Ghost of a Dream

by Simon R. Green

  “It’s not the pills,” said Happy. “Wish it was. No; when the old man said something bad was coming, I got a flash…There is definitely something Out There, outside the world we know…dragging itself closer, struggling to break in. Something connected to this station, but not in any way human…”

  JC waited, but Happy had nothing more to say. “From now on, keep it to yourself,” JC said quietly. “We do not want to freak out the natives till we have to. Mr. Laurie is our only source of first-hand information, and I don’t want him spooked.”

  He moved back to join Laurie, smiling easily and reassuringly. “No problems. Everything’s fine. Oh yes. Happy’s a little…highly strung. Now, you were about to tell me what’s really going on here.”

  “No I wasn’t,” Laurie said stubbornly. “You’re not ready yet. It’s not like I’ve seen anything definite…”

  “None so blind as those who will not see,” said Happy. “Ow! That hurt!”

  “It was meant to,” said Melody. “Carry on, JC.”

  “Most people never encounter the hidden world,” JC said carefully to Laurie. “Never see a ghost, never hear voices in the night. It takes the right kind of person, in a really bad place, at a very bad time…to actually see anything from out of this world. Ghosts are rare. Mostly, the dead go where they’re supposed to. Please don’t ask me where. I don’t know, that’s not my department. It’s my job to deal with the problems of this world, not the next. No, only very rare people, under very rare circumstances, become ghosts; otherwise, we’d be hip deep in the things by now. Like you said: it’s mostly people with unfinished business. Hanging on to places like this, that mean a lot to them.”

  “Aye,” said Laurie, unexpectedly. “Like I’m fond of this place because me dad worked here, and my son is so keen on reopening it.”

  “And most ghosts can only be seen by the properly trained,” said JC. “People with the proper skills…”

  Laurie looked at him steadily. “Who are you people? Really?”

  “You don’t need to know,” said JC, just as steadily. “In fact, you don’t want to know. You’ll sleep more easily that way. Think of us…as the clean-up crew. And that’s all that really matters. Isn’t it?”

  “Aye. I suppose so,” said Laurie. He nodded briskly, as though he’d made a decision. “Suppose I’ll stick around for a while. Come with me. I’ll get you settled, get you started. Fill you in. But I’ll tell you now, for nothing—this isn’t a good place to be, even before the sun goes down. Ghosts or whatever, there’s something in this place that wants us out. Doesn’t want anything human here. No-one’s actually died of fright here, not yet; but if I was a betting man, that’s where the smart money would be going. Because whatever’s here will stop at nothing to have this place to itself.”

  “I want to go home,” said Happy.

  Ronald Laurie led the Ghost Finders through a propped-open door and into the main station building. There was no sign hanging over the door, old or new. Laurie held his storm lantern high to spread the light and indicated the single lighting switch to JC. Who turned it on, with a dramatic flourish, and was pleasantly pleased when stark, modern light filled the room. Everything inside had been cleared away and cleaned up, leaving a bare, open room with more doors leading off, and a lingering smell of disinfectant. The doors to the Ticket Office and Waiting Room were clearly labelled, and there was no dust, no cobwebs, no unnaturally dark shadows. There was still…an uneasy feel to the room. As though none of them was really welcome.

  “Pleasant enough setting,” said Happy, determinedly. “I’m not getting any bad vibrations, not much of anything, really. I don’t like the place, but how much of that is me and how much the room…”

  “This is as far as the volunteers got,” said Laurie, and the others all jumped to find he’d moved silently forward to join them. He’d left his storm lantern behind and was looking around the refurbished setting with a pleased, almost proprietorial air. “Don’t go in the Ticket Office, though. It’s a dump. This is as much work as got done, before everything went to hell in a hurry. The Trust were going to make everything spick and span again…working from old photos, taken back in the day. They had the exact right shade of paint, specially remade furnishings, the lot. And then…”

  They all waited, but he had nothing more to say.

  “I saw an old signal box further down the track, when I was up top,” said JC. “Anything there we should be concerned about?”

