Yesterday evening I sat in my single room, while I heard my flat mate, Gary, a fellow student, fooling about with his girlfriend downstairs in the kitchen. A pack of strong larger beside my armchair, the TV flickering hypnotically in the gloom, I zapped through the countless channels, an increasing sense of despair stealing up on me.
By the end of the evening I was comatose, but that’s just how I like it, the nearest non-sensation to oblivion, short of suicide.
“Oi, Rog, we’re going out, see you later and don’t go blind with those porno vids,’ Gary shouts up, followed by the sound of his girlfriend giggling. By the time they came back I was unconscious. At least thankfully I was spared the sound of their humping coming through the thin walls of my bedroom.
It is a miracle I managed to extract myself from my bed, the alarm that I remembered to set the night before, a miracle in itself, reverberating in my skull. Some realisation of my condition must have asserted itself, forcing me to take a grip of myself, to fight the almost unbearable pain burning inside my head, the nausea threatening to overwhelm me and, worst of all, the cloud of desolation that still clung tenaciously.
The thought of serving customers, working as a Saturday assistant at Blakewell’s bookshop along Charing Cross Road in my condition, was unbearable. It would be so much easier to call in sick. But some semblance of rationality told me if I curled up in my misery underneath my bed coverings I would never move, never be able to face life or the living again. I would be unable to pay my way, becoming another statistic in London’s growing homeless problem, a dishevelled heap of human failure.
In hindsight I bitterly wish I had made the call, making a strategic retreat from the world for one day. I would have got over it, probably felt well by the afternoon or the evening. But I didn’t succumb and so found myself on Balham underground station stepping on to the 7.45am train to Leicester Square.
There was plenty of vacant seating to choose from early that Saturday morning and I tried to make myself comfortable, my mind on my inner pain. As the sound of the sliding doors grated on my throbbing head, the lurch forward of the compartment making me retch, I noticed sitting directly opposite, the homeless man I’d seen many times on the Northern line.
He was gaunt, with hardly an ounce of flesh, grimy, patterned with ages of dirt, his clothing made uniform, ragged and shapeless through what must have been years of wear. His hair was long, unkempt and hid his face, though the long strands did not hide his vivid, intense blue eyes.
I could feel the homeless man staring at me as I tried to avoid those eyes by looking at my reflection in the window behind his head. He disturbed me. He seemed to be a living embodiment of my own fate. I felt I was looking at the ghost of my own dead self projected into the past. He represented my own isolation, lack of friends or family, my eventual succumbing to the status of outcast.
I could feel my depression increase like an expanding suffocating balloon. My head felt ready to explode, I knew I was going to be sick and in public too. Then he spoke to me.
“What’s your name boy,” he said in a London accent.
At first I did not reply, I felt the usual mixture of emotions when approached by a beggar, (I automatically assumed he was a beggar) pity, guilt and an awkward irritation.
“Roger,” I said eventually reaching into my pocket and finding a few coins. “Get yourself a cup of tea.”
I knew I sounded patronising and he must have realised I only wanted to give him some change to get him out of my sight. I had decided to get off at the next stop, Charing Cross and walk. I was feeling claustrophobic, stifled by the artificial heat of the Underground on top of everything else.
“I want more then your useless money, boy.” The grime on his face split as he smiled.
The horrible creature was a pervert. Suddenly my stomach could not contain its contents any longer, I retched, bending over, splattering a young woman’s dark shoes and lower stockings with a thick, lumpy yellow and red liquid.
“Jesus, you creep,” she said as she moved away, the rest of the carriage looking on in disgust. Vomit dribbled slowly down my chin.
By the time I had wiped myself with a tattered paper handkerchief fished from my pockets, the train had passed Charing Cross. I stood up, pushing myself through the densely packed passengers to get to the sliding doors. I felt awful, my head swam and I could barely stand up. People grumbled but let me through as they would any pathetic down and out drunkard who had humiliated himself.
Standing on the platform, leaning against the tiled wall to calm myself, I flinched as the tramp on the tube train approached me, his face grinning once more.
“Your in a bad way son, I can help you. Meet me here after you finish whatever you have to do.”
I ignored him and began to walk the brightly lit steps up to the escalators, wrapped in a mist of self pity, cursing myself and all existence.
I had almost forgotten my encounter by midday but my abject humiliation on the tube was still a vivid stain on my memory.
As the day wore on I increasingly felt lighter within myself, my hangover evaporated and the routine of doing the stock-taking lulled me into a state of balance. I even got talking to my attractive co-worker at lunch time, a student of media studies, about my favourite subject, Dostoevsky.
