by Mike Ashley
The chain of carriages had now whiplashed back across the track, the final carriage – the wider one – out of sight . . . though Abbott had a good idea as to exactly where it had gone. Three wire-less telegraph poles across the track folded over with sharp snapping sounds and tumbled to the ground, felled like trees in an old logging camp.
The train whistled again.
The old man shouted and lifted his arms in supplication. Abbott saw the mummified fingers cast carelessly on to the dirt beside and beneath the askew rails.
Abbott jogged along the platform, quickly coming up alongside the man, shouting . . . but the man paid no heed.
The train hit the old man side on, the width of the engine and its shimmering spinning wheels gathering him up on to it, spread-eagled like a bug on a windscreen, and then it lurched sideways, the front momentarily catching Abbott in the sightless eyes of its twin lamps as it lunged across and rattled slowly and laboriously through a series of thick wooden supports which held up the old station’s roof. Abbott looked up in time to see planks disengage themselves from their once collective canopy structure and cascade in shards of varying size, one of the more sturdy examples narrowly missing his head. There was a hoarse scream suddenly cut off and Abbott saw that although there was still a torso lodged amidst the chrome and silver bars that criss-crossed the black metal of the engine, the old man’s legs had disappeared, severed by the engine’s impact with a low holding wall that ran across the end of the platform.
He turned and started to run, the sound of cracking wood and collapsing timbers filling the air behind him. At the end of the platform he dodged sideways into the thick scrub grass that now festooned most of the gravelled car park, home in these dim days of Madrigal’s history to nothing more than a few tyres piled haphazardly in one corner.
With a triumphant horrrrrnk!, the engine emerged from the remnants of the station house like the mythical white whale, resplendent with the lifeless body of the old man – its very own Ahab – caught in the gleaming framework of its muzzle. It must have been the shucking, side-to-side movement of the train . . . but the old man looked like he was waving. And was that a smile on his face?
Looking down, Abbott could see that the wheels were not like any other train wheels he had ever seen. They were like the wheels on a car – albeit much wider – encased in what appeared to be thick rubber and cross-hatched with a myriad slender spokes which erupted from the raised hub. Moreover, the wheels seemed to change direction independent of each other, with the first on the set of six running beneath the engine first twisting outwards – while the wheel behind it remained straight and the one behind that seemed to bend in – and then it twisted back again, with the others assuming their own rogue directions.
How on earth could whoever was driving this thing – Abbott glanced up at the side of the engine, at the misted window, where he could make out the hunched form of someone presumably fighting with the controls – keep it in any sense of a straight line?
As though emphasizing the sheer impossibility of such a task, given the difficulties imposed by the system of wheels, the train suddenly swerved back towards the track-ditch and Abbott saw the ripple move through the carriages that followed. He knew what was going to happen. It would have a snapping effect, the carriages swinging out and moving forward side-on, a thick and impenetrable wall of wood and metal taking down everything in its path. He looked around and, sure enough, the back carriage exploded from a small group of outbuildings at the far side of the station house, pushing before it a bellowing cloud of dust and debris, moth-eaten units of furniture . . . and the other carriages could now be seen through the holocaust, claiming their own victims in the process.
He looked to the side and saw a wall between him and the road. No time to run alongside the wall to the opening, and no time to turn the other way and try to outdistance the renegade engine and cut across its path to the space beyond.
There was only one solution.
With the back carriage now scraping along the wall and the engine seemingly powering forward to produce what would be a whip-crack effect once the bellied-out line straightened to its maximum, Abbott ran towards the driver’s cab and leapt for the rail, managing to get one foot on the narrow platform and grabbing hold of a gold coloured handle. Seconds later, he was slammed back against the paintwork.
The engine let out another bellow and the train smashed forward through the track-ditch, bucking like a wild horse, thundering across the road where, a few miles outside town, Abbott’s Pan Am lay waiting for sustenance and straight for a nest of wooden leantos lazing in the dappled, watery sunlight.
Gasping for breath, Abbott pulled himself around and grasped a piece of silver rail with his free hand. Then he edged forward and fell into the gap between the engine and the cab. It wasn’t too soon. Almost immediately, the train hit the lean-tos and a rain of timber and who knew what else fell on to the cab roof and the overhang like an apocalyptic hailstorm. The train lurched, swerved sideways, lurched again – lifting Abbott momentarily into the air and then crashing him down again on to the dimpled metallic platform – and then ploughed a deep furrow into a barren field, throwing curtains of sun-bleached soil out on each side.
The platform he was standing on at the front of the cab was barely a foot wide and, without decent hand-holds, maintaining any kind of balance at all required Abbott to lean across the gap over the rusted coupling attaching the cab to the engine. A sudden jolt could easily topple him and his fear was of not being thrown clear but of tumbling through the gap to be torn up beneath the wheels.
Then he saw the recessed handle.
