Off Track

by Neil Bullock

  There’s a faint smell of something that reminds me of a spring day in a forest, and a pleasant warmth that I can’t identify the source of. The carriage is absolutely silent, even when we begin to move. I snap my head to the side in shock, though I don’t really know what I expected to happen. Trains go places. It’s the whole point. I move to the window seat and watch dumbfounded as we start to rise into the sky, the supermarket outside growing smaller and smaller beneath us until I lose it in the darkness. I don’t know how high we are when we stop ascending, but I feel the point where we start moving forward, slowly at first, then gaining speed.

  My stomach lurches as we suddenly pass out of what I would recognize as the world and into something altogether more upsetting. Outside the windows are amorphous gray shapes stretching as far as I can see. At first, it’s difficult to differentiate one from another, but the more I stare, the clearer the boundary between each one seems. They twist and swirl and seem to advance on the train, then pull back. They undulate and form spirals, then straighten out again. They pulsate. Some flash white. Some dim to near-black. Some resemble horrible tentacles. I touch my fingers to the glass, mesmerized, until I realize the shapes further away are much more languid than the ones close to me. They’re dancing for me, vying for my attention. They want me to see them. The feeling comes unbidden: I want them to know I’ve seen them. I want to open the window and go to them, to float among them. I tap on the window and almost at once, hundreds of them dart over to that exact spot on the far side of the glass, flitting back and forth like ghostly fish in an aquarium. I exhale shakily, then stand. There are thick cloth curtains on each of the windows in here, and I waste no time in closing all of them.

  I frown, and gaze around the carriage, hoping to spot the next inexplicable thing that will happen. When nothing does, I figure I’m done in here. I grab my water and my bottle of Oxy, then head for the door through to what I assume must be the next carriage. I’m almost right: it’s another vestibule, more or less identical to the first, but the carpet is less tatty, and this one has four doors. One behind me, one on either side, leading to that swirling gray hell, now plainly visible again with no way to block it out, and one directly ahead. To the left of this one is another noticeboard.

  I hit the open button and step through into a narrow corridor. The carpet is the same as the last carriage, but the light fixtures are slightly less ornate. Sturdy looking wooden doors line the walls, five to a side. A sleeping car, I guess. Good to know.

  I’m about to move on when I notice that each door has a gold colored plaque at eye level, and the one first on my right has three words etched into it.

  Eden Isabel Lucas.

  I blink. That’s me.

  “Uhh,” I say, mostly out of surprise. What does it mean that I have a room on an impossible train? A room with my name on the door, etched into what I assume is probably brass. Who did that? And when? Did someone know I was coming? They must have. That’s worrying. It occurs to me for the first time that just because this train might have living humans aboard, that doesn’t automatically mean I want to meet them.

  After staring at the door like an idiot for several minutes, I reach out and touch the handle. Nothing untoward happens, so I depress it and push the door inward. My mouth drops open as I step inside, and I close the door behind me.

  “What the…” This is my room. Not exactly, of course, but if I had a space this shape and size, this is how I would organize it. There’s a bed in the corner because I never quite got over the idea that monsters might live underneath, and putting my bed in the corner means they could only get to me from two directions. Next to the bed is a desk, and this isn’t a desk on par with the luxury items I’ve seen so far. This is a desk that looks like it came from Ikea. My kind of desk. Simple, functional, and affordable. I put the bottles of water and Oxy on it.

  In the corner diagonally opposite the bed is a round table and four chairs, behind which is a mini fridge and a couple of cupboards and drawer units. There are no real kitchen facilities, but there is a microwave on top of the fridge.

  Next, I cross to the window and pull the blind to block the ghost world outside, because looking at it feels like there’s something tugging on my brain. That done, I head to the fridge, pull the door open hard, like I’m accusing it of something, and find it’s stocked with all the things I like to eat. Cold cuts, half a watermelon, milk, yogurt, various types of cheese, and a variety of fruit juices. There’s even a full bottle of vodka in the freezer compartment, for Christ’s sake. This is basically my apartment, and someone has some serious explaining to do.

  I turn around and find a violin case in the other corner. I shake my head in dismay, but I must be getting into the swing of things because I’m not in the least bit surprised to find my violin in the case. Maybe it isn’t mine exactly, but it feels like it. It looks like it. The tiny scuff marks that are on my instrument are also on this one. Everything I need to play is here. Bow, rosin, even a small stack of sheet music. I examine the bow, apply rosin, pick up the violin and play a few experimental notes, then tune it. There’s even a familiarity to the timbre that makes it sound like my violin. How is that possible?

  I move to the bed and sit on the edge — it’s exceedingly comfortable, far better than anything I could afford, but exactly what I’d buy if money were no object. I pull all the stuff out of my pockets. My phone – long dead, not even having enough juice to tell me the battery is flat — a few loose coins, and my keys. I put them next to the water and Oxycodone, then flop back onto the mattress.

  Even if this train has a driver, I don’t know how to access them. There was no door into the locomotive in the first carriage’s vestibule. There were no doors or windows visible from outside, either. I’m going to have to hope that another passenger — if there are any — knows something.

