Train Ride

by Bridget Darling

Train Ride

  (and other chilling tales)

  Pen

  ©2014

  ©2000-2013 by Pen

  All Rights Reserved

  All intellectual property herein is protected by Copyright Law. Any distribution, use or plagiarism is subject to prosecution.

  ISBN: 9781310685736

  Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favorite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

  This work is cat-approved.

  For my beloved Clairee

  I miss you more each day

  Table of Contents

  Train Ride

  Fear

  What do They Call Us?

  Ghost in the Garden

  Extra Storage

  Ravings

  Snow

  Summer Storm

  It Takes One to Know One

  Ghosts

  Alien Rights, Indeed

  Rough Night

  About the Author

  From the Author

  Train Ride

  Cheryl Rainesford glanced at the clock on the wall as she wiped down another table tucking the dollar tip into the pocket of her apron as she did so.

  “Fifteen minutes to go, kiddo,” Julia said. The redhead leaned idly on the counter before the cash register.

  Cheryl grinned. “Being transparent again, am I?”

  Julia shrugged and popped the gum in her mouth. “If I’d been here since seven o’clock last night, I’d be checkin’ that clock every two minutes, too.”

  Cheryl stepped through the swinging doorway that led behind the counter and placed the damp towel beside the sink before emptying her apron pocket of bills and change.

  “Ready to change out?” Julia asked as she hit the NO SALE button and the register drawer flew open.

  Cheryl quickly counted out her handful of bills and change: $22 in tips.

  “Not bad for a weeknight,” Julia commented as she exchanged the ones and change for a twenty.

  “It’ll put some gas in the tank.”

  Cheryl caught a glimpse of herself in the chrome of the dessert refrigerator. There wasn’t much to look at as far as Cheryl was concerned. She wasn’t pretty, she wasn’t ugly. “Pretty plain” was how Cheryl described herself. Her hair was the color of a field mouse and her facial features followed suit: two milk chocolate brown eyes set too closely together separated by her elongated nose.

  “It’s those lips, honey,” Julia said.

  “What?”

  “You know what I’m talkin’ about. No lipstick but those lips look like strawberries puréed in whipped cream.”

  “Yeah, they’re my finest asset,” Cheryl said as she wiped down the counter.

  “They’re enough to get you tipped decent. And you know what I always say.”

  Cheryl stated the slogan with Julia, “Use whatever you got to get a tip.”

  They both laughed and Julia waved her hand. “Especially here. Happy Joe’s OneStop Quik Shop isn’t exactly on the main thoroughfare.”

  Cheryl shrugged. “No, but it is close enough to Interstate 75 to bring in some travelers.”

  “Mmm,” Julia grunted. She allowed a beat or two of silence to lull before asking, “Think your mother will still be awake when you get home?”

  “I’m sure she will,” Cheryl sighed.

  “Guess she’s afraid something’ll happen to ya.”

  “Sure,” Cheryl said brightly. “If something were to happen to me she’d have to take care of herself, wouldn’t she?”

  “I’m sorry, Cheryl.”

  “No, no. That’s okay, Julia.”

  “You know, your mother’s not an invalid. She could take care of herself if she had to.”

  “My mother has always had someone to take care of her. First her parents. Then her husband. And now me. That’s why she had me.”

  “Now you don’t know that, Cheryl. Besides, what are you going to do when you don’t have your mother to take care of anymore?”

  “Celebrate.” Cheryl immediately regretted the word. “I don’t mean that literally.”

  “Oh, I know that. But you shouldn’t have to wait for your mother to die for you to have a life, Cheryl. You’ve already waited, what? Ten years? You should think about moving down to Atlanta, going to school.”

  “Oh, I think about it, all right,” Cheryl sighed. “But then I think about my mom, all alone in that house, no one to call, no one to come around.” She shook her head. “I just can’t, Julia. I don’t have the kind of heart it takes to leave my mother alone like that. My dreams don’t matter. They’ve all evaporated. Right along with the coffee sitting on those back burners.” She smiled and nodded her head to an almost empty coffee pot behind the counter.

