by Kim Newman
‘Made you look,’ said Annette, from the corridor. She giggled.
He couldn’t help grinning. She was hatless now, languidly arranged against the door-frame, dress riding up a few inches to show a black stocking-top, shoulders back to display her fall of silky hair. She drew her AA in the air with her cigarette end, and puffed a perfect smoke ring.
She drew him along the corridor. They joined Harry and Myles in the next carriage. The ballroom in Lord Kilpartinger’s day, it was now designated the first-class lounge.
Magic Fingers found a piano, and extemporised on ‘The Runaway Train’, which Annette found hilarious. She curled up in a scuttle-like leather seat.
At the far end of the carriage sat the vicar – probably working on a sermon, though his expression suggested he was writing death threats to be posted through the letter-boxes of nervous elderly ladies.
Arnold passed through the carriage, and informed them the bar would be open as soon as they were underway.
‘Hoo-ray,’ said Annette. ‘Mine’s a gimlet.’
She screwed a fresh cigarette into her holder.
Arnold smiled indulgently and didn’t tell Myles not to tinkle the ivories. They were in first class and could swing from the chandeliers – which were missing a few bulbs, but still glinted glamorously – if they wanted.
‘Impressions?’ asked Harry, who had a fresh folder open and a ballpoint pen in his hand.
‘All clear here,’ said Annette. ‘We’ll live past Peterborough.’
‘This box has had its guts battered,’ said Magic Fingers, stuttering through a phrase, forcing the notes out, ‘but we’re making friends, and I think he’ll tell me the stories. “The runaway train came over the hill, and she ble-e-ew…”’
Harry looked at Richard and prompted, ‘Jeperson? Anything to add?’
Richard thought about the little girl’s ageless eyes.
‘No, Harry. Nothing.’
Harry bit the top of his pen. The plastic cap was already chewed.
‘I hope this isn’t a wasted journey,’ said the Most Valued Member. ‘Just smoke and mirror stories.’
‘It won’t be that,’ said Annette. ‘I can tell.’
The whistle gave out another long shriek, a Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan yell from the throat of a castrated giant.
‘…and she ble-ew-ew-ew-ew…’
Without even a lurch, as smooth as slipping into a stream, the Scotch Streak moved out of the station. The train rapidly picking up speed. Richard sensed pistons working, big wheels turning, couplings stretching, the irresistible pull…
He had a thrill of anticipation. All boys loved trains. Every great mystery, romance or adventure must have a train in it.
‘…the engineer said the train must halt, he said it was all the fireman’s—!’
Myles’s piano-playing was shut off by a crash. The lid had snapped shut like a bear-trap.
The jazzman swore and pulled back his hands. His knuckles were scraped. He flapped them about.
‘Pain city, man,’ he yelped.
‘First blood,’ said Annette.
‘The beast’s impatient,’ said Myles. ‘Antsy, itchy-pantsy. Out to get us, out to show who’s top hand. Means to kill.’
Harry examined the piano, lifting and dropping the lid. A catch should have held it open.
‘Catch was caught, Haroldo,’ said Magic Fingers, pre-empting the accusing question. ‘No doubt about it.’
Harry said the lid could easily have been jarred loose by the train in motion. Which was true. He did not make an entry in his folder.
Annette thought it was an attack.
‘It knows we’re here,’ she said. ‘It knows who we are.’
They were on their way. Outside the window, dark shapes rushed by, lights in the distance. The train flashed through a suburban station, affording a glimpse of envious, pale-faced crowds. They were only waiting for a diesel to haul them home to ‘villas’ in Hitchin or Haslemere and an evening with the wireless, but all must wish they were aboard the brightly lit, fast-running, steam-puffing Streak. Bound for Scotland – mystery, romance and adventure!
Richard found he was shaking.
ACT II: ON THE SCOTCH STREAK
I.
Over the train-rattle, Annette Amboise heard herself scream.
She was in the corridor. The lights were out. One of her heels was broken, and her ankle turned.
