Literature / Far Below

Say it with me: The submachine subdues subterranean subhumans subsisting in the subway.

"Oh, you'd be surprised, old boy, how you can hush a thing up if you've got a whole city administration behind you!"

—Gordon Craig

"Far Below" is a Short Story by Robert Barbour Johnson that was originally published in the June 1939 issue of Weird Tales. It is either a sequel or a Spiritual Successor to "They", with which it shares daylight-shunning hominivores referred to as Them, and doubles as a homage to "Pickman's Model". As such, it is part of the Cthulhu Mythos.

Gordon Craig has been an inspector of the Special Subway Detail of the New York Police Department for twenty-five years when the protagonist keeps him company in his monitor room for one night. The inspector shows off the state-of-the-art tech at the SSD's disposal and tells his guest all about what his job entails. There are ghouls living underneath New York City and they occasionally dig their way into the subway's lowest tunnel, a stretch of five miles, with the aim of finding prey. They are strong and resourceful and know that to derail a train all one has to do is destroy the rails. They've done this once, taking their pick from the injured and unconscious men, women, and children to feed on. Never may this happen again, which is the SSD's primary task. Equally, the public cannot be made aware of the ghouls' existence because it would lead to chaos, so that is something the SSD has to see to too. Another purpose of the SSD is research on the few specimens they manage to capture. For their work, the agents of the SSD get paid handsomely, but there is a catch. The ghouls have a corrupting influence that means that after several years of service in the SSD, its members will themselves steadily change into the very creatures they've been fighting against. When the change reaches its tipping point and the last bit of humanity disappears, the afflicted agent gets gunned down as if he were a born ghoul. Graig's own change, to the protagonist's horror, is far along, which is why he no longer goes aboveground. He himself is proud of his work as both a scientist and inspector and therefore at peace with his fate as long as he doesn't dwell on it.

Among the paintings in H. P. Lovecraft's "Pickman's Model", one titled "Subway Accident" features a flock of ghouls "clambering up from some unknown catacomb through a crack in the floor of the Boylston Street subway and attacking a crowd of people on the platform." It is evident that Johnson's main inspiration for "Far Below" is this fictional painting. Although no such event occurs in "Far Below", the one that does occur, the derailment of a train midway between stations and the subsequent attack on its passengers, is alike enough. Furthermore, Lovecraft features in "Far Below" as someone Gordon Craig befriended after becoming inspector and it is implied that not only did Lovecraft write some of Craig's experiences into his stories, he also toned down their true horror, which accounts for the difference between "Far Below" and "Subway Accident". Another inspiration is either "Amina" or, more likely, "The Chadbourne Episode", as the latter repeated the former's assertion that ghouls are systematically hunted down in Persia, which is something also noted to be the case in "Far Below". Aside from literary influences, Robert Jefferson Johnson, Johnson's father, at one point in his career joined the railroad's undercover police service, which will have made writing "Far Below" a personal endeavor.

Johnson's story was adapted into the Monsters episode "Far Below" in 1990.

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"Far Below" provides examples of the following tropes:

