Hell Train

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘There was a run-down café there, where a small, sickly lad of nineteen who had been turned down for membership of the Black Hand sat, disappointed and embittered. He thought that the death of the Archduke would magically release the shackles that bound his people to the empire. He had missed his chance to attack our convoy, and had given up when he saw our automobile turn into the street.

  ‘The second I realised that we had made a wrong turn, I put my foot on the brake and began to back up. I admit I was disturbed that there might be another attack, and in my rush I stalled the car’s engine, locking the gears. From the corner of my eye I saw the sickly fellow rise to his feet and raise his arm toward us. He was holding a pistol, and used it now to knock a fellow bystander out of his way. I saw all this as if time itself had suddenly slowed down.

  ‘I attempted to reverse more quickly, but the rose oil on my shoe had made the leather sole more slippery, and my foot slid off the accelerator. In that brief moment while the automobile was stilled, the lad took aim and fired twice. His bullets found their mark; both the Archduke and his wife were shot. Franz Ferdinand’s neck was pierced and gushed blood. Count Harrach’s face was splashed with it. The Count put a white handkerchief on the Archduke’s jugular vein to stem the flow of blood. I heard his wife call out, ‘For Heaven’s sake, what happened to you?’ but she had been shot in the stomach, and fell from her seat. We thought she must have fainted, but the Archduke knew what had happened and begged her not to die for the sake of her children. His ceremonial hat slid from his head—I remember there were shiny sapphire feathers all over the car floor.

  ‘I pulled to the side of the road and we tried to remove Franz Ferdinand’s tight blue tunic, but we could not find a pair of scissors with which to cut it open. He died before we could get to the wound. The crowd rushed forward, and in the process my leg was crushed.

  ‘When I returned home, I discovered that my beloved Hannah was dead. She had walked into an ornamental lake and lain down in it, breathing the water down into her lungs to take her own life. No-one could tell me if she had heard about the Archduke’s assassination before she died, or if her wits had simply wandered after fearing that I would stray.

  ‘The Archduke’s chauffeur, Leopold, had miraculously reappeared—there seemed to be some mystery in his absence to which I was not privy—and I was asked to stand down. Later, I understood that all despatches would suggest he was with the Archduke when he died, and I, a lowly mechanic, was erased from history. You see now, sir, the burden I carry.’

  ‘I think I understand perfectly.’

  ‘I am responsible for nothing less than the deaths of thousands—millions for all I know—for just two months after Franz Ferdinand’s death, Austria-Hungary declared war against Serbia, and this great conflict in which we now find ourselves began, and it seems it may never stop until all the world is dead.’

  ‘You could argue that the Archduke’s assassination was not the only starting pistol for the war in which we are now engulfed.’ said the Conductor. ‘I believe there were other causes for the commencement of the conflict: nationalism, imperialism, militarism.’

  ‘No, sir, I will not be absolved so easily. The fact remains that if the Archduke Franz Ferdinand had not been struck down, we would not have declared war on Serbia when we did, and thereby set into motion a chain of disastrous alliances that spilt Europe in twain. And his death could have been avoided.’

  ‘I sympathise with your fatal role,’ said the Conductor, unlatching the door of the observation car and slowly sliding it open. ‘You saw the day’s events reversing themselves, your foot not slipping from the accelerator, the perfume bottle not spreading oil across the sole of your shoe, the glance from the Princess not incensing your wife. A single look was all it took, and now the world has been shifted on its axis. It has taken the road to Hell and damnation.’

  ‘You read my mind,’ said Franz, looking down at the racing tracks. ‘I have suffered with this pain for two long years. With each passing day the death toll rises, and I think to myself that it could all have so easily been avoided.’

  ‘But that is what fate always makes you think,’ said the Conductor. ‘That is the role of destiny.’

  ‘Be that as it may, I now find that this is not a burden with which I wish to live any longer.’

  ‘The world does not know that you are responsible for its greatest tragedy,’ the Conductor admitted. ‘Unless you plan to tell them?’

