Ghost Train

by Stephen Laws

  ‘Come on,’ he said at length to Robbie, ‘we’re not staying here. Let’s get out!’

  Just behind them, he could make out the luminous bats spinning slowly from the roof.

  ‘We’ll go back the way we came . . .’

  Robbie was moaning slightly as Mark stepped down from the carriage onto the rough, wooden floor. Leaning back inside, he began to help Robbie out.

  ‘Someone should have come by now,’ groaned Robbie. ‘That daft bastard back there must still be reading his dirty book.’

  ‘Help!’ Mark’s cry seemed to be swallowed alive by the blackness and left him with a peculiar hollow feeling which made him reluctant to shout again. ‘This way, Robbie. We’ll follow the track back.’

  With their arms on each other’s shoulders, they started back along the track. The tattered, mummified arms of the ghoul protruded from the recess just beyond and Mark could feel a rising dread that it wasn’t a wax dummy at all. That it was really alive and was just waiting for them to draw closer so that it could lunge forward and take them in its ragged embrace. He tried to avoid looking at its face as they drew level. And that was when they heard the noise behind them.

  Something was moving back there in the dark. Just around the nearest bend behind them, something was coming their way, following the carriage lines. Something that was unimpeded by the blackness and which walked with a deliberate, exaggerated tread, one foot flopping heavily after the other like something wet . . . and dead. And it was chuckling as it came in a low, throaty way.

  Mark felt his skin tighten; a spontaneous pulse of sheer terror swept through his entire body. Robbie’s grip on his shoulder was hurting as he hissed into his ear: ‘Oh Christ, Mark. They’re coming alive.’

  Alive . . . alive . . . there was something alive back there. It had crawled out of one of those horrible recesses. It had been waiting for the day the lights went out. Just waiting for two kids like them to be on their own. And maybe it wasn’t alone. Perhaps they were all coming alive.

  Even now, something was shambling round the corner towards them, arms hanging limply at its sides. And Mark heard its low chuckling again when it saw them, just before Robbie shrieked and they began to run. They ran as they never had before. They ran as if in a bad dream, with the terror trying to dull their limbs and slow them down so that the shuffling horror could catch up with them.

  Mark could hear a low moan of horror issuing from his own lips as he blundered round the first corner. Robbie clattered ahead of him, flailing at the dark like a blind man in a panic. The luminous bats tangled and flapped around Mark’s head as he hurtled after Robbie. Something ripped from the roof overhead, a rail perhaps, and the bats wrapped themselves round Mark’s arm before he shook them off to the floor. Behind him, he thought he heard a man’s shouted curse as he plunged on into the darkness; unaware that Robbie, faced with a blank wall and unsure of which direction to take, had stopped and was looking frantically around. But that couldn’t be right. It wasn’t a man back there. It wasn’t human. Further speculation was wiped from Mark’s mind as he crashed heavily into Robbie and went sprawling awkwardly across the railway line. Robbie catapulted into one of the recesses, colliding with Bela Lugosi’s coffin and shattering it like balsa wood under the impact. In the murk, Mark could dazedly see Robbie’s wildly kicking legs and hear his cries of fright and disgust as he thrashed to get up, dislodging the wax dummy in the coffin which keeled slowly over to the ground. Mark had an upside-­down glimpse of a white, waxen face leering at him before he recoiled in alarm. But there was something much worse behind them.

  ‘Robbie! Robbie! Come on! We’ve got to get out!’

  Mark was clambering to his feet when the rough hand seized him by the collar and swung him up the rest of the way.

  ‘You little bastards! You’re wrecking the place!’

  Mark felt a sharp cuff on the back of his head and was flung up the track as the dark shape moved quickly to the ruined coffin, leaned into the recess and roughly pushed aside a shattered spar of wood. In the next instant, the shape was dragging out a wriggling Robbie by one arm and a handful of his blond hair. Even in the dark, Mark could see that the thing which had followed them was not a ghoul or a zombie . . . it was the Man from the booth.

  Robbie was suddenly flung towards Mark and the Man had bustled from sight. Mark rushed to his side as Robbie struggled to his feet, brushing dirt and sawdust from his face. When he spoke, a little of the fire in his voice had returned.

  ‘Did you see? It was him. That bloke from the ticket office. He was trying to scare us.’

  The whine of a generator filled the tunnel and as suddenly as they had gone out, the lights were on again. Blinking like moles in the light, they surveyed their surroundings and could see that the interior of the Ghost Train was only a mess of wires, tubing and decrepit props. The House of Horror was a mouldering dump of ancient, twopenny-­arcade fright masks and crumbling shop dummies.

  The Man had suddenly reappeared from the side entrance and was moving purposefully towards them, his slicked hair falling across his face in a long, straight wedge. Mark flinched back as he drew level with them.

  ‘You leave us alone,’ said Robbie defiantly.

  ‘What’s the matter, kid? Can’t you take a joke, then? You gotta start smashing my place up like that just ’cause I put the lights out?’

