I really enjoyed this prompt. The sense of impending doom is full throughout, and the moment of tension hits you at the end. This is a great set up for a thriller. A fitting tale for the 50th week of Finish the Story!. This is easily the best contest on Steemit.

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The Abysmal Biscuit

by @F3nix

The awareness of the box's contents dripped slowly in Joelle's mind, coagulating like a graceless Rorschach's blot. Bones. Tiny tapered bones, standing out against the mahogany bottom.

The unusual item jolted on the worn chair, reacting to the vibrations of the old diesel-powered train. The convoy, the last of his lineage, still fulfilled its duty along the Brașov-Sighișoara route allowing students to return to their homes every weekend. To the rhythm of joints and sleepers, the whiteness of the remains continued to dance tremulously before the eyes of the young woman as the frames of her glasses slipped slowly from her nose.

In a tinkling clink of bracelets, the student closed the lid of the box and moved away as far as possible from it, crushing herself against the seat's padding. The lazy air of the air conditioner stuck to the bottom of her dry throat an acrid plastic taste.

And then she saw him. The old passenger had returned and was staring at her through the windows that led from the corridor of the car to the cabin. She listened to her own scream erupting and fill the cramped cab.

"I didn't want to scare you, young lady."

"N-not scared. No worries, sir." Somehow, Joelle managed to gather the few polite words her manners demanded. She could not have said how long he had been watching and if he had seen where curiosity had taken her. The glasses, temples up in the air, laid on the seat beside her.

The old man was tall and lanky, his burnished skin resembled the ancient scales of a dragon. Dressed in work trousers and a raw cotton shirt, he gave the impression of being one of those peasants whose families had inhabited the Carpathians for centuries.

Joelle's gaze passed involuntarily from the man to the funeral urn disguised as a biscuit tin: the representation of a merry-go-round in a lacquered colored wood and graceful workmanship. The children were swirling with their bent busts, perhaps because of the speed of the carousel. Their mouths were wide open and their hands clung to the poles skewering the horses. With a lump in her throat, she remembered the fleeting memory of just a few hours before, when a train was huffing at the central station and a gentle old man asked her help because he couldn't open the cabin door. She felt like something ruined down from her lungs to her guts.

"I see that you like my craft." In the silence, she could detect the old man's fingers caressing the box inlays.
"It's adorable. A gift for a grandchild?" Joelle realized only now that the object was his only baggage. In the warm twilight, the colors of lacquered wood seemed even more lively. The conifers thickened on the sides of the train, sliding quickly to the edges of her field of vision.

"Oh. A gift, says the young lady. Like a toy, perhaps?" The old man's eyes were two black bottomless pits. His gaze had slowly become vitreous like that of a deep-water fish, yet at the same time penetrating.
"Yes, a toy. I like how you see it, miss." The passenger continued, his voice getting thinner.

Only then, Joelle realized where they were heading: the train had just passed the old mill and would soon pass through the tunnels beneath the mountain.

"You may have noticed how I depicted all these children. Observe, miss, between a horse and the other: they are not alone." By pronouncing the last vowel, which he abnormally prolonged, his voice tone had become a slow and drawling rattle.

It was still too early for the wagons' lights to turn on and the tunnels were preparing to swallow the convoy.

A sound of nails carving into the wood tore the thoughts of the young student.

My Ending

“Suck your bones in my teeth, eternity your soul I’ll keep.”

Through laughter and the smacking of his lips, the old man chanted the mantra. He gripped the wooden box, and before Joelle bolted out the cabin, she took a final glance.

The children. Why hadn’t she noticed it before? It was so obvious.

They were all the ones missing. She’d seen their faces on the TV sipping coffee at the dinner.

This one’s a fucking collector, she thought. A real hobbyist of souls, and I’m going to be the latest addition.

As she fled down the train, the sound of their cabin door shoving open flooded her ears. The old man, before so weak, now had no trouble at all opening the door.

And then the darkness took over.

The train had entered the tunnel beneath Mount Roades, the longest of the tunnels on the trip. Just her luck.

“Suck your bones in my teeth, eternity your soul I’ll keep.”

His voice flooded the darkness. Joelle sprinted on towards the rear baggage car. To the one thing that could save her.

The grimoire.

This old man was proof. Truth towards a nightmare she wanted to ignore.

A chance encounter in a Romanian bar with a man claiming to be undead, and wanting to see her grimoire? That was a coincidence. Witnessing a gang of skeletal gremlins fighting with a rat beast that had tried to snag it from her? Bad luck.

But being hunted now by a soul catcher?

The grimoire was puling these things towards her. Drawing them to the thing that had been touched, been warped, been transformed. Her soul.

And it would be his forever if she didn’t get this god damned door latch open.

Joelle flipped the hitch and slid the metal door open. She slipped into the baggage cart and locked the door. The old man was there, his face pressing against he glass, staring out to her with the smile. And in the darkness, his once vacant and black eyes now shone a menacing red.
“You think metal can stop me?” He asked.

She didn’t stand around to witness his ethereal prowess. Instead she tore through the luggage until she found her heavy travel bag and almost broke the zipper as she raced to unzip it.

The grimoire was there, staring up at her with the blood-soaked leather. She gripped it in her hands and turned towards the old man, now a ghostly specter floating towards her, repeating his mantra.

Gripping the old tome, the demonic tongues came to her. And this time, she let them do their work.

Speaking the forbidden tones of the old ones, the old man, hungry for souls, became the hunted. He tried to flea, clutching his wooden box full of children’s bones.

But the grimoire wanted him. And it sucked him in like a vacuum. He begged, but Joelle didn’t listen.

The bones rattled in the box as it fell to the floor. Sunlight flared through the windows.