The creature’s mount opened its obscene mouth and roared, the sound echoing out of its fleshy gullet. Then, step by ponderous step it lurched forward. Its claws reached for him amidst a storm of excited clicking noises. He threw himself back as best he could as the horror plunged closer, until …
He found himself on the floor of the compartment he shared with the professor, who was staring down at him with raised eyebrow.
“Good heavens, Walters, you’re filthy” Madison said. Walters tried to answer and found himself gasping for air, but Madison waved him off. “Go wash up and change, for God’s sake. I think you’ve got a story to tell me.”
An hour, one shower, and several brandies later, Walters found himself seated across from the professor, who gazed at him with keen interest. He’d been through the story of what he’d seen, or at least most of it: the swamp, the insects, the titanic cycads. The rest, though, he kept to himself. It was a vision too far—monstrous insects were one thing, actual monsters were another, and there was only so much a man of science such as the professor would accept.
“You’re hiding something,” Madison finally said, “But it’ll be out in due time. Now this vision of yours—what do you think you saw?”
“I didn’t see it, Professor, I lived it,” Walters protested. “The mud, the blood—”
“The bites and the ichor all over your clothes, quite convincing, yes. So what did all that say to you?”
“It said to get home in a hurry,” Walters replied, and took another swig of brandy. “That it was no place for men.”
Madison nodded. “If pressed, I’d say it sounded like a swamp of the Carboniferous Era. Which, coincidentally, is some of what I’m having you study. Are you certain this isn’t some sort of charade to get me to assign you more reading on the late Cretaceous?”
“Professor!” Walters was ready to rise out of his seat in protest until he saw that Madison was chuckling.
“Easy there, young friend. I have no reason to doubt your story. The evidence—” he pointed to the muddy footprints that now dominated the compartment “—is most compelling. Besides, even if you’d faked the other bits, your materialization on the carpet was most impressive. But it just adds another mystery to the ones we were already investigating.”
“Other mysteries?”
Madison ticked them off on his fingers. “The fireman who went mad. The disappearing Mister Higdon, Esquire. And now your sojourn. I find it worrisome in the extreme.”
“So you think they’re connected?”
The professor nodded. “It seems likely. Speaking of which, what do you think really happened to the poor Magyar?”
Walters rubbed his aching head. “The conventional wisdom is that he went mad, yes?”
“You saw him. We’re long past the conventional. But why mad now, and why on this train? He’d done the run, with that same fellow that he attacked, dozens of times before. And don’t forget, he said something about the coal.”
“I’m afraid you’ve lost me.”
Madison smiled thinly. “Never mind. It may be time I made some inquiries. It’s definitely time you lay down and got some rest.”
“But I can help—”
“Rest,” said Madison. “There’ll be plenty of time to help later, I’m sure.” He ushered Walters into his bunk, pulled down the shades, and then left. His footsteps echoed down the corridor as the young man sank back into his pillow, gradually merging with the relentless thrum of the train’s progress.
Muzzily, Walters closed his eyes, counting in a dreamy four-four time as the wheels below rolled and clicked, eventually dissolving into a comforting, buzzing hum.
There was something about the hum, he realized. Something that he should recognize.
It was getting louder now, and he forced himself to open his eyes. All around him he could see the berth in the dimming light, the now-familiar brass fixtures gleaming with sunset glints. There was another world there, as well, a green haze settling over everything. Beyond the walls, he could see vast trees and vaster differences, could almost hear distant bellowing, and in his fingers and toes he felt a familiar tingling.
The shock of it jolted him to full consciousness. “Professor!” he shouted, and threw himself out of bed. The impact with the floor dimmed the vision for a second, but as he rose to his feet it returned with a vengeance. Half-guessing where the compartment door was, he staggered after Madison. Every step yielded the wet squelching sound of ancient mud. Every blink overwhelmed the ornate decor of the train with lush walls of primal green. “Professor!” he shouted again as he stumbled forward.
Dimly he could see other passengers diving into the compartments, alarmed at the madman who now lurched down the passageway toward the car’s end. A figure stood there, perhaps Professor Madison. But the professor had never had claws, had never stretched forth welcoming tentacles, had never wished to—
“Here, my boy, take this!”
A hand reached out for him, or perhaps a snaking tentacle, and then something cold and metallic was pressed into his fingers. Pocket watch, he thought dimly as he clutched it. He could feel the wheels and gears within, the steady tick of the hands advancing. The sensation cut through the haze, and the green vision vanished.
“Professor,” he said, and pitched forward.
Madison caught him as he fell. “Easy there. You’ll want to keep that with you. It’s the only thing that’ll anchor you, at least as long as we’re on this train.”
“Anchor me?”
“To this era.” Madison regarded him gravely. “I think it is time we put all our cards on the table.”
Weakly, Walters nodded, then pushed himself upright. “There is something I didn’t tell you.” The professor, he saw, was headed toward the front of the car, and he followed. “When I was gone, I saw a … creature. Riding some sort of amphibious beast. I saw it again just now. It was reaching out for me.”
