Insomnia: Paranormal Tales, Science Fiction, & Horror

by Saul Tanpepper

The drive to the park-and-ride was quick, the lunch hour rush unexpectedly thin. Ellen had turned on the radio to get the news, but then she turned it off again, suddenly weary of the constant barrage of dreary reports: strange weather, riots, poverty, war. It seemed like the world was going to hell, and it was taking the express train to get there. There was another power outage in Manhattan, in a place called The Wastes. In the last decade or so, the area had fallen into decay. Overcrowding and high unemployment were partially to blame, but so was the government. The National Guard had gone in to squash the riots five years back and ended up becoming an almost permanent presence there.

  Thankfully, the tracks only skirted the western edge of The Wastes.

  After paying for her ticket, she found a table at the small café facing her platform (number eleven). From here, she could keep an eye out for her train. It hadn’t pulled in yet, but the clock above her indicated that it was due to arrive at any moment. After unloading its passengers, it would board for twenty minutes. Then she’d be on her way.

  She tried calling home again, relieved to see that she now had a full set of bars.

  She could hear the call connect, could hear the canned sound of the ringing on the other end.

  The train pulled in, screeching to a stop against the bumpers, letting off loud hisses of steam. People waiting on the platform began move, the crowd coalescing in the vicinity of the doors.

  They opened and passengers began to stream out.

  After two dozen rings, Ellen angrily pushed the disconnect button. Still no answering machine.

  Last Christmas, while shopping with her mother at the mall, she’d suggested that they get mobile phones to replace their ancient landline. Her parents stubbornly resisted, arguing that they liked the fact that they couldn’t be reached twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, that they could just turn the answering machine off if they wanted to. Not that they ever did. Until, apparently, today, of all days.

  “You can turn off your cell phone,” she’d told them. “Or mute the ringer.”

  “I like our old fashioned phone, El,” her mother had countered. And maybe that was the point: her parents were old fashioned; new technology made them uncomfortable.

  Except cell phones weren’t exactly new technology anymore.

  Ellen now wished she’d pushed her mother harder to let her get them the mobile. She should’ve just ignored her and gotten them one anyway. At least with a cell phone, she could send them a text.

  An announcement was made that the train for Washington was now boarding and would be departing in twenty minutes.

  She tried Erik’s number and was relieved—and surprised—to hear his voice. He was supposed to be in school, although it was possible he was at lunch.

  “Hello?”

  “Erik, it’s El—”

  “Suckah! You’re outta luck. I’m either off torching some zoms in Omega Land or slamming some serious hoop with my buds, so—”

  Ellen shut her phone and uttered a sound of frustration before realizing she should’ve waited and left a message. She tried again. This time, she’d leave a reminder to tell their parents about her arrival that evening.

  But the line was busy.

  She counted a full sixty seconds before dialing a third time. This time, the call connected. She counted rings. After the fifteenth, she knew it wasn’t going to take her to voicemail. Apparently Erik’s mailbox was full.

  “Now boarding on Platform Eleven for Washington,” the announcement sounded. “Departing in ten minutes.”

  “Damn it,” Ellen whispered.

  Her parents had gotten them the phones several years before. They just renewed the plan every year without bothering to change anything. The package they subscribed to allowed them a fifty-message voicemail limit. This wasn’t a problem for Ellen, but Erik wasn’t very good about purging his mailbox. And with the amount of time he spent on his phone, it was easy to imagine how quickly it would fill up.

  She tried once more. Even if she didn’t leave a message, she knew the attempt would come up as a missed call the next time he checked his phone. Hopefully, he would see that she’d tried to call him several times and that would jog his memory enough so that he’d remember she was coming home a day earlier than expected and pass along the message to their parents. If he hadn’t already.

  “Doubt it.”

  The busboy at the next table looked up and over at her. “Excuse me?”

  Ellen shook her head. She hurriedly stood up and gathered her backpack and laundry bag and made her way down the platform. Before stepping onto a car, she sent him a text: Tell rents I need p/u @ 9pm 2nite. Don’t 4get!

