“It wouldn’t work!” she yelled.
“Why not?!”
“It just... wouldn’t work, okay?!”
“Okay, but I don’t understand why!”
“Sometimes it’s best not to understand why!”
Indeed, that was the truest thing she had said to the boy since he was born. She didn’t think he needed to understand why everything had dried up. Why there were hardly any people left in the town. Why they had been here for so long, since birth, held prisoner. Why the people in town didn’t look the way they used to. Why they were now gray, some of them mutated so much they could be considered human only by the broadest of standards. It was solidarity, Nissa thought. Any human, no matter how monstrous, was better than that thing circling them, trapping them.
And no, she didn’t really think he needed to know about Rayles. How the train was more an extension of the conductor than a piece of machinery.
He had once innocently asked her what kind of cargo the train carried and why it never seemed to go anywhere except in circles. She couldn’t remember how she had skirted the question but she had.
“We should start up now,” Nissa said loudly, tired of shouting.
“Huh?!” Sarot blared.
Nissa pointed up to the top of the mountain of skulls sweeping toward them from the train. “We should go now!”
“Oh! Okay!”
Nissa repositioned her bag of skulls, now shifting it back to the other shoulder, and led the way. It had not been their turn to climb the mountain for six months. Last time, it had taken just over an hour. Nissa wondered how many skulls had been added by the other townsfolk during those months.
They had to tread very carefully. One wrong step and the whole mountain of skulls could come tumbling down. Then the townsfolk would have to spend days rebuilding them. To do so could, quite possibly, attract the attention of Rayles himself. Although there had never been so much as a story about Rayles leaving the engine to come down to the town, she didn’t want to think about the further horrors awaiting them if that actually happened.
She was amazed how the skulls had stayed this way, the pile growing larger and larger, over the years. Perhaps Rayles was merely toying with them. Maybe he was too busy tending to his other duties to care. Maybe he didn’t think the townsfolk would be around long enough for the mountain to become a threat. Or maybe something even worse waited for them on the other side. That thought had crossed her mind quite a lot over the past few months, ever since learning she and Sarot would be the ones to attempt this feat.
Poor Sarot. If his life ended tonight, he would never know the story behind his death. But Nissa would. It was a story she knew all too well. It had been told to her in the cradle and she had heard it at least weekly until her mother had met her end trying to escape the snaking iron and steel that was Rayles.
Sarot had asked about ladders. He should have asked his father. His father who, as one of the strongest men in town, had been elected to hold the mammoth ladder while the women tried to climb it.
The women were the first to be consumed in the blaze. Rayles’ cars growing orange-hot before the fire erupted from the windows, turning the wood ladder to cinder and teaching a valuable lesson to the townsfolk.
They were no longer here by choice.
Nissa remembered her father’s weeping, his blackened arms and singed eyebrows. It wasn’t long after that he died. And Nissa, only twelve, had become something of a mother to Sarot.
Rayles was born in a day when humans had godlike abilities. They erected cities and castles. They invented flight. They invented industry and commerce. And the only thing Rayles had wanted was a perfect little town. So he had made Uroboros. Gleaming silver and loaded with cargo, it circled three miles of lush land.
Sometimes Nissa wondered what the town had been like before the decay, when it still had a name. When people dreamt things and those dreams came true. Hadn’t this town once been the dream of Rayles? She saw signs of that old life—the houses built along the perimeter of the town, along the tracks, because Rayles used to bring them something other than misery. And people had flocked to the once green valley where there was no want for anything. Food, shelter, warmth, beauty, leisure, a good sex life—it was all brought by the man who had built the gleaming silver train and promised people that, in his town, people’s dreams would always have a home.
But Rayles got sick. Apparently, he was not godlike enough to avoid illness. Only he wouldn’t die, he couldn’t, because his dream was immortality. Immortality and the train he had made.
Deals with the devil were mentioned. The rumor was that Rayles would be able to live eternally if he agreed to carry the souls of the damned on his train. Hell, it seemed, was full.
Townspeople noted the changes in Rayles and in the train itself. Rayles grew gaunt. His eyes grew yellow. His hair grew long and gray, trailing out behind him. Not that anyone could get that close a look.
