“That’s what they were saying on the news before we entered the tunnel. Now…” She shrugged.
“Where exactly?”
“Up ahead. Beyond.”
There was that word again.
Word of the blaze was picked up and quickly spread throughout the car. Then, just like the thing itself, it jumped between cars. Ellen could see people ahead flocking to the windows, trying to open them, sticking their heads out to see.
She sighed. A fire would delay her arrival home. Now she’d be lucky if she made it by midnight. And as long as they were in the tunnel, there was no way to contact her parents. By the looks of things, they were going to be stuck here for a while.
If the circumstances had been different, she might’ve amused by the irony: all day she’d been trying to get the message to her parents that she’d be home tonight. Now she was hoping the message hadn’t gotten through to them. She didn’t want her mother or father waiting needlessly at the station. In the dark. Alone. She didn’t like thinking about them being around the types of people who hung around train stations at night.
A man ahead of her had opened his window and stuck his head out into the darkness. She wanted to yell at him to get back inside, that another train might come and hurt him. She knew it was unlikely, if not impossible. The other set of tracks were a good six feet off to the side and, besides, there would be no other train. If this one was stopped, surely all the trains on these tracks would also be stopped.
After a few minutes, the man brought his head back in and reported that he couldn’t see anything. “No smoke, no nothing. Who said there was a fire?”
Ellen looked over.
“It must be miles up ahead,” someone suggested, “past the opening of the tunnel.”
Twenty minutes had passed since they’d stopped. The intercom finally clicked and came on. Everyone quieted, waiting expectantly for the announcement.
Attention passengers. We apologize for the delay and the inconvenience. We ask that you please remain seated and inside your cars. Do not exit the train!
Because of a situation at the Hudson Plaza Station, we have been requested to remain in a holding state. Please be assured that we are doing everything in our power to resolve the situation so that we may resume our trip as quickly as possible. At this time, we have no estimate for the duration of the delay, but as soon as we find out, we will pass along this information to you. Thank you.
The soft hush of static remained for another moment. Then it, too, was gone.
“That was helpful,” someone commented, to which several people responded with thin laughter. The tension, at least, seemed to have diminished for the time being.
Ellen turned back to speak to her seatmate, but the old woman had fallen asleep again. At least, it seemed she was asleep. The dry, rattling sounds emitting from the woman’s nose sounded like snores, and they coincided with her inhales. Ellen leaned her head against the window to wait.
It didn’t take long for the passengers’ impatience to descend into indignant outrage.
The same man who’d stuck his head out the window earlier was getting especially agitated. He was a clean-looking young man, perhaps in his early twenties. He had short hair and wore an expensive business suit, the jacket of which he had removed and draped over the back of his seat. He had rolled up the sleeves of his crisp white shirt and was now standing on the seat with his head and bright yellow tie out the window again. Ellen thought it strange that he’d be the one to start causing problems. He looked too business-like.
“What the hell’s the hold up?” he shouted. “Let’s go! Hey!”
He brought his head back in and looked around at everyone. “I’m going up to the front to see what’s going on.”
Somebody muttered that the engineer was actually at the back of the train.
“Anyone with me? Come on!”
A few passengers looked around at each other, but nobody got up.
The man shook his head but didn’t leave his seat. “Fine.” He shouted back out the window, “Hey! Anyone out there?”
The sound echoed dully off the tunnels walls.
A reply drifted over from another car: “Shut the hell up.”
“Screw you.”
“No, screw you, you bozo!”
A few people rolled their eyes or shook their heads at the exchange. A few laughed quietly.
The temperature inside the car—and likely in the tunnel, too—had been getting steadily higher since they’d stopped. The air was stuffy, almost suffocating. Ellen leaned her face against the glass and relished the coolness there.
The man leaned further out into the darkness. “Who’s that? What’s your problem?”
“You’re my problem,” came the reply.
Now the man’s shoulders were completely out of the car, the palms of his hands on the sill. Ellen could see him straining as he tried to maintain his balance. The man’s knees were almost completely straight. Now he was standing nearly upright with most of his body outside.
She almost yelled at him for real this time, wanting to tell him to be careful, but then she thought about the poor woman asleep next to her. She didn’t want to startle her and give her a heart attack.
Now the two men were exchanging profanities. More people were turning away, embarrassed or afraid, pretending not to hear. They were no longer amused.
Ellen, too, had turned her head to the side to avoid the man’s eyes should he happen to look at her. She could still see him reflected off the window across the aisle. Suddenly, his feet flew up and his body tilted out through the opening. Ellen gave a yelp of surprise.
“Hey—!” she tried to shout, but the man’s scream cut her off. His legs, then his feet, disappeared. There was a muffled thump as his body hit the ground eight feet below them, followed by an agonizing howl of pain.
“Serves the jerk right,” someone said, and there was a murmur of assent.
Ellen tried to see out her window, but everything was in the shadows. She thought she could see his shirt bobbing in the darkness up ahead, but wasn’t sure.