By six o’clock as I walked down the crowded thoroughfare of Charing Cross Road towards Leicester Square station in the fading light, this disposition was vanishing fast. I was due to meet my mother in a week’s time. I had not seen or spoken too her for six months and the thought of trying to wrangle money out of her to pay off my debts while at the same time pretending to be her loving son, was now playing havoc with any truce I had made with my angst.
I was conscious too of being desperate for a drink to escape the implications of another lonely night in my room in front of the TV, which only had the vicious effect of emphasising my encroaching alcoholism, lowering my mood and thus contributing to the craving.
I felt around in my mind for any alternatives to returning to my flat. I could spend the evening in one of the numerous drinking places of Soho but I would be a lone drinker surrounded by noisy crowds and happy couples.
As I looked at the telephone booths plastered with the lurid displays of prostitute’s calling cards, I even thought about seeking solace in emotionless sex, but the quick release provided by a sullen whore would only lead to guilt and shame. Anyway my libido was not strong at the best of times, subsumed by liquor, but above all I had no money.
Like the gravity of a black hole sucking in a doomed spaceship my flat beckoned with its ready supply of Carlsberg lager in the fridge.
I felt his presence before I saw him. The nape of my neck prickled strangely and I turned instinctively. He was right behind me on the packed platform, that disturbing smile fixed into place on his dirtied face.
I was tightly wedged between other travellers and the platform was filling up with more as we all waited patiently for the next train, which according to the display board was due in five minutes. My instinct was to move away, but something rooted me to the spot.
What immediately struck me and must have contributed to my remaining where I stood, was I could not detect any odour coming from his begrimed body. I should have been assailed by the stink of the unwashed, assaulted by the smells of urine and faeces, but I was not.
His rags when looked at closely through the muck and tear of decades were in the style of pre-war working class clothing, pre-first world war that is-a collarless shirt that once must have been white, a torn piece of cloth around his shoulders I could just make out to be the remains of a waistcoat, and ripped baggy trousers.
“So does my offer still stand?”
His pencil thin eyebrows I could just make out through the grime were raised, producing a quizzical expression. He stroked his straggly tangled grey beard with his long thin fingers, ending in overgrown yellowed fingernails.
I did not say a thing but he could tell by my expression I was interested. I was so far gone in my miseries any aid offered I would have accepted gladly. I knew this reject of society was unlikely to offer anything of substance, he probably only wanted some companionship in his desolate existence or money, but my curiosity had been piqued.
“We will have to go to Tottenham Court Road,” he said moving towards the north bound platform. Even though I only had a return ticket to Balham I followed him meekly like a lamb to the slaughter.
On leaving the train after standing in silence in the packed carriage, he directed me off the main exit tunnel through a short side passage to an iron door marked ‘Private Staff Only’ in red letters. It was not locked and he easily shifted the door outwards. He disappeared into the darkness beyond.
I hesitated, I had expected him to leave the tube complex altogether and take me to some grimy alley he called home. Although I had heard of the homeless living in the dank tunnels of the New York subway, I did not realise such a social phenomenon existed in London. Maybe there was a teeming community of outcast, displaced people behind this door. I felt even more apprehensive then before.
It only took me a few seconds to decide. I stepped into the gaping blackness and my companion shut the heavy door enclosing us completely into sightless midnight.
Light flared as he struck a match, throwing our flickering shadows over a tiny landing. A rusty Edwardian spiral staircase, its paint peeling, lead down a brick walled shaft.
We moved downwards silently except for the unsteady creak and rocking of the staircase, my trepidation increasing as I looked at the green mould clustering on the damp streaked walls and breathed in the enfolding aroma of rats urine. Every so often we were plunged into claustrophobic blindness as my guide’s matches fizzled out, but the dancing shadows immediately came to life as he lit another one.
I seriously began to question my own judgement in accepting his offer of help but then it was this or the monotonous despair of my bedroom. At least this was different. I didn’t know such hidden secretive places existed in the Underground and to actually visit one was intriguing.
We reached the bottom and before the match expired, bringing the dark like a fadeout in a film, I saw we had entered a vault-like space with a sloping arched brick ceiling, an uneven stone floor, humped and pitted, and incongruously in the centre a chipped and battered table with a high backed wooden chair.
To the side leaning against the wall was a massive storage cabinet, red with age old rust. There was movement on the right side of the chamber and I noticed a large grey rat scurry underneath the cabinet.
