Ghost Train

by Stephen Laws

  ‘I think she’s all right,’ said Mark. And then Chadderton saw the little girl still standing in the middle of the floor, her concentration centred on the collapsed heap in the far corner of the room beside the window. He saw the look of hate on her face, and watched as she ran round the bed to Davies’ outstretched arm. She collapsed weeping into his embrace, huddling close to him. The woman was beginning to stir again as Chadderton moved around the bed to the telephone. He lifted the receiver. It was dead. When he looked back to the threesome on the bed, the woman was awake but dazed and calling Davies’ name over and over. Chadderton felt a gnawing at his insides as he watched and listened; saw something there that he knew he had been denied forever and remembered standing at a graveside in the rain one summer morning. He remembered feeling that everything he had lived for was gone. He fought down the old, bad feelings, forced himself away from the family scene and back to the human wreck in the corner.

  He crossed to him again, listening to his tortured breathing. There was something strange here. He wasn’t sure just what it was yet, but he knew that something very peculiar indeed was staring him in the face. The man was more than just a psychopathic tramp. He took in his battered appearance, the torn clothing, the bloodstained face and wild hair. There was something about him . . . something . . . that didn’t scan. Something about the cut of the jacket. Something about the tattered shirt – as if it had been an expensive buy once upon a time. The shoes were caked in mud but with fancy buckles at the side . . .

  Davies was suddenly beside him again. Chadderton turned to say something about his wife, who was cradling the child in her arms, but when he saw the look on Davies’ face, the words died away.

  ‘Aynsley? . . . Aynsley?’

  ‘What?’ asked Chadderton.

  ‘It’s Aynsley,’ said Mark. ‘Dr Aynsley. He’s my psychiatrist. I’m sure it’s him.’ He knelt down, looking closely into the tramp’s face. ‘My God . . . it is him.’

  Chadderton started to say: Christ, you must have some fucking hang-­ups if you can do that to your shrink, and then he remembered. Dr Aynsley. He had met him several times – a hundred years ago it seemed – to discuss the Davies ‘accident’.

  ‘It can’t be.’

  ‘It’s him, I tell you. I thought he was dead.’

  ‘Dead? What do you mean, dead? Davies . . . just what in Christ is going on here?’ Chadderton was kneeling now, looking into the agonised face and suddenly realising that it was Aynsley, realising that Davies had been neglecting to tell him something very important indeed. The woman was rising from the bed, moving towards them.

  ‘Is he dead?’ she asked.

  ‘No, Mrs Davies. He’s not dead. But your husband hasn’t been telling me everything he knows about this and I think it’s about time he did.’

  ‘What’s happening, Mark?’ said Joanne. ‘For God’s sake, what’s going on? It seems like everything’s falling apart.’

  Something was horribly wrong in that devastated bedroom. Chadderton could feel it. He could still sense the same tangible miasma in the air that he had felt on the day of his wife’s death. Suddenly, it seemed that he was back on that first day of the nightmare; as if he had only just found that horribly familiar smoking ruin on his neatly cut and trimmed lawn; as if he had walked straight out of one nightmare and into another. Chadderton’s out-­of-­body view of himself plunging into an ornamental pool to douse his burning arms had fused seamlessly into this new nightmare of a ragged and dishevelled wild man lying crumpled on the deep-­pile bedroom carpet of a detached suburban house on Tyneside. He fought against the feeling; tried to react in the way that he had been trained. The woman was hurt, possibly concussed, and the small white-­faced girl sitting on the corner of the bed was unhealthily silent. The front garden looked as if a VC 10 had crash-­landed and, only moments ago, Chadderton had been struggling with something that only looked like a man. He knew that he had to get the woman and the girl to a doctor; that he should pull down the white knotted cords which hung from the bedroom curtains and tie up the wild man before he took it into his head to go berserk again; that he would have to get to a telephone and call the local police. But in that timeless moment, Chadderton felt locked in his own illogical nightmare and watched as Davies knelt down directly in front of the figure which lay slumped against the bedroom wall, gripping him fiercely by the lapel. Davies’ face looked as pale as marble in the semi-­darkness and it seemed to Chadderton that the thin pink scar on his forehead and hairline was suffused with blood, standing out in vivid contrast as a thin red slash. Davies was staring intently into the wild man’s face as if the answer to a terrifying secret could be found there.