The train was being searched, papers demanded, faces slapped, children made to cry, bags opened, possessions strewn. She’d soon be caught and questioned. Then, hours of agony culminating in shameful release. She’d hold off as long as she could. But, in the end, she’d break.
She knew she’d talk.
Fingers slithered around her neck. A barbed thumb pressed into the soft flesh under her jaw.
Her scream shut off. She couldn’t swallow her own spit. Air couldn’t reach her lungs.
The grip lifted her off her feet. Her back pressed against a window which felt like an ice-sheet. She was wrung out, couldn’t even kick.
She smelled foul breath, but saw only dark.
The train passed a searchlight. Bleaching light filled the corridor. Uniform highlights flashed: twin lightning-strike insignia, broken cross armband, jewel-eyed skull-badge, polished cap-peak like the bill of a carrion bird. No face under the cap, not even eyes. A featureless bone-white curve.
The boche had her!
She tried to forget things carried in her head. Names, code phrases, responses, locations, times, number-strings. But everything she knew glowed red, ready for the plucking.
Her captor held up his free hand, showing her a black, wet Luger. The barrel, cold as a scalpel, pressed to her cheek.
The light passed.
The pistol was pushed into her face. The gunsight tore her skin. Her cheek burst open like a peach. The barrel wormed between her teeth. Bitter metal filled her mouth.
The grip around her throat relaxed, a contemptuous signal.
She drew in breath and began to talk.
* * *
‘Annie,’ said Harry Cutley, open hand cupped by her stinging cheek, ‘come back.’
She had been slapped.
She was talking, giving up old names, old codes. ‘Dr Lachasse, Mady Holm, Moulin Vielle, La Vache, H-360…’
She choked on her words.
Harry was bent over her. She was on a divan in the lounge carriage. Myles and Richard crowded around. Arnold the conductor attended, white towel over his arm, bearing cocktails. Hers, she remembered, was a gimlet.
‘Where were you?’ asked Harry. ‘The War?’
She admitted it. Harry had been holding her down, as if she were throwing a fit. Suddenly self-conscious, he let her go and stood away. Annette sat up and tugged at her dress, fitting it properly. Nothing was torn, which was a mercy. She wondered about her face.
Her heart thumped. She could still feel the icy hand, taste oily gunmetal. When she blinked, SS scratches danced in the dark.
‘Can we get you anything?’ asked Harry. ‘Water? Tea?’
‘I believe that’s mine,’ she said, reaching out for her cocktail. She tossed it back at a single draught. Her head cleared at once. She replaced the empty glass on Arnold’s tray. ‘Another would be greatly appreciated.’
Arnold nodded. Everyone else had to take their drinks from the tray before he could see to her request. They sorted it out – a screwdriver for Myles, whisky and water for Harry, a Virgin Mary for Richard. Arnold, passing no comment on her funny turn, withdrew to mix a fresh gimlet.
‘Case of the horrors?’ diagnosed Myles.
She held her forehead. ‘In spades.’
‘A bad dream,’ said Harry, disappointed. His pen hovered over a blank sheet in his folder. ‘Hardly a manifestation.’
‘To dream, wouldn’t she have to be asleep?’ put in Richard. ‘She went into it standing up.’
‘A fugue, then. A fit.’
Harry erred on the side of rational explanati
on. Normally, Annette admired that. Harry kept an investigation in balance, stopped her – and the rest of the spooks – from running off with themselves. Usually, ghosts were only smugglers in glow-in-the-dark skeleton masks. Flying saucers were weather balloons. Reanimated mummies were rag week medical students swathed in mouldy bandages. Now, his thinking was just blinkered. There were angry spirits on the Scotch Streak. And, for all she knew, little green Martians and leg-dragging Ancient Egyptians.
‘Have you had fits before?’ asked Richard.
‘No, Richard,’ she said patiently, ‘I have not.’
‘But you do get, ah, “visions”?’
‘Not like this,’ she said. ‘This was a new experience. Not a nice one. Trust me. It reached out and hit me.’
‘“It”?’ said Harry, frowning. ‘Please try to be more scientific, Annie! You must specify. What “it”? Why an “it” and not a “them”?’