  Twelve minutes later, she was racing south, into the lush greenness of Hyde Park, the smog and skyscrapers of Boston dwindling away in the distance behind her, the sounds of the iron wheels beneath her and the gentle rocking of the train lulling her into a state of semi-drowsiness that did little to dull her growing sense of unease.

  She should’ve demanded to talk with her parents when she’d had the chance this morning. She should have stayed on the phone until Erik handed it over to them. Or at least made him write down a message on the note pad that they kept by the phone. Pick Ellen up at Newland Station at nine o’clock. How hard could that be? But she’d done neither of those things.

  I was in a hurry, she tried to reason.

  The specter of self-doubt rose up inside of her. It had only been an occasional visitor in the past—except for those few desperate months toward the end of her senior year when she thought she was going to fail, she had always been very self-assured—but in recent weeks she had found herself in its company more and more often. She knew a lot of it had to do with the wedding. The major details had been pretty much settled: the church, the rehearsal dinner restaurant and the hall where the reception was going to be held, the pastor who would preside over the ceremony. But now worry over the caterer had been like a heavy cloak weighing her down, making her question everything.

  She tried to focus on the things that were set. The flower girl and ring bearer were chosen (Ellen’s cousin and Todd’s nephew, respectively). The tuxes were reserved. The dresses were ordered. Everyone had been measured and fitted and, under threat of certain death, made to promise to keep their weight within a pound or so.

  Ellen smiled to herself, remembering Todd’s seriousness in the matter.

  All of his attendants were much older than hers. Most of them were already married and in their forties and fifties. Todd had so few friends his age. Their age, she corrected herself. It seemed strange, given that he worked on games for young people, but most of the programmers and engineers he’d introduced Ellen to all bordered on middle age. And whenever she was with them, they always seemed to be telling private jokes that she couldn’t understand.

  But she wasn’t marrying his friends, was she? Of course not.

  Still…the doubting found ways to creep into her mind, making what was once solid ground ever less stable.

  Just last month, for example, she’d finally decided on which of the three sets of invitations to go with. But then, last night, in a moment of distraction from her studying, she’d taken a sample out to admire it. She’d suddenly realized how much she actually disliked the color, the font, the wording. Everything. In fact, she hated all three of the choices and had cried for an hour over it before finally getting a grip on herself.

  Todd had pushed those three designs. In fact, she realized then, all of the hundreds of little decisions they’d made had somehow been all to his favor, from the choice of cake to the colors to the wedding date.

  She wondered, perhaps not for the first time, how many of those decisions were actually influenced by his mother.

  For just a split second, she hated him. She hated them both.

  “Nerves,” she’d told herself. “You’re just getting nervous.”

  She knew it wasn’t his fault. She’d always suspected that his mother pushed him hard. She knew the woman dis
liked what he did for a living.

  Ellen knew she should be grateful for Todd’s intervention. He protected her from his mother, providing a buffer from Mrs. Previn’s iron will. Still…

  Stop it!

  Guilt had washed over her then, smothering nearly all of the other emotions. But it hadn’t entirely erased the self-doubt.

  “I’m getting married,” she whispered to herself. “I want to get married. To—“

  Levi’s name and face drifted into her thoughts. The way his bare chest had heaved as he struggled to catch his breath. The way he’d smelled.

  “I want to marry Todd.”

  She curled her body into a ball on the train’s bench seat to preserve her warmth. The sky outside had soon changed from a muddy, smoggy patina to a silvery gray glint, and now it was a roiling mixture of tar and brown sea foam. Rays of sunlight struggled to penetrate through the clouds, streaking down in moments of absolute brilliance before being quickly extinguished by the shifting clouds. The train car had grown chilly and she now wished she’d worn a sweater beneath her thin wind breaker.

  “I want to get married,” she repeated, but her thoughts passed once again from Todd to the boys playing catch at school. To Levi and his boyish smile and the warmth of his fingers when they’d touched her for that one brief moment.

