Twilight Train

Twilight Zone-esque short stories about a ghost train of some sort. Not the best example of one though.

Last winter you’d never have seen me in a place like this, let me tell you that right off. It wasn’t about the smell, that ever lasting, clinging vile haze from the vents below that lead to god-knows-where. It wasn’t the people, though they all seemed to lack any evident emotion. Those cold, shared frowns forming an ocean of malaise drowning any wanderers hapless enough to enter. No, it wasn’t even the any of the other shadows, crawlies, scatters, clicks, clocks, ticks, tocks or even the screech of the harrowing angel from the archway on the far end of the world. It was that it never stopped, not once and I had been there every day, every spare moment I had, since nearly a year’s passing on the dot of the day I swear to you I was. I watched, endlessly. Aeons passed before me, galaxies were born and cast for my view and yet nothing ceased moving, for it’s moment of rest not one time. Passerbys would come along, come into the station looking perplexed. Something didn’t seem quite right it seemed to them, their frowns twisting and turning like a feather tossed around in the breeze. They’d cross their arms, shake their heads and take a step or two finally then pause and turn right back around to find themselves at another place later, much more merry to themselves I’m sure. A few brave ones made it to the ticket line, but that was something else in it’s own very special way. The tickets were sold, yes sir you bet. I have a few myself, the corners are all twisted and torn from how long I’ve had them. I keep every single one I buy, a little proof of purchase between me and good ol’ roundabout. You’ll never get to use a single one. There may have been at some time a ticket salesman or saleswoman of kinds who used to provide a service, but those days were long times forgotten in here. The tickets are purchased from a large steel machine protruding from the wall with the words “Freedom” printed neatly across it, silver backdrop to a cobalt twister of hope for those in seek of something else from what they woke up to today. They are ten dollars a pop, and the machine takes all forms of major credit cards, as well as debit of course. It lovingly caresses each individual one,before returning it to their owner. Then they take their ticket and turn it over once, then they turn it back over to it’s original place, and stow it on their persons somewhere hidden from all the others, hiding it from them in turn until everyone has eventually even hidden it from themselves.

From there, they wait.

I have never spoken to anyone, when you enter into the underbelly of the platform, you start to get a feeling no one is meant to. The walls and floors are cast over by hanging, dull gentle lights cast from the ceiling and coming to a little ways past halfway down. Deep shadows feel the gaps in with a sinister sashay when the screeching behemoth rolls past and sails by, shaking the walls and ceilings and causing the lamps to sway, still yet ever so gently. Along the corners and walls, spaced out in even increments along the floorboards, incandescent fireflies guide the way to the edge of where the floor meets that cold, steel lined abyss. The folks in the place, aside from myself, move about and they’ll sometimes be gone for a few days but when they wait, they simply cease to be. If you approach them, they do not acknowledge you, lost in the world they can’t escape and wouldn’t if they could. Some have fallen asleep, but they seem scared when they awaken and promptly stand and lean against the walls instead. Few stay amongst the shadows and those that do seem a different breed altogether from the others. Smoke drifts in and out of the dancing darkness and every so often voices will float outwards into the open area, settling down and resting eventually down the echoing tunnels, just off to the side. Usually, those voices seem to only come from one soul and it sends chills to me every time. The smoke is stale, yellow in the light and hisses by, forming new worlds and creatures in it’s traveling cloud upwards, never towards an open sky or a watercolor sunrise, simply traveling onward to another cold vent, leaking it’s sorrow unto the world. A cathedral of gloom, you might even think of it. It’s own haunting organ and it’s own chorus.