  Franz felt inside his jacket and removed an envelope. ‘Again, you read my mind. I have taken the time to write down my true version of the events. Can you make sure that it reaches the right authorities?’

  ‘You know there is a way for you to be absolved.’ The Conductor urged him on. ‘You cannot change what will be now—you have unwittingly helped me in my own cause by speaking of this—but you can bring your own misery to an end.’

  ‘Yes,’ Franz agreed, looking down. ‘I belong with the innocent dead.’

  ‘They will take comfort in the knowledge that you have joined them. All you have to do is take one simple step. All this pain can be over in a moment.’

  Franz shifted his weight and extended his crushed foot above the abyss. The train was hammering over a raised section of the track. Far below, the black woods fell away to a rock-strew ravine beset by hungry wolves.

  Franz turned to look into the Conductor’s coal-dark eyes. ‘We humans are weak,’ he said sadly. ‘One glance from a woman is all it takes to destroy the world of men.’ And with that he let go of the hand-rail, falling out of the train. His body tumbled over and over, and was rushed away into the ravine.

  The Conductor locked the observation car gate and turned away, smiling faintly to himself. ‘An act of self-destruction, Franz,’ he whispered with relish. ‘A sacrificial suicide is all it takes to oil the wheels of fate once more. Now that your offering has been made, we can test the mettle of our new passengers. How I always love the start of the journey.’

  He set off along the carriage, content in the knowledge that the game had been set in motion. ‘So,’ he said to himself, ‘it begins.’ Looking toward the guard’s van, he sensed that something terrifying had just been woken, and his smile widened.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THE SCRATCHING

  THOMAS AND MIRANDA sat beside each other. The Conductor had set out two wooden chairs, one on either side of the trestled coffin.

  ‘Well, this is a fine way to travel, I must say,’ Thomas complained. ‘Separated from the other passengers, in the company of the dead.’

  ‘If you had made better plans, we would not have been reduced to this,’ said Miranda. She sighed. ‘My mother had high hopes for me. She saw me in the millinery business, running my own company in Regent Street with a staff of young ladies at my command, outfitting the children of the high-born; not married to a country vicar, serving teas, surrounded by colicky babies. Thank God she cannot see me now.’

  ‘Yes, I know all about your mother’s plans,’ Thomas murmured. ‘They were the death of your father. The women in your family have always been strong-willed.’

  ‘Only because the men were weak. My mother is an Emancipationist, but freedom requires capital.’ Miranda reached out her hand and pressed it against the cool mahogany of the coffin. ‘Royalty, Mr Scheffen said. That’s why we must accompany him.’

  Thomas recognized the gleam in his wife’s eye and feared it. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He died tragically young. He is to be buried in his family regalia.’ She looked back at the coffin with dark shining eyes. ‘With his gold medals, his sceptre and sword, a hilt studded with precious jewels. They must be guarded from thieves and brigands. We are in bandit country. It is a task that carries responsibility. This is why we were selected. We are English, after all, and therefore entirely trustworthy.’

  The van swayed and Miranda’s head, filled with dreams of pomp and ceremony, began to droop. Thomas was left alone to watch the coffin. The train was slow
ing down. He rose and peered from the only window, little more than a narrow slit. There was a large sliding door, but it was bolted shut—somewhat insecurely, it seemed to Thomas.

  A dense billowing fog was sinking down from the surrounding palisade of pine trees to envelop the train. The wheels turned ever more slowly, the pistons sighing like bellows.

  The Arkangel crept cautiously through the fog. Thomas cupped his hands against the glass, trying to see, but visibility had dropped to almost nothing.

  ‘As silent as death,’ he whispered. ‘Can’t find a thing out there.’

  Miranda’s chin was touching the green-beaded bodice of her dress-coat. He returned to his seat beside the coffin. The train had fallen silent, but for the creaking of the carriages.

  He listened intently, and heard a faint sound. A scratching, like a squirrel scrabbling for a nut, or a rat dying in a wall. He rose once more and tried to trace the sound. There were very few items in the guard’s van that might hide a rodent.