  ‘It wasn’t funny . . .’ began Mark as they slowly backed away from the Man down the track.

  ‘You paid to come in, didn’t you? You wanted to be scared?’

  ‘Run for it!’ Robbie’s shout cut short any further argument and Mark turned to make a dash. But, in an instant, the Man had closed the gap between them. Robbie went down again in the confusion, and Mark felt a grip on his arm which flung him round and pinned him to the wall. The Man held him there with his forearm across his throat and Mark watched helplessly while he delivered a savage kick to the seat of Robbie’s pants. The boy struggled to his feet and clattered from sight around the next corner.

  ‘Get off me. Leave me alone . . .’

  The Man turned back to Mark. He had the same horrible, toothy grin on his face and Mark could smell whisky on his breath as he tightened the pressure of his forearm.

  ‘Skiving off from school. Is that what you’re doing, eh? I bet nobody knows where you are today, do they? Just pissed off for the day. Came down here and thought you’d start smashing my place up.’

  ‘We didn’t . . .’

  The Man’s bony forearm squeezed his windpipe shut. Groaning, Mark felt himself sliding down the wall. A purple mist was spangling across his vision; just like the mist that closed in when the dentist was holding that horrible, rubbery mask over your face.

  ‘This stuff’s expensive. Got to be replaced. Costs money, you know. I should take you to the cop shop and report you. What would your Ma and Da say about that, eh?’

  Mark squirmed to one side and felt the pressure ease slightly. But the Man quickly compensated, shifted his position and now took Mark by the throat with one hand, grabbing his hair with the other and slamming his head against the wall. The purple mist was beginning to creep in again.

  ‘Anybody ever tell you that you’ve got a face like a girl, kid?’ the Man continued. ‘You look just like a sweet little girl. Bet they all call you a poof at school, eh? Bet they do. What would your Ma and Da say if I took you to the cops, eh? They wouldn’t like that, would they? Their little poof put in prison for smashing my place up.’

  Mark was now in a sitting position, his senses swimming. The lights in the Ghost Train seemed to have dimmed, the purple mist swirled heavily about him and, through the haze, he could see the Man’s legs.

  ‘So the best thing you can do is just take your punishment, son. I mean, you’ve got to be made to pay. And then we won’t have to say anything to the police or your folks. So, you just take what’s coming to you, say nowt
to anybody, and we’ll forget all about it . . .’

  The Man was taking off his belt as Mark went over onto one elbow, the unrelenting pressure now gone from his throat. Weakly, he held up his other arm through the mist, expecting the sting of leather at any moment. In a curiously objective way, he realised that he was going to get the belt anyway. Not from Hopkinson, but from . . .

  But the Man had dropped his belt to the floor and Mark could hear the rustle of clothing as he began to unbutton his trousers.

  ‘You . . . leave me alone.’ Mark began to crawl away and felt a foot slam hard against his shoulder.

  ‘Don’t touch me, you queer bastard!’

  The foot slammed down again and Mark heard another stealthy rustle of clothing.

  ‘Don’t . . .’

  Mark heard a heavy thud and looked up in time to see the Man suddenly freeze in mid-­stance, his trousers hanging loose and open around his waist. And then he pitched forward against the wall, his face slamming hard into the plaster before he slid to his knees beside Mark. The Man remained kneeling for a moment, face still pressed to the wall, and then he slumped to one side over the metal line, just as the Bela Lugosi model had done earlier. And now Mark could see that Robbie was standing behind him, breathing heavily, and clutched in his hand was a length of wood torn from the railings at the front of the Ghost Train’s station platform. As the purple mist finally rolled in and Mark found himself enveloped in its satin clouds, his last conscious vision was of Robbie moving towards him, leaning down and calling his name softly . . .

  Mark was clawing his way to the surface of a boiling, purple sea. He was drowning and something told him that he would lose more than his life if he did not surface soon. When the purple cauldron suddenly dissipated, he found himself in total darkness. And then he realised that he was awake, lying on his back, and that his arms were raised upwards, hands still clutching at the air. For a horrifying instant, he believed that he was still inside the Ghost Train. That Robbie had left him lying there on the floor and the place had been locked up. He was still locked in the dark with the Ghost Train Man. Mark sat bolt upright in panic and in the next instant had reorientated himself. He was in bed with his wife, Joanne. Their seven-­year-­old daughter, Helen, was lying asleep next door. He was thirty years old and the Ghost Train incident had happened long ago, when he was eleven. He had been dreaming. Only dreaming . . .

  But why, then, was the Ghost Train Man standing in the bedroom doorway? Why was his Brylcreemed hair glinting darkly in the moonlight, his doll-­like eyes fixed on Mark? Why was he leering with that same horrible, fixed smile?

  Oh, my God, thought Mark. Oh, God . . . Go away. Go away.

  The Ghost Train Man sniggered and moved to one side, beckoning with a long, bony white finger to something which stood out of sight in the hallway and which, at first, seemed reluctant to enter. The Man leaned out of sight and when he returned, he had a length of rope in his hand which was attached to something Mark could not see. The Man had turned his knowing smile back to Mark as he pulled gently on the leash and his unseen companion moved into the doorway.

