CHAPTER 9

It was hot on the Tube. Stifling. Suffocating.

I grasped onto the support rail, my sticky hands preventing me from getting a firm grip as the carriage rocked back and forth through the tunnel. Removing one hand, I wiped my palm down my thigh, before gripping the pole again and doing the same with the other one, not that it seemed to make much difference. A body brushed against mine from behind and I tried to shift into what little gap there was to avoid contact, but it was futile. Passengers were packed into the carriage, bodies crammed so tightly together that personal space would have been nothing short of a miracle.

My t-shirt was sticking to my back and I wished there was enough room to take off my jacket, but I had no chance unless a few people decided to get off at the next station. Inhaling deeply, I leant my forehead against the rail and clung to it the best I could, closing my eyes for a few seconds. The heat was starting to make me feel a little dizzy and nauseous and I was giving hard thought to getting off at the next station myself and getting some air before I continued the journey home.

The train jolted, slowed, then jerked again and I opened my eyes reluctantly, realising that I hadn't heard the announcement of the upcoming station on the intercom. We'd stopped in a tunnel. The darkness pressed against the windows and I groaned inwardly and hoped we'd only be waiting a minute or so before the train could carry on.

I looked around at the small windows, seeing that most of them were already open.

God, it was so bloody hot.

Stuck here with no air blowing through the carriage, I could barely breathe. My leather jacket was heavy and confining, holding in the heat which had reached its hands around my windpipe, and was squeezing tighter and tighter. The nausea churned in my stomach and climbed up into my throat. Swallowing, I took a deep breath. The last thing I wanted to do was throw up in the middle of a packed carriage, especially when I had no idea how long we'd be stuck here with the stench and humiliation filling what little space there was left between me and those around me.

Count to ten, Brogan. Close your eyes and count to ten. It'll be okay, it'll...

'You see.'

A man's voice cut through the dulled hush of the carriage and I opened my eyes once more, wondering who had spoken.

I'd always thought it funny how quiet tube carriages could be at times, when people squeezed themselves into every available space, where eyes met and gazes were averted, where everyone buried their faces into books or mobile phones or studiously examined the station map on the carriage wall, where everyone did whatever they could to avoid conversation with strangers . So many people in such a tiny space and yet everything could be so silent. I glanced around at those closest to me, but no one seemed to be ready to engage in conversation, and, believing that I'd probably imagined it, I leaned against the pole again.

'You see. '

My eyes sought out the source of the voice and I instantly wondered how I hadn't spotted him before, how I hadn't been able to pick out the businessman in the expensive-looking suit staring so hard at me that I felt swallowed whole by the intensity of his gaze.

Seated closer to the end of the carriage, a copy of The Times folded neatly in his lap, his hands clasped on top of it, the man looked no different to any other commuter. His grey-tinged dark hair was neatly combed to one side and a cashmere scarf was draped, untied, around his neck, giving a violent slash of bright red to his morose grey suit. Guys like him were ten a penny in the city. London practically bred them like clones, pushing them out from the cracks in the old buildings like a swarm of insects, teeming over one another to get to the top of the success pile. Walk down any street in central and you'd have seen this guy and his swarm, same suit, same hairstyle, same grey demeanour.

My eyes darted about the carriage, wondering whether anyone else had heard him or noticed him, but everyone buried their heads deeper, moved in tighter, seemingly oblivious to the fact this man had spoken aloud.

As I stared at him and he stared right back at me, with his head tilted to one side at a strange angle, I became aware of the drum beat within my chest. An incessant pounding ballooned outwards, filling my ribcage, rushing into my ears. Anxiety gripped me hard and I desperately hoped that my overactive imagination was filling my head with conspiracy theories about weirdo businessmen on trains and that he was just your typical perv who liked to stare at women.

London was full of them too, after all.

If I'd had any doubts as to whether his words were aimed at me, they died when he stood up, never taking his eyes off me as he did so. The newspaper dropped to the floor of the carriage with a dull thwack and he stood stock still, his arms straight by his side, not bothering to retrieve it.

Slowly, I pulled away from the pole, pushing against it and stepping back, knocking into the person standing behind me, who stayed firm, blocking my retreat. There was nowhere to go. The carriage felt smaller suddenly, as if the shadows outside in the tunnel were pressing inwards, squeezing the train on both sides, the walls slowly crushing the already narrow space.

' You .' His face was a mask, blank, emotionless. 'You see.'

