, a key-in-knob type from the Schlage Lock Co, first manufactured in 1928. It had been set into the door at roughly waist height. At heart it was a simple five pin tumbler. I took out my pick and wrench, secreted them in my hands and stood with my back to the door, arms folded behind me.

  “To a passer by I probably looked like a bored commuter waiting for the next train, but behind my back I had inserted the pick and wrench into the lock’s keyway and had begun the process of manipulating the mechanism to get the lock open. I was out of practice and it was not easy working blind in this way, but any lock-picker worth their salt will tell you that picking a lock is a matter of feel and instinct. Being able to see the lock you’re trying to pick is rarely of any use once you have your tools in position. It took less than a minute to have everything just so. I lifted the final pin, turned the wrench and the lock’s plug rotated freely within its hull. I held the knob still with one hand and turned around, pocketed my tools as I did so. I checked my surroundings, more to ensure no one from the Transport Board was watching, then I turned the knob fully, opened the door and stepped on through.”

  * * *

  The first thing I saw on the other side of that door was an oil-lamp set down in the middle of the floor, smearing its amber light over the concrete. In the shadows I could make out another corridor, blocked by an iron gate, a stationary escalator, old signage, and posters from the Transport Board. I had moved from one part of the Underground to the other, and by the looks of it, it was a part that had not seen use in some time. Mice sat hunched here and there like misplaced punctuation marks and started as I approached, scattering in all directions.

  “And where was Buckle?” asked Hamilton.

  “Gone. There was no sign of him, at least at first. Then, from somewhere deeper in the station, I heard footsteps and someone let fly a curse. ‘Damn and bloody blast!’ It came from the bottom of the escalator, so I set off in pursuit.”

  “You aimed to confront him?”

  It was a fair question, but I had no real answer. “I’m not sure. The more I think about it… the more I believe I was convinced he either had the book with him or was going to lead me to it. Madness, I know! That case he carried with him looked just like the one they had put the book in at the hotel, but there are a million cases just like it. He had told me the book was to be destroyed and yet I felt quite certain it was still intact. It defies logic, but it seemed to make perfect sense to me at the time.”

  “You talk as if the thing had some sort of hold on you.”

  I nodded, for as strange as it seemed the book seemed to have its own gravity about it. Back at the Ville I was free to forget all about it, but after yesterday its pull was strong and right at that moment it was pulling me in the direction of Buckle.

  I continued: “I crept through the Underground, following him at some distance, and I soon saw a low light bloom from around a corner, heard the scuffing of feet, another curse, then fading footsteps. Fearing he would get away from me I picked up my pace and ran toward the light. I emerged on to a Tube platform, entirely vacant except for another oil-lamp set out in the open. Presumably Buckle was lighting the way for his return journey, or for someone due to follow him.”

  “And he was not on the platform himself?”

  “No, though it was not difficult to determine where he had gone. The platform being empty, I knew he must have dropped down onto the tracks, headed into the tunnel. The question was, in which direction? I paced up and down, walked the full length of the platform looking for a further clue, and found it. A light was coming from the eastbound tunnel. It was faint and distant, but most certainly a light. The trail continued. I sat myself down on the edge of the platform and dropped down onto the tracks.”

  Recounting my story, it seemed clear to me now that I had been possessed by some kind of madness. Why else would I have climbed down onto the tracks, placed my feet either side of the rails, began a tentative walk towards the thin light? I barely thought twice about it. I moved through the darkness, looking for the next sign, listening for the next sound.

  “I had been walking through the tunnel for three or four minutes, doing my damnedest not to trip or fall over. Ahead of me somewhere was Buckle, and this source of light, most likely at the next platform along. A breeze suddenly stirred behind me. It felt like a warm hand gently pushing me onwards, and with it there came a gust of fetid air. A scurry of tube-mice ran ahead of me and I turned around, squinted into the dark. Suddenly there came this great banshee wail and two great yellow eyes blinked open. There was a bloody train coming.”

  “My God, man!” said Hamilton. “What did you do?”

  “What do you think I did? I ran. I ran for my life. I turned back to that pale light, knowing that my only chance was to reach it before the train reached me. I ran as fast and as hard as I ever have, my heart thumping in my chest, my ears ringing, my lungs burning. I thought my own shadow, cast ahead of me by the lights of the train, would be the last thing I ever saw, this shambling giant, arms flailing, legs pumping up and down. I thought I was a gonner for certain. And then, all at once, the light was there. It wasn’t coming from the next platform at all, but from a gap in the tunnel wall. It was as if someone had taken a sledge hammer to the brickwork and knocked their way through to the other side, and in this ragged hole there sat an oil lamp. I dived for the space, felt the train barrel past me, all but clip my heels.”

