by Amy Cross
“Is that right?” Michael asked, glancing at the yellowing piece of old newspaper in her hands. “Well, I guess everyone has to have a hobby, and there's not much else to be doing in a place like this. The old social center closed down six months ago, and that left a void in the lives of a lot of people around here.” He stared at the cuttings for a moment, with a hint of unease in his eyes. “You should probably chuck those away,” he added. “It's kind of creepy keeping them around.”
“Most of them are about the train crash that happened here ten years ago,” she continued. “You know the one where an airport express train and an empty commuter train collided head-on in the middle of the night?”
“I remember,” he replied. “I was here.”
She turned to him.
“What?” he asked with a shrug. “It's not exactly easy to leave Marshall Heights. The place seems to have its own morbid gravity.” Reaching into his pocket, he took out a coin and dropped it into the Self-Pity Jar.
“I'm sorry,” she said, “I shouldn't be bothering you with this.”
“It's fine,” he replied. “I welcome anything that breaks up the monotony of my days.”
Sighing, he dropped another coin into the jar.
“It's almost as if she was obsessed,” Megan continued as she looked through the pieces of paper. “There's just cutting after cutting, and copies of all the official reports. I remember when she kept phoning me up because she wanted help using the internet. I never understood why she was suddenly so keen on technology, but now I realize it must have been because she was trying to do more research.”
“I remember her bugging me about the connection,” Michael replied. “Apart from this office, her flat was the only place in the building that got wi-fi. Go figure, huh? I could never get the signal to work.”
“It's one thing to take an interest in things,” Megan continued, looking through the paperwork, “but she seems to have been going into the whole thing in minute detail.” She looked at another newspaper headline:
Eight killed in early morning rail disaster.
Then another:
Mystery over Marshall Heights derailment.
“I get that it happened more or less right outside her window,” she continued, “and it must have been a huge shock, but still... I can't help wondering if somehow her interest was a sign of something else, maybe something unhealthy. Maybe I should reconsider the idea that she was suffering some kind of emotional problem. She might have been depressed. Living in a place like this could drive anyone to the brink.”
Michael dropped another coin in the jar.
“What if she was clinically depressed?” Megan asked. “What if she needed someone, and none of us came until it was too late?”
“She was in her sixties,” he pointed out.
“So? Depression can strike at any time.” She sighed. “Maybe that asshole was right at the police station. We could have done more for her.”
She stood in silence for a moment, thinking about all the times over the past year when she could have made a little more effort to keep in touch with Patricia: a quick visit wouldn't have been impossible, or at least some more emails, maybe even a phone call. They'd exchanged a few likes and comments on social media, which had lulled Megan into thinking that she was still in her aunt's life, but now it was clear that something else had been happening, something that her aunt had kept hidden from the world. She'd always considered herself to be a good niece, but now she suddenly realized that she'd done almost nothing.
“I was asleep when the crash happened,” Michael said suddenly. “In the middle of the night I was woken by the sound of this huge impact, and metal being ripped apart. There was an explosion, too, when one of the carriages hit an electrical box. I've never heard anything like it before and I hope to God I won't again, because when I sat up in bed I actually thought a plane had come down or something like that, or maybe there'd been a gas explosion. When I went to my window and looked out, I saw flames everywhere and for a few seconds I just couldn't comprehend what was happening.” He stared into space for a moment, as if he was reliving the whole scene. “And then soon there were sirens. So many sirens, and a little while after that the media arrived. A helicopter came too, hovering over the place and blasting all the wreckage with light. There was so much damage, it took then two weeks to clear all the wrecked carriages away. There even had to be a survey of this building, to make sure that the impact hadn't caused damage to the foundations.”
“It's a miracle only eight people died,” Megan pointed out.
“If it had happened during the day,” he continued, “there would have been a lot more casualties.”
“Did they ever explain the crash?” she asked, leafing through the scraps of newspaper in search of an answer.
“The commuter train was on the wrong line.”
“But they never explained how it ended up there,” she continued, skimming through another of the cuttings. “Somehow it had switched from one line to another, and then it suffered a loss of power, but I've been looking through all my aunt's notes and there doesn't seem to be anything about an official investigation.” She turned one of the pieces of paper over and saw a handwritten note in her aunt's familiar scrawl:
I shouldn't have called. It's my fault.
“Called who?” Megan whispered.
“You know what I think?” Michael asked. “I think it was ghost-spotters.”
She turned to him.
“The stretch of track that runs past this place is called Suicide Alley,” he continued. “Has been for as long as I can remember, and I've researched this place extensively. Thirty-nine people have committed suicide in the area over the past decade alone. It's not that odd to see trains going slowly past the building because there's been yet another report of someone down on the lines. The railway people keep trying to strengthen the fence, but somehow folk manage to get through. So the authorities set up infra-red sensors and cameras, but the equipment always malfunctions. It's almost as if the tracks themselves are sabotaging any attempt to cut the death-rate.” He paused for a moment. “The problem is that because of all these suicides, there's kind of an urban legend about the place.”
