The Sword of Feimhin (28 page)

Penny paused at the rusty steel mesh, her torch illuminating the door leading out onto the narrow railway platform and the ancient single carriage rails running to the right and to the left. She had improved on the dimming after Gully had produced an ‘almost perfick snotless noserag' from one of his pockets. It had been raining hard and persistently for several days in the City Above and fresh rivulets were running down the walls, following the older stains she had seen before. Squeezing through the half-ajar door she examined her own, earlier footprints leading along the station platform to her right. They were preserved, as if frozen in virgin snow. She only realised that she was holding her breath when she released it with a sigh of relief. There were no other prints, nothing to suggest that any other feet had added to her presence. Yet she felt the need to be still. Even though there were faint sounds coming from a distance, probably carried along
through the tunnels for miles, there was nothing else to suggest a presence nearby.

You see it's fine. No need to be a scaredy cat!

She had suffered nightmares thinking about the tunnel to the left. She just couldn't help feeling jittery after that time when she had, perhaps, imagined something monstrous coming up to the mesh. But Penny wasn't altogether sure of anything any more. Not now. Not here, in the City Below. Things that might appear to be logical and reasonable in the City Above might not apply down here. Here, a different set of rules applied.

Gully had been driving her mad. She had been adding the two turrets to the Church of St Mary Woolnoth on the ceiling map, when he had invaded her space. The churches were some kind of loci, or so her instincts suggested. Could it be that there were loci both in the City Above and the City Below? She had been trying to think this through when Gully had begun whistling, making her unable to concentrate. Gully could be very irritating with his serious whistling. He was just letting her know that he was wound up tight, but he had been wound up tight most of the time recently, which made it very difficult for Penny to do her work.

‘Them tunnels is dangerous.'

‘Everywhere in London is dangerous.'

‘Why won't you listen to me, Penny. I'm tellin' you there's a … a thing down there. It's eating people.'

‘Don't be ridiculous.'

‘Will you come down off there an' we'll 'ave us a nice cuppa an' some bread an' butter?' He hadn't pronounced it ‘butter'. He pronounced it ‘buhher'. ‘Will you come dahn an' 'ave a cuppa an' a bit a bread an' buhher?'

‘I haven't got time for this, Gully. I need to complete my maps.'

‘You an' them maps – them maps is drivin' you bonkers.'

‘You don't say that when you take my drawings out to sell them.'

‘They ain't drawin's. Them's just pictures. They ain't even pictures, to tell the truth – them's more like scribbles.'

When he wanted to hurt her, he dissed her art. ‘What would you know? You wouldn't know a drawing from a donkey,' she had replied.

His eyes showed his hurt in return. And then she was sorry she'd said that because she knew how sensitive he was about his lack of education. It was why he never talked about his parents. The only family Gully would talk about was his nan. He had cared for his nan, doing all the shopping and cleaning and cooking for her when she had suffered a stroke. Then the council had thrown him out when she died.

‘You should stop this, Gully.'

‘Stop wot?'

‘This is not about tunnels or maps.'

‘You won't never come close to me – why won't you let me touch you?'

‘You know why.'

‘I been takin' good care of you. I been gettin' the food. I
been taking chances for you. I made that gantry thing so's you could put your pictures up there on the bleedin' ceiling. But still you go lookin' right through me.'

‘No I don't.'

‘Yeah – you ruddy well do. You don't even see me here. I been tellin' you for ages about that stuff. Anybody could see that it's jus' natural, exceptin' you.'

‘No.'

‘That's all you ever say – no.'

‘You know that I can't bear to be touched.'

‘Can't? Won't more like. I mean, why? I mean, wot've I done to you, gel? I don't think it's me at all. Maybe it was your da. I mean, I'd understand it – I would. I mean, my own da was a crock a shite an' worse.'

She stood still, feeling the increase in her heartbeat even now, just as she had when she lay there on the gantry.