The train stopped stopping. Not only that, it seemed to go faster and faster. It made people dizzy just to look at it. It became black with soot because it never stopped to be washed.
And there were the faces.
That was the most shocking change of all.
The cargo.
These were not the goods and services Rayles once delivered.
Through the windows of the cars, the townspeople could see the faces of the damned, staring out from the grimed over windows, longing for anywhere other than the inside of that train. Sometimes there were screams. Screams of such volume that they rivaled the rumbling, jangling sound of the train itself. And the whistle changed too, sounding very much like a scream itself. Nearly every minute, it loosed one of its shrieks.
Nissa was conscious of all this as they neared the top of the skulls.
The engine car went past and she swore she heard Rayles laughing from inside.
Did he know? she wondered. Did he know what they had planned?
The skulls were those of friends and family, neighbors. Some of them had died trying to escape. Some of them had died trying to reclaim the world beyond Rayles’ tyranny. For some, that world was a green memory. For others, it was a dream, something unseen by any eye other than the mind’s.
Nissa liked the idea of using the skulls to escape. It would be like using Rayles’ victims against him. His very evil would be his downfall and her loved ones and acquaintances could experience a small scrap of revenge.
At the top, she cautiously unslung her pack and said, “Careful now!” to Sarot. It was a little less deafening here at the top of the mountain of skulls.
She began placing the skulls so they were every-other-one with the previous layer.
“I’m scared!” Sarot said.
“You should be scared!” she said, not comforting him at all. There wouldn’t be any sense in filling the boy with false hope. Not at this point.
After emptying her bag, she gestured for his. He placed it gently down on the skulls and opened it up. She took them out one by one, hoping it would give them the leverage they needed. She wanted to be able to see what lay on the other side of Rayles. Hopefully, the mountain would be high enough to clear the train when they tried to jump it. She knew it would be a long fall down the other side but she felt like maybe a twisted ankle was worth it. A broken leg and fractured skull would have been worth it. Together, the brother and sister had worked on their jumping skills and now, staring at the width of the train from this vantage point, she didn’t think they would have a problem clearing it.
A giddy excitement pounded in her chest. She wanted to be done with it. She wanted to taste freedom and get out of all this deafening gloom. Every second of hesitation was another link on their chain. Only, as she stared out at the impregnable blackness, she wasn’t so sure of herself. She didn’t know if she wanted to make the jump not knowing what was out there.
No.
They had to.
This was what they came for.
But she wasn’t going to
risk Sarot. She couldn’t do that. How could she be sure there was anything out there at all? It had been a long time since Rayles had closed his town against the rest of the world.
Turning toward Sarot, she grabbed his shoulders.
“Listen to me,” she said loudly. “You need to stay here. If there’s something better out there then I’ll come back for you and the rest of the townsfolk. If I don’t come back... make sure no one else attempts to escape. Do you understand?”
The engine sped past again. She figured she had only a couple of minutes until he was all the way across town. His whistle shrieked.
Sarot wiped tears from his eyes and shouted, “But I wanna come too!”
“You can’t,” she said. “But I have to go quickly. Remember, tell the townsfolk what I said. Learn to make this your home. A better home.”
The boy nodded.
She hugged him, felt his bony chest press against her. She released him and went into her crouch. She took a deep breath and sprang out into the night, sailing over Rayles.
She hit the rocky ground on the other side, crying out in pain as her knee buckled and her hip shattered. She managed to pull herself up on one leg, wincing at the explosions of hurt and the sight in front of her.
The world.
The world beyond Rayles.
The stink of death raped her nostrils.
Smoke and fire.
The world gone bad.
The whole sick world sprawled out dead before her.
And there were... things out there. Dead things, snarling as they rooted through ashes, rose from the dust, smelled the fresh meat and came toward her.
Desperately, she looked back toward Rayles. The engine was charging around the last turn.
The whistle shrieked and she saw the look of hurt in the dead things’ eyes. But it wasn’t enough to stop them. The scent of fresh meat—fresh, obtainable meat—was too strong. They scrabbled toward her, closing in from around her.
Nissa saw Rayles, reaching his long frail arms from the engine, trying to grab her, trying to save her.
But he was too old and too tired and the dead things were so hungry.
Pray You Die Alone: Horror Stories Page 7