Ghost Train

by Stephen Laws

  Mark was clearly distressed. His voice tapered off. He found it impossible to believe that he had still been asleep, still dreaming, when Robbie and the Man appeared in the bedroom doorway. But if he had not been asleep, if he had really seen them . . . then all of Dr Aynsley’s rationalising about his dreams and their birth in the trauma of his terrible accident failed to be comforting any more. It would mean that Mark’s own diagnosis had been correct from the very first time he had spoken to him: that he was becoming schizophrenic and that the dreams had begun to impinge on reality. He was beginning to see things . . . horrible things . . . and slowly, but surely, he was going mad.

  ‘The image persisted after you awoke?’

  ‘I saw them both. I was awake.’

  ‘What happened next?’

  ‘I covered my eyes with my hands. It was the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen. When I looked back, they were gone.’

  ‘Tell me more about the Ghost Train Man. What happened after Robbie hit him?’

  Mark cleared his throat, leaned across and drank deeply from a glass of water on the table at his side. ‘Robbie brought me round and dragged me away from the place. We just left him lying there on the track. He was still alive, but Robbie had split his head open with that piece of railing. Robbie took me home and we just told our parents that I’d been taken ill at school.’

  ‘You didn’t tell your parents what really happened? You never went to the police?’

  ‘No, we were too frightened.’

  ‘So you never found out what happened to the Man?’

  ‘Well, we never heard any more or saw anything about it in the newspapers. It was a pretty hairy few months, I’ll tell you.’

  ‘What about Robbie? How did he react to it all?’

  ‘We never talked about it. I think we were both probably too shocked to think about the implications. I think we just tried to block it out of our minds as if it never happened. I never saw a great deal of Robbie after that. Six months later he was killed.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I wasn’t with him. He and some other kids had rigged up a rope swing from a tree in the park. Robbie must have got tangled up in it while he was swinging. It hanged him. By the time the others managed to get him down, he was dead.’

  Mark cleared his throat, which Aynsley could hear had grown thick with emotion. ‘But there’s a postscript to the story. Eight years later, when I’d left school and got a job in an insurance office, I was invited down to the coast for a party at one of the guys’ houses. Up until that time, I’d had an aversion to that particular area . . .’

  ‘Understandably.’

  ‘. . . But I made my mind up that it was time to go and see if the Ghost Train was still there . . .’

  It was. Just as Mark remembered it. Except that now it seemed smaller, less imposing than it had done to an eleven-­year-­old boy. Mark saw the same billboard; the same lurid painting; even the carriages parked at the station platform looked the same. Business seemed bad. None of the carriages were being used.

  ‘Come on, Mark,’ said one of his workmates, ‘let’s see how good you are on the rifle range.’

  ‘I’ll catch you up,’ said Mark, his gaze still fixed on the Ghost Train. His colleagues were suddenly swallowed up into the milling fairground throng and as he stood alone, staring at the Ghost Train, he wondered if he had the guts to do what he had intended to do.

  A young girl squealed with laughter right into Mark’s ear as she passed, burying her face in candy floss. Mark’s heart lurched. Just as long as they don’t start playing ‘Carousel’, he thought as he began pushing his way through the crowd to the Ghost Train platform.

  You paid to come in, didn’t you? Mark remembered the Ghost Train Man’s words. You wanted to be scared.

  Now he was standing at the foot of the station platform. The ticket office had been given a new coat of paint. The rubber spiders dangling from the grille had been replaced by a row of rubber skulls. Someone was sitting inside the booth . . .

  Mark climbed up onto the platform, not really knowing what he was going to say or do. Just facing the Ghost Train after all these years had been the really important thing. He steeled himself and moved to the ticket office, heart hammering, throat dry.

  An old woman sat in the booth.