‘An' I got you out of that squat. All of them idiots was there. You've got no idea wot might've 'appened. You was 'eadin' for bother.'

‘I know.'

‘It was me found Our Place. I brought you 'ere. I did it all, I did everything for you.' His hurt struck her, like a punch in her guts. She didn't want to hurt Gully. She really didn't. She felt for him. She liked him.

Closing her eyes, she tried to shake the memory of Gully from her mind. She had to focus on the present, the small dusty platform in the ghost Tube station and the leftwards track, which led centrally, to the ancient heart of London.

She reopened her eyes, sat down on the filthy lip of the platform and, shoving herself off with her hands, hopped down onto the track. She waited for the cloud of dust to settle. She patted the ground with the tips of her trainers to locate the first of the wooden sleepers, all the while directing the torch ahead into the pitch black tunnel. Finding her rhythm as she stepped between sleepers she moved forward, making her cautious way into the gaping mouth of the leftwards tunnel.

The moment she entered it she felt something, a prickly awareness that was both scary and thrilling.

She had moved ahead several hundred yards when she was forced to call a halt to have another think. It was obvious that this line was more damaged than the rightwards one. She had passed stretches where water pattered down in silvery droplets from holes in the arched roof and now the track had disappeared into a pool of stagnant water that she would have to cross if she was to explore further. For a minute or two she just stood still, peering into the darkness ahead. Then, on a whim, she extinguished the torch and waited until her eyes became accustomed to the dark. She saw a faint bluish light. It reminded her of descriptions she recalled from books: the light sailors described in the dark of night coming up out of the oceans. She struggled to remember the word, and then she thought of it – phosphorescence.

But phosphorescence was a natural light and she didn't think this was natural. It wasn't coming off the walls, it
was coming towards her through the air, from some definite source somewhere in the distance. Her torch reignited, she sat in the dirt and removed her trainers and socks, hanging her trainers around her neck by the laces. She rolled up the legs of her jeans so she could wade into the pool, sliding her feet forwards rather than stepping to get a better impression of the bottom. She watched out for hidden traps or drops while she tried to keep her stride paced to the safety of the drowned sleepers. It took her fifteen minutes to negotiate what was probably only thirty yards. As she was drying her feet with the socks, which she discarded now they were soaked, she felt a definite movement in the air, like the faintest gust of wind. And then, while slipping the trainers back onto her feet, she heard the whisper, however distant, of running water.

The rail track ended with the pool, but the tunnel continued, though the walls looked rougher, perhaps older, or merely unfinished. The fanning movement of air became stronger as she moved on and the sound of water became louder. After about half a mile she was astonished to find that the tunnel opened out into a huge enclosed space, with a gaping hole to one side of its floor. She was breathless with surprise at her discovery.

She had to be very careful now, with that hole in the ground. She removed the handkerchief from the torch and shone the bright light in great wide arcs, discovering layers in the walls. There were broken red bricks on the floor and a shiny white piece of porcelain that could once have been
part of a loo. The space was wide, perhaps eighty feet or more, and the roof was just as high. She wondered if it might be a bomb site, left over from the Second World War, but when she inspected the walls in more detail they were too worn and natural, too cavern-like. Shining the torch over the floor she saw a great heap of rubbish that must have fallen into it from above, piling up to make a slope. She peered up the slope into the roof of the cavern. Wherever it had come from, that was the hole the draught was blowing in from. Maybe there was a way out that would save her retracing her journey back to the Tube station.

She turned her attention to the hole in the floor. When she dropped a pebble into it, it fell for four or five seconds before splashing into water.

Gosh!

She took several steps closer to the place where she could hear the sound of running water. She paused next to a big crack in the wall where the sound was loudest. She turned the torch off.

‘Oh my God!' The blue light was all around her, as if a tide of ghostly luminescence were flowing into the cavern.