  There it was again.

  It seemed to be coming from inside the coffin. But that wasn’t possible. Thomas put his ear to the casket.

  Skritch—skritch.

  Startled, he jumped back.

  ‘Miranda!’ He touched her shoulder and she raised her sleep-filled eyes to him.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Can you hear something?’

  She listened for a moment. ‘No, not a thing.’

  Thomas hushed her and raised a finger. ‘There it is again! Listen...’

  She humoured him by listening, but heard nothing. Turning, she saw the murk outside forming dew against the glass. ‘It’s the fog. It muffles everything.’

  ‘No, inside. You can’t hear that?’

  She shook her head, genuinely perplexed. ‘No.’

  Thomas’s raised finger tilted down and slowly came to a stop above the casket lid. ‘You must be able to.’ Back in Henley-Upon-Thames he had occasion to help himself to a nip of whisky, and she usually heard the top coming off the bottle from the floor above. ‘It’s coming from in there.’

  ‘Don’t be absurd. There is a corpse inside.’

  ‘What if he’s not dead?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Inside—I could hear him while you were asleep, scratching at the lid. What if he’s still alive?’

  Miranda stared at her husband as if he had lost what little of his wits was left to him. ‘Don’t be so absurd.’

  ‘Listen, can you really hear nothing?’

  ‘No. You must try to set aside such fantasies.’

  But Thomas watched the coffin in horror, listening for sounds from within. He imagined the casket’s silken interior being torn to shreds by broken fingers. Hands clawing away at the lid with cracked and bleeding nails.

  Skritch—skritch.

  ‘There it is again!’ The sound was clearer this time. A definite double scratch, as if it were caused by fingernails snagging and dragging down the silken lining of the casket. Could Miranda really hear nothing at all?

  Thomas stared at the coffin, then reached forward and ran his hands around its lid. The seal was tight, but he could not discover how the top had been locked.

  ‘I wonder what is in the paperwork Mr Scheffen gave you?’ he asked.

  Miranda looked inside the folder the undertaker had left them. She took out a heavy vellum envelope and broke the seal, tearing it open, tipping out its contents.

  ‘Miranda!’ he cried, horrified. ‘I meant that there might be some kind of medical note. That is private and not for our eyes!’

  ‘We’ll say it was damaged in transit.’ She scanned the pages. ‘It contains details for a state funeral. Invitations to be edged with black silk. Incense burners and sobbing mourners. Laid to rest amid an angelic choir. The pecking order of the pallbearers. Contents of the casket. Gold chains and the royal Carpathian seal, inlaid with rubies and emeralds.’ She rubbed her forehead, overpowered by the images in her head. ‘I need to think.’

  Thomas continued to stare at the casket. The noise of scratching filled his head. He imagined the inside of the coffin, an emaciated monarch gasping for air.

  He clamped his hands over his ears. ‘Perhaps it is merely... a rat. That’s it, a rat. Or insects.’

  As Thomas looked back at Miranda, the scratching suddenly stopped. Had it merely been his overworked imagination? The stress of the war, the disaster of the touring holiday, their escape? Thomas continued to stare at his wife. ‘You really cannot hear anything?’

  ‘No, Thomas, only the breathing of the train.’

  ‘Then I alone must suffer this sound.’

  Miranda attempted sympathy. ‘Perhaps your mind is a little overexercised. Hardly surprising under the circumstances, having to earn our passage home like common travellers.’

  But the scratching started up again.

  Skritch-skritch.

  Thomas watched his wife intently. It was clear she heard nothing at all unusual. He examined the coffin more carefully this time. Under the edge of the lid, a red wax seal ran unbroken.

  He looked down at the contents of Mr Scheffen’s envelope and sorted through it, finding a second item his wife had missed. Splitting the seal of the tiny rectangular envelope, he tugging the card free and read through it.

  ‘What if he wasn’t dead, Miranda?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  Thomas held up the note accompanying the body and displayed it to her.

  ‘The death certificate.’