  She shook her head, as if trying to shake the image from it. Maybe her parents had been right after all. Maybe they were too young.

  She sighed and took out her phone. They were passing through a forested area now—no buildings in sight—and her phone was unable to find a signal. Soon, though, they’d be entering Connecticut. She’d get a signal in Hartford, if not sooner. She’d try calling home again then. And if not then, maybe in Manhattan.

  She thumbed through the menu on her phone to her game folder and opened up the Angry Zoms app and began to play, taking out her frustration on the cartoon zombie with Erik’s face.

  She tried as much as she could to avoid playing video games while at school. It wasn’t that she considered them as beneath her. On the contrary. She had a talent for becoming addicted to the things. She could blow four or five hours totally immersed in the stupidest games, even simple ones like mahjongg or Tetris. In fact, she’d spent half of her senior year in high school playing Bejeweled and ended up almost failing out. How Todd could do it without losing himself like she almost had was beyond her comprehension. Erik, too.

  Ellen winced, realizing how much alike the two boys really were, how much they had in common with each other. She wasn’t sure she liked that.

  “A game about zombies?” she’d said, more confused than amused when Todd had told her he’d uploaded it to her phone. “What makes you think I’d need something like that?”

  “Need? No, but I thought you’d like it. It’s just a silly game. You’ll like it.”

  She’d hit him then. On the arm. Hard. She wanted to be taken seriously. She didn’t want him thinking she spent time on silly little games.

  He’d laughed. “Just check it out, El. There’s a surprise.”

  He was right. Zoms was funny and cute. Silly. And despite its name, it wasn’t gory in the least. And the surprise? Todd had reprogrammed it so that it was Erik’s pasty little face in place of the cartoon ones. Even Erik had thought it was hilarious. Her brother thought the world of Todd.

  Of course, it didn’t hurt that when ArcWare launched their epic battle game saga Omega Wars last year, Todd made sure Erik got the whole package, including all the gear and posters. Erik lived and breathed the game. Ellen found it disturbingly violent and nightmarishly realistic. Literally. The one time she’d watched her brother playing it, she’d ended up having nightmares.

  Angry Zoms, on the other hand, was just her speed. Besides, flinging Erik around on a virtual catapult and beheading him—or at least his likeness—with a digitized silver scimitar was good entertainment. It was one harmless little guilty pleasure she allowed herself.

  As long as she only played the game when she was stuck on the train.

  Hours later—Ellen wasn’t immediately aware exactly how many hours—she felt the train lurch as the brakes applied to slow itself down. The metal wheels screeched against the steel tracks. A woman in a thick tawny-colored overcoat making her way down the aisle from the bathroom stumbled, caught herself, continued on past Ellen.

  At first she’d thought it was the woman from before, the one who’d been mugged, but then she saw that it wasn’t, just someone with a similar coat.

  Ellen peered out through her window. The sky was even darker now; the sunlight, when it pierced through, streaked across the sooty haze at a much lower angle. They were passing an area filled with industrial-looking buildings, boxy gray structures that looked like warehouses or metal shops or military barracks. She recognized the view. They were on the outskirts of New York City, the fringes of The Wastes. She’d totally missed Connecticut.

  She raised her arms and stretched. Others around her were doing the same, beginning to rouse themselves, shaking out their stiff muscles, waking up.

  The digital clock near the ceiling at the front of the car said it was a quarter till five. Just like that, four hours had flown by as if it was mere minutes. That was what video games did to her.

  But now she was upset to find that the battery in her phone was showing red. She exited the game, then quickly dialed her parents’ phone number again. But the train dove into a tunnel, plunging the passengers into darkness, stripping away her signal and cutting off the call. The phone made a metallic clicking noise, then went silent.

  “Crap!”

