Cai Jan, The Mocking Bird
My Dad has always been a firm believer in the supernatural, or at the very least took great interest in it. He worked for the London Underground as an electrician and always had his fair share of ghost stories told to him by his fellow workers. He always told me it was “best to be open-minded about things we don’t fully understand.”
Myself, on the other hand, always remained sceptical about these sorts of things, that was until one day when Dad told me a story with such sincerity, I felt genuine concern for him, and even though I tended to question anything that was regarded as paranormal, the way my father told this story with such honesty in his voice, made me start to question myself.
It was a bizarre story, not the typical ghost story I had come to expect from someone who worked in the supposedly haunted tunnels of the London Underground. I wanted to believe my dad, but the recounting of this tale is so strange that I often wondered what really happened down in those tunnels, and what alternative possibilities could have occurred down there.
It all started the day I went to visit him and mom during the football season. Wembley Stadium was packed and everyone in the neighbourhood was watching the match on TV, all getting into the spirit of the game. I don’t know what brought this memory about, exactly. But I had a sudden flash of an event that took place in my childhood, out of complete nowhere.
I remembered when I was around five or six, and in our old family house. When suddenly a knock came at the door.
My dad answered it, expecting it to be a parcel that was an early birthday present for my younger sister, only for it to be three men in dark suits. I couldn’t remember exactly what company or group these men represented. I think as a kid I just assumed they were from Dad’s workplace. They wanted to talk to him and Mom alone, so my dad ushered me and my little sister out of the living room so these mysterious men could have this secretive talk with him.
Some time later, they left, and both of my parents were in a strange mood. I couldn’t tell if they were upset or angry or both, but it really confused and unsettled me as a kid to see them like this.
Years later, in that exact living room, the memory resurfaced and I felt compelled to ask my dad about the men in suits.
Almost immediately, my dad paused the TV, taking in a big sigh before staring directly at me, his eyes piercing mine. I felt as if I had just asked about a heavily taboo subject, as my dad just stared at me, before finally looking away and nodding his head.
He told me I was probably old enough to listen to his story, though he told me that he didn’t blame me for not believing him.
“It’s a strange story,” he said, “but one that’s haunted me for years. I don’t suppose you remember my friend Simon, do you? We used to work together.”
I shook my head in response.
“No, I suppose you don’t,” he remarked. “You were too young back then. Only about four when…”His voice trailed off and was silent for a few moments, before sitting himself up, adjusting his glasses and leaning forward to face me on the opposite chair, ready to recount his story.
Roughly twenty years ago, Dad and his workmates had a job in Holborn Station. It was a typical, routine job; just fixing some lights in the platforms and checking the tunnels. There was himself, Nigel, Tariq and Simon.
Nigel was the oldest and ‘senior’ of the workers, and was also a no-nonsense type of guy. Tariq was the youngest and newest member of the work crew. He was the typical rookie, very nervous on the job and would often look up to Nigel or my dad for advice. My dad was the joker of the group, often cracking wise on the job or telling weird and crazy anecdotes to amuse his colleagues on long, boring nights. Then there was Simon, or as he was known then by his nickname, “Simple Simon”.
According to Dad, Simon was a nice fellow, if not very gullible and somewhat slow to catch up on a joke, usually made at his expense. However, he shared my dad’s interest in the paranormal happenings of the London Underground, and the two had been good friends, along with Nigel, who they’d meet up at the weekends to go down to the local pub.
As my dad explains it, the four of them ventured through Holborn station to pick up supplies from the disused platforms of the Aldwych Branch of the station. These platforms had been disused for the past decade, and were used as a sort of storage place for engineering equipment, left to gather dust. To get to where they needed to go, first they needed to pick up some of the equipment, then head down the tunnels from there, to the first cross section.
The station was old, still sporting the yellow cracked tiles used in the 1910s. My dad said that the place itself had this unsettling feel to it before they even ventured into the tunnels, reported to have several hauntings.
Along Platform 6 was a place known as The Hostel, a set of utility rooms that had been used to house immigrants and World War 2 civilians during the London bombings.
It was along this very platform where they came across the rat’s body.
Usually this would be a common sight especially in the Underground, and would later get cleaned up by a different work crew during the night. But what struck my dad and the others as odd was that the rat looked to be half-eaten and regurgitated. It was nothing but clumps of meat, fur and skeleton, strung together by a sticky yellow substance that was more than likely vomit.
The question was, what exactly happened to the rat.
Obviously something had eaten it, or at least most of it, but what could’ve done that?
What was down in the tunnels aside from a rat that was large enough to eat one?
