Ghost Train

by Stephen Laws

  STEPHEN LAWS

  GHOST TRAIN

  VALANCOURT BOOKS

  Dedication: For the Portland Club (1977-1981)

  Ghost Train by Stephen Laws

  Originally published in Great Britain by Beaufort Books in 1985

  First U. S. edition published by Tor in 1986

  First Valancourt Books edition 2019

  Copyright © 1985 by Stephen Laws

  Published by Valancourt Books, Richmond, Virginia

  http://www.valancourtbooks.com

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without prior written consent of the publisher, constitutes an infringement of the copyright law.

  Cover by M. S. Corley / mscorley.com

  Part One: Mark

  One

  It was another day in hell.

  Mark sipped his second cup of coffee and watched the bustling activity of early morning passengers through the window. He had been in the railway station for an hour and a half before the bitter cold finally drove him to the comparative warmth and safety of the cafe again. The coffee was awful but hot. Gradually, it warmed his frozen body, restoring feeling to his fingers as he cradled the cup in his hands. But it would not remove the icy knot of fear in his stomach.

  He gulped the coffee again, eyes tightly shut. Conscious of the constant, gnawing pain in his bones, he tried to black out the memory of what he had seen the night before. He had hoped beyond hope that it would not happen again. But it had happened again. Just as it always did. Just as it always would.

  It was late November in Newcastle, and although the sky had threatened for weeks, there was still no sign of snow. Just an icy, dank chill that seemed somehow more accentuated within the lofty, echoing vault of the Central Station. The second hand of the ancient clock hanging overhead juddered to the quarter hour, dislodging a pigeon which fluttered high up into the rafters to join its clustered companions. Mark watched as it finally found a place in the criss-cross framework of girders, and then his attention returned to the people hurrying purposefully about their business. For a long time he watched, trying to glean something – he didn’t know what – from the many faces which passed him. Their expressions were set and unforthcoming; intent only on their mysterious destinations.

  Come back . . .

  No!

  Mark tried to lose his thoughts in an examination of the people occupying the cafe. In the corner, an astro-fighter machine beeped electronic signals into space. From the other side of the partition which screened the bar, he could hear the spit and clatter of a one-armed bandit spewing coins into the winning tray, followed by the tinkling laughter of a young girl. A fat woman sat in the corner, looking like a bundle of rags tied in the middle, picking at something which had stuck in her teeth. A young couple engaged in secret whisperings. Two students with knapsacks. A middle-aged woman sipping tea, with two huge shopping bags at her feet.

  Come back, Mark . . .

  Behind the counter, a young girl stood by the cash register. No older than sixteen; dark haired and pretty. Giggling into the back of her hand at the carefully rehearsed spontaneity of the blue-coated boy collecting trays. The boy slotted tenpence into the juke-box, pushed a button, and John Lennon began to sing ‘Imagine’.

  Mark tried to lose himself in the lyrics, but the references to dreams and dreamers made him remember again. He screwed his eyes shut and tried to reorientate himself.

  ‘Is that the Daily Star, love?’

  The trampish woman who had been picking at her teeth was suddenly standing next to him, pointing at the newspaper which Mark had absently bought earlier in the day and which lay, unread, on his table. It could have been any newspaper. He hadn’t bothered to look.

  ‘Only I always fill in the bingo in the Daily Star, see?’

  ‘Take it . . .’

  The old woman scooped up the newspaper as if he might change his mind and hurried back to her seat, eagerly ruffling through the pages. An unintelligible announcement came over on the public address system as Mark stood up and made his way to the counter for another coffee.

  ‘Heavy!’ exclaimed Alan, slumping back in the buffet seat and twisting round to look at the juke-box.

  ‘What is?’ asked Paul, absently stirring his coffee before yawning loudly.

  ‘I’m already friggin’ depressed and they’re playing one of Lennon’s songs.’

  ‘So what’s depressing about that, then?’

  ‘He was blown away, man. That’s what’s depressing. One of my heroes and he was blown away.’

