[Short Story] The Train

A headlight cut through the fog and the train chugged to a stop. A small boy tugged at the coat of a plump woman snoozing on a bench. “Grandma, the train.”

She rubbed her eyes and struggled to her feet. “Come on, Max,” she said, as if to show that she was still the responsible party.

Max grabbed her bulky bag and dragged it up the steps.

A man at the back was the only other person on board. Max and his grandmother sat near the front. The train jerked back into motion.

Max tried to look out the window, but constant whorls of fog obfuscated the dark landscape.

“Grandma?”

She grunted.

“Remember the bird we saw today? The blue bird?”

“Blue jay,” she corrected.

“I liked its little hat,” he said, meaning its crest.

“Jays are thieves.” She shut her eyes.

Max tried to recall the cheerful bird hopping from branch to branch, but the train was so grey and cold. Overcome with impatience and boredom, he slipped past his snoring grandmother into the aisle.

The doors at the front of the car rattled uselessly: locked. He braved walking past the man to check the doors at the back, but they were locked as well.

“Psst.”

Max whipped about.

The man was staring at him. Max backed against the doors. He didn’t like this man with his grey stubble, rumpled coat, and sleep-worn eyes. The man's eyebrows shrugged, his dry lips worked, his eyes grew bright and dark; and finally he said, as if speaking a difficult riddle, “Do you know where this train is going?”

“Chester.”

A slight smile worked at the corners of the man’s mouth. “If you say so.” He turned away.

Max rushed past him and squeezed back in beside his grandmother. Safe. The strange man had dampened his excitement about the journey. Tiredness began to take hold, and he allowed himself to drift to sleep against his grandmother’s arm.

When he woke, the world was white.

He could not see the seat in front of him. He reached out, but his grandmother’s seat was empty.

“Grandma?”

No answer.

The train had stopped. He brought his hand in front of his face, where his fingers were visible and comforted him that he had not gone blind. He felt his way along the seats and through the wet air until he came to the open train door.

Even on the ground, he could see nothing but fog. It laced around him and sunk into his nose, chilled his body, muffled the world. Most children, and even many adults, are afraid in the dark. It's impossible to see clearly, and everything takes on an ominous, mysterious air. But this was worse. The dim, cold whiteness made walking almost like swimming in a brackish pool where the surface never comes.

He kept wandering through the fog, hands outstretched, until a strange sound snuck into his ears. No, rather than simply strange, it was the kind of sound that should not exist in this world. He would not have been able to describe it. Like a rooster...no, a siren...no. And it was not a strictly frightening sound so much as an unfriendly sound. Max stumbled back toward the train, grasping at the cool air with the beginnings of panic rising in him. And then his hand struck metal. He reboarded the train with relief, shut the door, and ran to crouch behind a seat. As if by instinct, he covered his ears.

Soundless. Sightless. I'm not here. Nothing's here. Nothing, nothing, nothing...

A soft something brushed his arm. Max cried out and cringed away, but the something came again. It felt unbelievably soft, like the whisper of rabbit's fur. Max finally reached out to touch the thing. An unfamiliar sensation, like the tingling left on the tongue by kiwifruit, coated his arm. It had gone straight through the something, and yet he could feel its form coating his arm apart from the fog.

He shuddered and leapt to his feet, then jumped over where he thought it might be and ran back to the door. But it was shut fast and would not open again. Suddenly the train began to move, with himself and the something trapped inside the car together.

Max felt for the front doors and rattled them, but they were still locked. The back doors...that was where it was waiting. Or was it? It could be an inch away...

Steeling himself, Max ran to the back of the train and turned the handles. Slammed them. But the doors were still locked.

Something soft and light nestled at the back of his neck. "What is that?!" he yelled into the fog. He heard again the sound that shouldn't be, that was somewhere between a whistling kettle and a dying cat. He reached back and slapped his neck, but his hand only went through the thing while tingling unnaturally. He removed his hand with a shudder. A sense of fuzzy mold began growing in his throat. He struggled to breathe.

I'm going to die, he thought. He ran down the aisle, bumping into seats on the way, and began banging at the front of the car. "Help! Help..." He slid to the floor. His vision began to fade.

The train suddenly lurched to a stop. The door slammed open. With a rush, the fog sucked out of the train and vanished into the clear air. Max gasped as he stared at the suddenly visible world. The furry thing was gone.

He staggered down the steps and ran ahead to look into the conductor's car, but the window was dark. "Hello!" he yelled. "Can you help me? I'm lost!" There was no reply.

He looked around. Even though it should still be the middle of the night, this stop was bathed in bright sunlight. Although nobody was in sight, the red brick under his feet and colorful flowers in the window boxes of the station buildings had an encouraging air. He walked to the nearest building only to find the door locked and the windows dark. "Hello?"

He walked past the buildings into a charming square with a gorgeous blue fountain shooting high into the air. A balmy breeze brushed his cheek. Relief slowly oozed into him. The fog, the cold, the something, all were gone. He only had now to find someone to tell him where he was and how he could get to Chester.

A clock somewhere nearby struck three; was it early morning, or afternoon? Max walked to a row of buildings across the way that appeared to be shops, but all were shut and dark. The houses he eventually found were the same. Not a soul in sight, and everything boarded and dark. He banging randomly on doors. Nobody came. He kept trying until the clock struck four, then five.

Finally he tried the knob on a house: it opened. He crept in carefully. "Hello?" He walked from room to room of the tidy, pretty little house whose interior brought to mind Scandinavian decor, but nobody was inside. The moment his eyes fell on a large bed with flowered comforter and embroidered white sheets, exhaustion overwhelmed him. It was not five minutes before he had fallen asleep.

"What are you doing here?!"

