The Wrong Train

by Jeremy de Quidt

  But that cold feeling got out with him. It was there at the station like a presence standing just behind him. It didn’t go away. It made the skin on the back of his neck crawl. It got back into the car with him too when they drove off. It was there in the emptiness next to him on the seat.

  They dropped his mom off at the other car like his dad said they would.

  “I’ll go with Mom,” Sam said.

  But his dad wanted him with him—“me and my boy.” So that’s where Sam went. To Frank’s house.

  Frank drove trucks. When he wasn’t driving trucks, he fixed cars.

  “So what do you think?” said Sam’s dad, all smiles and proud of what he’d bought.

  They’d pulled up outside Frank’s house, and Frank had fetched a big lamp from his garage and crawled underneath the red car and poked inside.

  “Whole front’s new,” he said. “And all the glass.”

  “That’s a good thing, ‘new,’ isn’t it?” said Sam’s dad.

  That wasn’t what Frank had meant. He pulled a face. He shone the big lamp down into the dark places behind the engine, ran his finger along the line of a rough welded seam so they could see it. It ran all the way around, like stitches in a wound.

  “So?” said Sam’s dad. He sounded less certain now.

  “So—it’s been in a smash,” said Frank. “That whole front’s new—all of it. The chassis isn’t straight either. You’ve got to hit with a real whack to do that kind of damage. I’d have nothing more to do with it, if I were you. If that’s not been in a fatal,” he said, “I’m a monkey.”

  Sam and his dad got back into the car and drove off.

  His dad didn’t say anything until they were nearly home. Then, as though he was talking to himself as much as talking to Sam, he said, “Yeah, well, Frank doesn’t know everything, does he? That’s just guessing, what he says. It’s not that it doesn’t drive okay.” He looked sideways at Sam. “It’s not as though it doesn’t drive okay,” he said again, louder this time, “and it’s all new. There’s nothing wrong with the way it drives.”

  He patted the dashboard.

  “You’re a beauty,” he said. Then he smiled again. “Rock and roll, Sam.”

  More felt than seen, behind them on the backseat, Sam thought something had moved. Like someone shifting in the seat. He looked up into the rearview mirror, he couldn’t help it, but the backseat was empty. Just worn shapes in the leather.

  When they got home, his mom asked if Frank had liked the car, and his dad said “Yeah”—that the whole front was brand-new. But he didn’t say it like Frank had said it. He said it like it was good, and he’d given Sam a look. His mom had been so pleased—how could Sam say anything that would spoil it for her?

  So he didn’t.

  “I’m going to run a bath,” he said, and he went upstairs.

  He wanted to wash the smell of the car off him. He didn’t even like to think of it, all red paint and chrome, parked in the road outside the house with the shapes of dead people in the empty seats. “Been in a fatal”; that’s what Frank had said, and Frank was always right about cars—that’s what his dad used to say.

  He emptied his pockets in his room, turned them out onto the side, and found the little horseshoe in among his money.

  He stopped and looked at it.

  “Your Lucky Day.”

  Hadn’t been lucky for the people in the car, had it?

  He couldn’t remember putting it in his pocket, and he didn’t want it. It made him feel like he felt when he was in the car, like he’d felt at the garage—that somebody was standing just behind him. In fact, the feeling was so real that he turned around and looked at the empty bedroom to be certain—at the curtains, and the wardrobe, and his schoolbag lying on the floor by his bed. It felt like it used to feel when he woke up in the night when he was small and thought there was someone in the dark who he couldn’t see.

  He realized that he was holding his breath.

  He put the horseshoe on his dresser—right at the back—covered it over with a scrap of paper so he wouldn’t have to see it, then went to run his bath.

  The bathroom wasn’t very big. It was always cold. The steam from the taps filled it, misted the mirror over. He sat in his clothes on the laundry basket until the water had run. Then he got undressed and lay back in the bath with the condensation making little beads and rivulets down the paint on the cold walls.

  The water was warm and comforting and he put a damp washcloth over his face and closed his eyes.

  Then, as certain as if he’d seen them step into the room, it felt as though someone else was there. He snatched the washcloth off his face, sat up, and looked around, but it was just him in the water. Suddenly he felt very naked and alone in that cold little room. Something fell over on the glass shelf under the mirror. One of his mom’s nail polishes was rolling slowly toward the edge. He watched it roll and drop into the sink below. He didn’t want to be on his own in there anymore. He wanted to be downstairs with his mom and dad. He pulled the plug out and wrapped himself in a towel while the condensation made lines on the mirror, like someone running their finger down the glass.

  He got dressed still damp, and then, hesitating, took the horseshoe off his dresser and, going downstairs, threw it in the trash can outside the back door. He felt better then. Felt better, until he woke in the night and could hear little sounds from the dark of the room—just every now and then, little taps and clicks like someone picking things up and putting them down again. He lay absolutely still in the dark, listening. Then the feeling was gone and everything was quiet. All he could hear were the comforting sounds of the house—the tick of the clock by the stairs, and the heat coming on.