  ‘Don’t let it spoil your day,’ said Paul, smiling sarcastically into his cup. Alan was always the same after one of their all-night boozing sessions at the students’ flats. Even worse when, like last night, they ‘had partaken of a little shit’, as Alan liked to call it. It always seemed to leave him particularly irritable after the effect wore off, making him at times a real pain in the arse. Paul sometimes wondered why he knocked around with him at all.

  They were both twenty years old, both taking the same degree course at university, and both looking forward to the weekend to come: an open-air rock festival down south. It had been Paul’s idea originally; they were nearing the end of term and the pressure was building up. They had both been working bloody hard and a couple of days doing their own thing would loosen them up before they had to slot their brains into top gear again for the exams. They had the cash, so why not? Alan had needed little convincing, especially after his most recent downer about Diane; a circumstance for which Paul felt partly responsible.

  Alan groaned, rubbed his beard with one hand, and stood up. ‘Too bloody heavy!’ he growled, pulling himself out of the cramped seat and nearly colliding with a trampish old woman as she hurried back to her seat with a crumpled newspaper clutched in her hand. He made for the juke-box, fishing in his jeans pocket for change.

  Paul grunted in semi-amusement, watching as Alan hunched over the juke-box and began to look for another, presumably less-heavy record. Nearby was a bloke of about thirty, wearing a reefer jacket and just sitting, staring into his coffee. His face seemed unnaturally white, almost bloodless, and with a strangely haunted quality. It was a faraway, lost look, which affected Paul in a strange way he could not quite understand. There was a loneliness, a hidden distress there, which made him feel as if it might somehow be contagious. He shook off the feeling, attributing it to the after-effects of last night’s booze and grass. His thoughts returned to the events of the party. The usual crowd had turned up; all packed into Graeme Grantz’s flat. Poor acne-ridden Grantzy, who revelled in the fact that people always seemed to use his place for parties; believing it to be his own popularity and nothing to do with the free booze which was often provided, or the fact that he had the best stereo deck in the entire student block. Paul had reckoned that a good ‘bender’ would be the best way to start their weekend and was feeling really high when the party got under way. But he had reckoned without Alan’s sudden lapses into melancholy whenever Diane was present. She and Alan had been knocking around together for about six months, on what Diane liked to call a ‘non-heavy basis’. But it was pretty obvious to anyone with eyes that, while outwardly accepting Diane’s stance, Alan had really gone ga-ga on the fiercely gregarious and outgoing girl with the tight jeans, close-cropped hair and, Paul had to admit, not unscrewable body. At parties, she would always be right there in the middle of everything, while Alan, beer can in hand, followed her around trying to keep pace; eventually ending up sprawled on a chair, pissed, morose and
silent. Curiously, at the end of the evening, Alan and Diane would invariably leave together. When Paul saw him the following morning with his face beaming and his joke-a-minute patter, he would know that Diane had found a way to keep her lap dog happy. Sometimes it made him sick to see what she had done to him.

  Last night’s party had been the last straw. It had followed the same pattern: Diane laughing and putting herself centre stage, Alan sulking in the kitchen, opening another can and pretending to listen to Grantzy waxing lyrical about how great the party was going. Paul had been chatting up one of the girls from the Arts course but was getting nowhere, when Diane asked him to dance. His first reaction had been to say: What about Alan, you bitch? Or do you just want to see him squirm? But tonight was different. Alan’s behaviour was getting on his nerves and, besides, he felt horny. When Alan emerged from the kitchen, they were both locked together in the middle of the floor, bumping and grinding to the music. It was obvious that Diane had been waiting for him to emerge; Paul felt, rather than heard, her laughing as she pressed closer to him. By some curious stroke of fate, Dr Hook was singing from the turntable: ‘When you’re in love with a beautiful woman, watch your friends.’ Alan stiffened, turned and marched back into the kitchen, head lowered. Paul watched him go, thinking: You stupid bastard! Can’t you see she enjoys getting you worked up like this? His irritation with Alan was suddenly redirected towards Diane. He pushed her roughly away. She was smiling at him in a sarcastic, self-satisfied way.