Yet even these people, and these things they did, never once stopped. Fidgeting this way, leaning that way. Heads bobbing in motion to inaudible rhythms. Scratching the same itches they’d been scratching for days, in all the angles and strengths they could muster. Most of them had scabs, tracking paths up and down their arms, fresh from the latest inner quarrel they were having that day. There were benches, where some of the braver ones would attempt to catch some shut eye, but they always tossed and turned and groaned aloud as they fought back to waking after some time. After I had been there for what seemed like hours, I would leave and travel along the local roads back to my home. Curious feet, tapping along with what I can only call a remembrance of the hollow humming from the machine, always circling somewhere down those hallowed halls, screaming forth unto it’s everlasting night in a precise rhythm. Even after I left the first night, I knew that was what would drive me to the end of times. A droning, all consuming blanket of noise that I never wanted to leave from. It would power my walks anywhere I roamed and it provided the backdrop for my conversations, now plays with words dancing along it’s steady beat. It spun my dreams into golden fabrications, sparking life into nothing and creating a majestic story for the ages. I never even used me eyes it seemed anymore, I was too enraptured in my siren’s song, casting aside anything in my path.

Other things later escaped me as I continuously found myself spending more and more time along the station, even if just to get a taste of the air. It seemed sweeter in those dim lights, sugar trickling down my throat and wispy honey filling my lungs. I found myself having a hard time remembering the faces along the walls. I may have never spoken to them, but I listened, oh I certainly did. I strained my ears and harnessed every muscle to catch any hints to their purpose. A raspy cough coming from a middle aged woman along the wall, her face rounded and drooping down like a pile of wet laundry? Perhaps she has pneumonia and needs a doctor in another land, far away from here and it’s plight. She would go to him, and live out her days after being cured by the miracle from down under. A single tear rolling down and elderly man’s face, his cheek wincing at the cold, biting drop. Snapping from his dreamy, passive state long enough to wipe it away and flash backwards into his past all over again. Oh the things he must have seen! A younger boy dressed in ragging clothing, clearly they’d seen more years than he eve had, propped against the wall reading aloud to himself? I never saw a caregiver for him, a runaway? He stopped his reading and fixed his eyes on me and we locked together in a single union. A wave of soothing comfort came over me then and I felt myself shaking free of all my thoughts. His eyes reflecting the world that he envisioned, a land where children rule and adults are put to sleep at high noon. A lawless wild west with pop gun sheriffs, suction cup Indians and a whole stable of imaginary horses, hollering for the chance to prove themselves on the open grasslands. Sunrises that never fall, and nights that show you what the stars are really for. A glorious, pristine beauty glowing with the same brightness every other viewer stole away for their moment in time. I felt terrible then, alone and frozen to the core. My breath came out steaming rising up and over me towards those awful vents, and I gasped and stumbled backwards. I flailed a moment in futility at the steam, hoping to capture it and store it back inside of myself. What had just happened, what did he see in my eyes? I shivered, in a room I had thought was a tad on the heated side just moments ago. The room rolled in and around me, a maelstrom of thoughts, words and images flooded into me and I felt myself falling to the floor. I could bring my eyes to focus if I strained, but it seemed the more strain I put trying to see, the more noise fell into my skull. Shrieking wails ran traces along the roof, filling the station with a cacophonous haunting melody that shook me to the spot. I heard a subterranean hissing down the way, snaking it’s way down the corridor and spilling out to the room. I winced then as the wailing hit a high note and just as soon as the crescendo finished I put everything I could muster into one, crystal clear picture. My eyes shot open, slamming upward like geysers. The people were gone, the boy wasn’t. He was changing though, but I could make his face out in the dancing darkness and I remembered those eyes. I could never forget them now even if I had only seen them in my deepest dreams. He was rapidly growing taller, an inch a minute you might say. His hair, previously golden and hanging off his head was pouring off his crown like a waterfall. It turned an auburn brown and finished it’s course, spilling over his back and down his chest, stopping just below his midsection and resting comfortably on his belt. His shoes and clothing all seemed to accommodate this sudden spurt as well as the rest of his belongings. He snapped, jerked, popped and twisted in and out of positions no human being I have ever known could manage. An alien before me, he continued shaping and shambling in place, his mouth open in an inaudible scream as his body doubled over on itself backwards, his spine shifting and crunching. I felt a cool running down the side of my face, droplets sticking to my beard and I wiped my face. All the while, that wailing droned on, rising and falling in waves crashing against the backdrop and then retreating away until the next tide rolled in. I was scared then, I will freely admit. I’d be a liar if I wasn’t and I genuinely feel that’s the kind of thing no one walks into chest held high and proud without some kind of visual and auditory manipulator in their system. I hadn’t had my regiment that day, lucky me. I ached, muscles furiously kicking against a wall of crippling paranoia, but I wanted to run now. I wanted to run away, as far as I could, further than anyone ever had or ever would need to, I knew I wouldn’t be rid of this nightmare, but I could at least put some time in between our next visit. Flipping onto my back, I could see the exit but it’s light had climbed away from me and it was growing further. The stairs were broken off at the entrance and the ceiling had risen, there was no other explanation. Burying my face, I wept for everything I had ever cared for and for the things I would never get the opportunity to do so. My fingers stuck to my face and I peeled away crimson dotted grippers. I screamed, and not one soul heard me as a grunting, caustic gasping came behind me. Leaping off the rocky tile, I saw it then. An ebony faceplate came from the corridor to the side of ticket machine, dominating the area immediately upon it’s new found arrival. Like one of the kings of the jungle themselves, each inch it surged forward signaled a presence greater than I could fathom. All at once then, it’s front tip lurched outwards and smoke poured in from the corridor, filling the room with a thick, musky haze. I choked back down to the floor, slashing my arms at invisible assailants. The smoke flipped and danced away from me, taunting and laughing as I stumbled about feeling for a brace with which to support my fragile shell.

