Red Gloves, Volumes I & II

by Christopher Fowler

  A few minutes later he was disturbed by a faint noise. Twisting his neck, he looked up at the window. The planets above had all but vanished. Clouds were blotting them out.

  He heard the noise again, an uneven tinging sound like ice splitting under a frozen lake. As he listened it evolved and grew, a steady clink like keys swinging from a chain, a rattle backed by the hiss of compressed air. His muscles had frozen on the hard bench, but he swung down his legs and forced himself outside.

  The wind was rising, blasting bitter gusts along the platform. He saw two things: At one end of the canopy, the zigzag of electric torches backed by dark human shapes, moving quickly towards them. At the other end, the distant black bulk of an engine riding the silvered track. Jets of vapour appeared above it.

  ‘Get up,’ he hissed at Josh. ‘I think there’s a train.’

  ‘It’s not due for hours.’

  ‘You’d better hope there is one, ’cause I think they’ve found us.’

  Josh stumbled out onto the platform and looked along the line. ‘It has to be a goods train, it won’t stop, otherwise it would have been on the timetable.’

  Nick could clearly discern the outlines of several men now. They were silently running across the coal-black shale between the tracks, heading for the station stairs. He looked back at the train, a wavering shape that announced its arrival through the singing steel below the platform. Squares of yellow light bounced over the scrubland beside the line. ‘It’s a passenger train,’ he confirmed.

  —

  The maiden voyage of the Arkangel set the pattern for trips to come. The directors occupied the front carriage. Their respected guests spread through the second and third. As the train chuntered amiably through Wolsztyn, the parents pointed it out to their children; this was where the carriages had been so expertly crafted. Sandwiches were consumed as the train plunged on through dense forest. Conversation became more sporadic. The fathers fell quiet while their wives tended to the children. It was only when the conductor passed through the car with two officers at his back that the mood changed to uncertainty.

  —

  The rhythm of the wheels beat further apart. The train was slowing. As the engine passed trailing clouds of steam, Nick registered the elaborate brass plate fixed below the driver’s door: Arkangel. He looked over his shoulder and saw that the men were already on the platform. He could hear them shouting. They would attack long before the train could be boarded.

  As the two events converged, one overtook the other. The men were less than thirty metres away. The train was not slowing fast enough. Its brakes squealed, but the windows continued to flash past. Nick watched in helpless panic.

  Suddenly the group stopped running. They came no closer.

  The end-of-carriage door appeared beside Josh. It had an old-fashioned brass handle, not the electric kind controlled by the driver, and they were able to haul themselves inside. Idzi’s gang stood motionless, staring at them in bewilderment.

  The Arkangel had barely come to a halt before it began to draw out of the station once more. Beyond the far end of the platform was a level crossing. Perhaps it had merely slowed down as a safety precaution.

  They made their way along the corridor. The windows threw harsh light on the startled faces of their enemies. They showed neither anger nor disappointment at the escape. As the train cleared the platform, Nick lowered the nearest window and watched the station recede into blackness. The men had clicked off their torches and were already starting to disperse. It made no sense. Nothing about the night was making any sense.

  Nick took in their surroundings. The locomotive was an old steam engine, attached to a tender. It rode the rails sounding as if it had a beating metal heart. He had seen such machines in movies, but had never been aboard one. The carriages were old and shabbily luxurious, compartmented salons finished in green and cream paintwork, with inlaid wood panels and opaque glass light mantels.

  Letting themselves into one of the single compartments, they settled on green baize seats. The heating was off, but at least they were getting away. Nick smelled mothballs and damp wood, coal, tobacco and cracked old leather.

  The train had picked up speed and was now racing through dark woodlands.

  ‘I had a map,’ he announced. ‘It was in my travel bag. I think there’s only one railway line running out of Chelmsk. We have to reach the coast eventually.’

  Josh wiped a bloody smear across his cheek and closed his eyes. There was nothing to do but settle back and wait for the ticket inspector to reach them. They still had their wallets, passports and credit cards.

  ‘Have you looked at this train?’ Nick asked him. ‘The sconces have brass birds on them.’

  ‘Sconces?’ repeated Josh, opening one eye, incredulous. ‘What the hell are you on about?’

  ‘The fittings, the light fittings. They’re carved like birds of prey. The same design is etched on the mirrors.’