Nigel shrugged it off, saying it was probably a cat or a fox that had somehow gotten down into the tunnels. It was a likely possibility, he said.
They continued down the platform until they reached the mouth of the tunnel that led down to the cross-over track.
They were all used to the overwhelming darkness of those claustrophobic underground tunnels, and the slightest noise or tremor could easily be explained. So when the sounds of a metallic door slamming further down the tunnel was heard, they simply passed it off as wind from an updraft slamming a door further up.
There were only two problems with this assumption;
No wind could be felt in that tunnel, and as they had worked in this tunnel before, they knew that none of the maintenance rooms even had doors, let alone heavy metallic ones.
But nevertheless the sound echoed throughout that dark tunnel, as the group pondered whatever could have been making that noise.
My dad and Nigel decided to go first to investigate. The banging sound became louder, and more rhythmic, more deliberate. Whatever was making this banging sound seemed to be intentionally causing it.
Nigel called out, thinking it was another worker playing a joke on them, as they both slowly approached the left side of the tunnel towards the maintenance room. However, there was no answer, and just as they called out, the slamming sound ceased altogether.
Soon, Simon and Tariq followed close behind, and all four men nervously approached, ready to confront whatever was down there with them in the dark. Simon volunteered to go in first, shining his flashlight in the empty shadows of that large abandoned room.
What they found, huddled in the corner of that room, none of them could explain.
It was a large, bright green mound, roughly the size of a human being, curled up in the dark corner of the room behind a concrete pillar. It wasn’t until Simon stepped further into the room that this “mound” lifted up its head, and turned to look at him. It looked roughly like a bird’s head, attached to a long green neck. The face was pinkish-beige, with a large reddish beak, a small mane of green feathers running down from the top of its head to the base of its neck. Its piercing blue eyes stared directly into the flashlight, its large pupil contracting in the brightness of the light aimed at it.
Simon stood motionless, staring at this creature, as the other three by the doorway also caught a glimpse of this strange animal. The creature itself remained motionless, but stared at Simon with narrowed pupils, still huddled in the corner as it looked over its shoulder at him, its neck craned back in an unsettling angle.
My dad told me how he couldn’t believe what he was seeing, and tried to rationalise what this…thing could be.
Perhaps it was some kind of elaborate prop that someone had placed down here from a movie set ,as the station itself has been used for movies in the past. Maybe it was a real animal that had escaped from London Zoo, though for the life of him he had no idea what kind of animal it was. It had to be some sort of bird for sure, but what bird it was exactly was unfathomable.
The creature’s appearance became even more of a puzzle as while the group stood there, dumbfounded and too afraid to move, the creature began to slowly, ever so slowly, stand up on its hindlegs. The creature was now facing the wall as it stood up on skinny, bird-like legs that seemed to impossibly support a large, overweight frame of the creature’s body. Its arms appeared tucked under its sides, not fully visible from the angle the workers and my dad saw this creature at, but were able to see a long, tufted tail that looked as though it belonged to a cow more than a bird.
As this bizarre animal slowly turned around to look at my dad and the other workers, they could all see the rotund humanoid torso, the underside pink and fleshy with what looked like large human breasts, a massive stomach and exposed human male genitalia. The arms, now fully visible, looked like the forelimbs of a raptor, complete with bright green feathers on the underarms.
This strange bird looked rather flimsy and clumsy when it stood up. In hindsight, Dad thought, this creature almost looked comical in its appearance, if it wasn’t for the very fact that this chimera of a creature existed in the first place. The very nature of this creature was a puzzle. If it was a costume or a prop, it was far too detailed and its movements too “natural” to be fake.
If you could even call this monstrosity “natural”.
Simon was the first to speak.
And he spoke to the creature. It would seem for some reason Simon thought he could communicate with this animal. He called out to it as if it were expecting it to speak. Perhaps, Dad thought, Simon was expecting a human voice of a prankster to come walking out from behind this “prop”.
“Hello?”
The creature tilted its head, much like a curious dog listening to the commands of its master.
And to everyone’s astonishment, the creature actually responded, mimicking Simon’s voice to a tee, albeit with an irritatingly high-pitched voice as it opened its beak ever so slightly to ‘talk’.
“Hello?” The animal said.
My dad tried to call Simon back, telling him to get away from the creature. Something clearly wasn’t right. Even if this was a prop or a costume, what was it doing all the way in these tunnels? Was some person wearing a bird suit just waiting for someone to stumble across it? Whoever was controlling this giant puppet or costume was clearly deranged to some extent. Dad and Nigel agreed right then to report this to the higher ups, and told Tariq to call up to the offices on his two-way radio. But before any of them could act on what they had just discovered, Simon stood closer to the beast.