“People think the ghosts of all the victims are still out there?”
“You wouldn't believe how many people come down and spent whole nights over by the fence,” he continued, “freezing their butts off while they wait for a chance to snap a photo of one of the damn things. I see them sometimes, perched out by the fence with their cameras and their timetables. The whole thing's pretty weird if you ask me. Most of them are pretty well-behaved, but there have been times when one or two have let their enthusiasm run away with them and ended up trespassing. I've even seen a few on the tracks, just standing around with their cameras, waiting. It's not impossible that some ghost nut was down there on the night of that crash, accidentally knocked one of the old switcher mechanisms, and then either didn't realize what he'd done or saw the disaster and was too scared to confess. Hence the two trains ending up facing each other on the line.”
“But my aunt -”
“Her flat overlooks the tracks,” he continued. “So does mine, actually. I've got to admit, sometimes at night I stare down there for a few minutes. I've never seen anything, of course. I mean, there's nothing to see, but still... It's kind of hypnotic after a while, and almost romantic.”
“Romantic?” she asked, raising a skeptical eyebrow.
“The thought of all those dead souls out there, wandering the tracks where they died while the world goes on in the distance. It's complete bullshit, of course, but I can understand how the idea might be enticing. To people of limited intelligence, of course.” He paused. “You know, I think I need to get an Arrogance Jar. Sometimes I can be a little dismissive of people who believe in ghosts and ghouls.”
“There might be something out there,” Megan pointed out. “We can't claim to know everything about how the world works.”
<
br /> “Maybe your aunt just had too much time on her hands. Maybe she got into it a little too much.”
“But you don't think...” She stared at another of the cuttings for a moment, before turning to him. “You don't think something could have happened to her down there, do you?”
“Like what?”
“Like she got too close and...” She paused for a moment, putting together the horrific scenario in her mind. “What if she saw something, or thought she saw something, and then she went down there and, I don't know, either she got mugged or... worse, she might have been hit by a train and no-one even noticed.”
“I think you're clutching at straws,” he told her. “It's one thing to keep an eye on things from a window, but why the hell would she actually go down there and start trespassing on the tracks? She wasn't an idiot, was she?”
“She was smart,” Megan replied, “but she also cared about other people. If she thought someone was in danger and no-one else was helping...”
“Dead bodies don't just get left by the train tracks without anyone noticing,” he replied. “Maybe in a horror movie, but not in real life. Even if something happened in the middle of the night, she'd have been seen in the morning. I have no idea what happened to your aunt, but I think we can discount that theory. Which is a good thing, because as theories go, that one is particularly macabre.” He stared at her for a moment. “I don't think you're at the stage yet where any answer is better than none. You don't have to give up hope that she might turn up alive.”
“I hope you're right,” she said, setting the papers down, “but I have to be sure.”
Four
“This is the basement!” Beth shouted as she got to the bottom of the stairs. “Toby, we're not allowed down here! It's not safe!”
Listening to the silence for a moment, she realized that Toby was playing another of his games. She'd never been down to the basement before, and she didn't like the idea of taking a look around: the whole place seemed gloomy, as if even the electric lights weren't able to bring enough illumination, and all over the walls there were large metal boxes and cables with signs warning of high voltages and the imminent threat of a horrible death. One of the signs even showed a picture of a stick man being zapped by lightning. Beth knew she was probably being a coward, but at the same time she just wanted to just go back upstairs and watch a movie.
“Toby!” she shouted. “Come on, let's go!”
Silence.
“Toby! I know you're down here, so stop playing stupid games!”
Checking her watch, she saw the time:
3pm exactly.
“My mum's going to be back from the doctor's soon,” she continued. “I should be home to help her! She's going to have dinner ready and everything!”
She waited.
“Toby!”
“Come and check this out!” he called back to her suddenly from one of the other rooms.
“What is it?”
“Just come and look!”
“I don't want to.”
“Stop being scared of everything,” he continued, his voice filled with enthusiasm. “Come on, Beth, you're always like this. I swear it's nothing dangerous, it's just something really cool! You're not going to be a scaredy-cat your whole life, are you?”
“I'm not scared,” she said firmly. “I'm just sensible.”
“That's what scared people say all the time.”
“Toby -”
“Fine,” he replied, “but don't ask me to tell you what I've found, 'cause I won't. I guess you'll just never know.”
Sighing, she made her way to the doorway and peered through into the next room, but there was still no sign of Toby. The basement area of Marshall Heights was divided into a series of rooms, some of them better lit than others, some filled with boxes and some completely empty, and she had no desire to go picking her way through the place. Even though she knew monsters weren't real, she couldn't shake the feeling that she was being watched.
“This way!” Toby called out.