“I am afraid we have run out of matches. I hope you don’t mind but we are going to have to talk in the dark.”
He grabbed my sleeve pulling me into what must be the centre and sat me down on the hard chair. Numbly and without a struggle I complied, only tangenetly observing that this creature must have some means of seeing in the endless night of his sunken habitation.
Panic suddenly gripped me, all craving for drink vanishing in my anxiety to escape this forgotten zone beneath the tube station. I was on the edge of floundering and crying for help even though there was no one to hear my screams.
“Don’t worry son, I am not going to harm you, I just have a proposition for you,” he said, as if he could see my expression of fright.
My terror slackened slightly at these words, enough to stop my fear-induced flight into the pit black darkness. But his speech did not calm me.
From above came a deep rumble, feeling brick dust settle on my head and face as I realised we must be directly below the north bound train tunnel. A spider or some insect that had been dislodged from the roof by the vibration crawled across my scalp and I flicked at it, my skin crawling.
To bring a sense of normality I spoke briefly for the first time in a shaky voice.
“What is this place…have you no light at all …do you live here…and why haven’t the staff evicted you?”
My first spoken sentence to him sounded frightened but aggressive to my ears, like a trapped victim attempting to bargain with its captor. But he answered my questions in his cockney accent.
“This place was a storage depot when the line was first built but now they don’t use it… They don’t evict me because they can’t see me and yes it is where I live but I also have other places in the underground railway. As for light, there is no way I can find candles or lamps, only dropped boxes of matches occasionally, anyway I have no need of them as I can see in the dark.”
This pathetic wreck of a man was mentally ill. My blindness in this abandoned chamber disturbed me but slowly I began to relax and to think through means of escape. The best stratagem was to humour his madness and at some point he would come round to guiding me out, especially as he seemed intent on helping me.
I settled as comfortably in my chair as its rigid structure permitted and began to converse with the invisible stranger. It was unnerving conversing with someone I could not see but he soon took on the burden of most of the talking. Also I could tell he had no interest in me per se. It was not merely a selfless offering of help although he was trying his best to hide the fact.
He could immediately pick me out in a crowd he claimed and I was the only sort of person he was able communicate with. Strangely, and this must have been the delusion of his insanity, happy or contented individuals could not perceive or detect him.
But it was only when he began to dwell on his past and what had brought him to these desperate straits I realised the profound nature of his disengagement with reason.
He said his name was Fowler and was almost two hundred years old. How old exactly he had no clear idea as he was unsure of his own date of birth, but he was born in Lambeth in the Eighteen Thirties. He loosely kept abreast of dates by picking up discarded newspapers.
Employment as a construction worker on the first underground railway, the Metropolitan line, in the Eighteen Sixties had given him some desperately needed income, for his wife and ten children. But the hours and conditions of work were atrocious and as an older man in his thirties he was losing his strength by the day. He understood clearly that soon he would be discarded by his employers and he turned to drink as his only solace, neglecting his family by spending most of his wages on liquor.
He became violent towards his wife and children, especially his youngest son who he used to beat in a drunken rage almost continuously, though he was consumed with remorse and guilt afterwards.
One evening after a particular back breaking twelve hour shift when he thought he would collapse out of sheer exhaustion, he was standing at the bar of his local getting drunk, when a mysterious character made his acquaintance. The gentleman was very cultured and well dressed, an unusual patron in the sorts of public houses Fowler used to frequent.
The man proclaimed himself to be an alchemist, who had discovered through rigorous experimentation the secret of everlasting life. He told Fowler after a thousand years of existence he was bored and satiated with living. He desired to depart this material world and go on to a higher plane. He wanted to die. But to do this he needed a willing volunteer to exchange his immortal life.
He could guess Fowler was full of the woes of the world and immortality would be an escape. The poor would be able to run away from his ties, his problems; all he needed to do was perform a quick ritual and he would live forever.
The bargain did come at a heavy price though. This was the inability to leave the confines of London and to communicate with the majority of the human race.
Fowler was incredulous about this proposal but he was so far gone in his dejection he was willing to accept anything. There was nothing to fear really; if the man was insanely deluded or a charlatan then his everyday problems had not magically gone away. He was not going to offer this so-called alchemist money for his help; he had no money to give.
He accepted forthwith and was shown to a small back room, where a short ritual was performed.
As it was late and he was terribly drunk, he spent the night curled up in a corner of the room, unable to sleep. The next day, the alchemist having vanished, he decided to go to work, as he did not feel particularly immortal, although weirdly, he felt no lethargy or effect from his drinking the night before.
