Hiding Place

THE PERFECT CRIME JUST BECAME THE PERFECT NIGHTMARE.

After the rape and murder of his girlfriend Sarah in a Boston back street, Peter Vernon has fallen into bad company. Tonight he’s part of an armed robbery that targeted a religious rally at Fenway Park. The crime couldn’t be easier: grab the money from the backroom, make it to the long-deserted subway station at Barrow Hall, await further instructions.

But further instructions never come. The six men, cold, frightened, burning nervous energy and fuelled by the alcohol left them for their stay, begin turning on each other, bickering, fighting, fingering their guns. Vernon, the youngest and least experienced of the team, finds himself outmatched by the ruthless career criminals he’s holed up with.

The tension is destructive enough. But then the station lights begin to flicker, and there are unexplainable noises from deeper in the abandoned tunnel.

For Peter Vernon, and for all the others, this is a night that might never end.

HIDING PLACE is a standalone suspense/horror novel by the author of “Constant” and “A Thousand Years Of Nanking”. 50,000 words.

EXCERPT:
Suddenly there was a sound from behind us. Russell, calling from the far end of the platform.
I whirled. I still couldn’t tell exactly what he was saying. His voice was just there, behind us at the far end of the platform. Begging something.
Nothing but the empty platform wheeling off into the gloom.
Even Lamb, jolted out of his concentration, twisted his head to look behind him.
“He’s there,” Coster said. “He’s in the staff room.”
“He crawled all the way down the pit and into the staff room,” Lamb said. “And nobody saw or heard him. Does that sound likely to you?”
“He ran back,” Coster said. “He went along the other track and he doubled back here.”
“Russell?” I shouted. “Come out where we can see you.”
Nothing. The yawning glare, the deepening gloom.
And then the banging noise again. Close. A hollow booming from just inside the interior tunnel, like an enormous iron hatch being swung shut.
I flinched, staggered a step toward the brazier.
“It’s back,” Coster yelled. “It’s come back.”
Abruptly the same banging noise, this time from the tunnel that led to the surface. We all reacted the same: ducking and swinging to face it.
Nothing but the black mouths of the tunnels, one on each side of us, and the solemn yellow glare of the station in between.
“They’re on both sides,” Coster cried. “We’re trapped!”
Echoes swarmed into the pit beneath us, colliding and reverberating, ringing off the tiled walls, making the fire dance and turn blue.
All at once a new sound started up. An intense scurrying noise, an insane commotion, as if thousands of clawed feet were scrambling into the station from both tunnels. An exodus of thousands of frightened rats, flushed out of the darkness by a horror too great even for the vermin of the ground.
But it wasn’t coming from the pit, and anyway I could see the tracks were empty. It was coming from all around us, from on the platform beside us, darting and scrabbling between our legs, scratching frantically up the walls, leaping beam to beam across the low flat ceiling.
“They’re everywhere!” Coster screamed.