• Artistic License – History: Craig notes that the ghouls' first attack on a subway train happened when America "was as good as in the war", which means it happened not too long before April 6, 1917, the date that the USA entered World War I. He also says that the tunnel the attack took place in had only been open for a year. The latest before 1917 that a subway tunnel was opened in real life was the Steinway Tunnel on June 22, 1915, which would put the attack in 1916. However, Craig also says he was asked to do research on a ghoul corpse retrieved from the wreck upon his return "from Carl Akeley's first African expedition after gorillas," and depending on if he was part of the whole expedition or tapped out earlier, his return would've been anywhere from August 1921 to January 1922. There isn't an expedition that matches better either because from 1914 onwards World War I affected Akeley's opportunities. His then-last expedition ended in 1911 and focused on elephants. It is unlikely that the first attack is meant to have taken place in the 1920s, because Craig's been on the job for twenty-five years. Were the story's present 1946 or so, then the equipment Jimmy Walker's budget approvals before he resigned as mayor in 1932 got the Special Subway Detail would've not been as relevant anymore.
• Been There, Shaped History: Rather than cheaply selling Manhattan to the Dutch in 1626 due to miscommunication, the Algonquian are said to have sold Manhattan for cheap because they knew it was infested with ghouls.
• Bookends: The story opens with the Three-One Express, the last train for the night, racing by the monitor room. The story closes with the Four-Fifteen Express, the first train of the morning, racing by the monitor room. Both have been kept safe by the Special Subway Detail.
• Brown Note Being: Being near ghouls triggers a transformation in humans that ends with them becoming ghouls themselves in body and soul. It is a slow process of years and madness might vastly hasten the process. Before the transformation reaches the tipping point, a human experiences close proximity to ghouls as an steadily building sense of nausea. Craig refers to this as soul-sickness.
• Cat Scare: The story opens as if the protagonist is under attack: "With a roar and a howl the thing was upon us." As it turns out, he is describing a power-car rushing by the little monitor room he's holed up in.
• Creature-Hunter Organization: The Special Subway Detail of the New York Police Department exists solely to hunt down the ghouls residing in the New York Subway System. The SSD does some research on captured specimens, but simply making sure that the subway stays a functional part of the New York's public transport is what it was brought into existence for. Those involved know that New York isn't the only area with a ghoul problem, but they don't have the means to operate elsewhere and also don't have any contact with possible other ghoul-hunting organizations.
• Dead Man Walking: Anyone who exists near the ghouls will over time change into a ghoul themselves. This means that anyone who joins the Special Subway Detail has a mere handful of years to resign before the change has any perceivable effect. So far most if not all agents have stayed, possibly because they joined before the ghouls' corruption was known about nd by now they're already affected. Inspector Craig, who himself is far along in his corruption, refers to his agents as "an army of the Unburied Dead" and "an army of the Eternally Damned".
• Death of a Child: The ghouls grab whomever they can use for food. Children are no exception and several of them were killed in the original subway train wreck that the ghouls had orchestrated.
• Desecrating the Dead: The corpses of dead ghouls are disposed off by the Special Subway Detail in the lowest tunnel, sometimes by means of burial, sometimes but just dumping. Inspections later on have shown that the other ghouls dig up the corpses to consume the flesh.
• Fantastic Racism: Despite that ghouls are sapient and most likely related to humans, they eat their own dead and kill humans for food. Not a human cares to make contact or even treat them with a modicum of dignity. Every society known to deal with ghouls does so with immediate and indiscriminate violence.
• Gas Chamber: Inspector Craig mentions that one method the Subway Special Detail has employed to kill ghouls was the blocking up of one mile of a tunnel and filling the enclosure with poison gas. They only did it once because it didn't pay off.
• Good Pays Better: The agents of the Special Subway Detail risk changing into ghouls from being in the creatures' presence, although the change is one of years. Still, for that and the high risk they take fighting the creatures to keep New York City safe, they get paid much more than aboveground agents, have off every other night and don't have to be on duty during the day.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: It is believed by all involved that the common man would go mad if they knew that beneath their feet live creatures out for their flesh and whose very presence corrupts. That's why the existence of the ghouls is kept secret. As for the agents of the Special Subway Detail tasked with keeping the creatures at bay, they keep themselves functional by disassociating and rejecting any conscious perception or thought of the ghouls from their minds. It's a trick most agents have learned during World War I, which is of even greater use when they have to deal with a colleague who has turned into a ghoul. To further disassociate, the agents prefer not to speak of the ghouls either and if they have to, they never do so by name, using only "They" and "Them" to get any message across.
