The station wasn’t supposed to be there.
I’d been exploring the second basement of the building I’d just bought on Wardour Street—a crumbling relic with rubbish piled in every corner—when I found the door. It was steel, unmarked, and slightly ajar. The air beyond it was cool, metallic, and carried the faint, unsettling scent of damp stone.
The staircase spiraled downward, narrow and dark. I should have stopped. I didn’t.
At the bottom was the platform.
It stretched out in both directions, tiled walls streaked with grime and soot, tracks buried beneath decades of dust. The overhead lights buzzed faintly, their weak glow revealing a space that felt impossibly still. The air hummed faintly, a low vibration I could feel in my chest.
And then I saw her.
She was sitting on a bench against the tiled wall, her legs tucked beneath her, her back resting lightly against the stained tiles. Her black hair fell in loose waves over her shoulders, and her pale dress clung to her in a way that didn’t match the chill of the air.
She turned her head when she heard me approach, her deep blue eyes locking onto mine with an intensity that froze me in place.
I took a hesitant step forward. “What is this place?” I asked, though I wasn’t sure I wanted the answer.
“It’s a station,” she said, her voice calm and low.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Not anymore. It can’t be.”
Her lips curved faintly, though not into a smile. “Then what is it?”
I looked around. The grime-covered tiles, the rusted tracks, the oppressive silence. “I don’t know,” I admitted.
“Then maybe it still is,” she said, her gaze unwavering.
I stared at her, trying to make sense of the scene in front of me. She looked young—too young to be down here alone—but there was something unsettlingly composed about her, something that made her seem older than her face, he petite stature.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Waiting,” she said simply.
“For what?”
She tilted her head slightly, her hair shifting over her shoulder. “Maybe for you.”
The words hit me harder than they should have. My chest tightened, my breath catching for reasons I couldn’t explain. “What do you mean, for me?”
She didn’t answer. Instead, she leaned back against the tiles, her hands resting lightly in her lap. “You found me, didn’t you?”
I opened my mouth to reply, but no words came. My gaze flicked to the tracks, then back to her. “Have we met before?” I asked.
“Not neccessarily,” she said, her tone soft but firm.
“Then why are you waiting for me?”
“You’ll work it out,” she replied.
I stepped closer, my boots scraping against the tiles. “What is this, a sort of game?”
Her faint smile returned, sharper now. “Not a game,” she said. “More of a puzzle.”
I stared at her, the sharpness of her cheekbones, the way her eyes seemed to see through me. “You said I found you. But this isn’t the first time I’ve found someone like you.”
Her expression didn’t change. She didn’t look surprised or confused. She looked like she had been waiting for me to say it.
“There were others,” I said finally. “A blonde girl in a pub. Another girl in a house. Do you know them?”
“Of course I do,” she said, her voice as steady as her gaze.
Her certainty unsettled me. “How?”
“Because we all know you,” she said simply.
Her words left me cold. “What does that mean?”
“You already know,” she said.
“No, I don’t,” I snapped. “I’ve never met any of you before. I don’t know what this is, or why it’s happening.”
“Yes, you do,” she said. “You just haven’t thought about it properly. You need to dig deeper. This is what happens when we bury our thoughts, our memories.”
Her voice was soft but relentless, each word pressing down on me like a weight.
“Why don’t I remember?” I asked, the frustration bubbling to the surface.
“You hid it all,” she said, her tone matter-of-fact. “It’s safer that way. But it’s all still there. You just have to think. Really think.”
I stared at her, my hands curling into fists at my sides. “What am I supposed to be thinking about?”
“Everything,” she said simply. “The places. The people. The things you’ve forgotten.”
Her words settled over me, heavy and suffocating. I turned away from her, my gaze sweeping the platform as though the answers might be hidden somewhere in the shadows.
“Why would I bury something like this?” I asked.
“To keep yourself safe,” she replied.
Her voice pulled me back to her, and I turned, meeting her gaze again. “Safe from what?”
“From yourself,” she said.
The silence that followed felt deeper, heavier, as though the station itself were pressing in on me.
“You should buy the pub,” she said suddenly.
“What?”
“And the house,” she added.
“What house?”
Her faint smile returned. “You’ll know which one. Think!”
I stared at her, my frustration giving way to something colder. “Why?”
“They’re well within your means,” she said simply.
Her certainty sent a chill down my spine.
“And you should go to the river,” she added, her voice soft now.
“Which river? Where?”
“The Tyburn, Mayfair.”
“Why?”
“You’ll see when you get there,” she said, her gaze steady.
Before I could say anything more, she patted the bench beside her. “Stay the night with me.”
“What?”
“Just for tonight,” she said softly.
I hesitated, but her calmness was unrelenting, pulling me in. She was magnetic. I sat down beside her, the bench cold and hard beneath me. She leaned closer me, her head resting lightly against my shoulder, her hair brushing my cheek and her arms around me. She sighed deeply, comfortably. “At last!” – a soft whisper.
The platform was quiet around us, the hum fading into something softer, almost soothing. My thoughts felt heavy, too tangled to untangle.
At some point, sleep pulled me under.
I woke to cold.
The bench beneath me felt harder than it had the night before, and an old brown hessian sack was draped over me like a blanket.
She was gone.
The platform was silent, unchanged, but my mind wasn’t. Fragments of her voice lingered, words I didn’t remember hearing but couldn’t shake. The pub. The house. The river. Think deeply. Dig. Everything is already there.
Had she spoken to me as I slept?
I stood, holding the sack around my shoulders against the cold, and climbed the stairs back to the second basement. Her voice echoed in my mind with every step.
Think. Dig. Remember.
By the time I reached the surface, the memory of her was already slipping away, but the weight of her words remained.
The pub. The house. The river.
I didn’t know what they meant. But I knew I couldn’t ignore them.
How do I buy the house and the pub? Think!