Ghost Train

by Stephen Laws

  He screwed his eyes tightly shut. In his head, behind his eyes, it was really dark. He could hide in there. He was alone, there was no light and he would not move. There were little pictures in there, too. As he watched, he could see a man and a woman. They were walking on a beach and a little white dog was scampering around their heels. The man was throwing a piece of driftwood and the dog was bulleting across the sand to retrieve it, kicking up little clods of sand. And it seemed to Aynsley, as he looked closer, that the man on the beach looked a little like himself. Except that he looked younger, more self-­assured. And he was smiling a big smile and looking at his wife, and she was smiling too.

  There were rocks ahead. Big rocks and little rocks, all covered in seaweed, and there were pools with little creatures in them. And now the man and the woman were looking into the pools, looking at the creatures. The woman was poking into one of the pools with the piece of driftwood and saying: Charles, come and look at this. The man was walking across and looking into the pool, and the woman was saying: I’ve just seen the most peculiar thing. It’s slithered under that rock there. The man was taking the driftwood from her and leaning down across the pool. He was pushing the wood down into the sand at the base of the rock, wedging it underneath, and the woman was laughing and saying: Careful, darling. You nearly went in that time. And the man laughed back: Won’t be the first time I’ve put my foot in it. He was heaving on the rock, turning it up in the water to see what was underneath . . . And the woman was shrinking back in alarm, saying: Oh, God, Charles, what on earth is that? The man had dropped the driftwood, a look of disgust on his face, pulling away from the rock as it lolled back into a new position in the water. He was holding back the dog as it barked and yapped at the thing they had uncovered, green ripples of water lapping back at them . . .

  Turning over rocks and finding something nasty . . .

  . . . nasty . . . crawled out from under a rock . . .

  . . . turned over a rock . . .

  . . . and he had asked Mark what had happened. And Mark had opened his mind. And it was like turning over a rock in a deep green, slimy pool and finding . . . something that had been hiding in there all the time . . . and he had turned it over and . . . it had come out . . . and . . . oh, no no no no no no no no . . .

  Aynsley clasped his clenched fists to his eyes to block out the memory. He was whimpering, crushing the remembrance out of his mind. Because if He came back and found him thinking about what had happened, the consequences would be too terrible to contemplate. He forced it back into the deepest part of his brain, could feel his eyes on the knuckles of his fingers. They felt like small, swollen grapes. And when the memory had gone, Aynsley relaxed the pressure and looked at what he had clenched so tightly in his hands. He looked at the spool of recording tape and wondered what the Voice wanted him to do with it. He would destroy the tape if that was what the Voice wanted. He would eat it. Yes, he would eat it and no one would ever know. No one . . .

  Something had stirred in the darkness. He was sure of it. He had heard a noise; a scuffling, shifting movement, somewhere close. Aynsley’s eyes were wide open and staring as, not daring to move, he darted nervous glances at every corner, every pool of shadow. The shafts of light were only ten inches from his head now. The noise came again and Aynsley realised that it emanated, not from the darkness of the carriage, but from the darkness behind his eyelids. A dark and distant fluttering of wings. Quietly at first, but building, coming closer. It was flying towards him.

  The man shrank back farther into the corner, clasping the spool of tape before him in a prayer-­like gesture, and it was like a whirlwind as it came; a terrifying vortex of eyes and claws. He began to scream in his mind: I haven’t moved . . . I’ve stayed here in the dark, just like you told me to . . . I haven’t been seen. And I’ll do anything you tell me. The tape, what about the tape?

  It was here now. In the carriage with him. And the man was whimpering and crying and laughing, curling up tightly in the corner of the carriage. It surrounded him. It filled the darkness – was the darkness. He could feel its touch in every pore of his skin, a touch of snakes; burning, crawling snakes. And eyes. A thousand disembodied eyes all around him. Eyes that could see right through his skin into his innermost soul; eyes that could see his fear. Aynsley realised suddenly that it was feeding from him. Feeding and growing strong; feeding on his . . .