• Hand Wave: The ghouls only come up in the lowest subway tunnel, a structure of five miles, and they only come out at night despite that time matters little in the tunnels. Why they operate so narrowly is something no one has been able to figure out, but it allows the Special Subway Detail to focus all their manpower and tech, both stationary and mobile, on that specific tunnel for a handful of hours each night. Inspector Craig offers four best-guess explanations for what makes the tunnel different. The first is that the ghouls are creatures of habit and aren't comfortable venturing elsewhere. The second is that they are supernaturally bound to the lowest tunnel. The third is that the tunnel's dankness creates a "fungoid moisture and miasmic darkness" that suits them. And the fourth is a suspicion that the lowest tunnel borders a yet undiscovered cavern system that the ghouls inhabit. As to the matter of the ghouls' nocturnal habits despite living underground, the best Craig can offer is that they prefer to hunt when there's more time between power-cars zooming by.
• Hiroshima as a Unit of Measure: Inspector Craig, who fought in World War I, believes that if the people of New York City would know about the ghouls underneath the earth, "the horrors of Chateau-Thierry and Verdun and all the rest of them put together" would be nothing compared to "the shambles that rioting mobs would have made" of the city.
• Historical Domain Character: Three real-life people are mentioned in relation to the story's event. Deuteragonist Gordon Craig went with the real-life Carl Akeley on his gorilla expedition in 1921 and was recruited to the Special Subway Detail thereafter because of his knowledge on foreign humanoids. Jimmy Walker, the mayor of New York from 1926 to 1932, is credited for pushing through crucial investments to the SSD's equipment shortly before he resigned. And Craig has met H. P. Lovecraft, with whom he exchanged notes on ghouls. It is implied that "Pickman's Model" was partially based on the information Craig provided.
• Human Subspecies: Although Homo sapiens are perfectly capable of retrograding into ghouls, Gordon Craig theorizes that the original ghouls are descendants of groups of Neandertals or Piltdown people that were forced underground.
• Ignorance Is Bliss: All those that know about the ghouls living underneath New York City believe that the population is better off not knowing. Special mention is made of the surviving victims of the subway train wreck orchestrated by the ghouls. Ghouls aren't loud and there was total darkness after the crash, so the survivors never saw the unfortunate ones being dragged off to be eaten. What little they did experience was blamed on delirium. Notably, one man got his arm chewed off by a ghoul, but he could be saved. The damaged remaining tissue was amputated and the man was told his arm was damaged beyond repair in the crash, allowing him to continue his life with a far less traumatic history than almost being eaten alive by creatures that are still nearby.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Ghouls are carnivorous and favor human prey and human carrion, though in modern times their opportunities to such meals have considerably lessened.
• Masquerade: The Special Subway Detail and all of New York City's administration keep the existence of ghouls a secret to prevent mass chaos and panic and vigilantism and everything else that would destabilize the city. It all started with the subway train wreck the ghouls orchestrated, which the authorities hushed up as a suspicious accident. The newspapers, always looking for a scoop, went wild with theories about a German spy plot to keep the USA out of the Great War. This convenient rumor mill gave those in charge ample time to set up the SSD and streamline what cover-ups they'd use in their fight against the ghouls.
• No Name Given: The protagonist who accompanies Gordon Craig for one night on the job is not once referred to by name.
• Our Ghouls Are Creepier: The ghouls are referred to as such only once; to the members of the Special Subway Detail it is wiser not to define their enemy and risk dwelling on their horror. Therefore, the common terms used are "They", "Them", and "Things", all with capital T. Ghouls have a "vaguely anthropoid structure" usually held in a bestial, semi-crouched posture. They have greenish white eyes that shine in the darkness, pale skin, elongated jaws and flat foreheads that evoke a canine appearance, and spade-like appendages that give the ghouls the digging capacity of huge moles. Unless they're hunting, they're elusive and all that may be perceived of them are their shining eyes and hyena-like laughter. From his position as a professor in biology, Craig gives such descriptions as "some sort of giant, carrion-feeding, subterranean mole" and "canine and simian developments of members", which he wholeheartedly admits sounds contradictory. For their evident connection to humanity, Craig theorizes that ghouls are descendants of Neandertals or Piltdown people that were forced underground. Ghouls are carnivorous and favor human prey and human carrion, but they don't mind eating the corpses of their own dead either. Light of any kind is deadly to ghouls which is why they stay in caves and tunnels underground. The SSD has noticed that even without the day-night cycle mattering underground, the ghouls still only are active for a little over four hours each night. Whether this is something biological or if they're responding to the slowing down of subway traffic is yet to be determined. Ghouls are loosely theorized to have telepathic powers, but what is certain is that they are intelligent and have a corrupting influence. It is their proximity that little by little changes the SSD agents from humans into ghouls. Mental instability seems to quicken the process.