  ‘That’s thirty pence,’ she said without looking up from her knitting. She was about seventy years old, Mark guessed, dressed in a hideous floral dress and, although her hair had been dyed blonde, it was still grey at the roots. ‘Thirty pence, I said,’ she repeated, looking up at last, her eyelashes thick with mascara. Mark saw that her left eye had a cast.

  ‘Where is he?’ Mark heard himself say.

  ‘Where’s who? Look, if you want to ride, it costs thirty new pence. Understand? We’ve gone decimal, you know.’

  ‘The man who used to work here. He’ll be about thirty-­two, thirty-­three years old now. Black hair.’

  ‘You’re drunk! Clear off before I call the police.’

  ‘That’s just what I should have done all those years ago. He isn’t fit to walk the streets when there are kids about.’

  ‘Clear off, before I . . .’

  ‘This fella givin’ you trouble, Ma?’ said a voice from behind. It was eight years later, and Mark had grown in that comparatively short space of time from a boy into a young man, but he could never forget that voice for as long as he lived. He turned round slowly, already seeing in his mind’s eye that towering, thin figure in dark trousers and white shirt. The shining, marble eyes and the glinting teeth. The oiled hair and the look of madness.

  But this overalled figure could not possibly be the Ghost Train Man. He was much smaller, smaller even than Mark. His hair was receding at the front.

  ‘Push off, pal. We don’t want no trouble.’

  But the voice was unmistakable. Mark’s childhood demon was only flesh and blood after all.

  ‘You remember me?’

  ‘No. Piss off and find somebody else to bother.’

  ‘Are you sure? Eight years ago. October. On a Wednesday afternoon. Two schoolkids skiving off from school.’

  ‘Throw him out!’ snapped the old woman from the ticket office. ‘Drunken idiots coming up here and making a nuisance when we’re trying to run a decent business. Always the bloody same.’

  The Man moved forward, hand held out to take Mark by the arm and move him in the direction of the platform steps. Mark slapped out at the hand, knocking it away, rage building inside him.

  ‘Bet you haven’t forgotten that split head.’

  The Man’s eyes seemed to have acquired an unhealthy glaze. He stepped back, looking away from Mark, rubbing both hands on his greasy overalled hips. Behind him, Mark could hear the old woman saying: ‘Oh, God . . . oh, God . . .’

  ‘So you haven’t forgotten, then?’

  The old woman’s voice was suddenly nervous and quivering. ‘My boy’s never done no one no harm. No one, do you hear? Now you leave us alone or we’ll have you fixed good and proper.’

  The Man seemed to be grinning, although there was no humour there, his lips drawn back from pearly teeth. ‘Look, kid . . .’ he began, moving forward with head held down.

  And then he had swung his fist up into Mark’s stomach. Mark doubled over at the crippling pain, the breath knocked from his lungs, the force of the blow slamming him against the platform rail. Through misted vision, he noticed with an almost objective curiosity that there was still a rail missing. There was another savage blow on the side of his head.

  ‘Not here!’ screamed the old woman. ‘Not where everyone can see!’

  Mark felt a boot hit him under the ribs. He struggled to rise. There was another blow in the small of his back and he heard the bustle and clatter of the woman clambering out of the booth, shouting at the Man to stop. Still winded, Mark felt a han
d tangle in his hair, jerking his head up for a punch that would undoubtedly smash his nose. He saw the braced legs in front of him, just as he had done eight years ago. He lunged forward, fuelled by rage and knowing that the punch was already on its way. He jabbed his knee sharply upwards between the legs.

  There was a high-­pitched squeal and the Man crumpled backwards against the wooden border frame of the Ghost Train, his hands clutching his genitals. He began to gag as Mark bent forward, hands on knees, fighting to get his breath.

  ‘You . . . bloody . . . you . . .’ Mark could not find his voice.

  The old woman was screaming as she rushed to her son. After a few seconds, Mark moved forward to face the Man. He lay crumpled on the ground, moaning.

  ‘You’ve squashed them, you bastard! I know you’ve squashed them!’