  ‘Aynsley . . .’ Davies was shaking him violently. Chadderton tried to intervene, but found that he could not. ‘Aynsley! You remember what happened this morning? In the clinic? You remember, don’t you?’ The human scarecrow stared ahead vapidly, a thin stream of saliva escaping from the corner of its mouth and hanging like a strand of gossamer spider’s web from its chin. Davies jerked on Aynsley’s lapel again, slamming him back hard against the wall, and Chadderton found that he had raised his own arm in futile protest. His voice seemed harsh and ragged when he spoke.

  ‘Davies . . .’

  ‘Goddammit, Aynsley! What happened this morning? Remember! I phoned you up early this morning. I arranged to meet you at the clinic. You suggested that we try hypnosis again . . . remember? You put me into a trance – you hypnotised me. You can remember that, can’t you?’

  The scarecrow was looking at Mark as if it had noticed his presence for the first time. But the eyes were uninterested in him. They remained blank and unresponsive.

  ‘You said you would try and find out what happened to me when I boarded that train. You said you would try to take me through that ticket barrier again. Remember! For God’s sake remember, Aynsley! What happened to you? What happened to me?’

  Aynsley was chuckling now. A low, guttural and hollow sound that seemed preternaturally loud. Laughter which was not reflected in his still vapid and empty eyes. ‘So you’re asking the questions now, doctor?’

  Chadderton could see how the woman was reacting to the sound of that voice. He watched as she moved quickly to where her daughter sat on the bed, pressing the small blonde head to her breast and covering the child’s ears with both hands as if the sound of the unnatural laughter could be tainted. Davies shook the scarecrow again and the laughter ceased. Chadderton moved towards him, willing himself to take an active part in this nightmare, but feeling something inside which told him that this was a bad dream that somehow could only get much worse for him if he tried to participate in it. Davies was staring at something that the scarecrow was clutching tightly in one blood-­encrusted fist. He gripped the fist in both hands and wrenched something from it. The wild man reacted, rocking backwards and forwards where he lay, shaking his head and moaning as Davies stood up. There was an expression on the man’s face of naked fear.

  ‘You can’t play it!’ Aynsley’s tattered arm clawed out towards Mark in a futile gesture. As he tried to rise, Chadderton moved quickly forward to restrain him, seeing at the same time what it was that Davies had taken from the scarecrow. It was a spool of tape.

  ‘Listen, we’ve got to get him to a doctor. Your wife and the kid, too.­’

  ‘No! Wait!’ said Mark fiercely, his gaze still fixed on the human wreckage on the floor. ‘Tell me everything, Aynsley . . . or I’ll play the tape!’

  Aynsley was struggling uselessly to rise. He was making a low, moaning noise as he continued to stare with mounting terror at the tangled tape clenched in Mark’s hand. ‘I can’t . . . tell you anything.’ Aynsley’s voice was harsh, the words apparently causing him great effort. ‘If He finds out I failed Him . . .’

  ‘Who, Aynsley?’

  ‘I can’t tell you!’

  ‘Get the tape recorder from my study, Jo. Bring
it in here.’

  Joanne looked uncertainly at Mark for a second and then at Chadderton with an expression of bewilderment. Chadderton was still in his nightmare and could not react.

  ‘Go on!’ Mark’s harsh tone shocked her into action. As she left the room he turned his attention back to Aynsley, the psychiatrist’s wild and frightened eyes watching in horror as she vanished from sight. The little white-­faced girl sitting on the edge of the bed still levelled her accusatory look at him.

  ‘All right. All right . . . but promise me you’ll destroy the tape.’