• Post-Victory Collapse: When Gordon Craig was still a professor at the Natural History Museum, he was brought the corpse of a ghoul because it was hoped his knowledge of gorillas would give him an edge. He went for six days and nights without sleep or even rest to extract every last sliver of knowledge to be gained from the corpse before collapsing from exhaustion. He had to be taken to the hospital after that.
• The Reveal: As Gordon Craig works himself up in excitement over his troops killing several ghouls, he jumps up into a properly lit part of the monitor room and the protagonist gets a good look at him. It is evident that Craig is himself in the process of becoming a ghoul, as he's mentioned having happened to a colleague before. With his secret discovered, he admits to it and that the change isn't just physical. For now, he's human and will carry on his duties for the good of humanity. One day, he'll be a true ghoul and get terminated like the others.
• Ripped from the Headlines: The ghouls' derailing a subway train and thereby inflicting death and injury on the occupants is likely inspired by the 1915 Seventh Avenue subway collapse.
• Science Hero: Before joining the Special Subway Detail as Inspector Craig, the latter was Professor Craig of the Natural History Museum. It was because of his biological knowledge, especially regarding primates, that he was approached by New York's administrators to examine the ghoul corpse they'd acquired. When Craig's report proved his competence, he was hired as inspector. Even in that role, he passionately continues his research on any ghoul captured by the SSD.
• Secret Test of Character: When Professor Craig was handed the ghoul corpse to research, it was less so to obtain any useful information, because the New York government already knew quite a lot, and more so to see if he'd be a good leader for the Special Subway Detail that was being set up.
• Shout-Out: Inspector Craig compares the Special Subway Detail's effectiveness before their current equipment to "Mrs. Partington sweeping back the sea." This references a meme based on a 1824 news report that one Mrs. Partington in England determinedly but futilely tried to sweep back sea water that was gushing into her house due to the fierce wind.
• Sinister Subway: Most of the New York City Subway System is safe. The one exception is the lowest tunnel for a stretch of five miles, which is speculated to have been built adjacent to a cavern where ghouls reside. The creatures regularly dig their way into the tunnel in search of food, that being human flesh preferably. They are more than capable of derailing a subway train for that purpose. Because the city can't afford the chaos certain to erupt from public knowledge of ghouls and because the subway system is a project millions of dollars have been sunken into, administration has chosen to cover this up and to add the Subway Special Detail to the police department specifically to keep the subway ghoul-free.
• Title Drop: Craig regularly mentions that they are "far below," which oppressive melancholy foreshadows his reveal that he himself never can return to the surface. The relevant lines are "They'd go mad if they knew what was down here—far below," "in the eternal darkness of these long gloomy tunnels far below the city," "below the blessed sanity of the earth's mercifully concealing crust. Far below...," and "down in the crepuscular earth, the mad gnawing eternal darkness far below—"
• Violence Is Disturbing: The agents of the Subway Special Detail close in on a tunnel where ghouls have been located with such speed, light, and weaponry that their targets do not stand a chance. Inspector Craig follows the proceedings in the monitor room, jubilantly getting increasingly worked up as the extermination of the ghouls draws near and he gets to hear their shrieks of fright and pain through the speakers. This disturbing and uncharacteristic behavior comes to an end when, out of the shadows, it's obvious to the protagonist that Craig is himself becoming a ghoul. Craig immediately calms down and self-consciously admits to it, while also implying that his earlier behavior stems from the spiritual part of the transformation.
• Weakened by the Light: Possibly all light but at minimum intense light is deadly to ghouls. Inspector Craig estimates a ghoul would die within half a minute if they'd stand in the sun.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: The Special Subway Detail only captures ghouls alive if it is a safe venture and if there's research or funding to be gained from a live specimen. The default approach is to kill as many ghouls as possible, both for their consumption of human flesh and their corrupting influence. Said corruption is that the near presence of ghouls turns humans into them if given a few years of time. It's a fate that awaits nearly all on the SSD and there's been one case of a colleague truly reaching the tipping point. He was shot down and disposed of as any other ghoul, with the only difference being that paperwork was involved.
• Would Hurt a Child: The ghouls grab whomever they can use for food. Children are no exception and several of them were killed in the original subway train wreck that the ghouls had orchestrated.

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