by Tim ORourke
Chapter Twenty-Six
"Shouldn't you be going, too?" I asked Potter, as he stood before me in the waiting room.
"Why are you doing this?" Potter asked with a frown.
"Because I want to see Melody again," I answered.
Taking two steps towards me, so we were just inches apart, Potter spoke in a hushed voice and said, "Isidor, believe it or not, I know what it feels like to have a broken heart. I loved a girl once but she's gone now, and in a way, it was the best thing that could have happened to me, because I would've never met Kiera. "
"But I haven't met anyone else, that's my point," I tried to explain. "I don't have anybody. Melody hasn't gone, she is here somewhere, we will meet again - the picture proves that. "
Then, glancing quickly back over his shoulder then back at me, Potter whispered, "I know about pictures and stuff that seem to have been pushed between the two worlds, and no good will come of it. "
"What are you talking about?" I asked him.
"I don't have time to explain," he said, glancing back over his shoulder. "But believe me, Isidor, that picture of you and Melody, just like the letters that got pushed over to the girl I once loved, only led to suffering, and eventually, her death. Please come with us, Isidor, I don't want to leave you behind. "
"I'm staying, Potter, I know what I'm doing," I told him.
With the rickety old waiting room now lurching from side to side in the growing storm, and the sound of the approaching train and Berserkers nearly upon us, Potter looked at me and said, "I'm sorry, Isidor. I never meant to put you down or hurt you. You are my friend - you're my brother. "
To hear him say that meant more to me than anything. It made me want to cry with happiness, but just like Melody had said to me once, I just couldn't let it show. With a smile pulling at the corner of my mouth, I held out my hand for him to shake and said, "I know - but just like all older brothers, I guess someday you've got to let your younger brother find his own way. "
Potter glanced down at my hand, but instead of shaking it, he came forward and hugged me so tight that I thought he was going to shatter every one of my ribs. "I'm sorry," he whispered.
Then releasing his grip on me, he took a cigarette from his trouser pocket, and tucked it behind my ear.
"But I don't smoke," I told him.
"It's for Melody," he said softly, then he turned and left me standing alone in the waiting room.
I heard the train slow as it passed through the station, and I hoped Kayla and my friends had managed to get on board. The driver blew on the horn as the train started to speed up. The wind screamed and howled outside and the door to the waiting room rattled in its frame. Then caught in a sudden gust of wind, the door flew open, snatching the photograph of Melody and me from my hand. It flew into the air, seesawed momentarily so I could get one last glimpse of us together, then it fluttered out of the open doorway and up into the grey dawn sky. I raced to the door, but it was gone.
I looked to my right and could see the train speeding out of the station, and to my left I saw the first of the Berserkers leap onto the platform. This was the first time that I had seen them - and they didn't really look like wolves at all - they looked as if they had been trapped halfway between wolf and human - just how Sam now looked. They bounded up the platform on all fours towards me. Their claws made a clacking sound against the ground. Sniffing at the air, they looked at me with their seething eyes and snarled. With their half-human faces and flesh coloured snouts, they rolled back their lips and brandished their razor-like teeth at me
Turning, I went back into the waiting room and closed the door behind me. I knew that it wouldn't hold them back for long, if at all. The old fashioned-looking radio that I had first noticed on the counter by the tiny ticket booth made a crackling sound. I moved towards it, and I could clearly hear the sound of static. Picking it up, I pressed my ear flat against it and closed my eyes. In the hiss of the static, I was sure I could hear the faint sound of music and it was growing louder. With hands beginning to tremble, I realised I had heard that song before; it was the song that Melody and I used to sit and listen to down by Lake Lure. As the music grew louder and clearer, I began to hum along to Heroes by David Bowie.
With the music now filling the waiting room in a thick wall of sound, I set the radio down and looked back over my shoulder at the door. It slowly swung open, and in the doorway were several of those Berserkers. They were no longer on all fours, but standing upright like men. With giant paws that swung against their knees, they walked towards me. I looked into their burning eyes, and each of them opened their drooling jaws and roared.
Turning my back on them, it was then I noticed those levers again - the ones with the words push and pull written above them in faded-out letters. Just as if I'd been punched in the face, the word which had been written on the back of the photograph flashed in the front of my mind.
With the Berserker's breath hot against my neck and the song Heroes now blasting from the radio at an ear-splitting level, I closed my eyes and gripped the lever which had PUSH written above it. And as I did, I felt the Berserker's claws slice through my neck. But there was one last sensation I felt before the world went black. I felt a hand softly close over mine, the one that had just pushed the lever.