George Right - D

And then the lights went out.

Tony stopped dead, then turned towards the train that still was at a stop, lit from within, with hospitably opened doors. Strange, but light from the windows for some reason did not disperse the surrounding darkness at all.

“No, thanks!” Logan mentally said to the waiting train and walked through the darkness, extending his hand forward. He could see the train sideways from him and he was assured that he wouldn’t fall down from the platform. Even if there is an power failure in the station, somewhere here should be a staircase… he saw it while the station lights were still on…

His hand encountered something soft.

More precisely, someone. Logan understood that he was touching a person dressed, apparently, in something woolen.

“Sorry,” Tony confusedly muttered, hastily withdrawing his hand. “Do you know what happened to the electricity? And where is a staircase?”

The person answered nothing and seemed to not move at all.

And then Tony remembered that a few seconds ago, there was nobody on the platform. And he had not heard any steps since then.

Logan recoiled.

And then from the darkness sounds came. No, not from where somebody silently stood. From the other side. A heavy breath and a sound as if a body was being dragged on a stone floor. And these sounds were approaching.

Tony quickly turned and rushed to the open doors of the nearest car. It was very clear to him that these doors would close immediately. He would be only a fraction of second late. A fraction, still sufficient time to push his head between closing doors… and to experience the same fate as the red figure on the poster. This abrupt fear was so strong that, already having reached the doors, Tony almost recoiled back, but nevertheless forced himself to jump in, feeling during this moment, as if he was jumping from one skyscraper roof to another. With great relief he fell on the nearest seat.

“Well, and why were you so frightened?” inquired common sense, which appeared, as usual, after instinct. “There is a power failure at the station. Workers probably are simply dragging a cable or something like that.”

Yes, certainly.

But why don’t these workers use flashlights in the dark?

And then Tony realized that he was still hearing those dragging sounds and they were approaching again. Now he mentally begged the doors to close as soon as possible. But they still remained wide open.

And then Logan saw a man creeping into the car.

He snuffled and puffed, but crept rather fast, pushing off the floor with his hands…crept without rising his head, so Tony could not see his face. He saw only a shining bald pate and a dirty gray coat which was puffing up on his back.

And just when the man was halfway in the car, the doors slammed and chopped his legs off at the groin.

The train moved. Tony screamed.

The maimed man turned in the aisle and crawled straight towards Logan.

There wasn’t any blood. There was none on the floor, nor on the remnants of the creeper’s trousers. The doors apparently were free of blood, too—while Logan, who was sitting with his back to the dark platform, hardly could make them out from such foreshortening. He understood that he once again had become a victim of his own imagination. The man’s legs had not been chopped off tonight, this man had not them for a long time…

If it was a man at all.

Tony looked in dismay at this stump quickly creeping along the aisle between seats. He could not imagine a disabled person who would behave this way. At home, having fallen from a wheelchair or a bed—certainly, a legless man has no other option than to creep on a floor on his hands. But in a public place, in a subway, and before, obviously, on the street—otherwise how did he get here? The most terrible impression was made by the fact that the creeper did not lift his head at all and almost dragged his face along the dirty floor…

As if having heard Tony’s thoughts, the freak, now separated from Logan by no more than one and a half yards, began to raise his head.

But before Tony, who was frozen in horror, had time to see his face, the light shut off in the train, dipping all cars into the absolute darkness of underground.

Tony could not stand it. He jumped up and blindly rushed away down the aisle, hearing behind him the same sounds of a dragged body. His extended hand ran across a door at the end of the car. In his panic, he could not grasp the handle and began to rummage blindly on glass and plastic. Sounds behind were quickly approaching and Tony thought that he would be seized by his ankle any moment. But his fingers caught the handle, which moved with a click. Tony stepped again into the roaring intercar space blown by an icy wind—but this time in complete darkness. Now he was moving in the opposite direction—not to the head of the train, but to its tail. And at that moment, the next, especially sharp lurch of cars, ruined his balance, knocking the support out from under his feet! But fortunately, already falling into darkness, Tony managed to grab an invisible handrail. For some seconds he stood, grasping the handrail with both hands and waiting in horror for the sound of an opening door behind his back. Then Logan thought that the legless man simply could not reach the handle from the floor, and felt himself grow slightly more confident. He made himself unhook his right hand from the handrail and reach for the door to the next car. On the second or third attempt, he caught the door handle which was wiggling in the dark and entered the next car.

He still would like to get as far as possible from that… creature, and, spreading wide his raised hands and catching first the left and then the right handrails, he came up almost to the end of the car. Nothing hindered him. At last he turned aside and flopped on a seat—which he could not see, but was assured that it was empty. This time his intuition had not deceived him.

He tried to summon his common sense—though now, in the dark, it turned out especially hard. “It’s a shame to run from an unfortunate cripple,” Tony told himself. “Perhaps the poor fellow simply needed help… But then why didn’t he ask for it? Did he lack not only legs, but a tongue as well?”

And what if this man was simply drunk? Or mentally sick? Anyway—what harm can be caused to a strong and healthy guy by a legless man wriggling on the floor?

But at this moment, one more source of unease, besides darkness and uncertainty, broke through these reasonable thoughts. A smell. Tony distinctly smelled a faint, but heavy, stench. It it were stronger, he surely would vomit.

After suspiciously sniffing for some time, he understood that the smell came from himself.

More precisely, from his hand. The hand which had touched someone in the dark. It seemed to him that his fingers were covered now by some dirt. Slippy and rotten, judging by the smell.

However, that creature was not necessarily the reason. Quite probably that sticky muck was on a handrail or door handles which it had grabbed.

Tony began to rub his hand against the next seat, though firm cold plastic could hardly substitute for a towel…

“Anyway, this isn’t a nightmare,” Logan gloomily thought, holding his hand away from his nose. “My sensations are too bright and distinct.” He did not remember himself ever smelling anything in a sleep, and his sense of touch in dreams always was significantly dulled. Still smelling the rotten stench—and hoping that now it mostly came from the seat—he stood up and, stretching his hands forwards, crossed obliquely the aisle in the dark and took a seat at the very end of the car.

It solved the problem only partly.

Having sniffed, he again noticed an unpleasant smell—but not the scent of decay. Different. Now the smell of something burned was clearly felt in the air.