  ‘Tell me!’

  ‘This morning . . .’ Aynsley retched, wiped one trembling arm across his mouth and continued. ‘I asked you about what happened on that day. The day you fell from the train. You told me what happened . . . you told me . . .’ Aynsley’s voice choked away. ‘I can’t tell you! I can’t!’

  Joanne re-­entered the room carrying the small portable tape recorder from Mark’s study desk. Taking a silent instruction from Mark’s grimly set face, she placed it on the floor and plugged it into a socket in the skirting board beside the door. Aynsley was shuddering now, a long low moan escaping from his lips.

  ‘Tell me, by God. Or I’ll play the tape.’

  ‘You crossed through the barrier . . . you got on the train . . . Please don’t make me tell you any more! You don’t understand. He’s gone now. When His purpose is . . . diverted . . . thwarted . . . He has to go back and feed so that He can grow strong again. If you play the tape . . .’

  Mark moved quickly to the tape recorder, unravelling and rewinding the tape in his hands, not noticing how Joanne flinched away from him as if he meant to hurt her.

  Aynsley began again in slow, measured words, still slurred and quavering: ‘I asked you what happened. You were reliving it. I managed to . . . turn a stone in your mind . . . I unlocked your memory. And He was in there . . . waiting in your mind . . . but only a trace of Him . . . not whole.’ Aynsley began to laugh again; the same horribly hollow noise. ‘It was a man-­trap . . . a fail-­safe . . . put there to stop anyone finding out . . .’

  ‘What was in my mind, Aynsley? What?’

  ‘Please . . .’

  ‘What was it?’ Mark was roughly slotting the tape onto the machine, pulling the tape and threading it through to the empty reel.

  ‘Azimuth,’ replied Aynsley, the word sounding as if he were choking on mud. ‘God help me, it was Azimuth . . . eyes . . . wings . . . He saw me. He came out of you and went into my mind . . . entered through my eyes. I tried to keep Him out . . .’ Aynsley began to make futile clawing movements over his eyes, his shredded fingers matching the horizontal scratches stretching from his forehead and down his cheeks. ‘But I couldn’t . . . Don’t you see? That small part of Him which was left in your mind was feeding there. It was feeding from your mind. Feeding from your fear.’

  ‘Who is Azimuth?’

  ‘He claimed you once – but you escaped. But He has always been with you since that day. You gave in to Him today. He told me. But this man . . .’ Aynsley pointed at Chadderton. ‘This man saved you. Twice He claimed you and twice He was denied. Now He’s gone from your mind . . . He has been denied the Tasting of you . . .’ Aynsley retched again, and then continued: ‘I had to kill you, Davies. I had to kill everything that was yours . . .’ His voice had become a choking, desperate plea. ‘I had to. He wanted me to do it.’

  ‘I was . . . possessed . . . by something?’

  ‘No, not possessed. Not really possessed. Not yet. You were . . . haunted.’

  Except for the harsh, ragged breathing, Aynsley was silent now, staring wildly at Mark, his glassy eyes imploring him to question no further. The eyes widened, suddenly focusing sharply at the sheer horror of Mark’s intention as he leaned downwards to the tape recorder.

  ‘Don’t play it back! You’ll conjure it up! Don’t you see? It’s on the tape . . .’

  Mark punched his finger down onto the ‘play’ switch. The spools began to turn. The tape slithered through the machine.

  Ten

  Mark was no longer kneeling on his bedroom floor. His surroundings had vanished completely as if the lights had gone out. He was in an eternal, unfathomable black void of night. And the spangling mist which floated behind his eyes was the mist that always preceded his worst nightmares.

  Joanne and Helen were gone. Chadderton was gone. And the thing which had once been Aynsley was also gone. The tape recorder was no longer lying on the carpet before him. But he could hear the sound it was making and a low moan was escaping from his lips as he listened and remembered.

  It was the harsh, malefic shriek of a banshee fading from a high, reverberating falsetto to a low and droning bass as the lights went out and the Ghost Train suddenly lurched to a halt in the thick and cloying darkness of a world of living nightmares.