She kept absolutely still, listening hard and looking in all directions, attempting to figure it out. As she did so she heard a sound like the fluttering of a large bird's wings. An owl perhaps? But what would an owl be doing in this strange cavern under the ground?

Then she saw two beams of light, like tiny red searchlights. They were moving through the air. And something
was caught in the focus of the searchlights. Penny saw a mouse hesitate against a dark, shadowy stretch of wall. She could just about make out its eyes, which were pinpoints in the darkness. Penny jumped as a dark shape pounced on the startled mouse. She caught a glimpse of a terrifying imp-like face. The searchlights were rays of light emerging from the creature's eyes.

A Grimling!

The temptation to switch on the torch was overwhelming, but Penny resisted it with all of her might.

I must be absolutely still, be careful to make no noise and not use any torchlight – nothing that would attract its attention
.

She watched in the light of the Grimling's own eyes as it devoured the mouse whole like an owl, the head first, then with a series of gulps, the body, with the tail slithering away between its razor sharp teeth.

Then the Grimling vanished.

Penny waited several moments before she dared to move. She thought about what she had just seen. It was possible that the Grimling could switch off the light emanating from its eyes, but it was more likely that there was a simpler explanation. Edging closer over the rubble-strewn floor of the cavern, she reached out with her right to touch the wall, at the place she thought the Grimling had vanished. She felt the draught at much the same time that she found the gap – a cleft just a few feet high and barely wide enough for her to squeeze her head and shoulders through. And then she almost squealed with fright.

She saw creatures – enormous creatures – the strangest, most alien of creatures she could possibly have imagined. They were constructing things – huge and complex things, structures that were glittering in the gloom.

She withdrew her head and shoulders, trembling with shock.

There had been more than one type of creature. She had seen lots of Grimlings there, but they had just been buzzing around the huge creatures, like bees buzzing about a hive. What in the world did it mean?

Oh, Gully I was right. I knew I was right. I knew it all along – there's a second city, an alien city, below the London we know
.

The City Below!

It was at once breathtaking, wonderful … terrifying.

*

Penny hardly recalled how she found her way up the rubble slope to the surface, her heart pounding, her mind and senses overwhelmed. She just welcomed the cooling feel of rain on her face as she emerged into the street. She had scrambled to the roof of the cavern like a monkey, clawing with hands and feet, following the downdraught of air to emerge into the ruin of a Victorian terrace. Just another burned-out street, with most of the neon lights vandalised. Turning through a circle to orientate herself, she was greatly relieved to see St Paul's Cathedral no more than two hundred yards away. It confirmed her suspicions that the important structures of the City below were linked to the sacred buildings in the City Above. She slumped down on the wet pavement against a
derelict garden wall, exhausted by her journey through the tunnels and breathless from the climb.

What have I found?

She was certain that there would be other tunnels, leading to more discoveries – truly an alien City Below that was growing directly beneath London.

‘Hush!'

She jumped as a voice sounded from directly behind her. An elderly man, small and neat with a white beard, was standing in a gutted doorway behind the wall. He was wearing a navy cloak with curiously roomy sleeves that glistened with rain. He put his finger to his lips.

‘Please – don't hurt me.'

‘I wouldn't dream of hurting you, Penny.'

He spoke with just a trace of an accent, waving her to her feet, then ushering her back around the wall.

‘How do you know my name?'

‘It's the easiest thing in the world to decipher names. But there is no time to explain. We must hide and keep very quiet and still. There's something rather intriguing going on out there.'

Penny looked at him more closely. He was an inch or two shorter than herself, and his skin looked a shade of bronze in the neon light, with features that could be Asian, or even South American.

‘What is it?'

‘Hush now! Whisper if you must. But you can see for yourself, over there.'

Penny saw an abandoned camper van perhaps forty yards along the rubble-strewn street. It was close enough to a functioning street light for her to make out an amorphous mass squeezing out through the van's side door. She watched it expand into a huge, malformed shape as pallid as a cloud.