He awoke with a jolt and fled into the corridor, just as the storm broke overhead. Shaking, he made his way to the end of the carriage.
It was impossible to tell how long Nick had been asleep when the change of rhythm began to dispel his dreams. The train was slowing, emerging from a forest of silver birches. He opened his eyes and found the seat opposite empty. Stretching, he wiped a fan of condensation from the window and peered out.
A station, even colder and darker than the one they had left.
Hearing a carriage door bang open, he jumped up and left the compartment. Josh was ahead of him, already on the station platform. The train was bright and silent, the only source of light.
“Josh, what are you doing? Wait for me.” Nick ran after him, grabbing his arm. “What’s the matter?”
Josh looked back wildly. A moment later, his eyes dulled. “I had a dream.” He looked around. “Where the hell are we?”
There was a green metal sign on a pole. It read: ORDZANDZIN DEPOT. There was no one on the platform. The station looked as if it hadn’t been used in years. The waiting train was silent, its bright empty compartments far more appealing than the derelict station. They saw the silhouette of the conductor pausing to look at them as he passed along the carriage.
Josh walked along the platform to the stationmaster’s office. He tried the door but it was locked. On the elaborate wooden arch above the lintel, picked out in red and gold, was the same carved symbol of the Polish eagle, its feet tethered by a coiling, fanged serpent.
“What do you think that means?”
“I don’t know,” Josh shrugged. “Eastern European shit. Look around. This place is shut. Why would they even stop here?” Beyond the station canopy rain continued to fall in a thick grey mist, removing all visual cues, deadening all sound.
Against the wall stood a row of rusting trolleys. Each one contained an empty leather sack with an unknotted drawstring at its mouth.
A square of yellowed paper blew along the platform, sticking itself against Nick’s shoe. He reached down and picked it up. A flyer of some kind, dense Polish handwriting, a crude drawing of the train with the smoke from its stack transformed into a pointing hand. Exclamation marks, incomprehensible bullet-pointed commands of some kind. He screwed it up and let it fall.
The papers handed out to the passengers had a strange request printed upon them. For the sake of safety, it was desired that all valuables were to be handed to the officers for safekeeping before the train’s arrival at Ordzandzin Depot. This included all wrist and pocket watches, wallets, fountain pens, rings, brooches, necklaces, tie-clips, bracelets, earrings, cufflinks, money clips and loose change. Furthermore, any important documents, including all identity papers, deeds of covenant and documents pertaining to property or wills should be handed in at the same time. In certain cases, the gentlemen would be required to write a short note of explanation to their nearest relatives in Chelmsk.
The uncertainty turned to fear now, especially when one of the children saw his family’s belongings being unceremoniously tipped into a leather station bag and carted away on a trolley.
“What do you think we should do?”
“Man, anywhere has got to be better than here.”
Nick cocked his head. “What is that noise?”
“I don’t hear anything.”
“You can’t hear that?” He loped along the platform of the derelict depot, listening to the sounds beneath the falling rain. Distant voices, a great many of them, but low and keening, now rising together in sorrow, crossing from harmonious melancholy to grotesque discord with such ease that he might have been listening to the wind in the trees. He tried to see beyond the canopy, but a sheet of rainwater was falling from the broken gutter on the roof, obscuring his view. There were darker patches just past the platform edge that looked like forlorn human figures standing in the rain, defined by raindrops.
There were hundreds of them, watching expectantly.
“We have to get out of here,” he called back, but received no answer. Turning, he found Josh holding a brown sack against him. The sack had a head of glossy black hair.
“Danuta?”
She was shaking with cold. “I couldn’t stay,” she explained, letting the burlap fall to the floor.
“How did you get here?”
“I borrowed Johann’s car. I went to the station but saw the others arrive on the platform. I couldn’t go in. Then I saw the train come through.”
“How did you manage to beat it here?”
“The road is new, it is much faster.”
“You knew the train would stop at this station?”
“It has to. The Ordzandzin Depot is a supply stop.”
Josh looked back at the idling train. “But it isn’t picking anything up.”
“No, the station is here to receive supplies, not provide them. You cannot get out here. There is nowhere to go.”
“What do you mean? Where does the train stop next?”
“There is one further destination beyond this. The Lubicza Terminus. That is the only reason why the Arkangel exists. Then the train heads back along the same line, but on the way back it does not call at Ordzandzin Depot. For now we are safer on board the train. But we will have to find a way to escape.”
“You’re not making any sense,” said Josh, exasperated. The rain-battered shapes beyond the platform were shifting back and forth, becoming more agitated by the second. Their voices were rising above the wind and rain.
Behind them, the train’s whistle blew. Moments later, the carriages started to move along the platform.
Danuta pulled at their sleeves. “We must go.” They paced alongside the departing train and hauled themselves back on board just as it began to pick up speed. Nick watched the retreating figures of the naked dead standing beside the station in the downpour, his face pressed against the cold glass.
