by Stephen Laws
The lines were roaring and the stone walls trembling as the nightmare express bore down on Mark. He could not turn back to look but he knew that Robbie was shambling from the line and crawling into his recess at the side. The Ghost Train was right behind him, only seconds away. The train whistle shrieked, momentarily drowning out every other sound of its approach. And the voice in the shrieking was the same voice which had spoken to Mark through the speaker today, when something had tried to kill him.
Welcome back, Mark. I’m sooooooo glad to have you!
The train was rounding a bend. Mark knew without looking because the track was suddenly lit up all round. Dull orange light shone into the ghastly recesses. The denizens of those recesses, he knew, were even now crawling forwards. Crawling to their entrances to watch as the Ghost Train swept forward to run him down.
‘Oh, God,’ Mark was crying through choked sobs, feeling hot, fetid breath on his back like an opened furnace door and knowing that the train’s gaping maw was opening wide to take him. Jagged teeth like broken gravestones. Coiled serpent’s tongue lashing and squirming. Hot, grey steam hissing and billowing as it came, the same nightmare passengers leaning from the windows, leaning out and laughing, laughing, laughing . . . And something much worse was on the train, waiting for him.
Mark’s legs had lost their strength. The horror was too great. He crashed to the sharp gravel, while the ululating train whistle shrieked directly behind him. As he fell, he knew that there were some things worse than death. The shrieking enveloped him.
And then was gone.
Mark clambered to his feet and looked back down the track. The Ghost Train had vanished. The lines were cold and still. Tenuous wisps of steam swirled and parted and, somewhere, far away, Mark thought that he could hear a train whistle drifting lonely and forlorn as it disappeared into the stygian depths of the tunnel.
Mark knew that this dream was going to be different. Not knowing why the Ghost Train had failed to take him, he searched for a way out; for a way to escape this nightmare once and for all.
What’s the matter, kid? Can’t you take a joke, then? You gotta start smashing my place up like that just ’cause I put the lights out?
Mark knew the owner of that voice. He had heard those words so many times before that he could not be mistaken. A tall, thin form was stepping from one of the recesses. Feet crunched on gravel, faint light glinted on Brylcreem. And the figure was so tall, so abominably tall. Nothing human could be so tall. It was striding purposefully towards him, covering ground faster than he could believe possible.
You paid to come in, didn’t you? You wanted to be scared?
Mark could see that the stone recesses at the side of the railway line were gone. In their place, solid, irregular standing stones jutted upwards like a line of broken teeth. Those damned stones. They meant something. Something.
It’s only a dream . . . only a bad dream . . . thought Mark as he plunged away down the railway track. The lingering steam from the passage of the Ghost Train seemed to have thickened and closed in all around him in a cloying mantle. There was a smell of ozone in the air. The track ahead seemed to go on forever.
It’s only a dream and I’ll wake up soon.
But this dream was horribly different and somewhere behind him, the Ghost Train Man was following.
Skiving off from school. Is that what you’re doing, eh?
Mark screamed as he had not done since childhood. Impossibly tall, and with arms spread wide across the track to catch him, the Ghost Train Man was suddenly in front of him, swooping forward like a huge, Brylcreemed bat with that horribly out-of-proportion smile and those perfectly even, glinting teeth filling Mark’s vision. And now there was a pressure on Mark’s throat and he was being held against a rough stone wall; pinioned by a knotted, sinewy forearm as purple mist boiled behind his eyes. It was 1963 and Mark was an eleven-year-old boy lost in the Ghost Train. The Man had caught him.
Anybody ever tell you that you’ve got a face like a girl, kid?
And Robbie was dead. The Ghost Train Man had caught him and put him in one of those recesses alongside all the other people he had caught alone in his kingdom. The Ghost Train Man had caught Mark and Robbie could never save him this time . . .
Davies had pressed the switch on the tape recorder and, suddenly, Chadderton’s worst fears had been realised. Reality and nightmare had fused into one. The feeling of living a dream had taken over completely. The events in Davies’ bedroom had tipped him over. He had slipped over the edge of reality into an all-enveloping blackness. All around him – nothingness. And Chadderton wondered if this was what a nervous breakdown was really like. He was sure that his mind had decided that it couldn’t take any more. It had opted out.
