And Soon Comes the Darkness

by Angelique Archer

  After they placed their orders with the cashier, Cam wandered the rest of the car while Amber waited for their food at a table.

  The train wasn’t moving quickly, and Amber watched the scenery pass by, admiring how it looked like everything was coated in a thick blanket of snow, how the giant evergreen trees seemed more majestic with their branches dipped in white.

  But she wanted to admire everything from the safe, warm confines of the train. The forest beyond the trees looked bone-chilling, unwelcoming… haunting… a never-ending ocean of snow that could easily swallow up two kids.

  Something large and pale darted through the pines, running parallel to the train. She jerked back in surprise. Whatever it was had been gigantic and impossibly fast. She mashed her hands against the window, trying to find it once more.

  “The seismic activity in that area had been unprecedented. We’d never seen anything like it before. And so I flew down from Utah last week, trying to figure out what caused it,” Amber vaguely registered the stranger saying to the cashier, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the forest.

  “‘Seismic activity?’” her brother piped up, his voice laced with interest.

  “Yes, seismic…” The man looked down, remembering he was speaking to a child. He then lifted his hands, pressing them together, side by side. “We live on these plates that, over the span of millions of years, move around like this,” he explained, shifting his hands back and forth.

  Cam seemed eager to hear more, which was unusual for the scientist. He was accustomed to people’s eyes glazing over whenever he talked about his job. So even though he was talking to a kid, the thought of someone actually being interested in what he did for a living reinvigorated the excitement he had for his job. “You see, sometimes the plates want to move, but they can’t because they’re held against each other.” The man squeezed his middle finger and thumb together. “Once the pressure releases,” he told the boy, suddenly snapping his fingers, “that’s the perfect storm for an earthquake.”

  After a second of quiet contemplation, Cam asked, “So is that what you were doing here, studying earthquakes?”

  “Well, my young friend, that’s funny you’d ask. All of our equipment is telling us there has been earthquake-like activity in and around these mountain towns, but there are no fault lines. So it’s like having a snap without the fingers.”

  “But you didn’t find anything?” Cam inquired.

  “Ultimately, no,” the man responded dejectedly. It was a bitter reminder that he’d spent many sleepless hours and months of painstaking research leading up to his trip trying to solve a scientific mystery that, at the current juncture, seemed to have no answer.

  “Maybe it wasn’t something natural. Maybe it was something you haven’t seen before. From another world. Monsters.”

  Monsters.

  Amber thought about what she had seen in the trees. A polar bear perhaps? How silly for her to think it was anything else.

  Then she whirled around in her chair. “Cam, come here. Don’t talk to strangers.”

  “Thanks for telling me about your earthquakes,” Cam said to the man with a wave, before making his way back to his sister.

  “Thanks for listening,” the man answered in earnest.

  When Cam noticed Amber’s eyes were fixated on something unseen outside, his gaze shifted from her to the window and back to her again. “What are you looking at?”

  Amber struggled to decipher what she’d seen. “I… I don’t know. I thought I saw something.” She shook her head. “But it was probably nothing.”

  The train suddenly slowed until it came to an unexpected stop.

  Everyone in the dining car looked at one another. Amber twisted in her seat, her blonde waves tumbling over her shoulder.

  The doors slid open, and the conductor appeared. Both siblings instinctively rose to their feet.

  “Please stay in your seats,” the conductor told them, gesturing with his hands for them to sit back down.

  “What’s going on?” Cam asked. “Why did we stop?”

  The conductor seemed annoyed with him and gave a subtle eyeroll. “Stay in your seats. There’s an obstruction on the tracks, but don’t worry. We have people currently working out there to clear the issue. What we need from everyone is to stay put for now.”

  Once the conductor had moved on to the next car, Cam turned to Amber impishly, the opportunity for an adventure together too overwhelming to resist. “Let’s go see what it is!”

  Amber looked down at him. “Are you crazy? It’s freezing cold out there. And you heard what that guy said. We’re supposed to stay in our seats.”

  Cam’s shoulders slumped, but he didn’t seem entirely deterred.

  “Hey, your food is ready,” the cashier called out to them.

  Amber mustered her best scolding glare for Cam, then began to walk over to the counter, the aroma of pizza and pretzels wafting to her nostrils. She opened her purse and pulled out her wallet, fishing through the bills until she found a twenty. She handed it to the cashier and waited for her change, pulling a pepperoni off the pizza and popping it into her mouth.

  She quickly licked her fingers when he came back with the change and hastily tossed the coins into her purse. “Thanks.”

  Grabbing the tray with both hands, she turned and looked up.

  Her brother was nowhere to be found.

  Eyes widening in alarm, she held her breath. “Cam?”

  The scientist looked at her once, then pointed outside.

  Throwing the tray down on the table, Amber broke into a run.

  “Cameron!”

  Chapter IV

  THE TRACKS IN THE SNOW

  A mber ran halfway through the next car heading to the front of the train and noticed that the door between the two cars was still ajar.

  She jolted forward and practically threw herself through the open door. When she stepped off the train, Cam was standing in the snow, his back to her, unmoving as the snow blew around him.