At work he was ignored by most of his colleagues, which did not unduly disturb him as he was disliked by most of his work mates. But a small majority of the men he could not distinguish clearly. They were wavering indistinct blobs, which he could clearly hear talking, but when approached, did not acknowledge him as if he were not present or visible.
At first he put this down to the delayed action of the drink but around late afternoon with hundreds of other ‘navvies’ shovelling earth around him and the sounds of hammering, clatter and the general noise of a construction site making conversation impossible, he realised he was feeling no weariness, hunger or thirst, not even an urge for alcohol. Fowler could continue labouring forever if he so wanted without any need for rest. He began to take the mysterious transaction of last night far more seriously.
Then the disaster happened. The northern wall of the deep trench dug into the Euston Road collapsed burying twenty or more men including Fowler under tons of wooden scaffolding and earth.
In the sickening enclosed darkness he could not move. He was encased like a fly in black amber. He felt no pain but his mind fed grotesquely on the memory of the alchemist’s ritual the night before, almost driving him insane with fear. He cried, yelled and screamed for death internally in his head, for any form of release or salvation. But none came.
For what seemed like an eternity, he remained in this condition of tormenting limbo, but eventually light like the blaze of God’s redemption released him from what he believed would be his eternal prison. The engineers had redug the trench where the first line of the Underground railway was to be laid, unknowingly freeing the first ghost of the tube system.
His relief was beyond reckoning but it was short lived. Fowler was still confined, he was unable to exit the trench and he remembered the words vividly of the magic man who had given him the ‘gift’ of immortal life.
As the years went by the complex of tunnels and passageways of the Underground expanded out to encompass the whole of London. At various semi-unknown nodal points it connected with the sewer networks and other subterranean engineering endeavours, thus forming a complete hidden world for Fowler to explore and make his home in; a twisted maze of black vaults and man-made catacombs as mysterious and convoluted as any natural caving system. But, for some occult cause that remained a mystery, the man who had found immortal life was confined to this dark realm.
He was ideally adapted to the condition of lightlessness and gloom, as the ‘gift’ of immortality had also given him the ability to see in the dark. He had no urges for food, drink or sex and the need for sleep or rest was gone for good. So after his first frustrated emotion of entrapment in the newly built Metropolitan line, came one of freedom from all responsibilities. Fowler had no problems, no concerns or stresses; an isolated human who could observe his stygian surroundings without the fear of death.
But about fifty years since the fateful agreement with the warlock, after the novelty of his situation had worn off, a monstrous ennui began to set in, complemented by horrific pangs of loneliness and utter separateness. The few people he managed to communicate with were so wrapped up in themselves and in their own melancholic reveries the conversations did not last long.
The walls of his city-sized prison were closing in on him once more. He wanted escape, to breathe real air, to feel sunshine on his face, and to hear birdsong. He wanted above all else human companionship, someone special he felt responsible for, like his wife.
Fowler began to understand that as these common pleasures shared by nearly all of humanity were shut from him forever, he would prefer to die.
But again the words of the alchemist returned to him. If he was able to find another individual willing to become immortal with all the restrictions this entailed, then he would be released.
The seemingly endless task of finding the person then began, with all of its incumbent rejection, dead-ends and the resultant anguish, right up to this present moment.
“There you have it,” Fowler continued, “amazing isn’t it? But it’s all true, every word of it. And I can solve all your worries, every bloody one of them! Just by saying yes you will live forever. You can’t get a better bargain then that. So come on mate, give me your consent and hey presto, immortality!”
At this point I had to stifle a laugh. How ridiculous and pathetic he sounded, how lost he must be in his own delusional fancies. Even if what he was claiming had any resemblance to reality, who in their right mind would want immortality with those conditions. But I now could see a way of humouring him, which would enable me to get out of this dungeon.
“I’ll accept your offer,” I said. “But only if you agree to lead me out of here.”
There was a deep silence only broken by another loud vibration of a passing train.
“Yeah,” he said after the sound died down, “but you won’t want my help, you’ll be able to see in the dark like me. Anyway I won’t be around no more.”
Another silence and then very fast and rapidly, almost exultantly I thought, he spoke again.
“Of course I will lead you out, mate, of course, of course, just say you agree to my bargain. Just say it!”
I quickly and automatically agreed.
Footfalls to my left told me he was walking almost running towards the rusty iron cabinet behind me, then a screech of metal as its doors were flung open and a ruffling sound emanated from within, as if Fowler was searching for something.