  He waited in terror; waited for it to finish; waited to be told what it wanted him to do, reliving the terror of what he had seen in the clinic earlier that day and of his desperate, hopeless attempt to run away. It was in his mind. How could he ever run away from that? He screwed his eyes shut and waited. The snakes were creeping and slithering behind his eyes, squirming into his brain, feeding there and returning. And then Aynsley had a brief glimpse, deep deep down beneath the snakes, of another picture. It was the young man on the beach again. The young man who looked so much like himself. But this time, the young man was looking straight at him. The picture was gone as suddenly as it had appeared, flashing briefly on the backdrop of his mind. A split-­second, single frame from a piece of movie film in his head. It had submerged, been swamped by a sea of twisting, writhing snakes. But in spite of his terror, the face in the picture had registered its plea before vanishing forever.

  You can find out. You can discover the truth, the face seemed to have said with eager intensity. Don’t you see? After all these years of searching, you can finally find out the truth. Ask . . . now . . . While you still have time.

  He knew that the face was right. He could find out. All he had to do was ask, because the Voice had all the answers. It knew everything. Still curled up, still frozen like a still-­born baby in his terror, Aynsley turned his mind inside-­out in one mental effort made easy by the presence of the Voice. Turned it over and out; and then inwards . . . to where it was feeding.

  . . . Like turning over a stone and finding . . .

  But he did not have to ask. He could see everything for himself now. And it was turning from where it fed, to where he had intruded, turning to look at him . . .

  . . . Oh, God. It’s horrible, horrible . . .

  . . . And Aynsley was tilting forward in his own mind, losing his balance and falling, thrashing wildly and sliding down towards that which flowed up to meet him. He had disobeyed. He had intruded for a second time. And he would have to be punished. But, afterwards, he would be as One with the Voice. And every­thing would be all right again.

  Aynsley knew all of this as it came to him. And as it enveloped him, taking him within its folds of darkness and wrapping him in wings of leather, his reason and sanity were devoured and swallowed by a great, greedy sucking pit.

  He was At One with the Voice. He was part of it. It would act through him. And he knew what to do.

  Five

  Eric Morpeth was not a well man. He should not have been at work today. In fact, he should have gone off sick a month ago – he had been telling everyone that for days. But he had not told them why he felt so bad. He had not told them that he had started seeing things that weren’t there. How could he? He didn’t want people to think he was going loopy. He was over-­tired, under the weather and due for a few days off. But did he get any sympathy? Did he hell.

  It had all started, Eric guessed, on the day he had made that old woman move on. She had been asleep on one of the benches, pissed out of her mind, by the look of things, and he had only been doing his job when he had shaken her awake and told her to bugger off. But that was when the trouble had started, and Eric wished to God that he had just left the dirty old bag lying there and had moved on past her. Someone else would have spotted her soon enough and given her her marching orders.

  He had heard about the accident just outside the station, of course. Everyone knew about that. He had talked to the driver of the train, Stan Gibbings, about the night it had happened. Stan didn’t like to discuss it much, but he had had
a few too many pints in the club, and Eric had bought him a whisky to loosen him up a little further.

  ‘I couldn’t believe it. It all seemed to happen in slow motion. But I couldn’t do a thing about it. Really. Well, I mean, I couldn’t, could I? Not travelling at that speed. We were doing about a hundred when I saw her in the lights. I hit the bloody horn until my arm nearly dropped off, but she didn’t seem to hear. She was just sort of standing there, like. Right in the middle of the bloody track. Waving her arms about on either side of her, as if she was trying to keep her balance or something. And . . . I’ll never forget . . . she was looking down at the tracks as if there was something there that terrified her. She didn’t even seem to know that the train was coming . . .’

  Eric knew that it was the old woman he had moved on earlier. No one had been able to identify the body, of course. There was no identification in her belongings – or what could be called belongings. Just a bundle of bloody rags. No arms, no legs. They had found one of her arms embedded in the metalwork of the train; like a tailor’s dummy arm, with the fingers sticking out. Just a big stain on the front of the train and a ragged parcel lying in the weeds at the side of the track. A wandering vagrant who had staggered blind drunk onto the lines and had never seen the train coming. But Eric knew who she was, even though he had told no one. Her name was Martha, that much he knew. He had seen her wandering the streets and hanging about the station for years. Now she was dead and Eric knew in his heart of hearts that, somehow, all his troubles had started from then.