  One punch, thought Mark. Just one punch to alter his face and never let him forget. And then . . . No . . . that’s not the way . . . that’s never the way. He moved back to the railings, gasping for breath. A crowd had gathered to watch.

  The woman began to cry.

  ‘What have you done to my boy?’

  ‘Nothing at all compared to what he was going to do to me.’ Mark looked at the crowded faces. ‘Take some advice, missus. Get a good solicitor. Because I’m going to do him for assault.’

  Mark stepped down from the platform while the old woman cursed him and tended her son. His ribs hurt badly, perhaps one of them was broken.

  ‘I saw that,’ said a middle-­aged man. His wife was holding a large toy panda and shaking her head in outrage. ‘That man punched you for no reason at all. And I’ll say so if you’re going to take him to court. You want my name and address . . . ?’

  ‘Disgusting,’ said the woman with the panda, her sentiments echoed by the watching crowd.

  Mark smiled. He had never foreseen that things would turn out like this. But it seemed that everything was working out just fine, after all.

  ‘What happened after that?’ asked Aynsley.

  ‘He was prosecuted for assault. There were dozens of witnesses. It turned out that he had a string of convictions. He was put away for eighteen months, but in the end his sentence was a lot longer than that . . .’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘There was an incident in prison. He tangled with someone even more dangerous than himself and was knifed to death in the showers. It made all the headlines. Prison security, and all that. The funny thing is that I used to have a lot of nightmares about the Man, but after that second incident, I never dreamed about him again. Until last night.’ Mark rubbed his hands over his eyes. Aynsley could see that the tale had taken a lot out of him. For a while there was silence.

  ‘Just one more question, Mark. When you thought you saw the Ghost Train Man in your bedroom doorway, did he appear to you as you remembered him when you were a child? Or did he look as he did on that day you’ve described eight years later?’

  ‘Just as I remembered him from the first time. Hideous.’

  ‘I’m glad that you told me about this, Mark. It’s very significant.’

  ‘Significant? How?’

  ‘It’s so simple that you’re overlooking it. Haven’t you ever thought that your subconscious may have drawn parallels between the incident on the Ghost Train and the incident on the King’s Cross train?’ Aynsley stubbed out his cigarette emphatically in an ornate ash tray. ‘It would seem to me that you’ve fused the two occurrences together. You can’t cross the ticket barrier, not only because of your fear of another accident but also because, to your subconscious mind, it’s the entrance to the Ghost Train.’

  Mark could feel that Aynsley was correct to some extent. But there was more to it than that and he struggled to dig into his mind to catch the kernel of truth before it submerged into the murk. He was too late. It had gone. But the theory sounded good. It really sounded good.

  ‘And it’s very interesting that you say your childhood dreams vanished when you went back to the fairground and attempted to face the lion in its den, as it were. I’ve got a feeling that if you were able to pass through the ticket barrier, you could do the same thing again.’

  ‘I think you could be right. But God knows, I’ve tried to get onto that platform.’

  ‘Mark . . . what about the accident? Have there been any images, connected memories or impressions in your mind since our last meeting?’

  ‘Not a damned thing. Just a total blank.’

  Aynsley lit another cigarette.

  ‘They can kill you,’ said Mark.

  ‘So can falling from trains,’ replied Aynsley.

  Mark laughed aloud. He felt good. The tension which had begun to knot his shoulders and the back of his neck seemed suddenly gone. And he could tell that Aynsley felt good, too.

  ‘Mark, do you remember we attempted hypnosis in the early months to try and find out what happened to you on that train?’

  Mark nodded. He remembered how bad the dreams had become after that.

  ‘I stopped the treatment because you were becoming too distressed when it came to answering questions about that day. As you know, I was also unable to get past the ticket barrier with you.’ Aynsley blew a smoke ring which hovered lazily above his head like a halo. ‘I think you may be ready now. We should try again.’

  Mark thought that he could see light at the end of the tunnel. He smiled at the pun.