  Amber inhaled sharply, the icy cold air prickling her lungs like a thousand tiny knives.

  “Cam!” she screamed.

  He turned to her, his chin jutted up in the air, lapping up snowflakes as they landed on his tongue.

  “Cam! What the hell?” she cried out. “I couldn’t find you!”

  She tentatively hopped down and walked to him, grabbing his arm. “I’m serious, Cam! You can’t ever do that again.”

  His playful expression faded. “Sorry. I wasn’t trying to scare you. I just wanted to go outside.”

  “Yeah, but our food is back there. I paid for it and everything,” she insisted, jabbing a thumb at the train.

  “It’ll be there when we get back. Let’s go see what’s on the tracks.”

  “Ugh. Cam. Why do you have to be so annoying? Can’t you just do what your told?”

  He was already running ahead of her, and she threw her arms up in frustration and took off after him.

  They sprinted a few car lengths before they paused. The sounds of chainsaws and shouting reached their ears just as they finally arrived at the locomotive. Several yards ahead of the train, a giant pile of snow covered the tracks. There were a handful of men with trucks surrounding it. When the siblings edged closer, they realized it was two fallen trees beneath all the snow. The men were hacking at the trees with chainsaws, chips of wood and clouds of sawdust flying into the air around them.

  After watching the spectacle a little longer, Amber’s eyes were drawn to something peculiar to their right.

  It was almost as if someone had cleared a trail through the forest, branches and small trees and underbrush tossed this way and that. And there were jagged gouges along the bark of the larger trees, four, maybe five of them equally spaced apart.

  Like claws.

  “Hey, you! Get back on the damned train!” one of the men bellowed at them, jolting her from her thoughts. “Train crew can’t even keep their passengers under control, and they expe
ct us to clear this shit in less than an hour!” Amber heard him complain.

  Cam grabbed her hand when they shouted at them a second time, one of the workers setting down his chainsaw and starting after them.

  The siblings ran back to the first car they could jump aboard, looking over their shoulders as they pushed through the deep snow. Amber helped Cam onto the platform, and he opened the door, surprised to find a group of passengers congregated in front of them.

  Once Amber closed the door, she pulled Cam to her protectively, feeling uncomfortable under all the strangers’ stares.

  “Did they say what was going on?” someone asked them.

  “When will they be finished?” another person chimed in.

  “This is ridiculous!” a third trilled.

  A weathered, old hand reached out to them, and at first, Cam recoiled, until he discovered the hand was dusting snow off of his head and shoulders. He looked up to see an elderly man standing there, tufts of his gray hair protruding from a woolen flat cap.

  “Has someone been a naughty boy? You’d better be careful or Krampus will come get you!”

  Chapter V

  THE TRACKS IN THE SNOW

  H orror and morbid curiosity flashed across Cam’s features. “Who?”

  “You’ve never heard of the Krampus? He comes the night before Christmas and takes all the children.”

  Cam’s shoulders visibly relaxed. “Oh, so like Santa Claus. I don’t believe in Santa. I’m too old for that.”

  “No, no. Most certainly not Santa. Krampus is a magnificent white beast with sharp fangs, a long, pointy tongue, and claws the length of your arms. He comes at night and steals naughty children from their beds while they sleep, drags them to his lair in mountains much like these, and eats them.”

  A loud thud echoed against the metal roof of the train, causing everyone to look up.

  Cam’s face blanched, and he swallowed hard. “It’s Krampus!” he whispered and clutched Amber’s waist.

  The old man’s serious expression softened to a cheerful smile. “I’m just pulling your leg, young man. There’s no such thing as the Krampus. It’s simply old German folklore.”

  Amber bent down and met Cam’s eyes. “Yes, there’s no such thing as that monster. Just snow falling on top of the train from the trees.”

  The train began to creep forward, and the passengers cheered in relief.

  “Thank God!”

  “Finally!”

  “Maybe we can still spend what’s left of Christmas with our families.”

  “Blood! There’s blood in the snow!” a woman shrieked, her shrill voice cutting through the victorious exclamations from the others.

  Almost in unison, everyone turned to her and followed the direction of her pointed finger. They crowded around the window, trying to see what had frightened the passenger, attracted to the commotion like passersby to a vehicle collision on a highway.

  Instinctively, Amber grabbed Cam away from the window and cradled his head against her.

  “I don’t see anything.”

  “There’s no blood.”

  “She’s seeing things!”

  The sound of glass breaking in the locomotive just in front of them combined with metal screeching and crumpling, followed by screams of shock then agony, silenced the dissension among the passengers.

  They recoiled against one another, taking several furtive steps backward.

  The old man was the only one who moved forward, and he cautiously reached for the door between the first passenger car and the locomotive.

  The door retracted, and once it opened, a macabre crime scene lay before them.

  The coppery scent of blood and oozing entrails hung heavily in the air, impossible to ignore.

  But even worse, the conductor’s dismembered remains were scattered across the walls and destroyed control panels, legs and arms, pieces of skull, and chunks of flesh strewn about haphazardly.

