Take Back The City - Part One of the 'Life in London Town' series

23 - No Safe Haven

   Life had never seemed more perfect. As I lazed underneath the flailing branches of the willow tree that Patrick’s son, Victor and I had all collapsed beneath, the overwhelming euphoria built up that night erupted from within my soul in the form of images written in the early morning sky by some sort of celestial paintbrush I had managed to dream up; for once, they were images of the future rather than visions of the past. The sky became the theatre showing the kind of fantastical dreams regular people spent their nights dreaming of instead of the nightmares which dogged my sleep on the nights I spent at Holborn. A new-found optimism provided a blanket against the early morning chill as I began to drift off to sleep beneath the willow, waiting for my newly revitalised conscious self to rest and for my subconscious, which had been waiting for my weary, dainty eyelids to flutter shut ever since we reached the park, to wake and have its fun.

     What a difference an hour makes.

     “NO!”

     I couldn’t see where Victor had gone; I could only hear his voice echoing from the close-knit buildings and rebounding off of the cracked tarmac. He had bolted; it remained a mystery where he had bolted to, but mercifully it didn’t remain too much of a mystery for long. As I reached the end of Great Queen Street, which I reached in a fearful jog which resembled that of an overweight office worker – only without the self-satisfaction – I found out exactly where, and why, he had bolted off into the darkness.

      Upon reaching Holborn, destruction greeted me like an evil twin. Death was lingering in the stale air.  Debris – metal railings, vans, newspaper stands, even trees – lay across Kingsway, a street more desolate than ever. The sunrise burned with scorching fury over ransacked stone structures. I half-expected the Four Horsemen to gallop across the sky towards us; as I inspected the damage a little more closely, it became evident that a visit from apocalyptic antagonists may well have been a preferable fate for Holborn Station; the station entrance, which was missing glass panes, half of its trademark purple awning and even the two UNDERGROUND roundels which hung off of the stone façade above, provided an excellent, though haunting, catalyst for my imagination’s attempts to fathom exactly how bad the damage had been. I began to picture Holborn’s interior; places such as the Common Room and our sleeping quarters were probably beyond recognition at that point as, I feared, was the panorama that Patrick’s son had spent the night before painting life into. My train of thought was then broken, broken in the worst possible fashion: “How could you be this much of an idiot!” Victor exclaimed, his voice full of unbounded rage and frustration. Without pausing to think, he inhaled a gigantic gulp of air and smacked his head against one of Kingsway’s black railings once, twice, thrice, and yelled his own condemnation into the stale, unforgiving air. “How could you be this much of a bloody idiot, Victor!” he howled “HOW COULD YOU BE SO BLOODY STUPID!”

    He darted towards the shadowy remains of Holborn Station, dashing straight for a gap between two ransacked newspaper stands which had, previously, acted as guard garrisons. From the distance, I saw two lights turn on within the station, both bright yellow; I walked towards Holborn to investigate but, as I drew within a few dozen feet, I stopped dead. I took a second to look upon the lights; they were yellow, sulphurous, shimmering from the bowels of the ruins and shifting constantly. At that moment, one thing became painfully obvious: they were not lights.

    “VICTOR!” I screamed. His only response was to turn his head back down Kingsway towards me. “GET AWAY FROM THERE!”

    The shimmering yellow lights were eyes and, as Victor returned his attention to the station, they had sprouted a body. One of the Faceless had crawled from the depths of the station, and his eyes were firmly locked onto him. “VICTOR!” I yelled. “RUN!” Victor didn’t run, though. He had another idea.