  ‘I think so too,’ he said.

  Eleven

  The ice-­cold chill in the air was making Mark’s bones ache again as he entered the Central Station from the underground connection. Snow lay heavily on the ground and a Metro tram had broken down earlier that morning, with resultant chaos for early morning commuters. After his talk with Dr Aynsley, Mark had felt better than he had done for months. But the compulsion and fear remained and obstinately refused to be rationalised. The ticket barrier still remained the focus of the strange inner drive which he could not placate.

  He bought a newspaper from the stand, scrutinising the barrier as people pushed through. It was like a psychological mine field with an invisible no-­man’s-­land around it. He fought the compulsion to move towards it. Yes, I’ll try again, he told it. But not now. I’m not ready for it. He headed for the cafe, remembering the look on Joanne’s face when he admitted that he had spent most of yesterday morning at the station. She had said nothing, but Mark could see it all written on her face: Oh God, Mark. Not again.

  The cafe was fairly empty, as it normally was at this time of the morning, and Mark ignored the look of unabashed curiosity that the woman behind the counter gave him when he bought a cup of coffee and took it to his usual seat. She should be used to him by now. After all, the schizo was a regular customer. He had been coming here now for almost six months. Christ, six months! thought Mark. At first, after his recovery, he had only come once a week, but in the last couple of months it had been every weekday. And even then, the compulsion nagged him at weekends when he was with Joanne and Helen. He reminded himself of a hopeless junkie, deprived of his daily fix and suffering withdrawal symptoms because of it. But there was hope now. If Aynsley could unravel his mental block under hypnosis, if he could find out what had happened to Mark on that damned train, then perhaps the fear and the Impulse would be gone. He could brave the ticket barrier, pass through onto the platform, perhaps even board the train again and kill this phobia, this obsession, once and for all.

  Further thought was vanquished as the Impulse to get up and head for the barrier seized him again. And, at the back of his mind, the cold unreasoning fear warned him not to attempt it.

  Mark finished his coffee and walked stiffly back to the cafe entrance, aware that the woman behind the counter was watching him. He ignored her and moved outside into the cold, standing just by the entrance. He looked out across the station, watching the milling passengers, trying to divert his thoughts from t
he inner battle within him. He tried to guess the occupation of a young executive type; a tall, good-­looking woman; a man and a woman with suitcases . . .

  Come back.

  A teenager with a duffle coat and college scarf; a young couple pushing a luggage trolley, looking bemused; a pensioner with a poodle . . .

  Pass through. Enter.

  No . . .

  Two men in business suits engaged in animated conversation; three children dashing noisily into the newsagent to buy comics . . .

  And then Mark saw the man in the black raincoat standing in the newsagent’s shop, watching him. Mark looked away instinctively, but when he glanced back again, the man was still watching. Only now, he had seen that Mark had noticed him and was moving away, pretending to be engrossed in the newspaper he was holding. Mark was taken aback by the intense look of sombre scrutiny on the man’s face. He was middle-­aged, stocky and with hair greying at the temples. But there was no mistaking the fact that he had been watching Mark with a keen and intense interest.

  The stranger moved out of vision as Mark turned back into the cafe, bought another cup of coffee and returned to his seat, puzzled. Perhaps he was imagining it, after all. God knew, he was all to hell since the accident. Perhaps he was imagining now that people were watching him, another symptom of his emerging schizophrenia. What was it Dr Aynsley had said? . . . a paranoid obsession that people are talking about you behind your back. Perhaps that would be the next step . . .

  Get up. Walk to the ticket barrier. Show your ticket to the inspector. Pass through.

  Mark finished his coffee, rose creakily to his feet and saw that the woman behind the counter was drying cups on a ragged towel, watching curiously for his next move. He gave a small, rueful laugh as he left the cafe again. His new suspicions seemed to be proved right. The woman continued drying cups, shaking her head sadly.