  * * *

  His mom wasn’t at work the next day, so she was there when he came down in the morning.

  “What were you doing up last night?” she said.

  He looked at her and shook his head.

  “I wasn’t up.”

  She pulled a face as though it didn’t matter anyway. “I thought I heard you moving around.”

  She put his cereal in a bowl on the table, and that’s when he saw the little horseshoe. It was next to his spoon.

  “I found it in the trash,” said his mom. “Thought it might be yours and you didn’t know it was there.”

  “It’s not mine,” he said. “It was down the back of the seat in the red car.”

  She looked at it. “Well, you should keep it, then,” she said. “Lucky thing like that.”

  But he didn’t want to keep it, and it didn’t feel lucky.

  He couldn’t put it in the trash again, not if his mom might see it there; she’d only take it out. So he took it off the table and put it in his pocket, but he knew what he was going to do with it.

  When he came to the canal, he put his bag down at the side of the bridge, took the horseshoe from his pocket, and, not even looking at it, threw it as far as he could out into the water. It made a noise like a small stone—hardly even that—and it was gone, sideslipping as it sank through the dirty water into the thick, filthy ooze at the bottom.

  He turned his back and walked away, and he felt happy like he couldn’t remember ever feeling so happy before. He looked around him at the road and the buses, and the shops and the people, and just smiled; then he started to run for the joy of it.

  It was like that for him all day. He didn’t think of the horseshoe again, didn’t think of the big red car, not even once. He ran home at the end of school, came in at the back door, and threw his bag down on the kitchen table.

  His mom didn’t look up, and he knew at once that something was wrong.

  She wanted to know if he thought it was some kind of joke, because if he did, he could clean it all up and see if he was still laughing afterward.

  He didn’t know what she meant.

  She was so angry.

  “I thought you’d gone to the bathroom in it,” she said. “You might just as well have. All them clothes. Well, y
ou’re not getting new ones—I’m telling you that now.”

  He couldn’t begin to understand what she was talking about. It was something about his room. He didn’t bother taking his coat off; he went straight up the stairs. His door was open and the drawer of the dresser pulled out. The floor around it was sopping wet—like filthy water had been poured all over it—it was still dripping through the bottom of the dresser. The whole thing stank like the canal.

  All his clothes in the drawer were sodden with dirty water and smeared with thick, stinking muck. He simply couldn’t understand how it had happened. He picked all his clothes out one by one with his fingertips and dropped them in a wet pile on the floor, and still he didn’t understand how it could have happened, where it could have come from. Then something like a coin fell from one of the folds of wet cloth, and landed on the floor at his feet.

  Only it wasn’t a coin.

  As certain of it as he was certain of anything, someone had come to stand behind him. They hadn’t been there a moment before, but they were there now. He could feel the skin on the back of his neck begin to crawl, just like at the garage. He turned around slowly, but the room was empty.

  His mom was at the door holding an old dishwashing bowl.

  “You can put it all in here,” she said, and the moment she said it, the feeling left; it was just him and her and an empty room.

  He tried to tell her that he’d thrown the horseshoe in the canal, but she thought he meant he’d thrown it in, then fished it out and brought it home and put it all wet and filthy in the drawer—but that didn’t make any sense. She wouldn’t listen when he tried to tell her that she was wrong; she just talked over him and didn’t give him a chance, then left him alone in the room to clear it all up.

  She was still angry when his dad came home, and that made it worse because he found out then that they’d planned a treat for him—for all of them. They were going out in the big red car—going bowling. His dad had booked the lane and everything. They’d drive up and have burgers and fries—

  and it was all spoiled now.

  He tried to tell his dad what had happened, but his dad didn’t want to listen either. He just knew that Sam had done something stupid and that was an end to it. Least said soonest mended. Only it wasn’t Sam who had done it and it wasn’t mended.

  But his dad had booked the lane, and it would be a waste of money if they didn’t go.

  His mom didn’t talk to him in the car—only his dad did—asking him if he was all right in the back, which he wasn’t. His mom only spoke to his dad—in that “nothing has happened, but I’m not talking to you” sort of way that she had when Sam had done something wrong. Then she put the radio on and opened the window.

  Sam sat on the cold, long backseat, and all he could do was think of what Frank had said, and the horseshoe.

  He hadn’t known what to do with it when he’d cleaned up the mess. But he thought that if he put it back—if he put it back down the crack in the car seat—then maybe everything would be all right. So that’s what he’d done. When he’d gotten in, he’d shoved it back down—pushed it farther still so that it wouldn’t come out. He put the tips of his fingers in every now and then just to make sure it was still there.

  Bowling was no fun. His dad tried to make all his usual jokes, but they didn’t work because his mom wouldn’t join in, and finally even his dad gave up, and they played out the last frames in a sulky silence just to get the thing over with and go home.

  The big red car was waiting for them in the dark parking lot, all shining paint and gleaming chrome under the streetlights. When Sam got in, sat on the cold worn leather of the backseat and put on his belt, he knew there was someone else already there in the dark.

  The car had that smell again, stale and sickly. He couldn’t place it, but he was almost there; he knew that smell.