“What is going on here?” he asked Danuta. “Why would a train like this run when it has no passengers?”
“It does have passengers.” She stared at him anxiously, willing him to understand. “It has us.”
“Come in here.” Nick pushed her into the compartment. “Why won’t you tell us the truth? You saw those people back at the depot, didn’t you?”
“They would not have let you leave. I told you, no one like you can survive for long at the Ordzandzin Depot.”
“Then how did they let you get through onto the platform?”
“I am from Chelmsk. I am one of them.”
“You’re not making any sense, Danuta!” he shouted at her.
“It is our fault that the train is here.” She took his hand. “We don’t have long before we reach the terminus. Listen to me carefully.”
The mood on board was very different now. Even the children had begun to sense that something was wrong. A couple of them cried that they wanted to go home, but were sternly admonished by their parents. No one could truly believe their worst fears. It was a modern world. An explanation would be proffered, belongings would be returned with profuse apologies, the day would end well enough. Calculations were made about how long it would take to reach the coast. The fathers attempted to jolly their wives and children into happier moods.
Then, as the Arkangel slowed across the windswept plain toward its final stop, they saw the great dark bulk of the Lubicz Terminus approaching and began to fear for their children’s lives.
Danuta looked anxiously at the darkening fields. “My town – you ask why there are so many churches – three hundred years ago there were many more. All the priests in this part of our homeland came from our small town. It was one of the most pious and holy places in the country. But priests are supposed to be celibate, and even if our men of God were not, the children they sired were drowned in secret. In time our population declined. The farms began to die. The shops closed. The town elders met to decide what must be done. To increase the population they needed people who were not Catholic. They brought in Jews.”
She glanced nervously from the window. The train was racing at great speed through forests of rain-lashed larches.
“The town grew again. By 1935 it was more prosperous than it had ever been – too prosperous. We were far from the German border, but not so far that we could ever forget what might happen, either. We were one of the first towns to suffer, but few knew of our plight. The piety of Chelmsk went against us; over the centuries, its ancient fortifications had been repaired and strengthened. Walls that had once been designed to keep invaders out now kept the residents in. Still, my grandparents thought they were safe. No one saw that the churches which sheltered us would eventually be used to imprison our own families until the train could arrive. Who knew such things then?”
Nick could feel the train starting to slow down. Danuta rose in alarm, but he pushed her back into her seat. “Keep talking,” he warned.
“We did not know that members of the Sicherheitsdienst were living among us. One day the newly appointed security officers announced that the town was to be closed for reasons of racial impurity. For too long there had been much mixing of blood. It was our great strength, and it was to become our curse. A work camp had been opened at Lubicza, and although we did not know then, our people were to fill it.
“My town had many blacksmiths and factory workers, men used to tempering metal. In 1940 we were instructed to build a train, a special express under the sole command of the Sicherheitsdienst commandants. It was to be a great honour for our town. They asked our families to choose the most well-loved man on the council to become the conductor in charge of the train. He would be privileged to oversee every level of its daily operation. That man was my grandfather.”
“The Arkangel was used to deliver your townsfolk to the work camp,” said Nick. Suddenly he understood the meaning of the symbol; the crowned Polish eagle restrained by a mighty serpent, the symbol of a new German empire being tested out here for the first time, a dry run for the entire world.
“Each time the train left Chelmsk, a few of the town’s finest families were taken along with the commandants. There was no panic, only deception. They were told there was a spa resort – that they would return in a few days. When the train reached Ordzandzin, they were ordered to surrender all their valuables, their personal property. Money, watches, even the deeds to their houses, everything they had been advised to bring on the journey. It was collected and thrown out into the leather bags at the Depot. Sometimes people made a run for it when the train stopped. They would push their children out on the platform, only to see them shot dead before their eyes.”
“How long was it before the townspeople realized what was happening?”
“The commandants insisted that those families who left had elected to stay on the coast in places of greater safety. Sometimes they returned keepsakes that had been collected at the Ordzandzin Depot as proof of their well-being. When people ask how could the Nazis do this under the very noses of the people, this is how; by keeping any whisper of truth carefully hidden. People can be very naive when they want to believe. My grandfather knew, because he stayed on the train until it had been emptied at Lubicza. But he could not live with the terrible burden of his work. One night, he called a secret meeting at the town council, and told them about the true purpose of the Arkangel. But among the people he told was a junior member of the Sicherheitsdienst. They took him to the siding where the train waited, and slowly drove it over his legs. They wanted the names of those he told. He took three days to die.”
She looked to the window, but might have been seeing the world from a million miles away. “Before the war there were nearly three-and-a-half million Jews living in Poland. By the time it ended, less than 300,000 were still alive.”
“What are you saying, that this is a ghost train?”
