I’ve not written many real ghost stories, but this is one I did for Scholastic’s fabulous Wow 366! book, in which hundreds of children’s authors (including Andy Briggs and Barry Hutchison) wrote stories of exactly 366 words in length for the National Year of Reading and to raise money for Childline.  The seed of this story came to me after many late night journeys on the London underground in my late teens…

STOP ME

I like to tube-surf. I stand in the middle of the carriage, even when there are seats free, bending my knees slightly, balancing while the train ducks and dives, singing along the dark track.

I look down through the windows of the connecting doors, to see how the carriages ahead are moving; to warn myself of a lurch to the left or a dive to the right. I don’t often look through the windows at the side of the carriage. But on this day I did.

We’d slowed down between Leicester Square and Charing Cross, and for some reason I glanced left, through the glass to the blackness and the sooty snakes of power lines.

And I saw a girl. Her face was a picture of terror. And so it should have been. She was pressed against an underground tunnel, desperately trying not to get flattened while a tube train skimmed past her, centimetres from her nose. Her hair was whipping across her cheeks and her eyes were round with fear. And she mouthed something at me, in that single second that I saw her.

“STOP ME.”

I nearly fell into the gap, getting off at Embankment. I’d seen a girl in the tube tunnel. I must have been eating too many E-numbers. It couldn’t have been real.

Except that I saw her again. The next day, in the same spot. For one second. Eyes round with fear, hair across her cheeks. “STOP ME.”

The third day it happened I actually asked if anyone else had seen her. Nobody spoke. They just read their papers harder.

On the fourth day she got on to the train. The same girl. At Tottenham Court Road. Grabbing the handrail next to me, she looked haunted and grim. Determined. When we got to Leicester Square, she got off. And so did I.

When the train had gone, she walked to the far end of the platform by the yawning dark mouth of the tunnel and swung one foot over the edge.

“I have to stop you,” I said, and pulled her back. She stared, stunned, and then walked away. I never saw her in the tunnel again. I always look.