  Julia followed Cheryl’s nod. She looked back at the young woman standing before her; a young woman whose eyes were tired, tired beyond tired. Julia realized that she couldn’t remember a time when Cheryl’s eyes weren’t tired. “Guess I’d better fix some fresh coffee, huh?”

  ***

  Cheryl rolled down the window and allowed the cool autumn air to flood the car. It was a pleasant night; the air was just brisk enough to whisk away the cobwebs and dust of her thinking. The moon was full and its light cast an eerie glow inside the lone car on Gloucester Road.

  Underneath the briskness of the autumn air, Cheryl smelled the sawdust from the lumber mill beside the railroad tracks. This odor was mixed with the faint smell of oil and grease that permeated from the machine-truck repair shop beside the lumber mill. It wasn’t a wholly unpleasant odor and not one to which Cheryl gave conscious thought. It was an odor she had grown up with.

  The headlights of the Ford Escort reflected off the crossbars as Cheryl rounded the curve. Moonlight gleamed off the steel of the tracks in the road, reflected off the road like silver glitter from a Christmas ornament. Splinters of glass twinkled along the sides of the road in the sidesplash of her headlights.

  Cheryl stopped before crossing the tracks. Three-fifteen in the morning, the crossbars up and no one around but Cheryl stopped and looked and listened.

  The green light was on down the tracks. Cheryl gunned her little Escort onto the tracks. She wasn’t sure if the green light meant a train was coming or not.

  Whatever insecurities Cheryl had about the green light, those insecurities were not shared by her car. It stopped dead in the middle of the tracks. She stared, wide-eyed at the car. It didn’t sputter or choke. It simply stopped.

  Cheryl shook her head. “C’mon, old Bess,” she muttered. “I know you can do it.” She tried the ignition, switching it calmly at first, then more severely. The only sound was the jangling of keys against each other on Cheryl’s Mickey Mouse key ring.

  Cheryl sighed. “Okay. I know I’ve been putting off a tune-up. But if you’ll just start for me, I promise, I’ll get you one this weekend. Please?” She tried the ignition again.

  When the warning bells clanged she thought it was her car. She listened for a moment, unable to believe such a sound could come from her little Escort. As she watched the crossbar lower in front of her, she felt the harsh realization of what was happening become an adrenaline rush of fear.

  The reflection of the red warning lights on her car hood set Cheryl into motion. She floored the gas and turned the ignition. “C’mon,” she breathed through clenched teeth. “You can do it.” Cheryl felt panic rising within her; a tingling sensation in her lower abdomen that crawled down and between her legs. She thought she was going to pee.

  She pumped the gas pedal and flipped the switch continuou
sly. “C’mon! C’mon, give it to me! Give it to me, damn you!” The little car had nothing to give.

  The light hit her. Cheryl snapped her head to the right and was paralyzed; a small helpless animal trapped in the lights of an oncoming car. The oncoming light illuminated Cheryl’s pale, oval face, the interior of the car; it glistened on the tracks that lay before it.

  Cheryl snapped herself out of her frozen state. She grappled for the hook of the seatbelt, hot, sweaty palms slipping and sliding over the cold metal of the hook. She felt the vibrations of the oncoming train, heard the clickety-click-click-clickety of the wheels on the track and she couldn’t find the release button.

  “Dammit! Damn these seatbelts! Dammit! Dammit! Dammit!” Cheryl’s heart sledge-hammered so loud and hard within her ears she couldn’t hear herself cursing the one object that could make the difference between life and death.

  Cheryl was panting now, alternately crying and screaming. Without thinking, she tried the ignition before looking to see the light almost upon her and to hear the long low drone of the train’s whistle.

  With that glimpse into the light, Cheryl resigned herself to the inevitable. She inhaled deeply and raised her hands to shield her eyes from the impact.

  There was no impact. No crunch of steel and flying glass as the train went through her as if she weren’t there. Cheryl was suspended with her head thrown back, hands up, lungs filled with air ready to scream, eyes and mouth wide open.

