Far Horizons: Tales of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror. Issue #13 April 2015 | Page 185

Evie flicked Claire an impatient look. ‘We live in the
Real. The Morphs come from the Beneath. They want
to find a way through Underland to get to the Real. We
stop them.’
‘We?’
Evie looked over Claire’s shoulder. Her eyes narrowed
and her lips tightened. Claire turned to see what Evie
was looking at. The shape further down the train was
getting closer and growing uncomfortably larger.
To Claire, it looked wider than the aisle between the
seats, and she was sure she could hear a ripping noise
as it moved.
‘Later,’ said Evie.
They were standing at the most forward door and
Evie turned away to look out the window. Something
bright flashed past, and Claire saw her start to mouth
a count down from five as her hand reached up to the
emergency signal. Claire started to shout an outraged
‘Don’t’. Pulling the emergency cord for a prank would
get them in big trouble, and she didn’t want to add a
fine to the grief she was already going to collect from
her parents for being out so late.
As she finished drawing the breath into her lungs,
she realised that the normal rules had probably been
suspended. She reached out and grabbed hold of a
pole just as Evie pulled hard on the bright red chain.
The emergency brakes slammed on, and Claire could
see the walls of the tunnel light up as sparks scattered
from the screeching wheels. The train shuddered to a
halt with only half the first car poking into the station.
While it was still rocking on its springs, Evie threw
the emergency exit lever and pulled the doors apart.
‘Move it,’ she called back as she leapt from the train.
Claire cast a glance back at the rapidly approaching
outline and leapt out after Evie. They ran through an
archway that was directly in front and into a hallway
where two wooden escalators rumbled up and away
to the right. Dim globes of light atop poles between
the stairs provided the only illumination. Evie tried
to push Claire onto the one going up. Claire pushed

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back. She didn’t trust the escalators, and couldn’t see
what was at the top. Besides, Evie appeared to know
what was going on and Claire wasn’t happy about
walking away from that small reassurance.
‘Go on,’ said Evie. ‘I’ll be up as soon as I make sure it
saw me.’
‘What?’ Claire thought the whole idea was to get away
from the nasty shape chasing after them.
‘I have to get it out into the open,’ Evie replied. ‘Then
I can deal with it.’
Claire stumbled as she stepped backwards on to the escalator and steadied herself by grabbing the handrail.
Evie flicked an impatient hand at her until she turned
and ran up the moving stairs. At the top she stepped to
the side and turned back to watch.
Evie was side-stepping away from the bottom of the
escalators, craning her neck to see as much of the platform as she could. Sounds of metal tearing echoed up
from the platform, then a crash. Evie fired her weapon
then ran for the escalators. Too close behind her, a
monster burst into the hallway.
The creature was about seven feet tall and blocky, with
scaly skin that looked grey in the weak light. It stood
on two legs, with heavily muscled arms that looked
strong enough to rip a laptop in half the hard way. The
head was like a crocodile - only the snout wasn’t so
long - and intelligent black eyes made it looked like a
cliché bad guy from an anime. The Morph waddled,
rather than ran, but it was fast and Evie was barely
able to keep in front of it.
As she reached the bottom of the escalators, Evie
spun around and brought up the toy gun