“Your name is Cai Jan, yes?”
“Your name is Cai Jan, yes?” The creature responded, raspy and high-pitched.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Tariq asked Simon in a hushed whisper, not wanting his voice to provoke this creature in front of them.
Simon turned around, almost upbeat, like he had just made a new friend.
“That’s his name. Cai Jan.”
“That’s his name. Cai Jan.” The creature parroted.
“Get away from it!” My dad called out.
Simon raised his hand, as if to reassure my dad.
“No, no, he’s okay. He’s been hurt.”
“No, no, he’s okay. He’s been hurt.”
To this day, my dad didn’t know why the creature only copied Simon’s voice. Nor why Simon acted the way he did towards the creature. It was as if the animal somehow had some kind of mental grip on poor Simon, leading him further towards the creature as he, for some reason, tried to reason with Dad and the others that this monster was friendly.
It wasn’t until Simon was only a few feet away from the creature that he reached out a hand to touch it… and the creature did the same with its claw-tipped wing towards Simon.
The others could do nothing but watch. In horror? In bewilderment? It was hard to pin down an exact emotion they were all feeling at the time. But soon those confused feelings only became more prominent as soon as Simon and the creature made physical contact.
Right after that moment, Simon’s body seemed to contort, bending low and tucking his arms beneath his armpits, almost mimicking the creature in front of him. The sight was bizarre to say the least. At this point, Simon was acting stranger than the beast in front of him.
They would have all laughed at this sight, had it not been the absolute horror that followed.
“I am Cai Jan, yes?” Said the creature, completely unprompted.
“I am Cai Jan, yes?” Said Simon seconds after.
My dad at this point had had enough of this. He walked forward to reach out for Simon’s shoulder to pull him back, when the bird creature shrieked at my dad, a noise that rattled him to the core, as he put it.
And Simon would make a similar, ungodly noise that rattled out of his throat.
Then the creature flexed its long neck backwards, until the head was practically hidden behind its back.
And Simon followed the creature’s actions soon after.
A series of sickening cracks were heard as Simon pulled his neck back in an unnatural angle, snapping his vertebrae and leaving his head hanging limp behind his back, the bones jutting out from the skin, causing it to tear and bleed, as Simon uttered a horrific gurgling sound in the ruins of his throat.
My dad screamed, and so did the others. They could do nothing but run from the scene.
As they ran, they heard the bird creature utter this high-pitched shrill coughing sound, that almost sounded as if the thing was laughing. Laughing at the very horror it created. They didn’t even bother to look back.
My dad’s greatest regret was that he couldn’t save his friend. He had no idea what happened, as it all happened so fast. But whatever that thing was in that tunnel, was still down there. At least that’s what he assumed.
He, Nigel and Tariq called the head offices and told them exactly what happened. Of course, they didn’t believe a word of it, until they finally got to the part about Simon being in potential danger. After much convincing, a search team, as well as several police officers that were called onto the scene, discovered Simon’s body right on the cross-junction of the tracks. Four of his vertebrae had been snapped and his neck artery severed. But what puzzled the forensics was that he had somehow managed to walk from the maintenance room at the far end of the tunnel, all the way to the track crossing before finally succumbing to his fatal injuries.
Dad and his friends attended the funeral the week after. It was then that my dad told me he first saw the three men in suits.
It was later on that year that these men in suits had compiled some sort of legal document that they showed my dad in our house, in that very memory I had of him talking to the men while me and my sister were led out of the room.
They told dad to swear to secrecy on the matter, and that no mention of what really happened was to be spoken to anyone, not even to me, fearing it would apparently cause a “panic” if word of this incident got out.
As for the creature, some ‘officials’ had apparently located and contained it, and is now in an undisclosed location. As for Simon, his death was ruled as an accident. In the official story, he had slipped and fallen from the platform onto the tracks below, breaking his neck, and caused the whole of the London Underground to revise safety precautions.
After my dad finished his tale, I had no idea what to think. It was a very brief story, and I told all I could here, as dad wouldn’t elaborate any further on the details. Perhaps he wasn’t allowed to. He was apparently taking a huge risk just by telling me, but in the vain hopes that I wouldn’t go pursuing his story and investigating it any further.
And truth be told, I rather not. I am a curious person, but I rather not interfere with any legal parties involved, and especially if such a creature even exists and was capable of doing what it had done to poor Simon.
Perhaps I better leave this story off by saying this; if anyone has come across this creature, that I’ll be referring to as “Cai Jan”, or any similar incident around here in London, please let me know. I’m morbidly curious, to say the least.