  “No,” said Laurie. “This is it. This is the bad place. I think…something really bad happened here, long ago, and part of it is still happening.”

  “What do you think is behind all this, Mr. Laurie?” said JC, still being very patient because it was either that or scream out loud and stamp his foot. “You must have a theory. You know the history of this station. Has there ever been a bad crash here or some natural disaster? A murder, or a mystery…?”

  “There is an old story,” said Laurie, reluctantly. “Not something most of us around here care to talk about. Dates back to Victorian times. Summer of 1878. A train was seen to enter the tunnel, on the other side of the Grey Fells, heading for Bradleigh Halt. Twenty, maybe thirty people saw that train enter the tunnel, going strong and steady, leading six, maybe seven carriages, packed full of passengers. A routine journey. But no-one ever saw the train come out of the tunnel, at the other end. It never arrived here, at Bradleigh Halt.

  “It got later and later, and people started to worry. The signal box sent warnings up and down the line, stopped all the other trains. At first people thought there might have been some kind of accident. Maybe a crash though there shouldn’t have been anything else on the line for the train to hit. The way was clear. The other station put out the alarm, and volunteers came running from towns on both sides of the Fells. Everyone would turn out, in those days. There were no real emergency services then like there are now. The men entered the tunnel from both ends, slowly and cautiously, taking their own lights in with them. A train crash in a tunnel could be a terrible thing back then. A crash meant fire, you see; and there was nowhere for the heat to go. The enclosed space of the tunnel would turn it into an oven. A furnace.

  “So the men walked down the tracks, holding their lights out before them, calling out…and hearing only the echoes of their own voices. In the dark. In the tunnel. Until, finally, they saw lights and heard voices. But it was only the other volunteers, coming the other way. They met in the middle of the tunnel, deep under the great wide weight of the Fells; and for a long time they stood there, looking at each other. Because there was no sign of the train anywhere. Or the carriages, or the passengers. There were no side tunnels, nowhere the train could have gone.

  “All those people saw the train go in; but no-one ever saw it again. Local legends have it that the train isn’t really gone, just lost. Delayed, somewhere. And that one day it will return, thundering out of the tunnel-mouth and into Bradleigh Halt. A ghost train, carrying dead men and women as its cargo, all of them driven mad by all that time away…The train will come back, they say, come home, to announce the end of the world, perhaps.

  “There are those who say you can still hear the train travelling at night, sounding its awful whistle as it enters the tunnel on the other side of the Fells; but no-one’s ever heard it here. You can always find someone in a pub, ready to tell you the story for the price of a pint, how they’ve heard steel wheels pounding along tracks that aren’t there any more. That old steam-whistle, like the scream of a soul newly damned to Hell…Cutting off abruptly as it enters the tunnel, going nowhere…”

  “But no-one here’s actually seen it?” said Melody, looking up from assembling her equipment.

  Laurie shrugged briefly. “Who would want to? Local feeling is, if you can see it, then it can see you. And it’s never good to attract the attention of something from the dark side.”

  “So that’s why we’re here,” said Happy. “A late-running train. How very unusual.”

&nbs
p; Laurie gave him a hard look. “Was a time I would have said it was only another tale, for telling on a windy night by a roaring fire. Like Black Shuck, the huge black dog that wanders the back lanes late at night, confronting people and telling them their fortunes—always bad. Or like the local mine-shaft they had to close down because miners working on a new seam heard sounds of someone else digging on the other side. Or maybe the graveyard up the road, so old they’re buried three deep in places; where it’s said the dead rise out of their graves on Midsummer’s Eve, to dance till dawn. There are always stories…and after what’s been seen and heard here, I don’t know what I believe any more.”

  He sighed heavily, turning his back on the Ghost Finders to look about him. “The Trust had such plans for this place. A fully refurbished Bradleigh Halt, after all these years. They’d made contact with other steam enthusiasts, made arrangements to have a proper steam train run through. There are still some out there, you know, running private services. My son Howard had it all set up; we were going to have regular excursions coming through…And now, no-one will come here. No-one dares.”