It sighed then, and I could start to make out it’s form as the dissipating fog banked away and back down the other end of the wall, stretching down the corridor fading away into the breach. It was all encompassing, it’s black form stretching and filling the spillway, gluttonously grabbing up all of the free space it could seek out. Metal on metal upon metal, with intricacies woven into it from front to back. A tapestry detailing journeys across spaces and times only the original journeymen who had started them would know of. The boy! I had misplaced him in all of this time and he came beside me now, his pants shuffling against the stone. He was not the alien, shifting being I had seen moments ago but stood taller than my stature now and with an aura of confidence that seeped from his newly emerged body. His hair tied back behind him in a gracefully done ponytail, slung across his shoulder and dancing playfully in a breeze that seemed only interested in him. He had left all of his belongings next to the corner stacked in a little pile. Years later, someone would have to peace together what he had left behind and try to figure out an entire world based on those few scraps of cloth and extraneous little pieces of childhood. Glancing down I came across his book, it too had seemed to age gracefully. Blue walls separated my eyes from the pages inside, which seemed to have doubled since last glance and white knuckles made sure I knew I would never see them anyway, and I quickly lost interest in the matter entirely. He stared forward, unwavering at the new entry to his world. I stared forward as well, hoping his eyes could land on something and show me what it was this being had desired. He slipped over and around the black idol, each stroke of his gaze arcing from one side to the other without any seeming delay as if he were visiting a museum.

With a startling, sickening celerity he hustled to the nearest side of the intruder and slammed his fist into the side. Blood splattered amongst the side as an echoing gong rang out. He merely stood there, not removing his clenched bleeding hand from the side for even a moment. His breathing was shallow, bu steady and it almost seemed to match the hum that was now pulsating from inside the great behemoth. The blood, slipped a ways down before it was enveloped in blackness. The dripping stopped and seeped into itself before disappearing, flashing away from vision and only leaving that many more mysteries. I waited, not wanting to receive a similar attack upon my person and quietly panicked to myself. The boy, I suppose I should say the man straightened up and took his hand away and fished around in his pockets. The remnants of his attack were miniscule and quickly vanishing by the second, all of it being absorbed into the ever static blackness of the hull. He stopped fidgeting then, stopping over and picking up a few droppings of lint and other piles of dust and placing those back in his pocket, retrieving and examining his ticket from earlier.

I decided to sit then, it seemed the correct thing to do. My ticket was in my left front pocket, and I couldn’t find the will to look at it. I had bought one almost every single day up until this time coming and it always managed to escape my attention until I had returned to my quarters where I could poke and prod and wonder about it until all others in the night bedded down, leaving only myself and my prize to the night air and puzzlement. Now, however, it weighed down on me like the lodestone that it was.