  He was off duty now. His shift had finished and he was seriously considering not turning up for work the next day. Maybe he just needed a rest. Still in his uniform, he swung his haversack over his shoulder and headed out of the station into the crowded street. He would walk home tonight. Yeah, the fresh air might do him some good. He would go home, Lucy would have his tea ready, he would have a kip in front of the telly for a bit, and then move on down to the pub for a couple of beers. Then he could lie in bed the following morning and get Lucy to telephone in that he’d picked up a bug. Yeah . . .

  The day after the train had hit the old woman, Eric had seen his form master from Godley Secondary School sitting on the bench in the middle of the station. He was just sitting there, looking at him, and Eric knew with no trace of doubt whatsoever that it was Mr Jacks. But he also knew that Mr Jacks had died twenty years ago. He remembered, because he had been glad to hear the news. Yet, Jacks was sitting out there, looking at him and grinning the way he used to do at school. And he didn’t seem to have aged one bit. Eric had been terrified of Mr Jacks during his entire school life. The man was a sadist, a monster, and he seemed to have taken a particular delight in focusing his attention on Eric.

  Morpeth, boy! More work, less talk, laddie!

  But I wasn’t talking, sir.

  And insolence, too. Get the strap, boy. Seems like leather is the only answer for you.

  Eric had been standing at the ticket barrier and a crowd of passengers were bustling forward. As he furiously punched tickets, he could still see the silent, straight-­backed figure between the jostling bodies. He could still see the same, stiff posture, the same long, bony fingers spread across the knees. And Eric could see that he was mouthing something at him, mouthing it deliberately and meaningfully so that Eric could understand.

  Get me the leather, boy.

  A train was pulling into Platform Eight and passengers began frantically thrusting tickets at Eric. When the rush subsided and the last of them had clattered onto the platform, he looked back to find that the bench was empty. Jacks had gone.

  Eric had seen him, had thought he had seen him, on two other occasions. Once, when he had been on his way to Platform Nine, he could have sworn he had seen him standing there on the platform; just standing and waiting as he used to stand in the classroom, with his hands clasped in front of him. A long, cadaverously thin figure with hands that seemed to be grossly out of proportion to his body. The figure was almost in silhouette, a faint wash of grey from the overhead skylight on his features, but Eric was sure that it was him. Eric had looked away purposefully and then back again, expecting the figure to vanish as it had done earlier. But it had not. It still stood watching and waiting as Eric approached.

  Eric had turned away from Platform Nine that day; away from the silent shape, knowing that it was grinning at his departing back. And Eric thought that he was going loopy, just as loopy as that other bloke who kept coming to the station day after day, hanging around, looking scared and walking back and forth to the ticket barrier.

  The next time that Eric had seen him had been the worst . . . man, that had been bad. That was what had finally convinced him that perhaps he was working too hard and needed a rest. He had been in the station again, it was twelve-­thirty and time for something to eat. He was heading along Platform Nine towards the ramp which would take him over the main line and into the station itself. Tadger and Davey Robbins would probably be waiting for him there. They would pop across the street to the pub for a pint and a sandwich. He remembered how thirsty he had felt that day.

  He was walking close to the platform edge and had seen a really smart tart in a red dress; a real aristocrat. Eric reckoned that he was a pretty good judge of character and he knew, he just knew, that she would really go at it hammer and tongs between the sheets. She had that look on her face. Snobbish like, but dying for it. She passed him as he began to whistle ‘Who’s the Girl Dancing in the Red Dress?’. He turned to watch her departing figure, thinking: Oh, yeah. I’d like to make you dance, darling. Still moving, he had turned back to face the way he was going.

  And then something had seized him by the ankle, something that felt like a hard, bony claw. Eric had gone full length on the platform, hands still in his pockets, absorbing the full impact on his chest and completely winding himself. He was lying right on the edge of the platform, and had turned his head trackside as he fell to avoid smashing his teeth out on the concrete. Before his eyes a face was rising over the rim of the platform, only inches from his own; a grinning face which he knew only too well.