But there was no real escape here. No place to hide. Because Chadderton was suddenly standing in bright sunshine on his back lawn. His shirt was open, his tie hanging loose. He knew that he had just arrived home, that his jacket was hanging over the back of a chair and that a fresh can of beer was waiting for him on a side table. He had seen his wife’s car parked in the garage when he knew that it should not be there. He had followed that terrible smell of burning out into the back garden.
There was no sign of that frightful burning mound on the lawn. No thick, oily smoke billowing up from a huddled, shapeless mass. Only a scorched circle of blackened, smouldering grass. Chief Inspector Trafford was standing before it and looking at him with a bemused smile on his face. The smell of burning still hung in the air, thick and cloying; stinging the back of Chadderton’s throat and threatening to make him retch.
‘We’re taking you off the enquiry, Les. I think you know why.’ Trafford began pacing, casting his eye over Chadderton’s garden with patronising approval. ‘You’ve been through a lot. Had a terrible shock.’
Terrible shock. He was saying it just as if he was trying to keep him humored.
‘It’s obviously upset you, I can see. But I’m afraid that the drinking has got a little out of hand, Les. In fact, it’s seriously impairing your judgment. Nothing personal, but I’m sure you can see that we’re going to have to relieve you of duty. Temporarily, of course. Until you can get your act back together again.’ Again, that patronising grin. A fatherly pat on the shoulder. ‘Take a rest. That’s what you need, Les. How about a holiday? That would be nice, wouldn’t it? I know it’s been quite a while since you were able to take a real holiday. Take your good lady wife . . .’ Trafford was pointing behind him, into the garage. And Chadderton knew that she was in there somewhere. He knew that she wasn’t dead; that she hadn’t taken that train. She had changed her mind about the visit and had been drinking coffee with Mrs Colquhoun next door. He stumbled forward towards the garage and for the first time noticed the other smudges on the lawn. The blackened marks were footprints, he realised, as he drew closer to the yawning garage entrance. Charcoaled footprints leading from the circle of blackened grass on the lawn into the dark recesses of the garage. Something was waiting for him there in the dark, standing next to the Cortina. It was moving forward to meet him. Something which couldn’t walk properly.
And Chadderton remembered that this was a nightmare. And that nightmares always showed you something bad, something so terribly bad, when you were expecting things to get better.
He collapsed to his knees, holding his hands over his face as the dark shape moved out into the sunlight. He did not want to see and, in slow motion, was crushing the palms of his hands over his eyes as something black with five fingers swung jerkily into his line of vision. There was a glint of gold from one of the fingers.
The pressure was gone from his eyes now and Chadderton was no longer on his back garden lawn. He was in a huge, echoing chamber, looking up at a criss-cross of girders overhead. Pigeons were fluttering among them and sunlight was trying to peep in through a huge overhead skylight. He looked around him. He was in Newcastle Centra
l Station. But there were no people about. The station was completely deserted and, as he watched, an old newspaper floated spectrally across the platform away from him. He began to run, not really knowing where. Just away. Away. Away. He had still not lost the feeling that something very bad was going to happen. It was as if something wanted him to see what he would rather not see. If only he could get out of the station. Get out and get away. Get away and not see. But now he realised that the exit had been bricked up. Spinning madly in the centre of the station, he looked for another way out but could find none. Somewhere above, he could hear laughing. It echoed mockingly, bouncing from girder to girder, echoing long and loud. Chadderton knew that it was Trafford’s laughter.
‘You bastard!’ Chadderton was screaming hysterically. The sound of his voice seemed to cut through everything like a diamond on glass. It surged upwards and outwards, rebounding into his own head.
Now, the station had undergone an instantaneous alteration. The Victorian superstructure and the high, vaulted arches and girders remained. He was still standing in the centre of a chamber of sorts. But it was no longer a station . . . it was a gallery. It reminded him somehow of the Victoria and Albert Museum. There were glass cases positioned around him, containing exhibits and what seemed to be stiff waxen characters in period uniform. But, damn it all, he could still see the station buffet across the way. He could still see the newsagent’s shop. There was a glass booth standing right next to it.