  ‘Diane, you’re a cow.’

  ‘Screw you, pal.’

  That night, Diane left with a swarthy Greek from Engineering while Paul, by now feeling guilty, had spent the rest of the evening trying to pull Alan out of his depression by explaining that he hadn’t been after Diane. Attempting to save the coming weekend, he had bought some expensive shit from Grantzy which they both smoked, until Alan seemed to have recovered. Paul had given him a few home truths about his non-heavy relationship with Diane and had taken Alan’s silence to mean acknowledgement and acceptance of the facts.

  Now, in Newcastle Central Station cafe, they sat waiting for their train and trying to fight off the effects of the night before. Alan returned to his seat, muttering about the crappy selection of records on offer. Trying to ignore him, Paul looked up as the tall man in the reefer jacket stood up stiffly with the aid of a walking stick and made his way to the serving counter. As he passed their seat, Paul felt a curious chill. He shrugged it off.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ asked Alan.

  ‘Someone stood on my grave,’ said Paul.

  ‘So now it’s grave talk. Bloody heavy.’

  ‘Look . . . Alan . . .’ began Paul earnestly, ‘about last night. There was nothing going on . . .’

  ‘Forget it, pal.’ Alan was smiling. ‘I know what she’s like. She’s a cock teaser. Just not worth it.’

  Paul had never heard him speak like that about Diane before. He seemed to have finally made the breakthrough.

  ‘Let’s just have a real bender of a weekend,’ said Alan, still smiling. ‘Where’s that damned train, anyway?’

  Mark returned to his place and sat down heavily. He drew in a sharp breath at the pain in his knee and then huddled forward over his third cup of coffee, trying to keep those bad memories at bay. But they were always there, stalking around the edges of his mind. And the memories seemed to feed the Impulse which now began to creep over him: that same, terribly familiar Impulse which he fought to contain. He cradled the cup, felt the heat sting his fingers and then gripped tightly, hoping that the pain would take his mind away from these horrible feelings. God, would he never be warm again?

  He had been lying in bed the previous night, forcing himself to stay awake, listening to the sound of the wind outside his bedroom window. Low and crooning. Saying something. Trying to tell him something.

  Mark . . .

  Oh, God.

  His wife lay next to him, warm and soft. He could hear her quiet, rhythmical breathing. The sound of the wind and the sound of his sleeping wife were beginning to have a hypnotic effect on him. He knew that sleep was not far away.

  Oh, God!

  He bit deeply into his clenched fist to restrain the sobbing which threatened to convulse him as he remembered. Slabs of cold, granite-coloured light shone sporadically through the dilapidated criss-cross framework of girders across the skylight of the station roof, making strange alternating waves of light and dark as steel-wool clouds passed overhead.

  The sound of the wind. And the shadows of branches on the bedroom wall. The rustling, restless silhouettes from the tree outside his bedroom window. Spiny, skeletal fingers tapping at the glass. And somewhere out there, somewhere in the night, the faint, mournful sound of a train’s siren.

  Eric Morpeth had been a railwayman all his working life, rising to his present position of ticket collector. In his job, he reckoned, you got to be a good judge of character. He had seen some weird types hanging around stations in his time, especially late at night. But there was something about this particular bloke that disturbed him. Okay, he looked fairly ordinary. Some trendy in his late twenties or early thirties with a gimpy leg and a walking stick. You probably wouldn’t look twice at him in the street. Nothing fruity looking about him, nothing weird. But this bloke came into the station almost every day and just hung around. At first, when Eric came on his shift, he would be sitting under the big clock. By mid-morning, the guy would probably be sitting in the cafe. And then out under the big clock again. And then he would walk around a little, maybe buy a newspaper. But he would never read the newspaper. That’s what bothered Eric. Obviously, he was waiting for somebody. But he was also obviously very scared. And for some strange reason, that made Eric a little scared too, although he was buggered if he could understand why.