  Lewd thoughts, boy. Get the strap. Seems like leather’s the only thing you understand.

  Displaying an agility totally out of keeping with his rotund, plump figure, Eric had leapt away from the platform edge and onto his feet as if he had been given an electric shock, startling passersby who had moved forward to help him. Eric turned on them sharply, said something he couldn’t remember afterwards, and then looked back to the rim of the platform. The face was gone. And in sudden realisation, Eric knew that no one else on the platform had seen that horrible face or had heard what it had breathed directly into his.

  Eric had fled then, without looking back. He gasped in air and clutched at his aching chest as he pounded across the ramp, while passersby watched in astonishment or amusement. And that lunch-­time Tadger and Davey Robbins had begun to wonder if Eric Morpeth really was on his way to becoming an alcoholic.

  A rest, that’s what’s needed, thought Eric as he strolled out of the main city centre, following the railway embankment. And exercise, too. He realised just how much he had let himself go in recent years. He was really out of shape. Perhaps he should get back into training, start up the old five-­a-­side football again. He had been a nifty player in his day.

  Not far to go, he thought. The incline of the bank evened out just above and beyond him where the embankment wall had crumbled away. From there it was a three hundred yard walk to Eric’s terraced council house. He thought of former glorious days, speeding down the pitch, punching that bloody ball straight into the back of the net. He remembered vividly the wild exhilaration coursing through him as he turned for a victory run back to his team-­mates, knowing what a fantastic goal he had scored and knowing that everyone else thought so, too. It made the victory all the sweeter . . .

  Less talk, more work, said a voice from somewhere beyond the crumbling e
mbankment wall. Eric stopped in his tracks, feeling the paralysis of fear spreading instantaneously from the base of his spine to his legs; coursing upwards and through his body like fiery embalming fluid. It’s a taste of leather for you, boy. A terrifyingly familiar figure was standing on the embankment in the long grass, just beyond the tumbled, overgrown stones.

  He’s so tall. God almighty, he’s so tall, thought Eric. It was as if he was back in the classroom; a small, plump schoolboy quivering before the towering wrath of a vengeful demigod. And as the abominably tall, grinning shape moved through the grass towards him, Eric tried to run but could not. He could only stand, screaming silently in his mind as Mr Jacks leaned down towards him, blotting out the sky and reaching for him with those hor­ribly white, skeletal hands. The grin was twisting now, spreading wider as Jacks moved down on him. It was a parody of a face. A face that had ceased to be human. It was a leering visage of shining, pearly teeth. It was the face of Mr Sardonicus. It was the face of The Joker from the Batman comics that Jacks had confiscated from Eric on his second day at Godley Secondary.

  Yes, I’m afraid that it’s the leather for you, boy. And that face was next to his, eyes glittering like green marbles, furrowed crow’s-­feet wrinkling outwards insanely. Eric could smell the cheap tobacco on Jacks’ breath: the tobacco that he always stuffed into that Meerschaum pipe of his, stinking the classroom out and giving Eric headaches. He could almost taste it. He could taste something else, too: blood in his mouth where his teeth had clamped in paroxysm on his tongue. He could taste raw fear in the pit of his stomach, fear that spilled out from his guts. The hands were around his neck now, squeezing and squeezing. Eric could feel his eyeballs beginning to pop under the pressure and, unable to resist, felt his senses blurring. He was being carried now, he thought. Half carried, half dragged over the fallen rubble towards the railway embankment. Dimly, he could feel the ragged stones beneath his feet and then a hissing and swishing as he was pulled into the long grass. And all the time, the towering shadow above him blotted out the light. He became aware that he was moaning as he was laid down in the grass, the stalks and stems waving above his line of vision. He had wet his pants. And the towering figure stood above him; long, long legs like stilts stretching up into the sky, all perspective distorted. In its hands it now held a stiff leather strap that was somehow much, much too long and straight, with a savage point at one end. When the ter­rible leering head swooped down on him from the sky, brandishing that terrible strap, Eric tried to find his voice and give vent to his terror.