Hell Train

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘But what about the budget?’ Shane asked, slightly appalled by the casual air of the entire enterprise.

  ‘That’s already fixed. You don’t have to worry about stuff like that. You just have to write the bloody thing, and then we’ll tell you the bits we can’t do.’ Carreras sucked noisily on his cigar. ‘Listen, you don’t have to decide right now, leave it half an hour or so. Have another cup of tea. I’m sure Miss Winters can rustle you up some biscuits, or Mrs Thompson runs a jolly good canteen if you’d prefer something more substantial after your drive.’

  ‘I’m staying with my sister and her family, I don’t really have a place to work.’

  ‘Well, there are some decent pubs in the area, a couple of lovely places over at Shepperton, the King’s Head and the Red Lion. All the writers use them. You could stay in any one you fancy, so long as it’s not more than ten pounds a night. And I think we can spare you an office.’ He strode to the door and opened it. ‘Miss Winters, can we accommodate Mr Carter somewhere?’

  Emma Winters had repainted her lips and loosened her auburn hair. He suddenly saw that she was modelling herself on the starlets covering her office walls. Perhaps she dreamed of auditioning for the company one day. Her legs were a little thick, but there was something dramatic about her eyes. She suddenly shot him a stern look. He wondered if she could read his mind. ‘What do you need, Mr Carter?’ she asked.

  Shane thought for a moment. ‘Well, access to research materials.’

  ‘We’ve a decent library, and of course you could take the screening room if you’d like to reacquaint yourself with some of our past pictures,’ she offered. ‘There’s a spare office next door, and I’m sure we have an old Imperial lying around. That is, you do type?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Because some of our writers prefer longhand and it makes things so much more difficult.’

  Shane felt as though he had slipped through the looking glass into a land where films were made on nothing more than polite handshakes and good intentions. He turned to Carreras, who was glowing, thoroughly pleased with himself. ‘Is there any particular subject you had in mind?’ he asked.

  Carreras thought for a moment. ‘Well, it should have all of the Hammer trademarks, I suppose,’ he said. ‘An exotic setting, young lovers, fearsome creatures, a dire warning, rituals and curses, and dreadful consequences. Supernatural apparitions are always good—they give the lighting boys a chance to show off. We like rules; don’t go up to the castle at night, that sort of thing. There’d have to be something for Christopher. He’s terribly tall and grave, doesn’t really handle comedy roles, but he has a wonderful presence. He’s a terribly good baritone, but we’ve never found the right singing role for him. The rest is mostly atmosphere, and we can supply that by the bucketful. You know the kind of stuff, swirling fog, upturned caskets, villagers lost in the woods, fainting ladies in low-cut corsetry. Plenty of blood of course, although you’ll have to run those parts by me. I have a pretty good idea of what will get through.’

  ‘Did you have any thoughts on the subject matter?’

  ‘Well, Peter and I were talking about that the other day, and we rather liked the idea of a train,’ said Carreras finally. ‘Think you can manage that?’

  ‘I’ll start today,’ said Shane.

  ‘THE LIBRARY,’ SAID Emma, pushing open a wide oak door on the ground floor to reveal a room rather like a gentleman’s club, panelled and lined with bookcases, with a pair of red leather wingbacked chairs arranged before an immense fireplace.

  ‘It looks like the spot where Jonathan Harker first met Count Dracula,’ said Shane, amazed.

  ‘Oh, it probably was,’ said Emma vaguely. ‘I’ll have the typewriter brought down to you, and we’ll get you some new ribbons. Please call me if you need anything. Anything at all.’

  She gave him a secret smile—was she flirting?—and quietly closed the door behind her.

  Shane pulled up the library steps and checked the bookshelves. They were remarkably well stocked. Some of the more arcane volumes on witchcraft and devil worship might come in useful. He reached up higher. Wedged above one stack of hardbacks were several board games: Ludo, Monopoly and something called ‘Hell Train.’

  He carefully disentangled the battered box and took it to the table.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE GAME

  SHE WAS AT home by herself and had grown dangerously bored.

  Her mother had gone to the bakery, and had probably stayed to talk with Mrs Malik. Whenever the pair got together they gossiped for the best part of an hour. She had no idea what her mother talked about; recipes, husbands, the new priest with the sea-coloured eyes who had taken over St Peter’s. Her father was at work in the foundry, doing whatever it was that the men did there. He would not be back until after dark. He was never home until late, and when he came in he smelled of iron filings, fire and sweat.

  Which left her alone, looking out of the window at the torrenting rain. She had brushed and braided her blonde hair into plaits, and had played Pelmanism with a deck of cards, but the Queen Of Spades was missing from the pack and spoiled the game. Her mother had a jigsaw that showed a colourful painting of London Town, but too many of the pieces were missing.