Chadderton moved towards one of the boxes and looked in. It was a wax dummy with two heads. Chains dangled from manacled wrists, eyes bulged and protruded. There was a piece of card on the glass: ‘See the Two Headed Thing.’ Chadderton moved away from it. The horrible glass eyes were disquieting; they seemed to follow him as he passed. The other cases were filled with similarly disturbing specimens. Cheap and tatty exhibits from a twopenny-halfpenny arcade. A second-rate Chamber of Horrors.
He looked for another way out. He remembered that there was a second exit just beyond the buffet and began to move towards it. As he walked, he could see another glass case standing beside the exit itself. The box was turned away at a slight angle so that he could not see the occupant. And as he moved towards it he became aware of a thread of unease somewhere inside him. The horrible inevitability of nightmare seemed so much more tangible now as he drew closer.
Cat and mouse, thought Chadderton. This is a game of cat and mouse. Something wants me to find that exit. No . . . something has put that last exhibit next to the exit so that I’ll see it. No longer in control, he moved on, the glass case looming larger and larger before him. And, worst of all, he knew that he could not hide his eyes again this time. That he would be made to look into that case and see what was in there.
Chadderton drew level with the glass case, turned and looked inside.
It was his wife. He had known all along that it would be her. She had burnt and someone had come along and swept her up and put her in this case with all the other exhibits.
Oh dear God, I must wake up. I must wake up. I MUST WAKE UP.
Joyce’s eyes flickered open. She was still alive.
And Trafford was laughing again as Chadderton’s screams disturbed the pigeons nestling on the rafters above. Screams that echoed and rebounded as the glass case began to open and his wife reached out towards him, begging for an embrace. Trafford had appeared beside him now, laughing and laughing and laughing. And Chadderton, suddenly in full possession of his body again, lunged forward to take Trafford by the throat. He began squeezing that throat as hard as he could; they collapsed to the floor and Chadderton was lying on top of Trafford, trying to squeeze that damnable laughter out of him. But Trafford continued to laugh. Chadderton was weeping in rage, cursing and uttering throaty abominations.
‘I’ll kill you, kill you, kill you kill you kill . . .’
And as Chadderton’s hands continued to throttle, Trafford continued to laugh.
Joanne had just found Mark’s note: ‘Couldn’t sleep. Don’t worry if you wake up and I’m not there. Back soon. Gone for a walk. Love, Mark.’
It was raining heavily outside. November wind was snapping at the window casement. He shouldn’t be out in this, thought Joanne. She hoped to God that he hadn’t decided to go back to the station again. And then she heard the front door shut. She ran to the bedroom door, opened it and saw Mark standing downstairs in the hallway, his coat soaked through and dripping wet. There was a pool of muddy grey water on the mat and Mark was looking up at her, his face white and drawn. Even from here, she could see the livid pink scar across his forehead as if it had been newly made.
No, thought Joanne. It didn’t happen like this last time. And then she was moving down the stairs towards him.
‘Where have you been?’
‘Walking. Just walking . . .’
‘You look like death warmed up.’
Death warmed up. The words seemed to hang heavily in the air as she took his arm and pulled it around her shoulder. He looked as if he were about to collapse there and then on the ‘Welcome’ mat.
‘Get me upstairs to the bedroom, Jo. I’ve got to get upstairs.’ And again, Joanne had that strange thought which seemed to make no sense: It’s not supposed to happen like this. It didn’t happen like this last time.
Mark was a dead weight against her, the wet fabric of his coat dampening her nightdress, making it cling to her side. He was groaning with every step, eyes screwed tightly shut, strands of hair plastered across his tense, white face.
‘Get me upstairs, Jo.’
To Joanne, it seemed as if Mark had just been fished out of the canal, he was so wet. And God knew what state he would be in after this. Get those clothes off, get him dried and into bed and then straight on the telephone to the doctor. He was in a weak enough condition to begin with. A case of pneumonia was something with which she knew he could never cope.
They moved into the bedroom and Joanne guided him into the chair beside the bed.
And then, strangely, she was in bed and Mark was standing naked in the middle of the room looking at her. She couldn’t remember taking off his clothes and towelling him dry as she had intended. But she supposed she must have done. There was an S-shaped scar on Mark’s hip – another legacy from his terrible accident. He was looking at her now in unutterable misery.
‘Joanne . . .’