Her heartbeat was normal now. She knew what Harry – irritating man! – meant. She tried to be helpful.
‘Just because it’s an “it” doesn’t mean there’s no “them”. An army is an “it”, but has many soldiers, a “them”.’
Harry angry, at something Richard called him.
‘What came for me wasn’t one of my usuals,’ she continued. ‘I see what might happen. And not in “visions”, as Richard put it. I don’t hear “voices” either. I just know what’s coming, or might be coming. As if I’ve skipped ahead a few pages and skim-read what happens next.’
Harry, Richard and Myles backing away from her. No, they were still close – they wouldn’t back away for a few minutes.
‘I see round corners. Into the future. This was from somewhere else.’
‘The past?’ prompted Richard. ‘A ghost?’
‘The past? Yes. A ghost? Not in the traditional sense. More like an incarnation, an embodiment. Not a personality. My idea of the Worst Thing. It reached into me, found out what my Worst Thing was, and played on it. But there was still the train. I was on the train. It lives here. The Worst Thing. The Worst Thing Ever. The Worst Thing in the World.’
‘Dramatic, Annie, but not terribly helpful.’
Harry put the top back on his biro.
‘Listen to her,’ said Richard, slipping an arm around her shoulder – a mature gesture for such a youth. ‘She’s not hysterical. She’s not imagining. She is giving you a report. Write down what she’s said.’
Harry was not inclined to pay attention to the Jeperson boy.
‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘It’s static. It’ll cloud the issue. We need observable phenomena. Incidents that can be measured. Traced back to a source. I’ll get the instruments.’
‘We have instruments,’ said Richard. ‘Better attuned than your doodads, Daddy-O. We have Annette and Magic Fingers.’
He didn’t include himself, but should have.
A burst of indignant fury belched from Harry as Richard called him ‘Daddy-O’. She flinched at the psychic outpouring, but less than she would have done if she hadn’t known it was coming.
The lad was pushing with Harry. He couldn’t help himself.
Myles laid a hand on her forehead, nodded.
‘Something’s been at her,’ he said. She didn’t like the sound of that. ‘Left claw marks.’
‘Will everybody please stop talking as if this were my autopsy,’ she said. ‘I have been attacked, affronted, shaken. But I am not a fragile flower you need to protect. I can take care of myself.’
Like she did in the War.
The curve under the SS cap came back to her. If questioned, she would have talked. Everyone did, eventually. It had never come to it, because of her trick, her way of putting her feet right, of avoiding situations. Others – the names that had come back to her – had been less fortunate. As far as she knew, they were dead or damaged beyond repair. Most had been caught – talking made no difference in the end, they were still killed.
Ever since, she had been putting her feet right. Walking near peril, not into it. Here, she was on a train – a row of linked boxes on wheels. There might be no right steps here. There might only be danger. Her gift was often knowing where not to be. Here, knowing where not to be did not mean she could avoid being there.
She trusted her instincts. Now, they were shouting: pull the communication cord! She could afford the fine for misusing the emergency stop signal. One swift tug, and brakes would be thrown. The Scotch Streak would scream to a halt. She could jump onto the tracks, head off over the fields.
Harry, Richard and Myles backed away from her. Just as she’d known they would. She ticked off the moment, grateful there wasn’t anything more to it.
She was pulling the communication cord.
She suppressed the instincts. The red cord – a chain, actually – still hung, above a window, unbothered in its recess. She would ignore it.
Would she pull the cord in the future or was she imagining what it would be like? No way to tell. She saw herself in the dock, being lectured, then paying five one-pound notes to a clerk of the court – but the clerk had no face. That usually meant she was imagining. If this was going to happen, she would see a face, and recognise it later.
Then, her brain buzzed. She couldn’t mistake this for wandering imagination. Before the War, a child psychiatrist labelled Annette’s puzzling malaise as ‘acute déjà vu’. Catriona Kaye modified the diagnosis and coined the term ‘jamais vu’. Annette did not have I-have-been-here-before memories of the present, but I-will-be-here-soon memories of the future.