  She looked around the overstuffed sitting room. The air was still and dead, hardly ever disturbed. On the dresser was her sister’s death-book, its open pages tilted upright. She had died of tuberculosis at the age of five, and for the final photographs her little corpse had been dressed in her best clothes and sat among the family who loved her. There was her mother’s music box, with its stiff-jointed ballerina that came to life at the turn of a key, spinning around to the sound of the Emperor Waltz. There was a puzzle book, but most of the puzzles had been completed long ago, even though the answers had been printed in pencil and repeatedly rubbed out.

  She remembered there were other games in the attic, old ones that belonged to her poor mad grandfather, and despite the fact that she wasn’t supposed to go up there, she recalled that her parents kept the brass key on top of the kitchen dresser. It was difficult to reach, so she dragged over a chair and climbed upon it, standing on tiptoe until her fingers could close over it. She would only take a little look, then replace the key so that her mother would never know.

  The house was tall and gabled, with a long, narrow attic full of cobwebby wonders. There was no light up here, but she knew where everything was. Behind the crimson dressmaker’s dummy and the butterfly net, next to the two old armchairs, reversed on top of each other like a giant clam, she found the games: four colourful cardboard boxes covered in plaster dust.

  The first was a compendium of the games boys liked, blow-football, snakes and ladders, draughts and jacks. Nothing of interest there for her.

  The second was a box of magic tricks with a cover that depicted a moustachioed man pulling a white rabbit from a shiny top hat, but its instructions had long been lost, and besides, most of the magic tricks required weeks of practice before they could be performed.

  The third was something called ‘Strategic Invasion,’ and appeared to involve arranging armies across a map of Russia—what a boring idea for a game!

  But the last—and by far the largest—box was the most promising. For a start, the lid was tied down with a length of twine, and a card was attached that read: DO NOT OPEN.

  She carefully carried it down to her bedroom, lowered herself onto the rag-rug and studied the lid. The painting showed a Victorian train with a cowcatcher and a roaring Devil’s face and red horns, and billows of fire coming out around it like angry breath. The elaborate script beneath the picture read: ‘Dare You Board The Hell Train?’

  It seemed odd that she had never noticed the box before. Solemnly arranging herself before the game, she slipped off the twine, removed the lid and took out the playing board. Carefully unfolding it, she laid it flat and began to remove the pieces from their containers.

  There were no dice, no counters, and there was no r
ulebook, but the more she studied the layout the more it seemed self-explanatory. She set the passengers—little painted lead figures carrying valises—at the station which was, curiously enough, named after their own town of Chelmsk, and even shared the same brick chimneypots, the same town square, the same great foundry at its centre. In fact, the entire layout of the board looked like her town in miniature. Perhaps its designer had lived locally, and had glanced out of his window for reference while he was painting.

  The board was slotted with a mechanical railway track running through neat illustrations of idyllic countryside, marked with half a dozen little stations.

  Around the base of the playing area ran a curious caption.

  ‘When the Devil was summoned to Earth, he built a train to take the Damned to Hell.’

  A rather severe motto to place upon a child’s game, even she could tell that. Her mother would most certainly not approve of her touching the game, which made it all the more exciting. What harm could come of it?

  She looked back in the box. What else was there?

  With great care, she removed the largest, most detailed and most beautiful piece—a clockwork train. Its name was engraved on the boilerplate: ARKANGEL. She peered in at the exquisitely detailed carriages, their seats and lights and luggage racks. Then she connected the six cars together, including third, second and first class compartments, the last with a section of private suites and a little observation deck at the back.

  She picked out the least spoiled players—they were made of lead and had lost some of their enamel painted finish—finally settling on two handsome young men and two beautiful ladies in hats and bustle skirts—one blonde, one dark—and placed them on board the train, in the first carriage. They would be a husband and wife, and a pair of young lovers.

  There were two odd little fellows left over, so she set these in the second carriage, a fat little man who had something wrong with his right leg; the lead had got squashed, destroying his foot. She decided he should be a salesman with a sample case. The other was a man in a top hat and mutton-chop whiskers, carrying a tall box. He looked as if he’d be a showman of some kind.

  Sparks flashed around the wheels of the Arkangel as she wound up the engine with a tin key. Then she set the train down on the slotted track and let it embark upon its journey.

  She watched in fascination as the train chugged around the board, making little steam-engine noises, through pretty painted countryside scenes decorated with cherubic angels, over sunlit bridges and through rainbowed ravines.

  The train came to rest at a station, and seemed to be waiting for her to do something. She found a little tin ticket machine that dispensed cards, and, turning its handle, withdrew the first one.

  It read: ‘Piety.’ But what to do with it?

  At the end of the platform was a signal box with a slot in its roof, into which she inserted the card, and a moment later that changed the points. The train set off once more.

  It was beautifully made, but what was the purpose of the game?

  The clock on the mantelpiece chimed three. Outside, the street was empty and misted with falling rain. When she looked back at the board, she saw that the train was trundling along the next section of the track, passing a painted banner that read, ‘Follow The Rules & Shame The Devil.’

  Life, her mother always told her, is a journey that you must control.

  That’s what this is, she decided. It’s a game about life.

  The pattern repeated itself, and at each station she issued another ticket for another leg of the trip.