They reached the end of the car, and a porter opened the door with a brisk salute and a surreptitious sign of the Cross. Madison stepped through, followed by his protégé, and they passed into another carriage. “Would this creature have been roughly the height of a man, possessed of four asymmetrical appendages?” The professor went on to describe the monster of Walters’s vision so precisely the man’s jaw dropped.
“Yes. That’s it. That’s it exactly. How did you know?”
“Not all of my researches are approved of by the Royal Museum,” he said grimly. “There are certain books in my possession that my more rational peers frown on. Accounts of pre- and post-human civilizations, vast beasts from the gaps between the stars, ancient demon cults—not the sorts of thing that play well on Great Russell Street. And there are mentions of the creature you saw, vague hints at horrors out of time.”
“What do they say?” They passed through another car, moving steadily toward the front of the train. “What do those things want?”
Madison laughed, a bitter sound. “What they want is to remain hidden. Anyone who has knowledge of them, or who might acquire it—such a man attracts their attention.” He stopped and turned. “A man like you, now.”
“Or the dead fireman?”
Madison nodded. “Quite possibly. Or perhaps he was merely an instrument, used to dispose of evidence.”
“Evidence?”
“Think, Walters. You were drawn back to their time somehow. To the Carboniferous, when the vast beds of coal all around our route were laid down. What does this train run on? What did the man do?”
“Of course! It’s something in the coal!” Walters sprang forward, and now it was Madison who hurried to keep up. “We’ve got to find the thing in the coal before they try again!”
“You’ve got to be careful, my boy,” Madison puffed. “You’ve drawn their eye. They’ll stop at nothing to silence you. Hold onto the watch. I got it at great cost from one of their other victims, a paleontologist from Brisbane who dug a little too deep. It’s the only thing anchoring you to the now
.” Passengers and benches sped by as they ran headlong for the front of the train. “My best guess is that the vibrations of the train, mixed with some strange susceptibility of your own, is what flung you into the past.”
“And Higdon?”
“Higdon, as well. You and he carried the fireman. Perhaps there was some sort of metaphysical contagion out of time.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” said Walters.
And then, without warning, they were through the last car and into the cramped compartment at the back of the train’s engine. The air hung thick with smoke and coal dust as two shirtless men shoveled away for all they were worth.
“You there!” Madison shouted. “You’ve got to stop. There’s something in the coal, something terrible.”
The two men straightened and looked at each other. One strode over to Madison, while the other shrugged and returned to his work. “Am sorry, sir. No passengers are allowed here.”
“You don’t understand. There’s something wrong.” Madison’s earnest pleading was almost drowned out. The roar of the flames added hellish counterpoint to the chug of the wheels; the light from the furnace reflected luridly off the stokers’ half-naked forms.
“What is wrong is that you are here,” the man explained, less patient than before. “We are already behind schedule. The other passengers, they complain. If we stop shoveling coal, the train, it stops. It stops, they complain more. So you will go back to your seats, and we will keep the train moving, yes?”
“No,” said Madison. “Look, if you’ll just let me in the coal bin, I can—oh God, what’s that?”
He pointed, eyes wide with horror. Walters and the stoker turned. The other man paused, the blade of his shovel half-buried in the mound of fuel.
Plainly visible hard by the shovel was something in the gleaming, unmistakable shape of a gun, gripped in the blackened fossilized bones of a human hand.
“There!” shouted Madison. “Do you not see?” And indeed they saw, gaping as the one man dropped his shovel. Disregarding the effect of the coal dust on his trousers, the professor dropped to his knees and gently extricated the find. Walters stood right behind him.
“Is not possible,” said one of the stokers. “The bones—”
“The bones indeed! And what else—szen, szen! Of course. It was buried in the coal! This is what they were hiding, Walters, what they didn’t want seen! Incontrovertible proof of their meddling in Earth’s past!”
Walters stared. “The gun wouldn’t burn. Even in the furnace, it would be found, and there would be questions. They possessed that poor fireman so that he’d destroy it.”
Madison’s voice was strained, but jubilant. “But they failed, and now—now we’ve found it, my boy. Oh, we’ll blow their secret history wide open, we will!”
“There’s more there,” Walters said, and pointed. “The rest of the bones.” And indeed there were: a radius and an ulna, both remarkably well preserved, leading back into the depths of the pile.
“Well done, Walters. There might be more artifacts back there, too! Hold this, will you?” Madison passed the hand and what it held up to his assistant, then leaned forward to dig at the distended arm.
Walters took the bundle without comment, and gave it a onceover. The gun, if gun it was, seemed poorly designed for the human hand. The grip was more suited for a claw than for fingers, and the hand that was wrapped around it, still held in place by bits of coal, was positioned awkwardly. Frowning, he held it up. The sight lines seemed off, and he rotated it until something about the shape clicked.
He’d seen the weapon before. Seen it held in that inhuman pincer reaching out for him. Seen what it could do.
“Professor,” he said, leaning forward as his mentor burrowed busily into the coal.
“One moment,” Madison replied.
Trembling, he stretched his right hand around the stony knucklebones.