She could hear him loud and clear, though. He was screaming bloody murder, cursing the train company and the train builder and the public works department and anyone else he could think of. His voice drew closer, and she guessed that he must be all right if he was walking.
“Where’s he going?” someone asked.
The door to their car was behind Ellen. “He’s getting back on,” she said.
“I say we lock him out,” somebody joked.
There was a sudden thump just below Ellen’s window, and she let out another cry of surprise. The man outside stopped shouting. Everything was silent.
She could see him now, a pale ghostly shape in the shadows, shuffling around just below her. But then he suddenly disappeared from view.
“Hey, lady,” someone shouted at her, “open your window and see if he’s okay.”
“Sonofabitch!” the man yelled, suddenly backing away from the train and into the light cast off by the car. He was rubbing his head.
Everyone jumped.
“He’s fine. Sucker just bopped himself on the head.”
More laughter.
“What the hell’s he doing?”
“I think he…” Ellen sputtered. “I think he must’ve tripped.”
The train lurched forward a couple feet, then stopped. The cars banged into each other like a giant accordion.
“Dude better get back aboard.” There were a few nods. “Wouldn’t want to be left out there, alone in the dark.”
There was another lurch and this time the train didn’t stop. It started to gather speed.
Ellen cupped her hands on the window. Judging from the shadows, she guessed they were now moving at a walking pace. The man could still get on without difficulty.
“Come on,” she muttered.
A young woman who’d been sitting in the seat behind the business suit man stood up and shouted, “Hey! Did he get
back on?” She turned to the front of the train and yelled: “Hey! Someone’s still out there, outside of the train. Stop!”
“They can’t hear you.”
Ellen tried to lower her window. Other passengers on her side of the train were doing the same. A few succeeded, but several of the windows were stuck, including Ellen’s.
“I don’t see him.”
“Me, either.”
“Hey! You better get on the train, mister,” the young woman shouted.
But the growing clattering of the wheels on the tracks and the screech of metal on metal amplified by the closeness of the tunnel drowned out their shouts.
A man ran down the aisle, heading for the door at the rear of the car. He disappeared around the opening. Ellen heard the outer door slam and the man calling, “Hey. Hey! Are you out there?”
After a dozen or so seconds had passed, he returned. He shook his head and shrugged. The train was now moving at a sprint.
“Either he got on further back, or…”
He didn’t finish.
“Don’t worry about him. He’ll be all right.”
It was the old woman who spoke this, and she said it only to Ellen.
“How do you know?” she asked.
The old woman smiled. “Because,” she answered.
Ellen’s frown deepened. The woman was obviously off her meds or something.
“People like that usually are.”
“What do you mean?”
“People who take control, don’t sit around and wait for things to happen.”
The woman leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes again. Apparently, the subject was closed to further discussion.
Ellen looked around, but it seemed like she was the only one still worried. Everyone else had already dismissed him from their thoughts. They were settling back into their seats, unfolding their newspapers, going back to their books and their laptops or their phones. Closing their eyes. Forgetting. Pretending it didn’t happen.
Just wanting to get home.
Ellen nudged the woman. “Excuse me.”
She cocked an eye open and looked over at Ellen.
“I want to get out.”
“Off the train? It’s too late. We’re moving too fast. Sit down and relax, dear. It’ll all be over soon.”
Ellen saw that she was right. They weren’t quite at full speed yet, but then again, they should be coming close to a stop.
But she still wanted to get off.
At last the train emerged from the end of the tunnel. The sky above them was grungy, thick with black clouds. The windows were beginning to streak.
“It’s snowing,” someone exclaimed.
But the passengers had erupted into cheers. They were clapping, happy to once more be moving, to be out of that damnable tunnel and into daylight. An announcement came over the intercom, telling them what they already knew, that they were once more on their way.
Ellen reached into her pocket and retrieved her phone. She decided to just ignore the woman.
She had a strong signal now, but the battery icon was flashing red. She dialed home anyway.
The train picked up speed.
The line connected. The phone rang.
“I don’t think that’s snow,” someone said, a note of worry beginning to creep into their voice.
Ellen heard the click of the call being received, followed by a sharp clatter, as if the person on the other side had dropped the phone. She held her breath and prayed. But no one answered.
“Hello?”
Nothing.
“Hello, Erik?”
Muffled voices. Then she heard Erik speaking to someone in the background, asking what was for dinner.
“Erik?”
Over the receiver, she heard him say: “Hello?”
She exhaled, letting out the tension that had built up in her over the past few hours.
“Erik, it’s me and… God, I never thought I’d say this, but it’s good to hear your voice. Is Mom or Dad there?”
Silence.
“Erik? Come on quit messing around. I’ve had a bad day. Erik?”
Nothing.
She pulled the phone away from her ear. The screen was dark. She pushed the power button, but the phone refused to turn on. The battery was completely dead.
“Damn it.”
“It’ll be all right,” the woman said.