  Mark wanted to run. But the black void stretching away beneath him made him sure that if he attempted to move he would pitch forward. Turning head over heels, arms pinwheeling as he fell and fell into unknown depths for ever and ever.

  ‘What happened?’ asked a small voice in the darkness. ‘What happened, Mark? I think I’ve cut my head.’

  Mark was sitting in the Ghost Train carriage, next to Robbie. As if in a dream, he saw his hand wander to Robbie’s head, feeling in the semi-­darkness that it was warm and wet. And he could hear himself saying: ‘I think there’s been a power cut or something . . .’ as he followed through with the ritual.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ a small, frightened voice asked in the darkness.

  ‘Don’t worry. Someone will come in a minute.’

  Someone will come in a minute.

  This dream was going to be different. The realisation convulsed Mark’s stomach in a tight knot of terror and broke the subservient impulse to act out his part in this horrific nightmare. For the first time, he knew that he was free to act. Free to escape the bad dream.

  ‘Come on, Robbie, we’ve got to get out!’ And he was pulling the small figure in the school uniform from the carriage and down onto the darkened track, realising that things were going to be different in this dream because he wasn’t a little boy in school uniform any more.

  Someone will come in a minute.

  Mark was holding Robbie tightly by the sleeve of his jacket. He could see that the interior of the Ghost Train was horribly familiar but still, somehow, different. He began to run down the track, pulling Robbie along behind him. The recesses at either side seemed deeper, the indistinct figures of the papier mâché monsters were set further back in their cavernous darkness. The Ghost Train track itself was broader . . . they were running on gravel . . . the steel lines were thicker and heavier . . . Mark couldn’t see the ceiling above . . . no dangling rubber bats from an overhead rail.

  And he realised that everything was bigger, that the train lines were more like the railway tracks for a real train. That this track stretched deeper and deeper underground than it was humanly possible to believe.

  Somewhere behind them, the distant howling of a train siren echoed forlornly.

  The Ghost Train was coming and Mark knew that it was the same train that he had seen on the billboards outside the fairground; it was the same train that only today had shrieked and pounded into Newcastle Central Station, when something had taken control of his body and tried to make him throw himself from the platform. It was coming now and he could feel the power surging in the lines.

  Mark kept running, unable to run as fast as his fear wanted, knowing that they had to move faster if they were ever going to escape. Robbie’s small form tripped and stumbled along behind him. There was nowhere to run and hide other than the stone recesses at either side of the track, and Mark knew in his heart that side-­stepping into one of those would result in the ultimate nightmare. They were bad places. Once inside, they might remain there forever as permanent exhib
its. All they could do was keep running ahead of the train, hoping that they could reach the end of the line. But Robbie was too slow, he was stumbling again and Mark knew that they did not have much time. The Ghost Train was coming up behind them: a low, ominous rumbling was shaking the catacomb through which they ran. Robbie was too slow. Mark would have to carry him.

  Mark stopped and turned back to Robbie, stooping downwards to pick him up. Robbie’s arms were already held wide like a child waiting anxiously for its mother to lift it from the cot. Mark flinched back just before their arms embraced; felt his scalp crawling tight and his heart pumping liquid fear instead of blood.

  Maggots boiled and writhed in Robbie’s empty eye sockets, his jaw sagged and parted as he held up skeletal hands before his face. As Mark stood back in horror, Robbie was looking at those hands, even though he had no eyes – looking at what had happened to him, as if in disbelief. Shreds of decayed school uniform crumbled from his arms. And now Robbie was holding his hands out to Mark again in a horrified plea. He was trying to speak with a mouth that could never speak. Maggots were spilling outwards and Mark knew as he turned to run that Robbie was trying to say, Help me! In his mind, Mark was screaming: I can’t help you, Robbie. Oh, God. I can’t. Because you’re dead.

  Dead, Dead, Dead, DEAD, DEAD!!