Gorgoroth the mighty had been summoned. He wallowed in the warm putrescent fluids of the creatures he was to supplant; imbibing their warm faeces and urine; drinking knowledge of the creatures; his victims; mankind.
     
The Holy One had ordered him to stay for the time being, and stay he did. Indeed, he found this place, the artificial tunnels made by mankind to extract their excrement, a pleasant place. He felt secure and warm; his bloated mass expanded, as did the knowledge siphoned from the chemical impulses of these feeble creatures’ waste. The Holy One’s orders were explicit; the time apparently was nigh but the climate of that which lay outside was presently too cold for his infantile half-evolved body. But he would soon adjust and he, representative of the Old Ones, would regain control of this planet and rule supreme as his race had aeons before.
         

* * * * *

Ethel Jones was glad she was rid of Harry; she really didn’t feel comfortable in his company, particularly down below in the confines of the sewers. Harry was renowned for being “handy” with the ladies and openly bragged about it. The fact that she was respectably married with a child didn’t cut any ice with Harry; or even the fact that Bert, her husband, was in France fighting the Germans at a place called the Somme. Yes, Harry was a rat. No, thought Ethel, he’s worse than a rat -- she could stand rats; you had to, it was part of the job. Harry was the worst of men and a coward to boot. Why didn't he do his bit? She remembered vividly how Harry had led the male voice choir about having a woman in their midst. That was more than a year ago, and the others accepted her now. Indeed she was treated with respect; sometimes too much. There was still the prevailing thought among the older men that working in a sewer wasn’t a fit job for the fairer sex, especially a respectable handsome woman. But Ethel needed the money and she’d proved herself to most of the blokes -- they were invariably much older than she was and certainly a lot weaker, for Ethel was a strong woman, both physically and in character.
     
Ethel stuck the key into the slot on the cast iron cover. She twisted, then hauled aside the thirty-pound lid as if it was plywood. She looked further down the road some one hundred yards to see that Harry had opened his cover. She signalled to him that she was about to descend. He waved back and shouted.
     
“'Ere, watch out for the squeakies, Ethel. It’s alive with ’em down ’ere.”
     
She ignored the taunt and began her descent into total darkness. The rungs of the iron ladder secured to the brickwork on the inside of the inspection chamber were cold and clammy but as she went lower they became warmer, and by the time she’d reached the sewer walkway, some twenty feet below, the air was warmer too. The sewers never got really hot or cold, indeed they possessed a life and a climate of their own.
     
Ethel switched on her light, and reeled as a group of rats ran purposefully past her. She thought that strange but carried on walking, counting her paces in order to gauge exactly where the obstruction lay. She noted that there was hardly any flow at all. There was a blockage all right and it was big, it had to be to reduce the flow like this. This was a trunk sewer and it was rare for a blockage to occur on a channel of such a size. Perhaps there’d been a ceiling collapse. Ethel illuminated the roof but the brickwork and pointing looked sound. She felt uneasy and, swallowing her pride, she decided to hail Harry further down the tunnel.
     
“Harry, can you hear me?”
     
It took Harry a couple of seconds to respond.
     
“What is it, Ethel? Squeakies too much for you?”
     
“Harry, I’m twenty paces in and there’s nothing coming through.”
     
“I’m twenty in and it’s already ponding back. There’s a major blockage. I’ll check it out.”
     
“Watch it, Harry. It could be the roof.”
     
“Never knew you cared, Ethel.”
     
Harry, as usual, had to have the last word.
     
There was no point in standing around here; she walked back in the direction of the open cover and the penny of weak light filtering down from the grey February afternoon.
     
Then she heard -- or felt, she wasn’t sure -- an unearthly groan as if a thousand dying men had finally exhaled as one. The sewer itself seemed to move and then it seemed she was in a different place. She saw a sky of grey and greyness everywhere except where an explosion from something flashed a sickly orange light over what was a desolate battlefield. Then she saw men climbing over a parapet. Amongst the men, so near she could almost touch him, was Bert; her Bert. A blinding flash and a mound of mud erupted next to him. He fell.
     
“Bert! Bert! No...” She screamed but the scene of carnage dissolved. She remained in the dark, shaking. The tunnel seemed preternaturally quiet. She breathed in deeply, trying to regain control of her fragmented psyche.
     
I’m seeing things. What is happening to me?
     
She had to get out. Never before had she felt so overwhelmed by this place. As she turned back towards her exit she heard a squeaking and a scuttering of a myriad small feet. She froze, unable to move forwards or back. The noise got nearer. She finally managed to flatten herself to the wall of the tunnel. The noise welled up and reverberated inside her head. Then they appeared. A solid mass of living fur. Thousands of creatures rattling towards her in a mad exodus.
     
“Gawd help me...” she gasped as she covered her eyes. Then they were on her, a tide of squealing rat. She braced herself as the creatures ran past, around and over her. She felt their furry bodies, their sharp claws and scaly tails, then they were gone. She shook, laughing to herself hysterically. The tunnel became very quiet again, unnaturally so. Why had the rats done that? Something surely had scared them. Was the tunnel unsafe, about to collapse? Rats were clever; they wouldn’t have moved en masse like that for no reason.

She briskly began to walk the few paces back to the entrance and safety. The scream stopped her in her tracks. It came from down the tunnel -- from Harry. She instinctively turned to go back, to help. But there was no way through, not without getting out and re-entering via Harry’s hatch. She ran to the exit and climbed hand over hand to the grey light above.