There was the noise of fast returning footsteps and then very suddenly my left wrist was violently grasped and my palm forced upwards, at the same time something heavy fell on the table in front of me. I had no time to struggle before an excruciating pain hit me through the whole of my arm, as a very sharp object plunged itself into my upraised hand.
I wailed in agony and tried to pull myself away but his grip was vice like. I kicked out savagely, yelling obscenities, as the knife or whatever it was, was slowly, too slowly, drawn out of my palm. My weakening hand was moved back facing downwards and I felt my blood oozing out of what must be a gaping wound.
Without any warning Fowler’s hold on my wrist was loosened and I stumbled away. Clutching my bleeding hand as I haltingly moved backwards, my back eventually hit the hard wall. In all that short time as I shouted curses, threatening him with the police, I slumped to the floor, curling myself into a protective foetal position, tears of pain and fear flowing down my cheeks. But my shouts of terrified rage soon faded from my lips and turned to soft moans.
I had turned my head half expecting to be attacked by the demented vagrant, readying myself for another violent assault, my adrenaline pumping, when I was taken completely by surprise as I opened my eyes. I could see.
The impenetrable darkness had dissipated, leaving a red tinged twilight, allowing me to view clearly all objects in my field of vision. I could find no visible source of this ghostly light, seemingly coming from the reddish brickwork.
But it was the unbelievably uncanny and monstrous sight above the old table which fixed my staring eyes and forced an uncontrollable gasp of terror from my lips.
Drifting to and fro as if in a gentle breeze, swinging like a hanged man on the end of a tight nose, suspended five or six feet from the floor without any support, was the nude figure of Fowler. His whole frame was convulsed by spasms, as if a powerful electric current was pouring unstoppably into his body, his arms and legs tossing themselves in all directions like a rag doll being shaken by a giant. In the grip of an evil ecstasy, his face was turned into an ugly mask of unbelievable and unimaginable torment.
I watched in appalled fascination as his flesh began to peel smoothly and cleanly away, revealing the veins and musculature beneath until he resembled an anatomist’s dummy.
Then those too faded to invisibility exposing the next layer of pulsing bodily organs, as if he was performing the ultimate in intimate striptease. Within minutes, all that was left was his yellowish skeleton, shaking with an awful spasticity and then it too went, disappearing into whatever maw of hell or ‘higher plane of reality’ that was methodically and neatly eating him up.
But it was his words, echoing abysmally around the sunken cellar…I had never heard such speech of unremitting hopelessness, despair and abject horror. It was the final utterance of the dammed soul before facing the infinity of the black pit.
“Help me, I don’t want this, take me back, I have made a mistake, I will accept anything, God have mercy on my soul, save me from the Staring Eye, keep away, I repent of everything, just give me another chance, the Eye, the Eye, it stares, get away, get away, no please, the Eye…”
These desperate wails drilled themselves into my startled mind and I will never forget them. Even after Fowler’s carcass had gone for good they still reverberated, boring themselves ever deeper into my brain. I tried to shut them out by clasping my hands tightly over my ears but somehow they managed to gain egress. But eventually the harangue of preternatural torture came to an end, not suddenly but like a record which fades at its end.
Standing up, still shaking, I moved aghast and bewildered to the table.
Certain disturbing facts began to intrude themselves into my addled consciousness. I knew first of all there was no visible source of light because the illumination was internal, created inside me. Incredibly I had acquired the ability to see in the dark. The implications of this were so immense my mind refused to deal with it, locking it into a separate compartment that would only burst through, along with all the other realities of my situation, years afterwards.
I also comprehended I felt no pain from the wound in my hand. Bringing my palm in line with my sight I saw there was no gaping slash dripping with blood, only a faint scar that was even then disappearing as I looked.
Reaching the table, almost tripping over the discarded heap of rags, I picked up the dagger laying on its scratched surface. This must be the weapon which Fowler stabbed me with and it was a horrendous artefact.
At least a foot in length, the blade was almost luminous with the intensity of its steel. The sharpness of its point must have been capable of cutting through thick hide. I understood with another formidable shock to my senses, that when Fowler attacked with such force, the blade would have gone right through my hand to the other side. I should right now be writhing in agony, at risk of dying because of loss of blood.