  Josh squinted up. ‘Are they wearing crowns?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘They’re eagles,’ he said, yawning. ‘Polish eagles. It’s an old train, what do you expect.’

  The weather was turning. The clouds that had buried the stars were now lowering over the treetops. Rain began to patter against the windows. The train laboured up an incline. Blasts of steam were rhythmically expelled from the engine’s lungs. The carriage rocked back and forth like a crib, but Nick was too wired to sleep. The rain beat audibly on the roof.

  He felt the carriage pass over a set of points. Rising, he swayed out into the corridor, pushed down the window once more and looked over. The train had passed onto a branch line that consisted of single track. The forest was so close now that the branches of trees were brushing the sides of the carriage.

  ‘I’m going to see if there’s anyone else on board,’ he called back to Josh. ‘I think we just left the main line.’

  ‘Do what you want.’ Josh rolled his head against the seat’s antimacassar, summoning sleep.

  Nick tacked along the rocking corridor. The crowned brass eagles were on the walls here, too, their wings outstretched. Josh was right; it was the Polish eagle. But these were different. Their talons were knotted together by a coiled, scaly snake. Brass door handles were anchored with spiked, feathery wings. There were more snakes, cut into the moiré patterns of the woodwork, stitched into the green linen blinds, etched in the glass panels of the compartment windows.

  There were only three carriages. In the third he found an elderly conductor, avuncular and dusty, with a luxuriant grey moustache. Seated on a tiny fold-down banjo stool, he had managed to fall asleep, which was a skill in itself. His uniform was not standard Polrail issue. A badge sewn onto his cap depicted the eagle tethered by the serpent. Nick shook him gently. The conductor seemed surprised to see him, and asked him something in Polish.

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand.’

  ‘I am asking where did you get on?’

  ‘At Chelmsk.’

  ‘We do not often stop there anymore.’ He sounded as if he might fall back to sleep at any moment.

  ‘Well, you slowed down long enough for us to climb aboard.’ Nick tugged his wallet free of his jeans pocket. ‘Can I buy two tickets?’

  ‘You do not need tickets.’

  ‘Surely I have to—ah—’

  ‘You have made a mistake by boarding this train.’

  ‘You don’t go to the coast?’

  ‘No, we don’t.’

  ‘Well, is there a station where we can get a connection?’

  ‘There is, and we must stop there, but it is not for you.’ He checked his watch and rose on old bones, grimacing. ‘If you knew about us you would not be here at all.’

  ‘It slowed down, so we got on.’

  ‘Well, you would not have done so.’ The conductor was turning to go, moving with difficulty, as if he was walking on artificial legs. Nick noticed that the knees of his trousers had been ripped and badly restitched by hand.

  �
��Hey, it was an innocent mistake.’ Nick had no idea why he was apologising.

  ‘No-one is innocent on board the Arkangel.’ He passed through the connecting passage into darkness.

  Nick made his way back along the carriages, passing the length of the train, but there was no-one else in any of the compartments. He returned to the sleeping Josh and sat opposite with his forehead against the cold glass, watching the streaking rain. A sudden compression of air in the carriage told him they were rushing through a station. A sign flashed before his eyes, defying him to comprehend it: Wolsztyn. Then it was gone and they were back out in open countryside.

  The wheels beat against the rail joints with a comforting clickety-clack. You never heard that sound on British trains anymore. The carriage rocked back and forth. The window shades rattled. A white flash illuminated the horizon, throwing the forest into relief. Seven, eight seconds, then thunder. The next gap was smaller. They were rolling into the storm.

  Josh twisted in his sleep. In the mists of his mind he could discern the faint outlines of menacing grey faces with dark eyes and open mouths. He was backing away from them along an endless raised platform, but was moving too slowly to stay beyond their reach. The poor yearning creatures were ragged and thin, barely corporeal, more like charcoal drawings than flesh and blood. They extended their arms desperately in his direction, moving nearer, yet even as he felt the brush of their cold fingers he thought they would not harm him. They merely sought human warmth. Their unwashed stench rose in his throat as they swarmed on every side, pressing their filthy hands into his mouth, pushing down against his ears and eyes, pulling him away from the world of the living…

  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 woul
d 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 towards 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?’