  Eric was standing in his booth at the ticket barrier and now the frightened man was heading towards him. Shit, why did he make him feel so uneasy?

  ‘Ticket, please?’ said Eric, holding his hand out. The man stopped, his breath condensing like steam in the cold air, looking past Eric towards the tracks. Close to, Eric could see how disturbed he was and wished that he would just piss off. The man began to shuffle his feet, his breath rising in clouds.

  Again: ‘Ticket, please?’ But the man didn’t seem to hear him. ‘Listen, mate. I haven’t got all day. Either you’ve got a ticket or you haven’t. If you haven’t, the ticket office is just over there to your right.’

  Two student-types with knapsacks pushed past the man, one of them with some kind of smirk on his face. But the frightened man’s gaze remained directed across the tracks.

  ‘If you’re waiting for somebody, you’ll need a platform ticket to get on . . .’

  But Eric was talking to thin air. The man had turned abruptly and was now heading back in the direction of the newsstand.

  ‘Bloody loonies, eh?’ said Eric to the two students, punching their tickets. They said nothing, moving past him up the ramp. One of them turned round briefly to look at the strange man before hurrying on. The sight seemed to disturb him. Eric watched as the man with the walking stick reached the benches underneath the big clock. The man sat down and began to stare back at the ticket barrier again.

  Christ, there was something funny about that fella.

  Two

  Mark was trembling, but not with the cold. He couldn’t do it. He had tried to pass through but he just couldn’t do it. He tore his eyes away from the barrier and the memories of the previous night flooded over him once more.

  It always began with the same swirling, purple fog. It enveloped Mark and gave him the feeling that he was suspended in mid-air. There was no up or down. Nothing. Only fog. He clawed at it, kicked out but could feel nothing. Not even the ground beneath his feet. And then, as always, those strange images swimming in the fog: a roughly hewn stone about two feet square, suddenly obscured by curious
ornamental bars and then lost in the fog. In its place now, a crude miniature coffin containing a wooden doll. The purple shrouds of mist enveloped the coffin, leaving Mark once more floating in limbo.

  When the mist cleared, he could see that he was standing on a familiar hilltop overlooking a valley. He had been here before. It was sunrise and the first rays of early morning light stabbed across the horizon, bathing the nearby trees in a ruddy glow. He knew what would happen next and turned his attention to the circle of prehistoric standing stones which jutted from the clearing below him in the cradle of the valley. These stones were different from the others he had seen. They formed a rough circle in the shape of tilted arches; a curious grouping which seemed somehow significant but whose purpose eluded him. In the middle of the circle was a single, horizontal and rectangular slab of stone around which the grass appeared to have been scorched by fire.

  Looking beyond the circle of standing stones, Mark saw a slowly moving column of cowled and cloaked figures dressed in drab grey robes, approaching along a rough, sloping track. He wondered if they were druids. They were moving in double file, marking time with their footsteps, arms clasped within the folds of their robes, heads bowed and hidden. There appeared to be some kind of commotion at the back of the procession and, as the figures passed slowly through the stone arches and began to form a circle around the single slab in the centre, Mark could see that two of the men were dragging a young girl along between them. She was struggling furiously in a desperate, silent attempt to get free, but the faceless druidic figures were too strong for her.

  The purple mist appeared from nowhere again and Mark found himself swathed in the rolling clouds as the scene was completely swept away. When the mist parted once more, he found himself standing down in the clearing beneath one of the stone arches. The cloaked figures were now all in the centre of the circle. There were about fifty of them and some had lit torches, even though sunrise was imminent. The nearest were only feet away from Mark, but he knew that they could not see him. From somewhere in the closely crowded group, he could hear a curious sing-song voice intoning in a language he had never heard before. As he watched, a section of the crowd moved to one side and, in the next instant, the struggling girl was dragged forward to the slab. Mark was advancing through the crowd now, drawn by a force which he was powerless to resist. It was a floating sensation and, in a curiously detached way, he realised that he was passing through the figures which clustered around the slab as if he had no more substance than a ghost.