  Hamilton was sat with his mouth open. “Good Lord,” was all he could think to say.

  “I lay there for a moment, on the ground, catching my breath. I had been but seconds from death. Of course, it was my own stupid fault, but in my head Buckle was to blame. He had taken my book from me, led me down into the Underground, all but tried to kill me. I picked myself up, dusted myself off and determined to catch up with him. I was in a ragged tunnel, could barely stand upright in the cramped space. There was a ladder ahead of me, leading into the depths and I lowered myself down it, found myself in a broad tunnel of red brick with a stinking stream
running through its middle. The stench hit me right away. I was in the sewers.”

  Hamilton looked puzzled. “And even then you did not think to turn back?” he said.

  “Well, I was not keen to go crawling through the London sewers. Within seconds of being down there I had been hissed at by a rat as big as any tom-cat I have ever seen. But up ahead I could see a candle had been wedged into a crack in the brick work, so I knew I had not lost the trail. I had come that far and thought I might as well press on. Plus, I wanted my book. So, I set off through the sewers, trying to keep my feet as clear as possible of the sludgy stream that ran between my legs, praying to God that I could kept my footing. Let me tell you, after a few minutes you are so concerned about falling and getting a face full of muck, you almost forget the stench. I pressed on as quickly as I dared. Every fifty yards or so there’d be a candle wedged in the brickwork, flickering in the stinking breeze and guiding me onwards, and again at each junction, so that I was never entirely in the darkness and always knew which way to go next.

  “How far under ground I had gone, how far I had travelled at all, I could not say. I knew that I had not long since left Charing Cross Station and yet at the same time I seemed to walk for hours. I suppose it was the effect of having no particular landmarks to judge my progress by, other than the lights, and every tunnel looked identical to the last. After a time, I thought about giving up, about turning back, but by then it seemed I was just as likely to find my exit around the next corner as back the way I had come, so I pressed on. And eventually, it came to an end. I turned the corner and was struck by a sight so surreal that I would never have believed it if I had not witnessed it with my own eyes.”

  I came to a stop in my recounting of events, breathless. It was distressing to relive the previous night. I had bathed three times in the bathroom suite at the Savoy and had the clothes I had been wearing taken away to be burned, but still the stink of the sewers filled my nostrils and hung around me. It was as if the sewage had permeated my skin, got inside me somehow so that I might never get clean again.

  “Can you go on?” said Hamilton.

  “Yes,” I said. “Best to get it over with.” I drank the rest of my water to wet my lips and continued.

  Directly ahead of me the tunnel I had been following had come to an end, ejecting its contents out into a broad pool of cloudy filth, a full fifteen or twenty foot across, that sat bubbling and gurgling some distance below me. I held my nose, moved forward to better view the strange structure I had arrived at. It was a large and well lit chamber, some sort of hub where multiple inlets came to dump their waste in waterfall after waterfall of sewage. I thought of arteries feeding into a heart, carrying filth rather than blood. What organism might be sustained by such a thing, other than perhaps the city itself?

  Around the perimeter walls were many other tunnels of different sizes, some as tall as a man and some no more than a foot wide, though each was pouring its contents out into the main pool, some in thin gurgling streams and others in rushing torrents. From the broadest of these inlets there came a steady flow of relatively clear looking water.

  Hamilton interjected. “One of the lost rivers of London perhaps? Paved over years ago. Some were incorporated into Bazalgette’s sewer system.”

  Perhaps it was. I traced its passage, saw that across from me it divided into two separate streams and at this division, a sort of sandbank of foul matter had gathered and on this bank stood five figures, each dressed in a white robe. The bottom of their robes were caked in brown filth, but the upper parts were clean and they stood out well enough for behind them they had arranged a number of lanterns and candles so that their giant shadows were cast up on the brick walls. They had organised themselves in a rough semi-circle and the man stood closest to the water was holding a book in his hands — my book — and he held it high and began to read aloud. It was not easy to hear him over the noise of the flowing river and sewage but his words were carried to me on a stinking breeze. ‘… ze air resounds with zer voices und ze mountains rumble wiv zer consciousness und zey lie beneath ze seaz and ze cities. In ze cold vastes, in ze vrozen city zey shall know zem, in ze tower und beyond ze seal, below ze foulness ye shall know zem!’

  I recognised his voice. There could be no doubt about it. It was Hess, reading from the book in the same way he had back at my room at the Savoy. Only this time Buckle was not attempting to stop him, instead the thin grey man was stood at his shoulder and as Hess read, Buckle and the others took up a chant, a rhythmic sort of chorus: ‘Yog-Sothoth is the key… hail Yog-Sothoth… Yog-Sothoth is the key… hail Yog-Sothoth’.”