Max shot upright. "Huh? Ah?" His eyes focused on an old man leaning on a cane, squinting furiously. Max climbed out of the bed. "I'm sorry! I got so tired, and I'm lost! Can you help me?"

The old man shook his head. "You shouldn't be here. You don't belong here." He motioned through a window to the darkening sky. "Don't you realize it's nearly eight o'clock?"

"I'm sorry!" Max said again. "But I'm trying to get to Chester and I got lost so please can you help me? It was all foggy at the last station and I'm scared to get on the train again and the conduc--"

"Alright, alright!" He waved his hand dismissively. "I get the picture. Somebody messed up, I'll tell you that. You're far too young to be here. Weren't you traveling with someone?"

"My grandma!" Max cried. "Did you see her?"

"Little boy," he said after a pause, "I doubt you'll ever see her again. She's played you for a fool."

"What?" Nothing was making sense.

"Here, sit on the bed. I'll explain. You're in a terrible position. I barely know how to put it." Max sat down. The old man deeply sighed, ran his hand through his thinned hair. "This is the place of the wicked. Not just this stop -- that foggy stop you visited, and all nine hundred ninety-nine stops hereafter. This is the train ride of the damned. Your grandmother must have done something dreadful in her life. But instead of answering for it, she's somehow managed to rope you into it. You're far too young to be here. Even if you've done anything so horrible, you haven't had time to set it right.
"The way it works is this. When someone has done a horrible thing, after a number of years they receive a message of where and when to board the train. It's not always the same train. But it always comes on a foggy night, and it always starts with the foggy stop. After that, they're doomed to ride the rails for a thousand and one stops. When they hit the last one, they simply turn back up in the fog again. The same stops, over and over. Every one is different. But every one is horrible."

"But it's not 'horrible' here," said Max.

The man bowed his head. "And that's why you have to get out of here before nine o'clock. But we still have time, so listen. A person can get off at any stop they choose, and they can stay there if they like. But when the clock strikes nine, they'll be stuck at that stop forever. Do you understand? You keep going around and around through 1,001 stops or pick your poison, but either way it's a nightmare for eternity."

Max gaped. "You mean I'm in hell?"

"Is this hell? I don't think any gods or devils are involved. It's just...the way of things, like how a tree grows and blocks the light from the saplings below. The train comes, and you get on. If you don't, you're bound to suffer a dreadful death. But nobody knows what it means to get on until it's too late. How did your grandmother know enough about it to hoodwink you? But I don't know how else to explain it. There should never be a child here. You haven't had long enough..."

"How do I get out?" Max asked, feeling tears coming on.

The old man thumped his cane. "Haven't you been listening, boy? You don't 'get out'. There is no 'out.' The train will never return you to your old world. It only goes the one thousand and one stops. And you're sitting pretty at number two. I can't help you. But I promise you you shouldn't stay here. I was rash enough to choose this place without riding on. I've heard of others from people who visit here. But none of them sound worse than this. You have to go. Get back on. Keep fighting. --You shouldn't be here." He shook his head again. "Now go! Don't even cut it close."

He shooed the sobbing Max out of his house and bade him run back to the train. Max tried to cling to the old man, but he pushed him away, repeating almost in a shout, "Anywhere but here. Anywhere but here." Finally Max left.

The train metal clanged under his feet, the doors shut, and it moved on.

Sixteen years later, Max lay in a field being pecked to death by crows. This happened every day, and yet it never failed to make him scream. Like every resident of the train line, he regretted his choice. He thought of little else.

After he died, he walked to the train station to see if anyone new would step off. At #567, this was quite rare. And yet, today, the train stopped. Max eagerly leaned forward to see who it might be. He remembered vaguely what it had been like for him as a little boy, when he ran into residents like himself who liked to wait by the train lines. But they had all said the same thing: "Not here."

The door did not open. No new sufferer stepped out. Instead, the conductor's door opened to reveal a young man in a pressed blue uniform. He walked down the steps. "You must be Max," he said.

"Yes...yes, that's me!" New hope sparkled in Max's eyes. He stepped forward.

"It seems there was a mix-up...your grandmother's death was just reported and well, someone had to look into things. Somehow she managed to throw you in. I'm not sure how the system missed it. You're here by accident."

"Yes, yes!" He rushed to the conductor. "Every day I've been pecked to death, to death, by crows...you can't imagine! Please, take me home. Take me home!"

"I'm afraid that would be impossible at this point." The conductor spoke over Max's continued yells. "You've experienced and know too much. You don't belong in the world anymore."

"Who would believe me? Send me to a crazy house! I don't care!"

"Here's what we can do," said the man. He climbed into the train, then returned with a box wrapped with blue ribbons.

Max unwrapped it to find a brand new conductor's uniform and cap. "We have many trains," said the conductor. "Each train exists in its own universe. Would you like to be a conductor?"

"Can the...the things at each stop touch me?" Max asked desperately.

The man smiled. "No. But once you accept, you can't change your mind."

"Then...I accept."

Max climbed back into the train with the conductor. "How did you get here?"

The conductor put the train in motion, and before long they pulled up in front of a station in the ordinary world. Max dove for the door handle. "Don't bother. It's impossible to get out." Max struggled in vain for several minutes, even tried to break the glass, but to no avail. He sat back, defeated.

An old lady shuffled toward the first car. The instant her foot touched the train, Max felt her fear and the chill of the fog in his own body and mind as keenly as if he had been her. And when they pulled into the foggy station, her bewilderment and heightened fear became his own. Something dug sharply into her leg, and Max screamed, touched the same place on his own. He turned with dread to look at the conductor.

"Yes," the conductor said without looking at him, "You feel everything, every time, until they choose. Well, you get used to the little things like a dig in the leg."

Max's eyes were wide with horror.

"To answer your question," he continued, "I chose stop 1,001."

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