Black Monster

The Detective stood at the entrance to the boarded up station, it had been turned into a tourist attraction. Winston Churchills old second world war hangout. They’d gotten bored of the police being called everytime they had a meeting so they made sure there was a reason for a people to be there. She queued with the crowed but showed a staff pass and was let through a back door, down she went through a too brightly lit tunnel. IT had been painted corn blue, and a slight waft of lavander just about covered the under laying mustyness. side tunnels had been bricked or boarded up, one alcove had been turned into a staff room for those organising the actual touristy bit, the people who thought that this was a museum with archives – well actually it was but that wasn’t all it was.

She felt chilled and clammy already. The harshness of the light did nothing to quell the feeling she was decending into the bowels of the earth. In truth non of the tunnels under London went too deep due to the clay layers but some of the tunnels were *old*, incredibly old for England anyway. They predated the city in some cases.

The underneith of the city was a warren of old rivers in huge tunnels brick built and moss covered, sewers which were larger tunnels than most people realised and also had a tendency to clog with fat of all things, she had been down here when the mole crews had come to clean them out. There were disused, cellars, hydro-power pumps left degectedly by a society that had found electricity. Old telecom tunnels, coal bunkers and purposely built passages from one celler to another. The abandoned rail way station at the entrance was not the only one, there were extra networks and even a secret canal or three. Add in the mantainance tunnels and London was not built on blue clay nor red clay nor any other type of clay, London was built on the waste pipes and foundations of forgotten Londons.

It was an arcetects nightmare.

It was the conspiracy theorists dream, sometimes they even got it right. There were tribes below ground starting with the dead in the crypts and moving on to the homeless who drowned in the storm drains instead of having a dry safe night.

Emma had nightmares about Head Quarters, the lighting had changed to older more yellowed light, it was gentler and cuased a soporific effect, she yawned. It felt like a dream, one were you walk an eternity into the pit. And she had the esculators to come yet. Turning a corner she clattered down a series of worn concrete steps. crudely made, you could see the shells in it were they had used a cheap mix, she’d been told it was a health and safty thing to add grip but the stairs were coroding in the moist atmosphere. It made a strange smell, like bad teeth.

Her nose began to run from the coolness, it should have started to get warmer now, but the damp besieged it. Time always seemed to slow here, the lighting had taken on a pink hue now and was getting dingier. She descended rumblings and groans transmitted themselves through her boots, the bowls of the city never slept, they always quivered, expectant of the effluent they were about to spout onto the walkways and concourses of the city above. Human vermin. A warren. Rats and other things from the humanities dark past lurked in the buy ways and overspills. A small mouse scuttled infront of her looking for tourist crumbs. If it went too far into the nest of tunnels it would be eaten by rodent brethren.

The whirring clank of the esculators was now audiable. She stepped out into a caven, it was a parody of a 1940’s shopping centre with stained glass and tiffany lamps, a fusion of styles from the first half of the 20th century. It smelt of mouth balls. It had a decaying granduer.

Ranks of esculators laboured down into the murky depths, black sillohettes with a sickly glow emminating from the top marked torch like lamps welded to the side of the groaning structure. Someone had thought that putting green lights underneith the metal panels would be a good idea. It was supposed to help you see your feet so they were mangeled in your descent but the green light spilt out from between the interlocking metal teeth of each step placing an erri throbbing glow.

It was medievial, it was steam punk, it was insane but she still stepped upon the creaking mass and began to descend. The light levels perceptively dimmed onces more, her eyes were starting to strain now. An incessent dripping cut through her thoughts, it was almost masked by the grinding and clanking of gears but was growing stronger and burning its way into her mind. Drip drip… splot, drip, drip, glug.

The knuckelds on her right hand showed white, her hand ached from holding on so tightly. She wanted to close her eyes by the virtigo it would cuase was not to be contemplated, losing her footing here, faintng or just letting go of the moving handrail could result in death. The machine shuddered and her knuckels went whiter. The eternity ended abruptly and she stepped off onto a gritty ill kept floor, things scuttled away from her.

The sensation of motion ceasing made her stumble slightly but she quickly recovered and bustled forward not wishing to stay in the gloom longer than nesacerry. The sound of drippling water was everywhere now and she stepped around the puddles, frowning, they should not be there, they hadn’t been last time she had visited. She looked to the cieling and cursed the light levels. A quick fumble in her bag produced a torch. The cieling was cracking, that was not good, that was so not good. Her breathing rate fasterned and her palms became slick. She moved onwards trying to ignore the press of the city above her.

And then she was in front of an old oak door, the sort with large black nails that have been cut and hammered in it. She pressed a crazed yellowed white plastic door bell next to it.

It creaked open and a woman with piles of curly hair looked at her as if she had just crawled out from under a rock. The woman was palid and slightly spotty. ‘Oh its you’ she said standing to one side to let Emma through.

Posted: Saturday, November 17th, 2012 @ 11:02 pm
Categories: Uncategorized.
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