  The broken windows and gaping holes in the metal allowed the wind and snow to blow through the locomotive, chilling everyone to their core.

  More people timidly joined the old man at the door, and they gasped and screamed in revulsion as they witnessed the violent scene before them.

  Amber didn’t mean to, but as the passengers swayed and shuffled around, she caught glimpses of what remained of the conductor, and she released her grip on Cam, inadvertently allowing him to inch forward to the front. He wove through the crowd, each step heightening the look of fear and trepidation in his face until it all came to a crescendo when he noticed a bloody clump of stringy flesh hanging from the ravaged metal.

  He reached for his asthma inhaler with one hand and sucked in a shaky breath.

  “What the hell?” one man’s voice croaked.

  “Is it terrorists?” another questioned.

  Amber briefly wondered if it was the polar bear she thought she’d seen. But she had never heard of polar bears attacking moving trains or being capable of tearing apart metal.

  Whatever it was, she didn’t want to be around when it showed up again.

  Suddenly, massive claws ripped through the top of the train, scraping a giant gash through the metal.

  Some of the passengers hit the ground, including Amber and Cam, ducking to dodge the claws as they swiped past.

  One of the ones who remained standing wasn’t so lucky. He was staring at the clawed arm disbelievingly as it swung down the aisle through the gouge in the train. By the time he snapped out of his paralysis, the claws had already moved past him, through him.

  Amber looked up from where she lay covering Cam’s body with her own just in time to see the man’s torso splinter into multiple chunks and fall away.

  Cam covered his ears, his eyes tightly squeezed shut. Then he felt himself lifting away, Amber grabbing him by his shirt and dragging him back as the train car descended into chaos.

  Chapter VI

  THE TRACKS IN THE SNOW

  A mber was running as quickly as she could, tugging her little brother along with her.

  She heard pounding upon metal, like heavy footfall leaping across the top of the train, faster than humanly possible. She heard the pounding stop, then metal tearing apart again, felt that cold burst of wind as though there was no protective shield from the elements above them anymore.

  Don’t turn around.

  Don’t look.

  By the time she put two cars between them, she had darted past the confused faces of other passengers still in their seats, innocent, blissfully unaware of what had happened a couple cars down.

  She should have told them to run, to hide.

  She should have warned them that something hideous was coming for them, and that soon, they would be in the same irreparable state as the conductor, torn limb from limb.

  But she didn’t warn them. There wasn’t time.

  Amber didn’t know what compelled her to keep moving forward, to stay calm—she was only aware of one thing: keeping her brother safe at all costs.

  The pounding followed them again, only a little further behind them, and she saw the passengers in the new car look up curiously, until the same claws dug through the metal, and the familiar screams and cries and shouts began once more.

  There was no way they could outrun it. They would be dead before they made it to the next car.

  A slightly ajar latrine door caught her eye, and she shoved Cam into it before closing the door behind them. She fumbled with the slide lock, sorely disappointed with how flimsy the door seemed as she leaned against it to catch her breath.

  It was then that she noticed Cam, how his chest rose and fell rapidly, how he sputtered and coughed, how his face was pale and sweaty, his eyes panicked.

  “Cam, where’s your inhaler?” she whispered urgently.

  “I…” he gasped, checking his pockets. “I… dropped… it.”

  Amber felt a wash of nausea plummet over her. “You lost it?”

  She immediately wished her parents were there, that so
meone could tell her what to do, that someone would save them. She fumbled around in her purse for her phone, quickly thumbing in the passcode and impatiently scrolling through her contacts to find her mom’s number.

  “Call Mom… and Dad…” Cam wheezed.

  “What do you think I’m doing?” she snapped, cursing in frustration when the call repeatedly failed.

  They had no reception. She would never be able to reach them as long as they were in the mountains.

  Her parents would never know what happened to them.

  And no one was coming to be their salvation.

  Two things crossed her mind. If she couldn’t get Cam to stop coughing, their hiding place would be discovered. And if they couldn’t get his asthma under control, her brother would die.

  Amber pressed her fingers to her forehead, trying to remember. Cam had had asthma his entire life, and this wasn’t the first time he’d lost his inhaler.

  “Okay. Cam, look at me,” she said, remembering what her parents would do. He was staring at the door, tears streaming down his face as he listened to the screaming. “Cam. Look at me,” Amber insisted again. “Focus. Look at me.”

  Finally, his eyes roamed to hers.

  “I want you to breathe with me, long, deep breaths. Like this.” She inhaled deeply through her nose, then exhaled slowly, taking his hand and putting it on the center of her chest. “Again. With me. Inhale. Exhale,” she instructed, her voice soothing and steady.

  Cam’s wheezing diminished greatly, and he stopped coughing.

  “There we go. That’s good. You’re doing great.” She held his shoulders and turned around.

  People stampeded past their hiding place, trying to escape the mayhem and whatever it was that was attacking them.

  A man jostled the lock on the latrine door, shouting for them to let him in, banging furiously on the door with his fists. She released Cam and held onto the latch with both hands, keeping the door closed as best she could. If the man decided to kick in the door, they would be doomed.