Following the sound of his voice, Beth made her way through a couple of empty rooms before finally finding Toby crouching at the far end of a long corridor. He seemed to have found something in the corner, and as Beth approached she began to realize that he was holding a small collection of dirty gray teeth.
“What do you think they're from?” he asked, turning to her.
“Animals,” she told him uncertainly, her eyes fixed on the teeth.
“You don't know that. They're from people.”
“No they're not, they can't be. They must be from dogs, or cats, or...”
He shook his head.
“Yes they are,” she said firmly. “Can we just go? Please?”
“They're all different sizes,” he continued, holding up one of the teeth. “Different colors too, some of them are more yellow than the others, like they're not all from the same person.”
“They're not from a person at all,” she said firmly. “Can we just get out of here?”
“You're so scared,” he replied. “Face it, these are probably, like, teeth from people and for some reason they're down here in the basement and no-one knows they're here except us.” He turned and looked over at the door that led through to another, darker, room. “What if there's a whole body down here? What if there's a murderer at Marshall Heights, or a serial killer, or -”
“That's it,” Beth said, turning to walk away. “I'm going back up.”
“And leaving me down here?”
“That's your choice.”
“What if I get murdered?”
She stopped and looked back at him.
“What if you go back up,” he continued, staring at her with sudden intensity, “and then I'm never heard from again? What if I go missing, and everyone's asking you what happened to me, and you have to tell them that you left me down here alone after I'd just found parts of a dead body?” He paused for a moment. “What if there really is a serial killer, and he's listening to us right now, and he's just waiting for you to leave so he can take me?”
“You're making all of that up,” Beth said cautiously.
“Everyone'd hate you,” he pointed out. “They'd blame you for leaving me alone to get murdered, and they'd be right. Friends are supposed to stick together, not run away when they get scared and leave each other to get chopped into little pieces.”
“You're not going to get chopped up. Can we please just get out of here?”
“There might be a pile of bodies nearby,” he continued, “and no-one'll ever find them because no-one cares what happens in Marshall Heights. This'd be the perfect place for a serial killer to go around killing people, 'cause no-one'd ever come to check up. My dad used to say that people get put here to rot when there's nowhere else for them to go and the council just wants to forget about them. I mean, if I was a serial killer, I'd totally do my crimes somewhere like this, not out there in the rest of the world where people actually care. You could probably kill everyone in this tower-block and no-one would even notice.” He looked down at the teeth, rattling them in the palm of his hand for a moment. “Maybe he's the perfect killer, and dropping these bones is the only mistake he's ever made. Or maybe it isn't a mistake, maybe he wants someone to find them.”
“Toby,” Beth whined, “can we please get out of here?” Hearing a noise nearby, she turned just in time to see a rat scurrying between the shadows. “Gross,” she said with a grimace.
“If we don't stop him, he'll come for everyone, he'll work his way through the whole building, going from flat to flat. And he'll start with your mum because she's like everyone else here, no-one cares if she goes missing.”
“You're stupid,” Beth told him, turning and heading to the door, “and I'm going upstairs to watch a film. You can come if you want.”
As he listened to the sound of her footsteps walking away, Toby stared at the teeth for a moment longer. Finally, realizing that Beth was getting further and further away, he dropped the t
eeth back onto the floor and got to his feet, before running back toward the stairs.
“Hey!” he called out. “Wait for me! Don't leave me behind!”
Once he was gone, the basement rooms fell back to their usual peace and quiet. Dust hung in the air, drifting through the light from the electric fittings. And then, suddenly, there was a faint noise from one of the darkest rooms, a kind of scratching sound followed by a couple of shuffling footsteps. Moments later, a human hand emerged from the darkness and tossed a few more teeth into the next room, before withdrawing back into the shadows. If there had been anyone else around to hear, they might have detected the faint sound of someone breathing in the darkness, and if they'd stared into the next room for long enough, they might have just about been able to make out the sight of two dark eyes.
Five
With her coat wrapped tight to protect her against the chill wind, Megan kept her eyes firmly on the train-line as she walked along the path that ran next to the fence. The line itself was a good ten meters away, but she figured she'd be able to spot anything untoward. Michael's words were ringing in her ears, telling her that there was no way she was going to find any sign of her aunt, but she felt as if she'd tried everything else: knocking on doors hadn't helped, and the police had been terrible.
She had no other leads, and for the first time she was starting to wonder if she might never find out what had happened. The thought of having to go back to Cornwall and admit she failed was too much to deal with, but she felt as if she'd run out of options.
Stopping for a moment, she watched as a train trundled past, rattling along the tracks. She couldn't help but stare at the large metal wheels, and after a few seconds she found herself imagining what it would be like to either fall beneath those wheels or to be struck by the train and thrown clear. Either way, a sudden and very violent death seemed inevitable, although she figured that at least it would be mercifully quick. Those final moments, though, as the train sped closer and then hit...