from this. Nowhere to hide, if not here.
Another scream joined hers. Higher. A keening, grind-ing wail that did not issue from a human
throat. A siren. But its significance was lost on her until she saw the specters be-gin to scatter. The
newsboy raced toward a regal-looking structure and vanished inside.
An air-raid siren, then, and this was a shelter in those hellish days when the Luftwaffe crossed the
Channel and the bombs rained down and the fires burned out of control.
The first explosion knocked her off her feet.
Jazz stopped screaming. She lay on her side on the tracks as dust sifted down from the ceiling, and
she told her-self the impossible could not touch her. There came another thunderous roar and she felt the
ground shudder, and that drove her back to her feet. She staggered toward the next splash of light. In the
distance, she saw the ghost of a build-ing reduced almost to rubble, valiant walls standing like jagged,
ancient ruins.
Not real, she told herself. It's not real.
But her mother's voice came back, stronger than her own. Trust your instincts, Jazz. Always.
Down deep, we've all got a little of the beast in us.
This time the voice didn't sound as though it came from inside her head but from the darkness, clear
and strong as the Churchill hater's.
Jazz raced, panicked, for an exit, but nearly halfway to the other end of the abandoned station, she
had nowhere to run. The siren rose and fell. Voices shouted from the dark-ness, but the sepia mirage that
had appeared around her had thinned, fading.
To her right, Jazz noticed an anomaly on the wall —a round metal pipe that followed the curve of the
roof and then went up through the ceiling of the tunnel. Some other sort of vent, going to the surface. But it
came from the floor beneath the abandoned station, and that didn't make any sense at all. What could be
deeper than this?
The air-raid siren became a whisper and then a strange electrical buzz. No, the buzz had been there
all along. It came from the pipe bolted to the wall. Jazz put one hand against it and thought she could feel
the slightest vibration. She glanced back the way she'd come and found herself truly alone again. With a
shuddering breath, she nearly went to her knees with relief. Her ears still rang with the effects of the siren.
With no sign as to where this vent might lead, she con-tinued on her original course but against the
wall now, let-ting her fingers drag along the tiles.
She saw the hole before she reached it. Tiles littered the ground where someone had shattered the
wall, tearing down bricks to make a passage. Practically adjacent to one of the ventilation ducts above, the
hole in the wall was bathed in light. Beyond the hole was a short passageway, at the end of which another
metal door —this one painted a deep red— stood open, and Jazz could see the top of another spiral
staircase leading down. This one was cast in concrete. Words had been painted on the passage's wall,
faded now but readable even after so many decades had passed.
DEEP LEVEL SHELTER 7-K
On the door were two posters. Jazz stepped through to peer at them. The top one featured a
beautiful illustration of St. George slaying the dragon and, in large type, the declara-tion Britain Needs You
at Once.
Jazz put a hand over her mouth to keep from crying out again, remembering the phantoms fleeing the
air-raid siren. Britain needs me, she thought, her mind feeling frayed. She uttered a short bark that might
have been a laugh.
The other poster had been torn at the top as if someone had tried to strip it from the door. The letters
she could make out made it clear it had been issued by the Metropolitan something or other.
A man and four women were charged and con-victed at Great
Marlborough Police Court on the 8th March, 1944, with disorderly
conduct in a public Air Raid Shelter. Further, on the 13th March,
1944, at Clerkenwell Police Court, a man was sentenced to one
month's imprisonment for remaining in a public Air Raid Shelter while
drunk.
It is in the best interests of all that shelters should be kept
respectable. Will you please assist in an endeavor to meet this end?
—C.F.S. Chappie
Afraid to go on, afraid to go back, mind numb and body ex-hausted, Jazz stood and stared down that
spiral staircase. The descent appealed to her. Down and down and farther down, as deep as she could
burrow into the ground, where no one would ever find her. Down into the darkness to hide forever, just like
Mum had told
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