The Horror in the Tube

From the point of view of Dr Eliza Jamieson

Saturday 3^rd January 2004

I am starting to believe that fate has it in for me after years of hard toil through first an all girls’ boarding school and then Cambridge University. I would have hoped after all the effort St Thomas’ went to get me on staff that they would at least have put me on the surgical team but no that would have been too easy. Instead I am stuck looking at children that have scraped their knees and big burly drunks who have picked a fight with either the wrong person or the wrong piece of furniture.

What’s even more to the point is the fact that I am serving under a senior registrar who couldn’t perform a simple surgical procedure let alone a full operation. How he even got a medical degree is beyond my understanding. He has either me or the nurses do any stitching that needs doing, obviously menial jobs are beneath him. Anyway Doctor (Hah!) Haroon Akmed had me on the graveyard shift again on Saturday night. Wonderful! I work till midnight then it’s a two hour trip to Reading to the house I share with my two best friends from University, Suzanne Doyle, who has got a job as a Office Manager in Reading, and Dr Graham Steel, who is working at the Royal Berkshire. My god! I think tonight was a record: three people threw up on my shoes, two fellows started fighting in the treatment room and nearly flattened me and one guy must have thought I was his girlfriend as he hugged me and attempted to kiss me despite the fact he was covered in blood.

Well at least I had a change of clothing. Fortunately Steve was on at the coffee shop and I managed to wangle a cup of coffee even though he was closing up (think he might fancy me but can’t see myself with Steve the coffee guy, cute as he is). As I make my way to the underground I notice a familiar figure lurking nearby. It would appear that my resident stalker is back - thought he was gone forever after all those court cases. Finally the train arrives ten minutes late (don’t think they care after 10pm). Quiet as usual, just an Afro-Caribbean man and his girlfriend, Victor the guard and a couple of Japanese tourists. Marvellous, I now find that I have to take a detour as they are suffering from power cuts near Tottenham Court Road and Heyburn. So after another ten minutes of shifting and changing even my hair is feeling tired. Finally I am back on route and the train is down to just the lovebirds, Victor the guard and me. Then the train stops and the strangest collection of people I have seen in a while enter the carriage. There is a tall well dressed woman, an old man who looks like a university professor in a tweed suit, a female tramp who I could smell as soon as the doors opened, an average fellow who looks like a computer programmer and a tall handsome chap of about 22. They are talking quietly and seem to know each other. Anyway it is none of my concern so I go back to reading my paper. Suddenly the train judders to a halt and the driver's door flies open. Strange, we're between stations!

The driver leaps from the cab and is visibly shaken, his skin is pale and he is be sweating profusely. He is jabbering but I quickly sit him down and attempt to talk to him. He appears to be slipping into shock and claims to have seen something on the track but he does not wish to discuss what he had seen. There have of course been rumours of members of the public coming down the tunnels but judging from Jim (the driver - Victor told me his name) it looks unlikely this is the case here.

Anyway I continue to calm Jim down and Victor says he will go and take a look. John, the young handsome chap who had recently got on, asks to go with him and after a short argument Victor agrees. They both take torches and head up the tunnel. In the meantime I continue assisting Jim but everyone else goes to watch the two men heading up the tunnel. As they advance there is a comment that there appears to be another platform up ahead. The old man, Lionel, glances towards the well-dressed woman, Lucrezia, and then states that it could be the old British Museum station that closed in 1929.

Strange, this is the last train yet I could be sure that I could hear another train approaching. I stop treating Jim for a moment to express my concern but I note that the two on the line are obviously aware of the danger and are pulling themselves up onto the abandoned platform.

This appears momentarily through light across the old platform. It looks disused but I see two horribly deformed figures moving on the platform. (Perhaps there is some truth in stories of people living down here?) I also notice what appears to be a tall African near the exit but he looks to be terribly malnourished and his eyes appear to have sunk into his head as they do not catch the light and the nose is gone! The African is virtually naked but he does have numerous piercings in his dark skin. I see him point towards the two degenerates but the light moves and I cannot see what occurs.

The rushing sound gets louder and then we see that it is not another train but instead the sound is being made by a huge swarm of rats! Thousands of them rush past. I am concerned as what could give the compunction for so many of them to leave. Anyway as the light falls on the platform again only Victor and John are visible. The other figures have gone; they were most likely a trick of the light. The two of them then make their way back down the tunnel to the train and Victor says that he will lead us out through the tunnel.

At this stage the large smelly woman, who I understand is called Mavis, pops up with a very strange statement: “They must not get it!” As to who 'they' are and what 'it' is, there is no clue. Lucrezia and Lionel both looked shifty and start to whisper then appear to be trying to convince the computer programmer fellow, Evan, of something. Lionel, who appears to be the leader of this little group, then informs us that he thinks he knows a way up through the old station. The Mavis woman starts talking about something called Mon Kar Seppu (I am later to discover that this is not so much a 'what' as a 'who' as it is the name of a mummy, a third dynasty high priest so I am led to believe) which she states has disappeared and it appears this thing was what was stopping the mysterious 'them' from getting the even more mysterious 'it'.

We all decide to follow Lionel but halfway to the platform there appear six average sized figures and one larger from the shadows of the far tunnel. I thought at first they could be a work crew but Lionel, Lucrezia, Evan and Mavis all go very white, Lionel stating that he is not sure of the way after all and seems to be insistent that they will take Victor’s offer of a way out. Their friend John seems to have his own ideas and rushes off in the direction of the exit.

We then follow Victor out through the access stairs but as we go up Lionel approaches me and asks me for my name and telephone number. He also asks that I not mention what happened to anyone. Maybe it was the tiredness but I complied with his wishes. The only record of the incident lies here in my diary. I thought no more about it but this incident was to come back and haunt me.

The following Monday I was off but I noticed an article in the newspaper reporting that there had been a break in at the Egyptology Room in the British Museum either late on Saturday night or early on Sunday morning it was reported that there appeared to be no leads and also there appeared to be a vagueness about the method of entry. It appeared in the reports that were to follow that only one item was missing an item on loan to the Museum at the time from Egypt. It was a four-foot high monolith from the third dynasty, probably why there were seven of them in the tunnel as I assume a monolith would have been extremely heavy.