The Underpass

I did my best to avoid the underpass after Rob went missing. I was barely twelve years old at the time and the only witness. My testimony was dismissed as unreliable but I know what I saw. And at night, even now, I sometimes still see it crouching in my dreams.

Concealed in the guttering candle-light of the blackouts, the darkness of the underpass began to swell, fomented by loneliness and cruelty, until eventually it bled through and the events of that summer afternoon surged once more to the surface.

Beget from the same black shadows as MR James’ unsettling fiction and Nigel Kneale’s macabre teleplays, The Underpass is a short story best told amongst friends, dark corners carefully checked for unwelcome guests.