  “It was a most peculiar sight. I could not immediately piece together what I was seeing, for here was Buckle, the man from the War Office, who had secured my release and who had done all he could to get his hands on the book, and here was Hess, a Nazi who was supposed to be locked up. The two of them were beneath the streets of London, plainly engaged in some sort of ritual and plainly in league with each other. That display back at the Savoy had been a sham from start to finish. God knows who Buckle really was or what these men were trying to achieve but… it did not sit well with me.”

  “You were… frightened by what you were seeing?” asked Hamilton.

  “Had I believed in superstition and nonsense I might well have been, but I did not believe. It was not the occult aspect of what I was witness to that concerned me. It was the fact that Hess was here, that he and Buckle where working together. They were spies, collaborators, fifth columnists — call them what you will. Hess was at their lead, and this could only be a bad thing. I knew I had to tell somebody, to alert the police or the Home Guard. And I turned around intending to just this, but at that moment events took… an unexpected turn. There came… a sound.”

  “What sort of sound?”

  “A rumble. A grunt. Felt as much as heard. Like the noise a stomach makes when it is hungry, only a million times louder. It was the deepest sound I have ever heard. My insides turned to water. My brain rattled within my skull, my knees gave way and I fell to all fours, only just managing to avoid plunging face first into the flowing sewage. A shower of dust fell from the tunnel roof onto my back and shoulders and from my elevated view of the chamber I watched the pool of filth begin to shift and move. I pulled myself to my feet, observed the scene more closely. The five men had been shaken into disarray but were regaining their footing. Hess, stood at the front, his feet sunk deep in the sewage, with a distinct look of triumph on his face. He resumed his reading, picked up the volume. ‘Man rules now where zey ruled vonce; zey shall soon rule vere man rules now!’ And behind him the men resumed their chanting. “Yog-Sothoth is the key… Hail Yog-Sothoth!” And the pool of sewage below began to move in response to their words, to turn and swirl. Eddies of filth spiralled at the edges then combined, moved to the centre until the whole mass was rotating in one awful giant whirlpool. A movement suddenly broke the surface of the water, a suggestion of something large and monstrous swimming beneath the surface. I stared on in amazement, but soon wished I had not for the spinning sewage seemed to draw me in, not physically you understand… more that my entire being seemed to be pulling away from me and travelling down into the never-ending whirl of foulness. I left myself momentarily, followed the spinning water down, down, down, and found that I was not floating in a pool beneath the city, but was orbiting above it, above everything. Hess’s words were no longer nonsense, there was meaning there, a great truth, long forgotten…

  “And then came that noise again. I was brought back to myself by a shower of dust and brickwork that fell upon my open eyes and into my gaping mouth. I coughed and spluttered and my eyes streamed with tears. I must be grateful to our old sewers, for who knows what would have happened had that moment of pain not brought be back to myself? Below me, the chanting was reaching a crescendo and I knew for certain then that whatever was happening was going to bring down the roof at the very least, perhaps worse, perhaps the whole city was about t
o be pulled into that swirling pool.

  “In all my life I have only ever acted for my own benefit, have never much cared for doing the right thing for the sake of it. Why, if I can not profit from a situation, I have no interest in it. And yet, stood witness to that scene, with the water rising and the men chanting, I knew I had to do something. What was occurring down in those tunnels, deep beneath the city streets, was not natural. Where it would lead to, I did not dare to think. I knew only that the one person who had a chance of stopping it was me. So I did the only thing I could think off. I drew my old pistol from inside my jacket, aimed it directly at Hess, said a brief prayer and pulled the trigger.”

  “You meant to kill him?”

  “I meant… I meant to stop what was happening, by any means. A great racket filled the chamber, the chanting ceased at once and the group of men tried to dive for cover and locate the origin of the gunshot at the same time. It was Buckle that found me, his eyes locking on to mine and his long arm extending. ‘There!’ he shouted. ‘He’s up there! Kill him!’ And I suppose they would have if they weren’t so rooted to the spot from having stood on that island of filth for too long. Hess and Buckle remained where they were but the others began to loosen themselves from the muck. Would that they were stuck faster, they might well be alive today. As it was, whatever was squirming in the lake of sewage had been agitated now, it seemed to reach maximum velocity and all at once bubble over. A tide of brown matter rose up and swatted at the sandbank like a giant hand. The men at the rear who had been climbing free were dashed against the tunnel walls and swept away in an instant. Buckle and Hess were still firmly rooted where they stood. They raised their hands to cover their faces and both screamed. I watched the book fly from Hess’s hands and disappear, lost beneath the sludge followed by Hess himself, there one moment, gone the next. Buckle was sent spinning into the whirlpool. I watched his body turn in a wide arc, his head go below the filthy waves then resurface, one arm poking into the air defiantly.