  His dad drove the car out of the parking lot, and Sam looked out the window and watched the streetlights go by—looked at his mom and dad lit by the glow of the dashboard. He just wanted to get home, to get out of the car. As he looked out, he could see the reflection of his own face doubled against the window glass.

  As they came to the long, straight stretch of the bypass, his dad glanced at his mom.

  “Let’s see what this monster can do,” he said.

  From the back of the car, Sam saw his dad settle himself into the seat as he dropped a gear and floored the pedal. With a growl the big car leaped forward, and as it did, Sam’s seat belt clicked undone. He closed it again, but it came open straightaway, only this time as he put his hand down to close it, he gasped as he felt the cold fingers of someone else’s hand brush against his in the dark and unclip the belt again.

  “Mom!”

  He tried to put the clip back, to hold it closed, but there was always another hand in the way. The car was absolutely flying.

  It was flat out.

  “Rock and roll!” shouted his dad.

  “You be careful!” said Sam’s mom, and she reached out toward the dashboard as though suddenly she was afraid, and as she did the car lurched sideways, slewing across the road toward the big concrete pillars of the bypass bridge. She let out a scream, and in that moment Sam saw, doubled in the glass beside his own reflection, the grinning face of someone next to him in the dark of the backseat, and he realized what the smell in the car was.

  It was just like the smell of meat in the butcher’s shop.

  As the man’s voice trailed off, the dark on the platform became real again, seemed even darker than before.

  For several moments, the boy thought he’d actually heard, could still hear, the dreadful smash of glass and metal, but there was nothing but silence. The only sound was of the old man shifting on the bench.

  “Everybody needs company.”

  The old man said it as though he hadn’t told the story at all.

  “Everyone needs someone to look after them,” he said. “Your mom and dad, they look after you, don’t they? You and that brother of yours. I bet he’s a little tiger.”

  The man laughed at the thought.

  “Games you must get up to.”

  He paused and looked up at the lamps.

  “Them lights will probably go out soon,” he said. “They do that, you know—turn the lights off to save a bit of money. That’s why I’ve got my lantern. You won’t get me caught with the lights going out. Not with my lantern.”

  The boy didn’t feel comfortable anymore. He wanted the old man to stop talking. To go away.

  “Do you live very far from here?” he asked.

  He hoped the man might take the hint, but the man only looked at him and smiled. The boy wished he wouldn’t keep smiling like that.

  “Not far, but Toby likes a nice walk this time of night,” he said. “Who doesn’t like a nice walk?”

  “Why do you walk along the railway?” the boy said. He could feel himself getting angry now. “There’s trains.”

  “Not that many,” the man said. “Besides, I was waiting for you to get off.”

  He laughed.

  “Sooner or later, someone always gets off. Then there’s Toby and me and my lantern, and we can keep them company. Play my little game together.”

  He didn’t say anything more than that, just took a deep breath and looked contentedly down the platform and out into the dark. But the words hung in the air like a hook, and the boy felt a sudden cold that had nothing to do with the night.

  “What game?” he said.

  The old man leaned toward him.

  “I’m going to have a nice bit of fish when I get in,” he said. “See you off safe on the train, and then have a nice bit of fish. What are you going to have when you get in—you going to have a nice bit of fish?”

  It was so harmless a question, but behind it, that hook still hung in the air.

  “You tell me what you’re going to have, then,” the old man said. “It’s always nice thinking about a good hot plate of food when you’re a bit chilly.�
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  “I don’t know.” The boy shrugged. “Pizza?”

  “That’s Italian, isn’t it?”

  “Sort of.”

  “I expect you’ll be ready for your bed by the time you get in. Late hour like this. At least you’ve got your mom and dad waiting up for you. It’s those kiddies who have to fend for themselves I feel sorry for. All that babysitting and stuff while their moms and dads are out gadding about—you ever do that? Do any of that babysitting stuff ?”

  “Sometimes,” he said.

  Sometimes he did—he’d look after their neighbors’ children. He never liked it. Once or twice his mom had gotten him to help out someone at her work.

  The old man smiled.

  “Got a story about that,” he said.

  And as he began to speak, the world around the boy seemed to shift again.

  It wasn’t a house Sophie had ever babysat at before, but that wasn’t such an unusual thing. She had the people she’d sit for regularly, and sometimes they’d recommend her to their friends—and that would be a new house. Even if that wasn’t how tonight’s people had gotten hold of her, then chances were they’d seen her card in the supermarket window—she got jobs that way too—and that was always a new house. She hadn’t spoken to these people, though—her mom must have taken the call, because the details were waiting for her on the pad by the phone where she could see them as soon as she came in from school. Her mom was on nights this week, and whoever it was must have called just as her mom was going out through the door, because the writing was a complete scribble—Sophie would hardly have said it was her mom’s at all—but the bits about the time and how to get to the place were clear enough, and that’s all that she really needed. She peeled the note off the pad and stuck it on the fridge door while she made herself a mug of tea and got herself something to eat. Then she sorted out her bag, watched the clock go around till it was time, and set off.