Maureen Johnson - The Name of the Star

“Please come down,” said a voice. “Be careful on the last steps. They aren’t in very good condition.”

I froze in position. Now my brain remembered that it was supposed to be afraid. Stephen was still just one step behind me—he put his hand on my shoulder.

“No point in stopping,” the voice said.

He was right. I was so deep now that going back wasn’t an option anymore. This was the point where Stephen had to let me go on my own. He nodded to me, removing the flashlight from his belt and gripping it together with his terminus.

I took these last steps very slowly. They widened as I got nearer to the bottom, and they ended in what must have been the old entryway, where you bought tickets. The old ticket stalls were boarded up. Some of the tiling had been stripped away from the walls. There were a lot of modern safety notices stuck around, along with much older notices about smoking and nerve gas. Two arches opened in front of me. Pointing at each one was a crumbling cartoon picture of a hand, a little bit of the original Victorian decoration to direct the flow of traffic on and off of the platform. They probably looked nice at the time, but now they were unspeakably creepy.

I couldn’t see Stephen anymore—he was hiding just out of sight up the steps, waiting. I passed through the arch on the right and stepped onto the old platform. It was a large space, with a high vaulted ceiling. The sunken bit where the trains used to pass had been raised up to the platform level, so it was one large room. Part of the space had been converted into a two-level structure with a set of stairs. The rest was chopped up strangely. There were random walls and doorways and halls. The train tunnels were now dark passageways, leading on to more strangely shaped rooms in a place that wasn’t supposed to have any rooms. Heavy bundles of wires, a foot thick or more, ran along the walls and the edges of the floor. There were some posters left over from the days when the station was a bomb shelter, filled with slogans like CARELESS TALK COSTS LIVES and cartoons of Hitler hiding under tables. There were notices about smoking and being courteous to your sleeping neighbors.

A figure emerged from behind one of the walls. Now I understood why people thought ghosts floated. They moved with a strange ease. It looked like they had normal arms and legs that made them walk and reach, but there were no muscles in those arms and legs—no weight, no blood, none of the things that gave ordinary humans their individual ways of moving.

Aside from his silent approach, Newman was disarmingly normal.

“Hi,” I said.

“Don’t stand there in the doorway,” Newman said. “Come through.”

“I’m fine here.”

Newman was carrying what looked like an old-fashioned doctor’s bag. I’d seen these bags. They were Ripper-style prop bags, sold at stands all over the city. He set it down on an old metal worktable and opened it up.

“Well done with your message,” he said. “I’m not sure how you managed it, but it was very effective. ‘The eyes will come to you.’”

He produced a long knife with a thin blade from the bag. He was still far away from me. I’m not good at measuring distances, but it was far enough that if he ran for me, I could still turn and make a break for the stairs. But he made no indication that he intended to run at me. He poked through his bag in a leisurely fashion.

“How many of them are there?” he asked.

“What?”

“Remember some time ago, when we met?” he asked. “When I threw your friend in front of a car? I asked you if you’d ever met anyone like us, and you told me that you knew some . . . I think your words were, ‘some weirdos at home’? You were lying, weren’t you?”

I didn’t reply.

“There’s no need to deny it,” he said. “I certainly hope you didn’t come down here alone. It would be terribly irresponsible to send you on your own. Whoever’s out there—why don’t you come out and play as well? We’re all friends down here.”

Nothing. Just the dripping noise.

“No?” he called. “Don’t want to? Look around you. Do you see this? This is the old headquarters. A good place for us—the Shades. Scotland Graveyard. Not a hint remains of what went on down here, all the work we did. When the government decides it no longer requires your services, it makes you go away. If you don’t come out of here, do you think you’ll get any recognition for your bravery?”

Still nothing.

“I know this place better than almost anyone. I know all the ways in. I didn’t see anyone come down with you, so I can only assume they are coming through the tunnel from London Bridge.”

He extended his arm to his right, toward one of the yawning openings into the dark.

“The other way in is the way you came, Aurora, right down those stairs. And I watched you. You came alone. Unless there are people on those stairs, waiting to make their entrance. Don’t wait too long, for her sake.”

“Hey!” called a voice from another part of the station. “Jack the Wanker! Over here! I want your autograph!”

Callum stepped out of the darkness of the tunnel, holding out his terminus.

“Ah,” Newman said. “You’re young. Makes sense, I suppose.”

“That’s right,” Callum called. “I’m a kid. Come see my toy.”

“Here’s something I know about your toys,” Newman said. “There are three of them. Are there three of you? I certainly hope so.”

“I don’t need any help,” Callum replied.

“Telephones,” Newman said, stepping closer to Callum. “Very good. We had to carry torches and Walkmans. They even tried to put one in an umbrella. Very cumbersome. The telephone—that’s very good.”

As Newman was turned away, Stephen made a dash from the steps, across the small ticketing room, and threw himself against the wall between the arches, right next to me.

“You seem keen,” Newman said to Callum. “It’s a good thing I have this knife. Which one of us do you think would win in the end? I can slash your throat as fast as you can turn that terminus on me. Should we try it and see?”

He whipped the blade in an arc in front of him and took a few more steps toward Callum, who didn’t move an inch.

“Oh, I like you,” Newman said, approaching Callum. “You’re a brave one.”

“Stop,” Stephen said, pushing me aside and stepping into the doorway.

“Here we go,” Newman said. He didn’t sound at all alarmed. “Two. One more, surely.”

“You can’t take both of us,” Stephen said. “Make a move for one, and the other will get you. You may be a strong ghost, but we’re still stronger.”

“The dead travel fast,” Newman said.

“Not that fast,” Callum said. “Believe me, I can outrun you.”

“He can,” Stephen confirmed.

“Well then,” Newman said, with a smile. “I suppose I’d better give myself up.”

“Just put the knife down,” Stephen said.

“You know . . .” Newman stepped back a bit, toward the twoleveled structure in the middle of the platform. “I did learn something very useful during my time down here—”

And with that, darkness—a darkness so absolute, my eyes had never experienced anything like it. My brain had no idea what to make of it. Now I truly understood where we were. We were deep underground. I had no sense of space, no sense of distance, no perspective at all. I couldn’t have found my way back to the steps. I didn’t have my cell phone on me—that had been taken away when they were tracing the texts.

“The location of the light switch,” he said. “Funny how frightening the dark is.”

His voice bounced around in all directions, off the curved ceiling, off the bricks and the tiles. He could have been thirty yards away, or he could have been next to me. Two tiny points of light appeared—the glow of the phones. After a moment, this was joined by a thin beam of light from Stephen’s direction, and then from Callum’s. The flashlights.