As he grappled the handle bar away from its recess and pulled, the train swung wildly to the left and Abbott felt himself lift from the platform. He folded his fingers tightly around the handle and felt something twang in his shoulder, immediately giving way to a kind of cold tingle that travelled down his arm and into his fingers. Any minute – any second –feeling and, more importantly, control, was going to go from that hand and he would fall . . . and now that the train had straightened off a little, he would fall through into the path of the wheels. Face it, with the way the driver was handling the controls, anywhere at all beneath the train would be in the path of at least one of the wheels.
Abbott pulled the handle and the door gave way. With the last vestiges of his strength, he reached with his other arm, grabbed the door jamb and pulled himself through. Almost immediately, the train seemed to pirouette and Abbott fell forward into the cab, rolled over and was thrown to the side wall, all breath being forced from him.
He slid down the wall, grateful for the momentary calm, and looked for something to hold on to while he gasped for air.
A deep voice spoke above the roar of steam and gears and pounding wheels. “You okay?”
Abbott looked around.
The engine compartment was gloomy, lit only by a couple of lanterns – Abbott presumed they were some kind of oil or fuel lanterns, seeing as they were not connected to anything – hanging from levers on the roof and swinging crazily. The walls were festooned with all manner of dials and steering wheels, huge levers and knobs, buttons and flashing lights. Oil ran over and between everything, pooling on the metal floor. At either side of a thick column which looked like a chimney breast, two small windows looked out through grime and dust on to a shuddering landscape of trees and field, the perspective changing virtually by the second, lurching first one way and then the other, and suddenly seeming to jump into the air or drop into some unforeseen chasm without warning.
“I said, you okay? Took quite a pounding back there.”
Abbott squinted and part of the darkness in front of the chimney breast shifted to one side until the outline of a head, topped with some kind of cap, obliterated the view from the right hand window.
“I’m . . . okay,” Abbott said. Speaking was difficult and he tried just to wave a hand, but the pain shot down his side and touched his right hip.
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sp; The figure turned around again, moving back into the dark obscurity between the windows. “Don’t worry about the old guy,” the disembodied voice said. “He’ll be okay.”
“Okay?” Abbott was incredulous. “You hit him with the fucking train, for crissakes.”
“Yeah, well . . . he’ll be okay. He always is.”
“Always is? You mean this has happened before?”
“Oh sure,” the man said matter-of-factly. “It’s Madrigal.”
Abbott was reminded of the closing lines in Roman Polanski’s Chinatown movie . . . the old man mentioning the town’s name like it explained everything that was shitty with the world.
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Nothing . . . everything. Who knows any more.” The man seemed to be busy working something. Then he said, “He show you his fingers?”
Abbott didn’t answer.
“He’s always doing that . . . taking them off, putting them back again.” He chuckled. “He’ll be okay. He’s an angel – he’ll fix things up.”
“What exactly will he fix up?”
“The town. Madrigal. For when I hit it again. That’s what he does. Like I said, he’s an angel.” He chuckled. “Anyways, you sure you’re okay?”
Abbott could tell from the voice that the man had turned away from him but he couldn’t bring himself to consider what the man might be doing. The pain was now travelling down his right leg and his foot was going numb.
“Cos otherwise, you sure don’t talk much,” the man added. “Now, there’s some folks think that’s a plus factor – me, I could use a little conversation, you know what I’m saying here?”
The pain was subsiding a little now and Abbott shuffled to his left until he wedged himself into the corner of the engine compartment. He rested his head back against the wall, placed a hand behind it to minimize the damage from it being repeatedly banged against the metal structure and opened his eyes.
The light was either getting a little better or his eyes were simply getting more accustomed. Now Abbott could make out the man’s shape; he was small – around 5–5, maybe 5–6 – stocky, wearing a set of striped overalls which looked creased and covered in oil and grease. From his back pocket, some kind of rag was caught in the act of overflow, one pointed corner jiggling back and forth as the man fought at a massive steering wheel attached to the central area. The hat was a baseball cap, dark in colour – maybe blue, or dark green: Abbott couldn’t make out – and it covered a thick thatch of wiry hair, grey-white, worn unfashionably long so that it exploded into tiny ringlets plastered by sweat and grease against the man’s bulbous neck.
The steering wheel looked to be a complex affair: one wide rim – which the man held with one hand – and three others, each progressively smaller in diameter, raised up in tiers and fastened to a central column by ornate metal bars. Alongside it, a nest of long gear levers protruded like bullrushes from a circular socket.
Abbott watched for a while, enjoying the sensation of the pain gradually diminishing. He kept shifting his attention between the man’s activities and the view of the outside, which could be seen through the two side windows. At first it was just somewhere to move his eyes, and then he noticed something.
The field of vision through the windows, at least from Abbott’s position on the floor, was limited to clouds. The man wrenched the wheel first one way and then the other, thrust this lever forwards, churned that one in a circular motion to rest almost horizontal with the floor.
“Quite a ride,” Abbott shouted above the noise.
“Yep,” came the reply.
“Is she . . . is she out of control?”
“Who?”
Abbott smiled. “The train.”
“Oh, the train.” He spun one of the wheels suddenly with one hand in an almost ballet flourish, pushing one of the levers upwards with the other and then smacking the side of the wheel to maximize the speed of the revolution. Then he caught hold of it and twisted one of the others in the opposite direction. The train lurched drunkenly and Abbott slid away from his corner.