  “Don’t give up yet, Mr. Laurie,” said JC. “We’ll sort things out and put them right. That’s what we do.”

  “Mostly,” said Happy.

  “Don’t think I can’t reach you from here,” said Melody. She consulted her various pieces of equipment, arranged before her in a semi-circle, on a collapsible stand of her own design, and seemed pleased enough. Sensors and scanners, computers and monitors, and more than a few things that only made sense to her. Laurie looked it all over with a sceptical eye. Melody stared him down. “This isn’t as much as I’m used to, Mr. Laurie, but this was all I could fit into the boot of the taxi. More will follow, if necessary.”

  “All very shiny and impressive, I’m sure, miss,” said Laurie. “But I can’t guarantee you how much of it’ll work here.”

  “I don’t need to rely on your local power supply,” Melody said easily. “My babies have their own generator.”

  “There’s a sentence you won’t hear very often,” said Happy. He strode across to the Waiting Room door, pushed it wide open, and looked inside. Shadows looked back at him, quiet and unmoving. Happy sneered at them, shut the door carefully, and looked back at Laurie.

  “So what are we waiting for? What’s going to happen? Is it going to involve ectoplasm? Because if it does, I’ll put my heavy coat on. Messy stuff…”

  “It’s the small things you notice, at first,” said Laurie. “You’ll see. The doors here don’t like to stay closed. Or open. Any of them.”

  They all looked back at the main door they’d come in through, giving out onto the platform. It stood wide open, spilling bright electric light out into the evening. They all studied the door carefully for a long moment. Nothing happened. And then Happy frowned suddenly.

  “Wait a minute…I shut that door behind me when we came in. Didn’t I?”

  None of the others had an answer for him, one way or the other. Happy scowled, strode quickly over to the open door, and slammed it shut. Then he backed quickly away from it to rejoin the others, not taking his eyes off the door all the way. It didn’t move.

  “Look at the Waiting Room door,” said Laurie.

  They all turned, and looked. The door was standing all the way open. Happy swore softly.

  “Okay; I know I shut that one a moment ago. Doesn’t necessarily mean anything, though. Could be the door isn’t hung right, or the floor’s off at an angle…”

  “No,” said Laurie. “That’s not it.”

  JC strode unhurriedly over to the Waiting Room door, studied it for a moment, and produced a small wooden wedge from an inside pocket. He forced it into place under the bottom of the door, stepped back to look over his work, then went to the open main door and did the same thing with a second wooden wedge. He smiled cheerfully across at the others.

  “That should hold it,” he said. “The simple answers are always the best.”

  “Might work,” said Laurie. “Might not. The Trust volunteers tried that as well, at first. Because it was small things, to begin with. Small, disturbing things. But if it were as easy as that to deal with, we wouldn’t have needed you…There. See?”

  They all looked around sharply, as the single naked light bulb overhead began to go out, the harsh electric light dimming, bit by bit, as though it had to come from further and further away. The light went out of the room, and the shadows pressed forward. The bulb went out, then the only light in the long room was the late-evening light, spilling through the new glass windows and the wedged-open door.

  “You can replace the bulb, if you like,” said Laurie. “It won’t make any difference. It’ll keep going out. Any bulb, in any room, anywhere in the station…My son Howard helped install the new lights, and the new wiring; nothing wrong with any of it. It seems that there’s something here that doesn’t like the light.”

  Melody snorted loudly, hit some switches on her display, and half a dozen small floods kicked in, blazing light from her instrument stand. Not enough to fill the whole room but more than enough to force the shadows back where they belonged. Melody smiled triumphantly at Laurie, then, one by one, the floodlights began to fade out, too. Melody swore harshly, her fingers stabbing at the keyboards set out before her, bringing all the power in her generator to bear. The floods stopped fading, but they didn’t regain their former brilliance, either. Melody’s eyes darted back and forth before she finally nodded, reluctantly.

  “Nothing on the sensors, nothing on the scanners—short- or long-range. All of my tech is specially protected from Outside influence; but something’s got to them. I’ve never had my lights go out on me. It shouldn’t have happened.”