  I still haven’t ruled out the idea that this whole situation is my brain misfiring as it slowly dies, but as everything feels so real, I decide I’m going to treat it that way. I need to figure out what the hell is going on, because none of this makes any sense. Call me crazy, but I like things to make sense.

  There are still two carriages that remain unexplored. I debate taking my stuff with me. There has to be someone else on board, or the sign on my door is literally impossible. I don’t want to lose the Oxy, I may still need it later. I open one of the desk drawers, looking for somewhere to hide the bottle and instead find a key that fits my room door, and that appears to solve that problem. If I think about it, it seems like that whoever operates this train might also have a key, but I figure I’m not going to be long. I abandon my stuff, leave the room and lock the door behind me.

  In the corridor, I examine each of the other nine doors. The first eight all have plaques like mine, but none of them bear words. The final one is a bathroom, identifiable by the little pictographs of a man and a woman on its plaque. Good to know, I guess.

  I turn and look back the way I’ve come. It’s a little frightening. The corridor really is very narrow, with barely enough room for two adults to pass without touching. If someone were to enter from the far side, and that someone was hostile, I would have nowhere to go but behind me, into the next carriage, and then where? To the end of the train? Not for the first time, I feel trapped. I shiver and, with an effort, turn my back to the corridor.

  I hit the open button on the door to the next carriage and freeze. It’s a dining car. There are four polished wooden tables, each surrounded by four matching chairs rendered in dark wood and deep red velvet. There’s a bar in one corner and what I assume is a small kitchen or storeroom walled off in the opposite corner, accessible by a plain white door.

  At the table in the center of the room sits the room’s only occupant: a grinning bald man.

  “I was wondering when you’d get here.”

  three

  Mitch

  “Who the hell are you?” I ask, far more abruptly than I mean to.

&
nbsp; The man tips his head back and roars with seemingly genuine laughter, his cheeks gradually turning a slightly redder shade of pink. He laughs for so long that I start to fidget, feeling uncomfortable just standing in the doorway, apparently the subject of some hilarious joke I don’t understand. I frown and take a step forward.

  When he finally finishes, he looks at me and says, “My name is Mitch. Come in, won’t you? Have some… dinner, I guess. The steak is wonderful.”

  I take a few apprehensive steps into the dining car and peer over the back of the chair closest to me. Mitch does indeed have a plate with a large slab of steak, mashed potatoes and baby carrots, the pretentious kind that still have part of the stem attached. “Where did it come from?”

  “I have no idea!” Mitch says with a chuckle and a flamboyant shrug of the shoulders. “I just think about steak and a few minutes later, it appears in front of me.”

  “Well, that’s impossible.”

  Mitch gestures to his food with a wry smile. “And yet.”

  I move a little closer. “It’s dinner time?”

  He eyes me a bit more seriously now. “It’s whatever time you want it to be. There is no time on board.”

  I glare. “Am I supposed to know what that means?” I haven’t seen any clocks on board. My phone should have told me the time, but it was dead when I pulled it out of my pocket. It shouldn’t have been – I’d been keeping it switched off since the power went out – but I didn’t think much about its deadness earlier.

  Mitch says, “All right, so… wait, don’t freak out, okay? It’s a little weird when you first experience it.”

  I brace myself and wonder what’s about to happen to me. “Experience what?”

  A grin and a knowing look. “Can you tell me what year it was when you boarded the train?”

  “I… of course I can. It was… uh…” I can’t tell him. I haven’t got a clue. I bring my fingertips to my temples as if I can channel my thoughts like a hokey sideshow mind reader, but it doesn’t help. It’s not only the answer to his question that’s missing from my brain, it’s everything that fixes me in time. I can’t even remember the year I was born. “What the hell?”

  “I know. It’s strange, but you get used to it. It turns out time isn’t really that important if you allow it not to be.”

  I’m still reeling from the idea that something has removed information from my head, or rendered it inaccessible, but a question occurs. “You’ve been here a while, then?”

  He grins at me again. “I don’t know. I can count the number of sleeps I have, or the number of dinners, that kind of thing. I etched it on the wall of my compartment for a while. I remember that number was close to a hundred, but then one day I woke up and it was gone. I’ve tried writing it on paper, but the paper eventually disappears. I stopped trying.”

  I’m not sure how I feel about this. Time is something humans use for so much. I feel untethered knowing that it’s suddenly beyond my reach. I resolve to try to remember rather than write down the number of sleeps I have. If I don’t write it down, it can’t be removed, right? Then again, if my date of birth is missing from my head, maybe nothing is safe.

  “Why don’t you sit down?” Mitch asks. “You look a little pale.”

  I surprise myself by joking, “This is my natural shade.” It’s not a funny joke, but Mitch roars with laughter a second time. I’m getting the impression that he’s one of those people it’s impossible not to get along with. He shoves out the chair opposite him with one foot and I park myself in it.

  “Good. That’s better. Now, might I ask your name?”

  “Oh, God, I’m sorry,” I shake my head slightly. My mom instilled a rigid sense of politeness into me. I think it’s understandable that other things have taken priority lately, but I still feel the tiniest bit mortified. “I’m Eden. Eden Lucas.” I hold out my hand across the table and Mitch takes it, gives it a gentle shake, then releases it. His hand is ice cold.

