Ain't Folks Cute
As the mediocre English horror writer R Chetwynd-Hayes once observed, there are few better proofs for the existence of ghouls, vampires and zombies than a twenty-minute trip on the London Underground. It is true beyond doubt that, if you are unlucky enough to have to take the Tube twice a day in order to earn official permission not to starve, you do run across the occasional non-human unpleasantness besides all the human ones. There must be something about the atmosphere of the place - the harsh light, the omnipresent grime, the deadly noise - which makes it a haven for the damned and depraved. Perhaps it's the advertisements.
Certainly the party ambience must be a factor. I'm talking, of course, about the British version of party ambience, whereby nobody talks to anyone else but, at most, merely eyes them up and down in silent disapproval. Disapproval and self-pity are the British equivalents of bienvenida and mi casa es su casa, respectively, much as lager lout culture is what passes here for sportsmanship. This is what draws the creatures. There must be few things more attractive to the average ghoul than the margarine-thick miasma creeping like a poisoned mist out of forty or fifty covertly shifting glances of mutual dislike.
Ghoul-spotting on the Underground is a harmless sport which helps to pass the time and tedium of a journey which is too noisy for conversation and too uncomfortable for worthwhile reading. Even if they are aware of being observed, the creatures are prevented from attacking by the overcrowding and risk of capture; their appetites are in any case almost entirely satisfied owing to the preponderance of walking corpses among Tube passengers. Walking corpses no more object to a ghoul taking a chunk out of them, or a vampire having a cold drink, than they object to a day at the office or a glance at the newspapers.
The only real problem for the amateur ghoul-watcher is, of course, the growing difficulty of distinguishing the creatures from the rest of the crowd. Humanity's continuing evolution into a semiconscious species, and the natural fecundity of the delta-minus and epsilon types, means that only the thoroughly trained eye can be certain any longer that a genuine ghoul is in fact being observed.
Last week, for example, one of my fellow passengers was a thickset male creature with a token bristle of hair warning the unauthorised away from its scalp and the dead flat eyes of the habitual corpse-eater. Was it a ghoul? The fact that it was wearing a blue pinstripe suit was neither here nor there. It had its thumb in its mouth and was poking absently and audibly around in there; but this also is a deceptive sign which might have meant anything. For all I knew, the thing could have been an ordinary moron simply trying to find its tongue. It had one of those unique British chins which manage at once to be both belligerent and dramatically undershot, and it was reading - or perhaps I should say regarding - the pages of The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy with blank, uncomprehending resentment.
During the quarter-hour I spent observing it, the thing neither cracked a smile nor turned a page. I was wracked with uncertainty. If it were a ghoul, surely it would take better care to conceal itself among the other London Underground customers? Tube carriages at half-past five are rarely scenes of merriment and bonhomie, so that even the least ebullient of ghouls can generally pass unnoticed for a few stops; but this one didn't even seem to be trying. But if it was merely an ordinary epsilon, why was it holding the book the right way up?
It was an inconclusive encounter. The thing got out at my station, where the platforms are in the open air; but again this proves nothing. Many ghouls nowadays have a taste for sunshine in small doses, particularly in large cities where the dizzying reek of warm days has become almost an addiction for some of them. But that small-eyed, slope-browed face, slack with stupidity and leaden with inarticulate spleen, while its owner picked its teeth with its thumb, remains with me to this moment. There is something indescribably horrible about such faces, even when one has been spared the experience of seeing them open their mouths and talk. I hope the thing was a ghoul. If I knew that it was, I might soon be able to sleep again.
Certainly the party ambience must be a factor. I'm talking, of course, about the British version of party ambience, whereby nobody talks to anyone else but, at most, merely eyes them up and down in silent disapproval. Disapproval and self-pity are the British equivalents of bienvenida and mi casa es su casa, respectively, much as lager lout culture is what passes here for sportsmanship. This is what draws the creatures. There must be few things more attractive to the average ghoul than the margarine-thick miasma creeping like a poisoned mist out of forty or fifty covertly shifting glances of mutual dislike.
Ghoul-spotting on the Underground is a harmless sport which helps to pass the time and tedium of a journey which is too noisy for conversation and too uncomfortable for worthwhile reading. Even if they are aware of being observed, the creatures are prevented from attacking by the overcrowding and risk of capture; their appetites are in any case almost entirely satisfied owing to the preponderance of walking corpses among Tube passengers. Walking corpses no more object to a ghoul taking a chunk out of them, or a vampire having a cold drink, than they object to a day at the office or a glance at the newspapers.
The only real problem for the amateur ghoul-watcher is, of course, the growing difficulty of distinguishing the creatures from the rest of the crowd. Humanity's continuing evolution into a semiconscious species, and the natural fecundity of the delta-minus and epsilon types, means that only the thoroughly trained eye can be certain any longer that a genuine ghoul is in fact being observed.
Last week, for example, one of my fellow passengers was a thickset male creature with a token bristle of hair warning the unauthorised away from its scalp and the dead flat eyes of the habitual corpse-eater. Was it a ghoul? The fact that it was wearing a blue pinstripe suit was neither here nor there. It had its thumb in its mouth and was poking absently and audibly around in there; but this also is a deceptive sign which might have meant anything. For all I knew, the thing could have been an ordinary moron simply trying to find its tongue. It had one of those unique British chins which manage at once to be both belligerent and dramatically undershot, and it was reading - or perhaps I should say regarding - the pages of The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy with blank, uncomprehending resentment.
During the quarter-hour I spent observing it, the thing neither cracked a smile nor turned a page. I was wracked with uncertainty. If it were a ghoul, surely it would take better care to conceal itself among the other London Underground customers? Tube carriages at half-past five are rarely scenes of merriment and bonhomie, so that even the least ebullient of ghouls can generally pass unnoticed for a few stops; but this one didn't even seem to be trying. But if it was merely an ordinary epsilon, why was it holding the book the right way up?
It was an inconclusive encounter. The thing got out at my station, where the platforms are in the open air; but again this proves nothing. Many ghouls nowadays have a taste for sunshine in small doses, particularly in large cities where the dizzying reek of warm days has become almost an addiction for some of them. But that small-eyed, slope-browed face, slack with stupidity and leaden with inarticulate spleen, while its owner picked its teeth with its thumb, remains with me to this moment. There is something indescribably horrible about such faces, even when one has been spared the experience of seeing them open their mouths and talk. I hope the thing was a ghoul. If I knew that it was, I might soon be able to sleep again.
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