“Professor, I really think—”
“I said not now!” Walters had never seen Madison like this, face pale, almost pleading. Sweat stood out on his forehead, a product of the coal chamber’s intense heat. His eyes gleamed with excitement as his hands scrabbled in the detritus of the ancient strata. “We’re finding … we’re going to find …”
Walters closed his grip, his twisted fingers finding their twins. The fossilized bones and his were a perfect match.
“Professor!”
Madison turned, and Walters immediately wished he hadn’t.
For the professor, it seemed, was suffering a seizure. Hunched over in agony, he screamed wordlessly. His fingers had twisted into claws, curled so tightly on themselves Walters could hear bones snap and ligaments pop. As for his face, it was a mask of horror. Eyes bulging, lips suddenly bloody where he chewed on them in frantic spasms.
“Szen!” the Madison-thing hissed, and then launched itself at his assistant. Walters barely had time to raise his arms in defense before Madison was upon him. Fingers crooked into claws raked his flesh, desperately clutching at the alien device. With a shout, Walters flung his attacker across the width of the car, sending him sprawling into the coal pile.
“You cannot fight in here,” said one of the stokers. Madison turned to look at him, snarled, and then flung a fistful of coal dust into the man’s face. He screamed and stumbled back, clutching his eyes, even as the other stoker fled the car.
“Professor! What are you doing?” It was a vain hope to think that any trace of his mentor remained in the creature that hurled itself at him, body contorting unnaturally. Its fingers found the punctures the insects had made in Walters’s arm and dug in, causing him to gasp in pain. Involuntarily, his crippled grip loosened and the alien device tumbled to the floor. Coal and fossil bone splintered free as it hit, and the gun spun away.
“No!” Walters flung himself after it. The possessed Madison followed, a split-second later and a half-meter behind. The train took a curve, wheels roaring, and the device slid crazily toward the side of the car. Walters tumbled after it, blocking it from falling to the track below. A tug on his leg told him that his sudden opponent had grabbed a hold of him, and without a second thought he kicked. There was a gruesome crunch as his boot connected with the professor’s shoulder, and then he could hear fabric tear as the Madison-shaped thing fell away.
Wheels screeching, the train pulled out of the curve and started accelerating. As it did so, the gun slid away once more, now toward the center of the car. Stumbling, Walters lunged for it. For an instant he thought it was too late, and then his fingers closed on it. He tightened his broken grip and turned, half-expecting to see Professor Madison lunging at him once again.
Instead, the professor stood there, blood streaming down his face. In his hand was the pocket watch.
“Szen,” he said, and then the rising hum took Walters away.
The creature in the mud was dying, of that Walters was sure. He’d made certain of that, swinging a heavy length of wood at it from ambush and knocking it from the back of its mount. Six or seven more savage blows had followed, thoroughly pulping its star-shaped head and severing the odd tentacles that extended from it. Now greenish ichor oozed from the shapeless mass as it twitched and shuddered in its death throes. Rather than attempt to revenge its rider, the hulking amphibious mount had instead taken advantage of its freedom and plunged straightaway into the murky waters of the swamp. That left Walters and his victim alone, while all around them insects hummed and sang.
Professor Madison would hardly recognize him now, Walters thought with grim satisfaction. To survive in this place—no, in this time—he’d become a murderous savage, stalking his enemies and assassinating them one by one whenever the right moment arose.
Mud caked his hair and skin, the better to protect him from the ravenous appetites of the swarming insects. His clothes were in rags, but there was no need for modesty in this place. There was only survival.
And there was no way back, that he knew. It had been too long. Across the aeons, the trai
n would have moved on, the peculiar vibrations of its wheels humming too far away to draw him back.
Or perhaps he’d been the one to range too far in his flight from star-headed hunters. He no longer knew where he’d first come back into this world, or where the train tracks would someday run. So there was no return to the future for him now, just black water and greenery and sucking mud.
Something shone in the muck at his feet. He bent down to examine it, and came away with a familiar prize. It was a gun, or something very much shaped like one. The creature had not had time to use it on him before he’d attacked. Now it was just plunder. Now it was his.
He’d long since abandoned the one he’d brought back with him. Ancient and useless, it was an unnecessary weight. But this one, new and deadly, was an entirely different proposition. He had long since resolved that he would not go down meekly. Let the monsters pursue him. He would make a home of the jungle. They would never take him from here, that he already knew. When his time came, he would be claimed by the thick waters, his bones sinking down with the rotting leaves and broken branches. And over the millennia he’d become one with them, as time and heat and pressure did their work, until someday, some poor train stoker’s shovel would strike too close to where his remains lay, at the bottom of a pile of coal.
His twisted fingers closed around the gun. The circle would be complete.
“Are there any questions?” Professor Madison asked. The lecture hall was full of the usual first-year students, equal parts terrified and bored. Ten years on from the incident on the Bratislava train, seven years since he’d been released from the sanitarium, and still they flocked to the classes of the “mad professor.”
Madness on the Orient Express: 16 Lovecraftian Tales of an Unforgettable Journey Page 19