An open exterior door, night-time countryside rushing past. Someone falling from the train, breaking against a gravel verge. And someone coming for her, from behind.
If that was a few pages ahead, she’d rather fold the corner at the end of this chapter, put the book on her bedside table and never open it again. But that wasn’t how the world worked.
Arnold came with her second gimlet. This one she sipped.
‘Perfect,’ she told the conductor, suppressing shivers.
II.
Annette’s recovery impressed Richard. Two gimlets and a nip to her compartment to fix her face, and she was set. Her strings were notches too tight, but so were everyone else’s. She flirted, presumably on instinct, flitting among her colleagues, seeming to offer equal time. Only Richard noticed he was getting marginally more serious attention than Harry Cutley or Danny Myles. She already knew them but needed to puzzle out the new boy, fix him in her mind the way Harry fixed names, by rolling him around, pinching and fluffing, testing reactions. Which, as ever, were warm and, he thought, horribly obvious.
Harry sourly made shorthand notes in his folder.
The frightening vicar gently enquired as to the lady’s condition. Annette said she was fine, and he retreated, satisfied. Richard still wondered if the man was faking his aura. His killer’s hands seemed made to be gloved in someone else’s blood.
Standing nearby, Annette was carefully not looking at the communication cord. Of course. Anyone who travelled by train knew that imp of the perverse which popped up at the sight of a ‘Penalty for improper use – £5’ notice – pull the chain, see what happens, go on, you know you want to. On the Scotch Streak, the imp was a bullying, nagging elemental.
Annette felt Richard’s lapel between thumb and forefinger.
‘Real,’ she said. ‘Sometimes I can’t tell any more.’
He didn’t know where to put his hands.
‘Put the boy down, Annie,’ said Harry. ‘Come fill in this Incident Form. Since you’re convinced you were assaulted, we must have a first-person account before memories fade.’
She shuddered and joined Harry. He gave her a sheet of paper and a pencil, which she proceeded to use as if sitting an exam, producing neat, concise notations in the spaces provided.
Danny Myles sat at the piano, fingers tapping the closed lid. His bruises were rising. He smiled, did a little two-finger Gene Krupa solo on the polished wood.
‘Me next, you think?�
� Richard asked.
Myles lifted his shoulders.
‘Watch your back, Jack.’
The carriage windows were ebony mirrors. If Richard got close to the glass and strained, he could make out the rushing countryside. A late supper would soon be served in the dining carriage. The train didn’t stop until Edinburgh, at half past one; then, after a twenty-minute layover, it would continue to Portnacreirann, arriving with the dawn.
The overnight express felt more like an ocean liner than a train. Safe harbour was left behind and they were alone on the vast, deep sea.
Though they had compartments, none of them would sleep.
Richard took out his father’s watch, checked it against the clock above the connecting door. He had ten past nine, the train clock had ten to. He’d wound the watch at Euston, setting the time against the big station clock.
Myles saw what he was doing, rolled his sleeve back and felt a glassless watch – a holdover from his blind days. ‘Stopped, man,’ he said. ‘Dead on the vine. Seven seven and seven seconds. That’s a panic and a half.’
‘I won’t have one of those things,’ said Annette, looking up from her form. ‘Little ticking tyrants.’
‘Prof?’ Myles prompted Harry.
Harry pulled a travel clock out of a baggy pocket and held it next to his wrist-watch.
‘Eight thirty-two. Ten oh six.’
‘Want to take a stab at which is the real deal?’ asked Magic Fingers.
They all looked at the train clock, ticking towards supper time.
‘What I thought,’ said the jazzman.
Harry Cutley riffled through his folder and dug out more forms. He handed them out. Myles got on with it, turning out a polished paragraph. Richard simply wrote down ‘watch fast’.
‘Perhaps now you’ll stay away from mechanical instruments and rely on people,’ said Annette. ‘You know clocks run irregularly in haunted places, so why do you trust thermometers, barometers, wire-recorders and cameras?’