“No, it’s not,” Ellen snapped. The weight of her frustration came crashing back over her, crushing her. She wanted to cry.
“I need to get a message to my parents.”
“Is that what you’re so upset over?”
Ellen turned to her seatmate and nodded.
The woman reached into her pocket and extracted a phone and pushed it into Ellen’s hands. It was one of those new models, tiny and sleek, solid black. It was heavy. And ice cold.
“Go ahead.” She smiled. “You can use mine.”
Ellen nodded, sniffed, and thanked her. She dialed in Erik’s cell phone number out of habit before realizing she should’ve called the home number, but she let it go through anyway. She heard the tiny clicks as the call went through. She waited.
Outside, the snow grew thicker. It splattered against the windows and sheared away, leaving streaks of dry powder that the windswept off. The train sped on, gaining speed.
The phone rang, clicked, rang again.
The air smelled of ash. Ellen’s eyes began to sting.
Finally, Erik’s voice, asking, “Hello? Who is this?”
† † †
Erik Grabowski was just walking in from playing basketball when the phone rang. His parents were in the other room. He could hear the television on in there, the characteristic drone of the evening news anchors going on and on, covering the same old stories, day after day. He couldn’t deal with it. It was too depressing. That his parents continued to watch the news—that his sister did—just proved how dead to the world they’d all become.
The phone rang again.
He ignored it.
Ring!
“Someone going to get the phone?” he yelled. When it became apparent his parents weren’t going to get it, he reached for the handset on the wall.
It twisted out of his fingers and crashed to the floor. He cursed, wishing his lame parents would get with the program and replace the landline with a mobile one. Or at least get a cordless. Damn, stupid cord kept getting all tangled up.
He remembered Ellen mentioning last winter if he thought they should get a cell phone for Mom and Dad for Christmas. “Let ‘em get their own,” he’d replied. But Ellen had argued that if they left it up to their parents, it’d never get done. So he’d told her to go ahead and do it (as long as he didn’t have to pay for anything). But then she never did. She was turning into their parents, letting things go.
“What’s for dinner?” he yelled, still trying to untangle the cord.
“Liver and onions,” his father said.
Erik could hear him laughing and his mother chastising him for teasing.
He lifted the lid on the pot on the stove. Water. For spaghetti. Erik smiled. Spaghetti was his favorite. He hoped there would be meatballs.
“Did you answer the phone?”
Trying, he muttered, then: “Hello?”
The line clicked, but there was no one there.
“Hello?”
“Fine. Didn’t want to speak to you either,” he told the dead connection, and hung the phone back up on the wall. The cord coiled around itself, looking like a snake writhing in pain.
“Water’s almost boiling,” he said, passing his parents on his way up to his room. A computer-generated banner flashed across the screen: breaking news. There was a massive fire somewhere. A young guy in dark slacks and a dirty white shirt with a yellow tie was talking to the reporter. He was covered in soot and his arm was in a sling. A bandage was wrapped around his head.
“Did you put in the pasta?” his mother asked.
“Really, Mom?”<
br />
She sighed. “Did you finish your homework? And don’t say you did if you didn’t. I want an honest answer.”
“Mom—”
“Don’t make me check.”
“Yes, it’s done. Mostly, anyway. I’m going up to finish it now, okay?”
“No video games before dinner,” his father added, tearing his eyes away from the screen for a moment. The breaking news story ended and another started, something about the nuclear threat in the Middle East. Erik rolled his eyes. Same old, same old. “Don’t roll your eyes at me, Erik.”
“I wasn’t—“
“Erik…?”
“Yes, Dad. Sorry, Dad. I won’t do it again, Dad.”
Erik tromped up the steps and into his bedroom, kicking a pair of jeans out of his way. He noticed that the bed was made and grunted unhappily. His mother had been in his room. Again.
She’d probably been snooping. Fine, let her. He had nothing to hide. Well, except for his new 3D portable gaming console Todd had given him. He wasn’t supposed to have it up here, especially after Ellen’s near-meltdown last year in high school.
He reached down with his foot and snagged the strap of his backpack and brought it up to where he was lying on the bed. He pulled the console out and checked to make sure the game cartridge was still in place.
“Ah, Omega Wars,” he said. “Why couldn’t homework be as fun as you?”
He’d just booted it up when his phone chirped at him.
“I’m not available,” he mumbled.
The phone rang again.
“Not now, I said. Busy here.” He decapitated another undead Stasi spy. “Die, you Nazi zombies. Die!”
“Erik, are you doing your homework?” his mother called up the stairs.
“Yeah, Mom. It’s…Shakespeare. Hamlet. I’m rehearsing some lines.”
“Dinner’s in five.”
“’Kay.”
His phone kept on ringing.
“Christ! Why don’t you go to voicemail?”
He picked it up and looked at the caller. It was unlisted. He hit the mute button.
The phone rang again.
“What the—?”
He hit the mute button again, but the phone kept on ringing.
Insomnia: Paranormal Tales, Science Fiction, & Horror Page 15