  “Will the lights stay on?” said Happy.

  “They will if they know what’s good for them,” said Melody.

  “What readings are you getting?” said JC. “Anything useful, or even interesting?”

  “I’m getting electromagnetic fluctuations, other-dimensional energy spikes, and really strange barometric pressures,” said Melody, her eyes darting from one monitor screen to another.

  “If you don’t know, say so,” said Happy.

  Melody stuck out her tongue at him. “The readings are clear. However, I don’t know enough about local conditions to make sense of them. Yet.”

  Laurie managed another of his small smiles, for JC. “Been together long, have they, those two?”

  “You can tell?” said JC.

  “Oh aye,” said Laurie. “I was married, once. But I got over it.” He looked about him. “Your machines are impressive, but you’ll do better with candles. The Trust laid a stock in—over there.”

  He nodded to a small cupboard, set to one side. JC moved across, opened it, and brought out a dozen large candles, each in its own separate holder. JC set them about the room at regular intervals, lighting them one at a time with his Zippo. He didn’t smoke any more, but he liked to have something in his life he could depend on. He came back to join the others, looked about him, and nodded, pleased at the gentle, golden warmth the candlelight added to the room. Soft as butter, golden as buttercups.

  “Keep an eye on the candles,” said Laurie. “They have a tendency to go out. When it’s most inconvenient.”

  And then he broke off and looked hard at JC. Around the edges of JC’s heavy, dark sunglasses, a bright light was shining, sharp and distinct.

  “Dear God, man,” said Laurie. “What happened to your eyes?”

  “Laser surgery,” said JC. “I’m suing. Don’t worry about it.”

  “JC,” said Happy. “Look at the main door.”

  They all looked. The door JC had so carefully wedged open was now closed. The wedge lay alone on the floor, some distance away. JC studied the situation for a moment, then strode across the room, yanked the door with one hand, and pushed it all the way open. He then retrieved the wedge and forced it back into place, using all his strength. He studied the wedge, breathing hard, an
d knelt to check that the wedge was as securely positioned as he thought it was, testing it with his bare hand. He nodded, satisfied that he’d have a job getting it out again without the assistance of a hammer and chisel. He stood up, brushed himself down a bit fussily, and smiled easily at the others as he came back to rejoin them.

  “Didn’t bang it in properly, the first time,” he said. “So, Mr. Laurie, doors that don’t like to stay open or closed, lights that don’t like to stay on. What else can we expect?”

  “It gets cold,” said Laurie. “Cold, for no reason. Cold as the grave.”

  “No central heating here?” said Happy.

  “Remember where you are, lad,” said Laurie. “They didn’t have such things, back in the day. Didn’t believe in them. My old dad always said central heating made you soft. And who’s to say he was wrong? There’s a decent-sized fire-place if you need one in the Waiting Room. And an authentic paraffin stove, in the Ticket Office. Not much fuel in it. So don’t waste it. Never know when you might need it.”

  “Hold everything.” Melody looked quickly from one set of readings to another. “Something here, or very near here, is interfering with my equipment. My short-range sensors keep locking onto something, then losing it for no good reason. There’s something here with us, JC. Can’t tell you what it is yet, but it’s weird and powerful and very slippery…”

  And then Happy cried out—a sudden, shocked sound. They all turned to look at him. He was pointing with a trembling hand at a small mirror hanging on the far wall. It was an ordinary, everyday mirror; in a straightforward ornamental frame. Afterwards, no-one could be sure exactly what they saw there, only that there was a face in the mirror, watching them. And it wasn’t the face of anyone in the room. The image disappeared the moment they all rushed forward to look at it, and by the time they all got there, the reflection showed only their own faces, looking back at them with wide eyes and shocked, startled expressions. At what they’d seen, or thought they’d seen. It took the Ghost Finders a moment to realise Laurie wasn’t there with them. They looked back; and he was standing right where he had been. He nodded slightly and shrugged one shoulder, as if to say, What did you expect?