She held her arms out to him and he moved to the bed, pulling back the covers and slipping quickly in beside her. His body felt icy cold as she pulled his head tight against her breast; caressing his hair and wanting her love to make everything all right again. He was kissing her roughly now and she was responding to him, wanting the warmth of her body to flow into him and dispel the ice water that seemed to be flowing in his veins. Urgently and desperately, she wanted him to enter her. And when he did, it was like ice again. But everything would be fine. She was going to make everything well and by this one act of lovemaking she would make him whole again.
Mark’s face was pressed tightly down into the hollow of her shoulder and neck as he moved inside her, and everything was going to be better . . .
But he was chuckling against her skin in a way that she did not like. A low, guttural, hollow sound that she had heard somewhere a million years ago. There was no warmth in her body now – it had been taken from her in one terrible spasm of fear. She pushed hard at Mark and could see the look of horror on his face as he pulled back, his eyes looking through her and focusing on some frightful inner realisation.
‘Oh God, Joanne. What’s happening to me?’ A hoarse, horrified whisper. And then Mark had lurched away from her and she, in her fear, was crouching against the headboard with the sheets pulled up protectively around her, knowing that something was terribly wrong.
‘It’s the accident, Jo. It wasn’t my fault. I can’t help what happened to me. Really, I just want to get better. And you can help me be . . . be .
. .’ Mark was struggling for a word and Joanne wanted to tell him that the word was Whole . . . I want you to be whole. But she could not tell him.
‘Oh, noooooo . . .’ Mark was clutching at his face with one hand as he lay on the bed, propped up on one elbow. ‘Everything’s . . . everything’s . . . going to pieces, Jo. Going to pieces, Jo . . . GOING TO PIECES, JO . . .’
Mark pulled his hand away from his face and Jo wanted to scream but could not.
One of Mark’s eyes was smeared in a glistening chunk across the palm of his hand. The fingers of his hand were, even now, shrivelling and peeling, corrupted fragments of flesh falling to the bedspread. Mark was looking at his hand and uttering short, hoarse cries of horror. He was clambering from the bed, backing away from her into the centre of the room. But his legs were flaking and crumbling and would not support him. He fell heavily to his knees and the impact dislodged his lower jaw which crumbled downwards, falling away from its socket. Mark was using his other hand to try and keep it in place but it was no good because his other hand was liquefying and flowing. His other eye was popping from its socket as Joanne fought to find the scream that had been building up inside her. And when she saw that his penis was missing and could feel the ice-cold deep inside her, the scream finally came to her lips. But the scream could not end the nightmare: Mark was still disintegrating before her, and although he could not speak now, she knew what he was mouthing: Going to pieces . . . going to pieces . . . going to pieces.
Eleven
Helen knew something bad was happening when everything vanished.
She had been sitting on the edge of the bed, watching as her Daddy and the Other Man came in and rescued them from the Bad Man. She knew that Daddy would come, it was what happened in every fairy story she had read. ‘Here comes the Cavalry’, Daddy would say, with comical inevitability, every time they watched a western on TV. And she also knew that something had happened to her when the Bad Man had hit Mummy. She supposed it was what Mummy called ‘The Bad Shock’ and that the best thing to do was just sit on the edge of the bed and be quiet until her mind told her that it was okay to be normal again. Helen remembered how Tracy Allen had looked that day in the schoolyard when she found out that her sister had been hit by a car. She had gone all white. ‘White as parchment,’ Helen had heard their PE teacher say later that afternoon. And although she didn’t know what parchment was, she guessed that it must be pretty white. Tracy hadn’t spoken a word but her eyes were all glassy and one of the other teachers had taken her home for a long rest. When Helen asked her about it, Mummy had told her about ‘shock’ and how it might take a little while to get better when something really bad like that happened to you. In her own way, Helen understood all of this, even though she had always thought that a ‘shock’ was something you got from seeing something really nasty – like one of the Doctor Who monsters when they crept up behind you and grabbed you. Helen had always thought that you screamed when you got a shock and that it made your hair go all spiky and your eyes pop out on springs, just like the characters in some of the comics she read. But she could grasp the concept, even though she thought the word was wrong. She understood that she was in shock now and wondered whether the sudden darkness had anything to do with it.