  “Oh, that’s perfect. I’m Mitch,” he tells me again. He’s clearly quite a lot older than I am, but I find it difficult to put a number on that. Maybe that’s a result of the inability to use time, or maybe it’s just that Mitch doesn’t have a very guessable age. He’s bald except for the sides of his head, which are covered in thinning gray hair, and he has a scraggly gray beard with flecks of blond. All of that suggests he’s maybe late fifties, early sixties, but his eyes are a striking dark brown and his skin taut and radiant.

  “Nice to meet you,” I say, the familiar rhythms of social interaction making me feel a bit more like myself. “And I mean that. It’s been a really stressful few days.”

  His face assumes a somber expression. “Ah. The stories you hear on this train are some of the most interesting, though often horrible, stories you will ever hear in your life. When you’re ready to tell me yours, I will be all ears.”

  “What makes you think I’m not ready now?” I’m not, but he doesn’t know that. Right now, I’d be surprised if I ever want to talk about anything that happened to me again.

  “I didn’t want to presume. Would you like to hear how I ended up on board? I’ve told this story so many times it’s lost its power over me.”

  A steak suddenly appears on a plate in front of me. It’s accompanied with mashed potatoes and carrots. I flinch and Mitch grins. “Did you do that?” I ask.

  He nods, clearly very pleased with himself.

  My stomach makes a low rumbling sound, and I realize how hungry I am. I have barely eaten since I left Portland. “I’d love to hear how you ended up here,” I say, then start eating. The steak is divine, pink and juicy in the middle and perfectly seared on the outside, with seasoning aplenty.

  He speaks carefully, slowly, as if he’s afraid he might miss some detail or other. “It was late winter, February or early March, I think, and my wife, Melissa, and I were on our way to visit our son, Thomas. We lived in Chicago, him in Idaho. I never understood why he moved to Idaho to tell you the truth, but there you go. It had been snowing in the days preceding our little trip, and though all the snow had been pushed to the side of the road, there was still a lot of it around. We set off late into the day, which was a mistake as it turns out. The sun was low in the sky already at the time of year, but it was dipping toward the horizon.”

  I put down my knife and fork and hold Mitch’s gaze, not liking where this is going.

  “I guess it was the glare from the piled-up snow and the low sun that did it, but suddenly I find myself staring at the back of a semi-trailer and still doing fifty-five miles per hour. I hadn’t seen it. We hit it, and Melissa, who was never very good at remembering to wear her seatbelt, was thrown through the windshield.”

  My eyes widen. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this.

  Mitch drops his gaze to the table. “I wore my seatbelt but it was still a pretty old car. Not very safe. My legs were crushed. I was trapped. I tried calling to Melissa, but she was face down on the road, not moving. I screamed for help, and of course, help came. People crowded around Mel, and around me. I started drifting in and out of consciousness, but I swear the last thing I remember is pulling myself from the wreck of my car. There was nobody around, Melissa was gone, as were the paramedics, but none of that seemed very important. I remember seeing a train, just beyond the tree line at the side of the road. This train. All black, except for a bright red line down the side. Then, despite my legs being crushed, and despite the fact I was trapped, I found myself walking to the train and climbing aboard, and here we are.”

  I’m staring at him, mouth agape. When he finishes speaking, I say, “My God, I’m so sorry.”

  “Thank you, Eden. Eat your steak, it’s getting cold.”

  I take a reluctant bite, chew, swallow, then try to figure out how to respond to his story. He said it had lost its power over him, but I don’t think that’s true. It seems clear to me that he doesn’t want to discuss it further, and I can’t blame hi
m. I think for a moment. “You said the train had a red line down the side?”

  He nods.

  “It had a white line when it came for me. Do you know that that means?”

  He shakes his head. “No. I know it changes, though. There’s a carriage further down the train that has a bunch of displays the same color. I don’t know what the point of it is. I can show you later if you like.”

  I nod eagerly and take a bite of mashed potatoes. They are salty and buttery and wonderful. When I’ve swallowed, I ask, “So, do you know what this train is? Where it’s going?”

  His eyes get a faraway look in them, “Isn’t it obvious?” My blank gaze must make it plain that it is not, so he continues. “It’s not like this in scripture, but I think this train must be our ticket to the afterlife. To eternal paradise. To Heaven. That’s why your name is so perfect. Congratulations, Eden. You’re one of the lucky ones.”

  I concentrate on eating my food for some time, trying to make Mitch’s assertion fit with my reality. I didn’t die. I was the only one who didn’t. Why would I need a ride to Heaven? If what Mitch said is true, this train should be jam packed with millions, maybe billions of people, but I shouldn’t be among them. Given what I know about God, I’m far from convinced a heathen such as myself would be afforded a position in whatever passes for eternal paradise anyway. God never showed much regard for the people who did believe in him. Why would he show me any?

  I watch Mitch eating his own plate of food, his motions slow and deliberate. He chews delicately but rhythmically, like a machine. Does this seemingly sweet old man honestly believe that this train is taking him to Heaven?