  ‘You censured me for looking at the funeral seating plans, but now you examine his private medical records.’

  ‘It says the carrier suffered epileptic fits. Epilepsy! I’ve heard it can appear as a death-like trance. What if he’s still alive?’

  ‘He would have been pronounced deceased by doctors. The casket is tightly sealed.’

  ‘But they are the ones who sealed it.’

  ‘You heard our benefactor. The man inside this casket was declared dead, and the dead do not come back to life!’

  Skritch-skritch-skritch-skritch. Louder than ever before.

  Thomas was a man possessed. He tried to tear open the lid of the coffin with his fingers, but could not manage it. Then he rose and began searching for something to open it with.

  ‘You are imposing your own fears on this, Thomas,’ his wife warned. ‘You are afraid that someone else might suffer the fate you dread! Can you not see that?’

  ‘Help me find something that can prise off the lid.’

  ‘What if he died of the plague? A terrible contagion? Perhaps the death certificate lies. Perhaps that is why the coffin had to be accompanied.’

  ‘The mortician knew about his epilepsy. He wanted to cover up the truth. Imagine; a crown prince dissents in time of war, and has to go. A conspiracy. This man died trying to get out. I know, because he is still clawing at the lid.’

  Miranda looked at her husband in horror. ‘Thomas, this has gone quite far enough. We must do as we are told or we won’t be paid. You’ll take some hot tea and pull yourself together. I will find us some.’ And she rose to her feet, leaving the guard’s van.

  Thomas sat miserably alone with the prince’s coffin. All was quiet. He tapped the side of his head experimentally, trying to find out what was wrong. Too many years spent in hushed cloisters, too much time passed in guilty denials, a marriage in haste that he now had leisure to regret—were these finally leaving the marks of madness upon him, as they had his poor father? Is it me, he asked himself, or whatever’s inside that great mahogany thing?

  And suddenly the terrible noise returned, the loudest yet. As if hypnotised, Thomas approached the coffin.

  He saw that it had two slender locks built into the wood, one for each part of the lid, which was divided in two at chest height. He sought the envelope again and turned it out, but found no keys. How were those on the far side of the Channel meant to pay their final respects to their relative if they had not been provi
ded with access? Slowly he bent down and peered through one of the keyholes.

  A single red eye, as bloody as a sunset, suddenly appeared on the other side, staring furiously back at him.

  Thomas leapt away in shock just as Miranda reappeared with a small tin urn of tea. Had he just imagined what he’d seen?

  His wife had a look of steely slyness on her face that he saw whenever she was planning a stratagem. ‘I have been thinking,’ she said, seating herself beside him. ‘A member of the Carpathian royal family. You’re right. The royals are not like us. We should check inside, just to be sure. Try and find something to open it with.’

  That’s the answer, let her see for herself, and then we shall know if I am mad, he thought. They looked for something they could use to open the coffin. Thomas dug into his valise and produced a tiny pocket-knife, with which he tried to pick the lock.

  ‘Get out of my way, Thomas.’ Miranda had found a stoker’s coal shovel almost as big as herself. She raised the shovel and wedged the blade into the edge of the coffin lid, pushing with all her might. There was a hiss of air as the wax seal started to crack apart.

  ‘We’ll say this was damaged in transit as well, when the train braked suddenly,’ she told him, giving the spade another whack. ‘Say the casket was insecurely tethered.’ With the third blow, the top half of the lid splintered and broke open. ‘Come on then, don’t just stand there like a useless article, give me a hand.’

  Thomas slammed back the lid and studied the interior silk lining. It was criss-crossed with bloody scratches and pieces of rotten fingernail. Miranda threw her hand across her mouth at the stench.

  ‘You see, Miranda? He was alive! He might still be saved...’

  ‘Can you not smell? That’s putrifaction! How could he still be alive?’ Miranda leaned forward and peered inside, but it was hard to see in the gloom of the guard’s van. ‘Pass me a lantern.’ She pointed to the oil lamp in the corner. ‘Do you have a Lucifer?’