  The yellowish lights above her blinked on. The train sped up, but she only knew this by the accelerating rhythm of the clacks as they passed over sections of track. They made a sweeping right turn and the tunnel narrowed. Now she could see the light from the cars reflecting ghost-like off the walls. Every so often, a doorway or dark opening would flash past, but otherwise the tunnel was plain and bare and wholly unremarkable.

  She fully expected the train to maintain its speed, so when they began to slow, she looked up, startled. She wasn’t the only one to notice the deviation.

  The wheels squealed, and the train came to an abrupt stop, jerking her nearly from the seat.

  Silence reigned throughout the car for several moments as people rose and entered the aisles, glancing around at each other in surprise. Ellen saw at least three people try their cell phones, but she knew they’d be disappointed. One-by-one, they lowered them without reaching anyone.

  People were starting to talk to their neighbors. Looks of confusion turned to scowls of impatience.

  “What the hell’s going on?” she heard someone yell.

  Ellen stood up and twisted the kinks from her back and neck.

  “Going far?”

  It was the woman in the tan coat.

  “Excuse me?”

  The woman heaved herself parallel to Ellen’s seat, reaching a wrinkled hand out toward the back and pulling herself forward. Her fingers were misshapen, arthritic, and she wheezed as she stepped closer.

  “Going far…tonight?”

  She wasn’t a heavy woman, but she was old and parts of her body dangled loosely from her frame, dripping like melted wax. Her skin was mottled, different shades of the same color as her coat.

  With a grunt, the woman settled into the seat beside Ellen and closed her eyes. After a moment, she looked over, patted the cushion next to her with her hand, as if to invite Ellen to sit with her. Ellen found this amusing, considering she’d been sitting there already. She sat back down.

  “I’m going all the way to the end,” she said, in answer to the woman’s question. “To DC. You?”

  “No.” The woman’s breath was hot and dry and smelled faintly of sour cheese. “Washington’s just a stopover for me. I’ve got a lot further to go.”

  Ellen furrowed her eyebrows in confusion. DC was the end of the line. Or maybe the woman was catching a connecting train to some point beyond.<
br />
  Beyond, her brother’s voice echoed in her head.

  The woman smiled and extended her hand. “I’m Mary,” she said. Her teeth were white and flat and perfectly aligned. Dentures.

  “Ellen.”

  The hand was bitterly cold and bony. Ellen shivered, thinking how hard it must be for a body to keep itself warm with such thin skin and so little flesh.

  The woman closed her eyes and exhaled.

  “Do you know what’s going on?” Ellen asked. “Why are we stopped?”

  The lights above them flickered. Ellen became aware of a slight buzzing sound, apparently emanating from the fixtures. She hadn’t noticed it before.

  The woman didn’t answer.

  Ellen turned back to the window and tried not to worry.

  “So young.”

  Ellen turned back to her companion. “Sorry?”

  “Are you in school, dear?”

  Ellen frowned. She didn’t know what it was exactly, but something about the woman unsettled her.

  “Boston Technical,” she finally answered.

  The woman didn’t acknowledge the reply. In fact, she appeared to be asleep.

  “I’m studying sociology and psychology. It’s a dual major. I’m hoping to work for the United Nations someday, or maybe the govern—”

  The woman snorted. Ellen couldn’t be sure if it was a laugh or a snore. Not that mattered. She was used to people zoning out like this whenever she talked about her career plans.

  Other passengers in the car were growing more anxious. She could hear people shouting elsewhere on the train, growing more vocal in their irritation.

  “There’s been a fire.”

  Ellen looked over. The old woman was staring at her, her eyes wide, limpid pools. They were completely black—or would be were it not for the silver threads of cataracts spreading over their surfaces, like a pond ice creeping from the edges in winter. Ellen drew her thin jacket tighter around her.

  “Fire? On the train?”

  The woman shook her head. “Up ahead.”

  “Where then? How do you know?”

  The woman chuckled and lifted her hand from her coat pocket. In it was a transistor radio, and now Ellen noticed the thin black wire that snaked its way up the outside of her sleeve and into her opposite ear.