She was glad to get out, even just for a minute. The temptation to stay; to ignore that awful scream, was strong but not strong enough. She ran to Harry’s hatch and began her descent; then, halfway down, a thought occurred to her. Supposing this was a trick; some sick ploy of Harry’s to get her down there -- with him. She thought even Harry incapable of that but the possibility lingered in the back of her mind. She forced herself downwards remembering that scream. Her feet splashed in to raw sewage. The ponding was right the way back here and the liquor rippled as if something were in it, moving about.

The tunnel’s about to go, thought Ethel.

She decided to move back up the tunnel and away from the flood on the assumption that Harry had retreated and perhaps missed the recessed climb-way. It was hard to see and did explain why he wasn’t there. He’s missed his exit and panicked, she smiled inwardly. Bloody idiot.

“Harry,” she called, then waited for a response. She heard nothing but felt a presence. She edged forward away from the blockage. After twenty paces or so she heard something. A man’s voice? She wasn’t sure.

“Harry, is that you?”

The noise increased. She crept forward, still grasping the heavy manhole key in case of trouble. If Harry was fooling about she’d let him have it. Blow the consequences.

The noise was nearer now. Then she saw Harry; curled in a foetal position; jabbering like a madman. He was covered in blood and stank of fear.

“Bloody hell, Harry. What’s happened?”

Harry didn’t respond. Indeed, he was obviously incapable of speech. Ethel saw that the blood came from Harry’s thumb. Apparently he’d bit the nail and whole end of his thumb clean off.

“Gawd help us,” muttered Ethel.

She unceremoniously yanked Harry to his feet. His fear-shot eyes looked behind her and down the tunnel. He raised a finger, pointed. The tunnel reverberated as if it was alive. Ethel fought the urge to look back. She urged Harry forward and he at last found the use of his legs. They ran. Yet the vibration and slithering behind them got nearer.

Ethel looked back. She knew she shouldn’t have. The thing that lurched towards them was a vision of Hell it self. A vile worm-like thing of an immensity that nearly blocked the tunnel stretched toward them on a myriad stubby hooked legs. Its frog-like snout smiled, exposing a maw of daggered teeth.

Harry relapsed into a state of incoherence. Ethel turned to run but for her the scene changed. She ran through a battlefield of mud and carnage. She came to the crest of a shell crater and looked down. Bert lay there in a dissected vision of red and grey. His inert dead eyes stared back at her.

She screamed over and over and found herself back in the sewer. Harry was nearby but his mind was elsewhere, though his eyes stared past her, the thing was apparently nearby. Behind Harry she saw an iron wheel. She remembered vaguely what it was -- a sluice from the river to wash away blockages. To the side of the wheel was a ladder -- apparently there was an inspection cover, a way out above.

She urged Harry upwards, physically lifting him on to the first rung. Harry took the hint and climbed. Yet the slithering noise from the gigantic beast was close. A terrible vision of the Western front, of Bert’s smashed body being buried in a sea of mud polluted her mind.
     
“Ouch,” she groaned having banged her knee on the valve wheel. Only then did she realise what she must do -- to remove the blockage, to flush out the filth. The sluice connected to the Thames and the river was in spate, full of snow water. Then a greyness of that same night, a rerun of Bert’s apparent demise flooded in to her. She fought back, with pain. She bit her hand hard and the foul apparition fogged away. Then she sensed fear, not her own but from it -- the thing was frightened of something. Perhaps it had never known fear. The wheel valve stared back at her through the gloom.

It’s the cold. It can’t take the cold.
     
She grabbed the four feet high wheel in both hands and swung from it like a monkey in the zoological gardens. The mechanism screeched in protest. She wriggled, moving her weight about but the wheel had seized.
          
Gorgoroth, in his perverse way, admired the woman. She’d made him pensive, even fearful -- he’d never felt fear before -- but now she was his. Perhaps these creatures would be of use after all. He’d honour her by consuming her, of course, but her mind would be of use to augment his own. He sent out a tendril and grabbed the human but she remained attached to the contraption.
     
Ethel bounced off the floor of the tunnel and pulled every ounce of her weight on to a spoke of the wheel yet it remained unmoved. Then she felt the whiplash around her waist and a terrible sickening weight on her. She held on, but only just. Her fingerhold on the wheel loosened; she felt her self being prised away like a limpet from a rock. Then the wheel screeched again and moved -- very slightly. The weight on her now was immense, she felt as though the thing would cut her in two. Her hands slipped from the wheel and she knew then that she’d die, like Bert.

But her grip was broken because the wheel had turned. The additional strength of the creature had done the trick. The wheel spun around and the door careered back with the irresistible force created by tons of ice cold water. She leapt from the wheel to avoid being pinned to the wall. The tendril fell from her and the thing emitted the foulest of screeches as the near freezing contents of the river surged onto it. She managed to hold onto a rung and pulled herself clear of the flow. She turned to the creature and saw its full horror close up. The dreadful thing, from hell itself, clung with its myriad legs and tendrils to the extremities of the sewer walls. She thought for one dreadful moment that it would hold but the ice cold torrent was irresistible, its weight and strength immense. With a high-pitched inhuman screech the thing was gone.
     
Ethel found Harry quaking on the top rung. He hadn’t the sense to open the cover with the key, which still dangled from his belt. Ethel had, and she took the key and turned it in the slot, and eventually emerged on to a darkened street lit by a single gas light. Harry crawled out behind her, still unable to speak.
      
They took Harry to the Hospital where he was pronounced insane. It was ten-o-clock that night when Ethel finally arrived home. She found her mother and son in tears. Her mother held out a brown envelope, from the War Department.