  Cheryl Rainesford felt a cold rush of air as the engine of the train passed through her. She felt she was dreaming or watching a movie in slow motion where she couldn’t move. She felt the vibration of the train’s wheels on the track. She heard the clickety-click-click-clickety rattle of the wheels rolling beneath her.

  She saw the conductor - a skeleton in a pair of denim coveralls, a red plaid kerchief around his bony neck, a conductor’s cap atop his skull. He was shoveling coal into the fire-bin. When he saw Cheryl going by, he kindly stood and tipped his hat to her revealing straggles of wispy white hair and long, grimy fingernails extending from the bones of his fingers. Cheryl saw the conductor-skeleton bend over and resume stoking the fire. She felt the acrid taste of burning coal on the back of her throat.

  In the dining car, skeleton waiters in black pants, white starched shirts, and black bow ties served skeletons seated at tables. Each patron was dressed differently, but all had straggles of wispy white hair and long grimy fingernails.

  As each table passed by Cheryl, the seated skeletons slowly turned their heads toward her. Some nodded in her direction, their empty sockets seeming to actually see her, their teeth locked into an eternal grin. Some raised their bony hands in a wave and some pointed to her, looked at their companions and threw their skulls back in mock laughter.

  The clink of china cups, the mixture of voices in intermingled conversations, even the sounds of mock laughter all reached Cheryl’s ears; muffled, sounds coming from a coffin six feet under hard blackened earth. Those sounds, coupled with the aromas of coffee, after-dinner cigars and brandy, followed Cheryl as the dining car gave way to the sleeper cars.

  Most of the occupants in those sleeper cars were wrapped in their bedsheets resembling, to Cheryl’s horrified eyes, death shrouds.

  One skeleton was propped up on its pillows, its hollow sockets focused on an open, yellowed newspaper.

  One skeleton was seated on the john.

  One skeleton lay upon a bed, its legs bent at the knees. Between those legs was another skeleton. Their pelvic bones thrust against each other, clicking in rhythm with the clicking of the train wheels. They turned their eyeless sockets to Cheryl, their lurid grins mocking the grotesque rendition of the human sexual act.

  Cheryl longed desperately to vent the pent-up scream locked within her lungs.

  She tasted the smell of cow dung. She wanted to close her glued-open eyelids.

  The teeth of the cow skeleton munched aimlessly on the dried hay in its cargo car. Its empty sockets looked Cheryl’s way. A cat skeleton gnawed its bony paw in a corner.

  A hobo sat against the far wall; tattered jeans and plaid shirt billowed about its slender frame. Its bony knee was propped up with a bony arm cast across it. A yellowed, hand-rolled cigarette dangled from its tobacco-stained teeth.

  Its eyeless sockets turned to Cheryl. “Got a light?” it said, its voice as old and raspy as the white wisps of hair on its skull. As the car with the hobo pulled away, Cheryl heard the hobo laughing.

  The red caboose with its lone occupant rumbled through Cheryl. The skeleton waved as it passed by Cheryl.

  With the passing of the caboose, Cheryl was thrown forward in her seat and the air was pushed from her lungs so all she uttered was a small cry. Whatever force had gripped her was done with her and had cast her aside like litter.

  Cheryl’s forehead was covered with a thin sheen of cold sweat. Her blouse and work smock were soaked with her own perspiration. She held her pale and shaking hands in front of her face. Beads of sweat stood out on the palms.

  Cheryl looked down both sides of the track. Nothing was there. Not even the green light down the tracks was on.

  The clanging of the warning bells stopped and the crossbars lifted.

  Cheryl sat in shock, gasping for breath.

  When the car started of its own volition, Cheryl screamed.

  ***

  Cheryl glanced at the clock on the wall. Ten minutes to go.

  As she returned her attention to the table she was wiping down, her hand brushed against a water glass sitting there, filled with water and a few ice chips. Cheryl watched as the glass tipped over.