On the hilt were hellish demonic figures, intricately wrought by a master craftsman of diabolical skill, malformed, tentacled, alien and non-human. These shapes seemed to be possessed of a geometry and proportion not of this sphere of existence. All yawning orifices, their heads consisting of hundreds of insectiod eyes, their bodies bulbous, fungus-like and misshapen, flinging out enwrapping, coiled suckered arms, and each monstrosity was eating another or copulating in an unholy ravenous orgy.
A book on the table, small in size, time-worn, a grimoire or black magic manual, opened to its middle section, drew my attention from the knife.
This was where my pouring blood was directed by Fowler when he had stabbed me. The two pages were stained red with what seemed like aeons of free-flowing life juices, but these marks were unable to obscure the blasphemous picture covering both pages.
A flayed, gaping, vagina like fleshy mouth or opening, surrounded by outlandish writing, was made, purely by the illusion of artifice, by the artist’s unusual drawing talent, to pulsate and writhe in a carnally obscene fashion. I was almost forced to look into its centre by its power, like the effect of a sucking vortex; and there amongst the glutinous folds and layers of skin of the alien entity, was an eye, a staring, hateful, malevolent eye. Within its black pupils was the tiny but moving face of Fowler, shrieking silently as if everything evil in the universe were slowly eating his mind.
.
It is silent now, only the scurrying mice down below the platform, between the tracks and discarded rubbish, making a sound. The strip lighting has been turned off but it has no consequence for I can see everything in a red tinged ambience. Natural day and night will have no meaning, except for the rhythms and day to day patterns of the Underground.
Of course it is always night in the dark labyrinthine tunnels of the underground system, lit only by the bright windows of the speeding trains, filled with their clanking rushing noise and the flickering illumination of the torches of the tube workers after midnight; rationalised in most people’s heads by the deceptive straight lines of the famous London Underground map stuck on the walls and at the back of neat A to Z’s.
I am startled by the wavering electric torches of three rail workers as they move along the platform from the station exit. They clamber down into the rail pit and retreat into the empty hole of the tunnel, talking loudly and guffawing at some lewd joke.
They have no awareness of me as I sit benumbed on the plastic seating, but the worker with a haggard face and one trembling hand glances my way. Maybe he can detect an indistinct shape or bulk or a collection of shadows emphasised by the radiance of their lamps. If so it is so inconsequential he does not bring it to the attention of his colleagues and they pass away into the darkness.
There is no escape from my new world. I have tried. My first action was to climb on board the train departing for Balham, horrified that, except for a few, I was unable to clearly focus on any of the passengers. They were a blur, like criminal suspects on TV, digitally blanked out.
I moved up the escalators to the surface. I got to the ticket barriers. I had my ticket in my hand ready to slot it into the mechanism, but some unseen field of force prevented me from going any further. I pushed, threw myself physically at this unseen wall, began to hit at it, kick violently with my feet, but I could not pass.
I began to moan, shout, then I screamed, wailed, throwing myself around like a madman, half hoping some one would restrain me, call the station manager or the police, to forcefully get me evicted, but the few passers-by ignored me as if I was not there. I tried to grab hold of the labels of a ticket inspector, to shake him into taking notice of my plight, but I passed right through him as if he did not exist.
Eventually the fits of panic and frustration ebbed away and the emotionless indifference of my present condition exerted itself. For some unknown reason I travelled back to Tottenham Court Road where I slumped without feeling on the row of seats.
My problems and concerns blighting me above ground are no more. I do not feel sleepy or tired and I never will. I am immortal: I need not fear old age, illness, disease or death ever again.
This is my world now, always visible, an enclosed secret domain, nearly eight hundred miles of it. The lost and abandoned tube stations, unlit crypts of forgotten days, containing the relics of past advertisements and scrawled graffiti are there to be found. I have no companions except for the scuttling colonies of rats and possibly other ghosts or the lost souls of a subterranean land.
A strange excitement is developing inside, intruding itself into my blank state; an enthusiasm to explore the synthetic realm of the underground labyrinth. True it is a confined space, but as twisting and convoluted as the most unreachable cave systems in the world. Who knows what unfathomable secrets reside down here. I have two already, the primordial and devilish book nestled in my pocket and the evilly carved dagger. I cannot read the bizarre lettering in the grimoire but I can find someone who can, another outsider who will be able to decipher its diabolic message.
I scramble down onto the rail tracks and walk slowly towards the mouth of the tunnel, an entrance to an unexplored domain, a country of mysteries. One thought haunts me as I make the first step; what depths of seclusion, companionless isolation and lonely desperation forced Fowler to make that abominable bargain, with such an unthinkably dreadful price for his soul?
I shudder and disappear into the shadows...
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