“No, I’d say I’ve got it pretty much under control right now.”
Now Abbott saw that the man was not even looking out of the windows at all. He seemed to be staring at the chimney breast wall directly in front of him.
“Where you headed?” Abbott said as he continued to look around the compartment.
“Everywhere. And nowhere,” the man added. “Just travelling.”
Abbott nodded. “What I mean to say is, where can I get off?”
“Get off?” He chuckled. “Well, now, you can get off any time you’ve a mind to.” He pulled down on a piece of knotted string and the whistle blew a shrill screech. “Makes no odds to me.”
“But where do you stop?”
The man pulled on the wheel, tugging it to the right with all of his might, and sent a lever screeching to one side. “I don’t,” he grunted.
“You don’t stop?”
“That’s what I said.”
Watching the man’s back, Abbott said, “You’re not steering to avoid things are you? You’re steering to hit them.”
The man opened a rectangular metal door in front of him exposing a blazing furnace. He reached down into the large tub alongside him and fished out what looked like a handful of empty polythene bags which he threw on to the flames. As the fire burst with renewed ferocity, the man slammed the metal door and took hold of the wheel again.
Accepting that he wasn’t going to get an answer to that one – though, of course, it could be that the man hadn’t even heard him . . . which was all too possible given the noise – Abbott said, “What kind of fuel is that?”
Now the man turned around and smiled.
“Dreams,” he said.
The face was a mixture of sadness and gentleness, self confidence and humility . . . with an underlying edge of something darker. The man looked to be around 65 or 70 years old. He had a round face fringed with grey sideburns that ran all the way to his jawline, a couple of intercrossed deep furrows across the bridge of his nose and eyes that were half-lidded . . . as though Abbott were looking at a photograph that had been taken mid-blink.
“Dreams.” It was all Abbott could do simply to repeat the word, though he did so without any inflection of doubt. If the man said the fuel was dreams then it was dreams. Abbott didn’t know how that could be but, if this guy said it, it must be so. He immediately felt that there would be many things that this man could tell him – or even ask of him – that Abbott would accept without so much as the hint of argument.
The man turned around and spun the big wheel like a demonic conductor, one chubby arm shooting towards the compartment’s roof as soon as it left the wheel . . . and then dropping to take hold of one of the other wheels, turning it quickly back while the man leaned forward and studied whatever it was in front of him. Abbott felt suddenly freed.
“So,” he said as he struggled to his feet. “We’re in a train that doesn’t stop anywhere and that’s fuelled by dreams.” Hearing it now, spoken by his own voice, Abbott wondered how he could ever have considered such an answer as being anything other than the lunatic ramblings of an old man.
“That’s it. Got it in one.”
Abbott moved forward holding on to a series of small levers protruding from the roof and stood alongside the man. Great . . . he’d hitched a ride out of Nowheresville on a car-wheeled train – driven by some old fart who spoke riddles – which had just killed a man in broad daylight and caused more damage (even though that damage was to downtown Madrigal, which could surely use a little spring-cleaning) than all the Lethal Weapon movies put together. And the man the old fart had killed looked like he was a leper, for crissakes: and where in the world do lepers still exist? Abbott looked out on to the countryside and saw that it was a blur.
“Jesus, how fast we moving?” He glanced to the piece of wall in front of the man for some kind of instrument panel. There was nothing . . . ex
cept for what appeared to be a flickering television screen protected on all four sides by extended panels. Abbott couldn’t see what the screen was showing, and there didn’t seem to be any sound coming from it . . . though with all the background noise he couldn’t be sure.
The man shrugged. “No idea. Pretty fast, I’d guess.”
“We in some kind of rush?”
“Not particularly.”
“So why’re we going so fast?”
The man yanked a protesting lever towards him and spun the wheel again, stomping a couple of times on a wide pedal at the base of the wall. The train juddered a couple of times and slewed wildly to one side, knocking Abbott off balance. He fell back but managed to avoid hitting the wall.
“I said, why we—”
“To keep up our speed.”
Abbott was about to say something else when the man looked at him – just a glance, and a smile – and then turned his attention back to his little screen. Abbott felt his frown melt and yeah, right . . . to keep up our speed . . . obvious . . . he looked back out of the window and watched countryside shoot by in a dizzying succession of groves of trees, columns of houses, rows of vehicles . . . some of them moving, others just parked up in endless aisles – and wasn’t it strange that there wasn’t a single person to be seen anywhere? Wouldn’t they hear the noise and come out to see what the hell was happening?
Hey, Mabel, come look – there’s a goddam train slewing its way through the neighbourhood even though we ain’t got no tracks right here in the suburbs . . . and it’s carving everything up as it goes. And isn’t that an old man lying spreadeagled across the engine? Looks to me like he’s waving . . .
The scenery didn’t simply go by, it frequently shifted to one side and then to the other, sometimes slowing almost to a halt before speeding up again. What the hell kind of train was this?