  Julia caught the falling glass in her hand. Water and one or two ice chips escaped the glass.

  “Honey, are you okay?” Julia asked. She replaced the glass onto the table. “You’ve had a case of the dropsies ever since I came on shift.”

  “I’m okay. Really.” Cheryl didn’t sound convincing, even to herself. “I think I may have a cold or the flu coming on. I’ve been kind of fog-headed all night.”

  “Maybe you should drink some orange juice.” Julia walked through the swinging doorway behind the counter. “I’ll get you some.”

  Cheryl didn’t protest. It was best not to say much.

  “Here ya go, hon.” Julia stood holding the glass to a Cheryl whose eyes were someplace else. “Hey, Cheryl?”

  Cheryl snapped out of that place and looked at the glass of orange juice. “Drink this, honey.” Julia’s voice was compelling. “Maybe it’ll make you feel better.”

  Cheryl gulped down the orange juice, its bitter taste coating her tongue and throat. She handed the glass back to Julia. “Thanks.”

  Julia noticed Cheryl’s eyes. They didn’t have their customary tired look. There were many things Julia saw in those eyes, but it wasn’t that bone-tired weariness she was accustomed to. Maybe Cheryl was coming down with something.

  Julia placed the glass onto the countertop and looked at Cheryl. “Maybe you should go on home. You look a little pale.”

  “Do I?” Cheryl was barely conscious of her surroundings. She could think of nothing except the train. The train. The train.

  “Yeah. Go on home. Stop by the store and get yourself a gallon of orange juice and drink as much of it as you can before you go to bed. Then put an extra blanket or two on the bed, bundle up underneath all that cover and sweat it out.”

  Cheryl smiled to herself. Sweat it out. Wasn’t that what she had been doing all these years waiting for her mother to die?

  Cheryl shivered from the chill the thought sent down her spine.

  Julia saw that shiver. “That does it. If you don’t leave right now, I’m going to personally drive you home.”

  That thought was as frightening as it was ludicrous to Cheryl. If Julia drove her home, she just might miss her train.

  ***

  Cheryl gunned the little Escort down Gloucester Road. The autumn air was brisk, the moon illuminated everything in its pat
h, the odors of sawdust and oil lingered in the air. Cheryl’s mind raced clickety-click. It had been real. Of that fact, she was certain.

  The headlights of the Escort reflected off the crossbars and the moonlight gleamed on the steel of the tracks in the pavement. Cheryl stopped at the crossbar and looked both ways. The green light was on down the track.

  She maneuvered the car onto the center of the railroad tracks. She put the car in PARK and turned off the ignition.

  And she waited.

  Fear

  fear

  covers these streets

  like a blanket

  on a cold winter’s night,

  walks these streets

  in black cape

  avoids the light;

  stalks its prey

  by light of day;

  no immunity to this

  ancient predator

  no question that

  it lives among us

  the oldest of us all.

  We cope.

  We hope.

  We cannot will it away.

  Both friend and foe

  we accept it.

  What Do They Call Us?

  Lisa immersed her hands in the hot dishwater. Perspiration plastered her dark hair to her forehead and against the back of her neck. The sports bra she wore clung to her small breasts and was soaked with sweat beneath her arms and where it clung to her cleavage.

  She looked out the kitchen window. The setting sun was a red ball of fire three-quarters above the treetops. She opened the window with one dripping hand. Not a single leaf stirred, not a whisper of air entered the cramped kitchen to offer respite from the summer heat.

  Lisa closed her eyes against the inferno on the horizon. Green and yellow images danced across her field of vision; prisoners behind her eyelids.

  Were these afterimages? Or premonitions?

  “Roger! Can you take a look at the air conditioner?”

  Roger’s voice, muffled as from a distance, answered, “Later!”

  Lisa sighed. She had tried every trick she could think of to pry him away from the television set.

  A single bead of sweat popped out on the nape of her neck. It trickled down her back following her spinal column. Goosebumps skittered along her flesh. She opened her eyes and shuddered despite the ninety-eight degree heat.