  These new cards read: ‘Fair Play’ and ‘Decency.’

  But as the train progressed and the game continued, her luck with the cards turned bad. The next ones were ‘Drink,’ ‘Lust,’ ‘Violence’ and ‘Godlessness.’

  With each new instruction, the points clicked and the train rolled forward. But now it was heading away from the sunlit country scenes, across to the far left hand side of the board, and she realized that it was moving away from ‘The Primrose Path Of Righteousness,’ onto a murky branch line fraught with danger; falling trees, a rickety bridge across a ravine, a densely overgrown forest, great black crows, even what appeared to be an erupting volcano. This line was labelled ‘The Wicked Way To Eternal Damnation.’

  If this was a game about life, it appeared that it was also about death.

  That’s not fair, she thought. My passengers have no choice but to stay on board. The decisions aren’t up to them, they’re just down to fate. How do they know if they’re good or bad? Who has the right to test them?

  It was exasperating. Why did games always have to have a moral?

  The clockwork engine seemed to be running of its own accord now. Down into the darkest, most sinister part of the board headed the train. The sparks that sprang from its engine threatened to set the cardboard scenery alight. But where was it heading? The name of the terminus on the bottom left hand side of the route had become smudged and was illegible.

  And as she leaned closer to follow the train’s path, she saw the Arkangel’s wheels really begin to turn as it grew and grew, thundering past her shocked eyes in a blast of fiery steam, threatening to jump the tracks.

  The train was getting bigger by the second. With a groan and spit of steel and steam it expanded to fill the room, until it appeared to be thundering out of the fireplace. The pictures on the mantelpiece shook and cracked. The ornaments were shaking. A vase rolled over and smashed. The noise of the engine pounded against the walls, filling her head until she could hear nothing else. The train was thundering across the dining room.

  Rectangles of light flashed past on the walls, shaking the pictures from their moorings as the train carriages roared past. The engine funnel was belching coal dust and soot onto the ceiling and over the furniture, the train’s bell was clanging wildly, its horn blasting a shrill shriek that threatened to shatter the windows. The wind from its passing sucked all of her mother’s music sheets into the air. Caught by the Arkangel’s cowcatcher, the piano exploded and was hurled across the room. The great wheels revolved so close to her feet that it seemed they would tear up the floorboards and rip the house in half.

  Terrified, she could only watch in horror as the great train roared past her on the start of a journey that, once commenced, could not be halted.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE ARRIVAL

  THE RIVETS WERE white gold, fading to crimson and blood brown before they had been fully hammered into place. Iron plate and tempered steel, rods and bolts glimpsed through fire and steam in the cuprous stench of annealing metal. The world of the engines was ever like this.

  The result was a magnificent piece of craftsmanship, but perhaps they were being punished for showing too much pride. One of the workers brought in from the depot had the four fingers of his right hand sheared off in the engine’s coupling joint just hours before the dedication ceremony, and the cheap Russian grease they used on the plates infected the wound so badly that by the time the ambulance reached the hospital, his arm was a livid poison sac. Amputation should have caught the contagion, but no; they buried him beside the track less than twenty four hours after the Arkangel rolled out of its shed. No-one pretended the work was easy, but jobs were hard to come by back then and the line brought hope, even if the means of achieving such prosperity also carried lasting shame...

  NICHOLAS CASTLEFORD AWOKE with a start. The memory of his dream blurred and faded like smoke.

  He looked out of the window. Greenery, wheat, single track roads, mile upon mile of nothing. Looking at this pastoral scene, it was hard to imagine that the world was at war.

  Nicholas had not found the war to his liking. He had absconded to Poland of all places, where he practiced the ancient art of fleecing the locals. Cards proved to be the best weapons in his arsenal, and he used them without mercy, taking huge amounts from stupified villagers who should have known better.

  After a trip back to London to deposit more hard-earned cash a
nd to order new suits from his tailor, he’d returned to make a further killing. But this time he had been caught out by a local magistrate and had only just managed to avoid a flogging. With the police alerted, he had made a circuitous route through the nation and across its borders, so that he now found himself on the wrong train, in the wrong country, at the wrong period in history.

  Looking out of the window he found the station name to be incomprehensible, but most definitely incorrect. In fact, Nicholas had a feeling that the last half dozen stations had been wrong.

  Perhaps the train had turned onto a branch line. Nicholas compared the sign to the railway line in his guide book and saw that virtually none of the letters matched. There were accents and circumflexes all over the place. Why did they have to make everything so damnably complicated? The empire had spread the use of English to most civilised countries, so why the hell had it not reached here?

  The battered green train had seen better days, but this was still the most reliable way of getting around the country. Many of the roads had been blockaded, sewn with rolls of barbed wire and planted with rocks. The army was trying to limit civilian access routes across the interior.

  The train arrived with a screech of brakes and a squeal of pistons. There was so much smoke and steam and squirting oil that he thought it might have simply pulled in and collapsed, never to move again. And yet he had barely managed to alight with his bag before it gathered its strength and fled, chuntering and wheezing out of the station.