The man cocked his head to the other side, an odd robotic gesture that seemed stilted, as if he was a marionette puppet and someone had just tugged sharply on the string that controlled his head.

When I opened my mouth to speak, it didn't sound like my voice. It was like hearing it under water, a muffled bubble of sound that struggled to break through the frantic hammering of the drum.

'See what?' I said. 'What do I see?'

No one in the carriage turned at the sound of my voice. No one seemed to register me at all. No one except the man.

The lights flickered. Static buzzed in the bulbs. Electricity crackled. The carriage was plunged into darkness, just a split second of impenetrable black that filled my mouth, my nose, my ears, like thick, dank water, choking me, drowning me. When the lights exploded back into life, I saw it. A sheen of silvery skin on the man's cheek, harsh white reflecting off scarred flesh. It was a brief flicker of a bad dream. A touch of a nightmare; there and then gone again so quickly that I had to blink away the haze, but I knew I'd seen it, I'd seen him .

Without another word, he began to move in my direction, wading through a sea of people as if they weren't even there. They seemed to shift, not acknowledging him or even looking his way, but they still moved away slightly, almost as if somewhere, subconsciously, they knew they had to. It was like smelling something rotten, a lingering, cloying stench that you instinctively shied away from, and as they shifted one by one, I could see a brief flicker of repulsion in their faces. They didn't even seem to realise they were doing it, but it was there.

I began to push backwards, but they didn't move for me. Every shove was met with resistance, a solid wall of people holding me there, preventing me from escaping from the man who just kept coming. Why couldn't they see him? Why was nobody doing anything?

'Stop,' I cried out. 'Stop, please. Don't come any closer, I'm warning you!'

Overhead, the lights kept flickering and the man didn't stop. He just ploughed towards me, an unstoppable force, a one man-hurricane ready to engulf me and tear me apart.

I frantically looked around, desperate for someone to notice. 'Please, somebody help me? Please .'

No one answered. No one cared. No one saw .

With a strangled cry, I turned and pushed with everything I had, forcing my arms into a gap between a middle-aged woman with her hair scraped into a tight bun and guy wearing brightly-coloured headphones and squeezing between them.

With a start, the train began to move again and the motion made me stumble, the gap widening suddenly. Having no one to break my fall, I landed hard on my knees and fought to scramble up again, glancing behind to see the man had almost reached me.

Despite the fact he was nearing his prey, his expression hadn't changed. He looked just as unmoved as he had before and I think that terrified me even more, because there was nothing there, no triumph, no glee, no malice in his eyes. Everything about him was cold and detached and utterly inhuman . I didn't want him to swallow me whole and somehow, I knew he would. If he reached me, if he so much as touched me, that would be it. He'd pull me in, consume me, and no one would help me.

I had to save myself. Had to.

With the fight raging through my veins, I shoved and pushed, hit out, flailed, did anything I could to get through the tide of bodies in my way. Breaking through to the other end of the carriage, I reached the single door, somehow managing to squeeze past the crush of people standing there. As I did, the automatic voice echoed through the speaker, announcing the upcoming station and I felt the rush of hope buzz through me, an adrenalin shot straight to the heart.

I pressed against the glass window, urging the train to go faster.

Almost there, almost there .

On the adjacent track, another train sped by, the sound of the air rushing inwards like a clap of thunder and making my ears pop. I flinched at the sound, eyes wide as the coaches flashed past, the flickering lights inside illuminating the carriages.

The flickering lights.

I noticed the lights at the same time as I noticed the people staring at me from the other train. They stood in amongst the rest of the passengers, who seemed just as unbothered as those on my train, unaware of what was happening, completely oblivious to the creatures that stood side by side with them. Blank white eyes. Puckered, twisted flesh. They stood still, turning only their heads to follow me as the train flew through the tunnel. Thunder roared in my ears repeatedly as each carriage passed, lights blinking furiously, the air slowly being sucked from my lungs. I watched them, horribly transfixed as the train disappeared, leaving nothing but darkness on the other side of the glass and the reflection of the people behind me.

The man stood at my shoulder.

I turned around, shrinking back against the door as I looked up into his eyes.

'You see too much,' he said. 'You shouldn't see.'

I screamed then. A deep, fathomless scream that thundered with energy, with fear, with a denial of everything that was happening, with a refusal to just give in, because I couldn't. Not to this. Not to him. I screamed and screamed, because it seemed it was all I had left to give.

Finally – finally – the other passengers noticed me, heads turned, shocked faces stared at me. Saw me. Saw him.

I kept on screaming.