“No, I said you would never understand. There is no secret to this story. I told you, people remember the past. They know what happened. It’s said that after the war, the train was left in the sheds at Chelmsk. The engine was broken up for spare parts, and finally the carriages were sold to Polrail for use on the passenger line. But there were stories, things seen and heard that could not be possible. So the Arkangel really did become a ghost train – in the sense that it was shunned by the living.”
The train was leaving the larch forest, heading out into the open plain that stood before the terminus. “Believe what you like. The train is real. It runs when it has to. It cannot take me back to Chelmsk. I must alight at the Terminus.”
“You must tell me everything, Danuta. What will happen to us?”
She was trying not to cry. “After the war the town was almost deserted. Those with any so-called impurity had been removed. Every remaining resident became precious to us. The town could not lose any more of its inhabitants. This is why the train exists. To keep the families of those who survived from leaving, and to remove those who are tainted, or who would lead them away. This is all my fault. I never saw the Arkangel before it appeared tonight.” She pressed the back of the hand against the cold metal door. It felt as solid and real as any national Polrail train she had ever caught. “I am so sorry.”
The Arkangel’s brakes screeched and they were thrown forward. Out in the corridor, they could see the dark mass of the Lubicza Terminus thrown into relief against the night sky.
The convex roof of the train shed was backed by a large brick building topped with a square tower at either end. In a stroke of architectural arrogance, the crematorium chimneys had been built into the very fabric of the terminus. The building’s crenellated gables reminded Nick of those on London’s own railway cathedral, St Pancras Station. Between the chimneys, beneath the mocking spiked spires that rose along the edge of the steep roof, the eagle symbol was repeated in iron – but here it had changed form. The eagle had been crushed entirely by the triumphant snake that entwined its body.
There was only one railway track into the terminus. The platform extended on either side of the train. Here, grey linen sacks stood in metal frames, ready to receive the clothes of the passengers. They would panic now, of course, sensing their fate just as cattle led to the slaughterhouse would fear the smell of death. But everything about the station was designed to do one thing, and one thing only – to herd the passengers forward toward the building’s interior, through its great iron gates.
When the officers demanded that they strip their children and then themselves, a raw terror set in. From the windows they could see the passengers in the carriage ahead of them stumbling onto the platform. Their bare white nudity was profoundly shocking. The children were screaming and sobbing now, their naked mothers pawed and prodded by the guards, the men sometimes punched in the low spine with the butts of rifles if they questioned what was happening. Some of the older ones fell, and were trampled underfoot. An old woman with bloody dentures hanging from her mouth lay screaming and clutching at the passing legs until one of the officers of the Sicherheitsdienst stuck a bayonet into her soft lower belly and dragged it upward, eviscerating her. After that, it was decided that no one should ever be killed on the concourse; the terrified crowd became too difficult to control. Lessons were quickly learned in the management of the damned.
“Where is Josh?” Danuta asked, looking around. “He must not get off the train.” She looked into Nick’s uncomprehending eyes. “He’s a Jew who seduced a daughter of the town.”
“He didn’t seduce you, Danuta, you know what happened, it was a crazy night, we were all drunk and fooling around, we got carried away—”
“I’m pregnant, Nick. And I don’t know whose child I’m carrying, whether it’s Josh’s or yours. What does that make me in the eyes of the dead? At best I am a whore. At worst, I’m carrying the child of a Jew who is also a murderer. Idzi is dead. He died on the street while you were reaching the station. Josh will be taken and so will I. None of us is innocent. We’re not like those who died before.”
“Last stop,” called the conductor from somewhere furthe
r along the carriage. “All those for Lubicza Terminus alight here.”
“Have you told Josh about the baby?”
“No, I thought if I hid the truth from him he would be able to leave, and perhaps there was even a chance for me. I should have known there was no way out.”
“Your grandfather, can’t he do something?”
“He is as much a prisoner here as everyone else.”
“There.” Nick pointed along the corridor at the figure framed in the doorway. “Josh, stay on the train!”
Josh was stepping out onto the platform. Behind him, the conductor, Danuta’s grandfather, stood impassive and unable to prevent any change in the fate of his passengers.
“God, look at this,” Josh called, looking up at the span of the roof as he walked further onto the concourse. Behind him a wall of sound was rising, a cry of terror so dense and discordant that it seemed like one great voice. It broke over them in waves, splintering into individual human voices, pleading, panicked, fearful, the voices of those who would do anything at all in order to draw one more breath.
Nick had no choice but to go after him. Josh was walking away. There was no time to explain. He grabbed Josh’s wrist and tried to pull him back. “We have to stay on board,” he warned, tugging hard.
“What, and go all the way back again, are you crazy? Listen to that, what the hell is that?” The wave was growing, towering above them, ready to crash.
“Josh, stay with me.” The distance between them and the Arkangel was lengthening. Nick knew that the further he moved from the train, the less chance he would ever have of getting back.
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 20 Page 31