  Mark was screaming as he clutched his hands over his eyes to block out the sight. Joanne was awake now, her arms around his shoulders; shaking him, pleading with him, begging him to stop. The Ghost Train Man and his companion were gone. But Mark had seen them. He had seen them and he knew that he would see them again.

  He had seen the small ragged figure with the rope around its neck. The small figure that had been dead for all these years; eye sockets bulging and writhing with maggots; wisps of hair clinging to the decomposed skull. It had come from its recess on the Ghost Train track at the Man’s behest; a skeletal jaw sagging loosely as it moved and the tattered remnants of a school uniform still visible on its frame.

  It was Robbie. He had joined the Ghost Train Man and his friends on the sixpenny ride.

  Ten

  ‘I was there again this morning.’

  Aynsley turned from the window of his consulting room which overlooked the city centre. Mark was sitting slumped in the rather opulent upholstered armchair which the psychiatrist kept especially for patients, looking up at the ceiling. The tone of his voice seemed to carry with it an expectation that the doctor would remonstrate with him for giving in to his obsession again.

  ‘I couldn’t fight it.’

  ‘Why do you feel that you have to fight it? Is it because of the fear you feel when you get there?’

  ‘No . . .’ There was a long pause as Mark continued to stare at the ceiling. ‘It’s not the fear itself. The fear is more like a warning. A warning to turn back.’

  ‘We’ve discussed this before, Mark. You must realise that it is your subconscious mind that is affecting you in this way. You suffered an appalling accident; you fell from a train and received serious injuries from which you nearly died. It was an unparalleled physical and emotional shock. Not unnaturally, when you attempt to cross over onto the platform, your subconscious mind is terrified that it will all happen again. It therefore tries everything to stop you.’

  ‘All right, but that still doesn’t explain what it is that makes me want to go back to the station time after time. What it is that makes me want to cross the ticket barrier . . .’

  ‘Have you tried to analyse the Impulse again, Mark? Can you tell me exactly what you feel?’

  ‘It’s . . . I . . . just can’t put it into words. I just feel compelled to go. I tried to resist it again today, but it kept nagging at me all morning. It wouldn’t leave me alone.’ Mark sighed deeply and looked across at Aynsley. ‘This sounds so bloody ludicrous. I’m saying these things, trying to express how I feel, and it sounds so bloody ludicrous – even to me. No matter which way you look at it, I’m becoming schizoid, aren’t I?’

  ‘There you go again! I’ve told you before that you must rid yourself of that train of thought . . .’ Aynsley raised his hands in the air and smiled wearily at Mark. ‘Oh, my God, what an unintentional pun. Mark . . . you are not schizophrenic. You show none of the symptoms associated with schizophrenia.’

  Mark shook his head and looked back up at the ceiling as Aynsley continued: ‘As long as you keep that thought in mind, you’re never going to make any progress. It’s negative. You’re a rational man, Mark. When we have our talks, you strike me as being particularly rational about these impulses and emotions. And it’s exactly because you’re a rational man that you find it so distressing not to be able to grasp the nature of the condition which your subconscious mind has imposed on you. You have no personality or identity problems. Look . . . schizophrenia sufferers may begin to hear voices in their heads, or develop a paranoid phobia that people are talking about them behind their backs. They could be beset by the knowledge that a rat is lodged in their throat; or they may see that the living bodies of their friends and relatives are riddled with writhing maggots . . .’

  Aynsley had not noticed the sudden rigidity in Mark’s posture, the sudden flashing glance and intense expression on his face as the psychiatrist continued: ‘. . . All of these delusions can be experienced by a schizophrenic – not as confusions inside the mind, but as objective facts of the exterior world.’

  ‘I had a dream last night.’

  Aynsley paused and took a cigarette from the golden box on his desk. Mark seemed to have cut him off deliberately. ‘Another dream of standing stones and pagan sacrifices?’

  ‘No. It was a different dream.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’ Aynsley sat back in his chair, lit the cigarette and drew deeply on it. There was a tension in Mark’s voice which interested him.

  ‘It was a dream that I haven’t had since I was a kid. It used to plague me a lot. But it was more than just a dream. It was practically a blow by blow account of something that actually happened to me . . .’

  As Mark recounted the nightmare of the Ghost Train, Aynsley could see the ste
adily mounting horror in his eyes. His hands were clasped tightly around the walking stick which lay across his lap. Aynsley noted how vividly Mark told the tale and how clearly the memory was burnt into his mind. He wondered just what on earth he could do to help him. Mark seemed so logical, so analytical of his own plight that he presented a fascinating puzzle to the doctor. Aynsley had been in practice for fifteen years and could not remember anyone like Mark Davies. Without doubt, his accident and subsequent recovery were sensational to say the least. And the psychological problems which remained were fascinating. Aynsley had rarely, in the six months or so that Mark had been receiving treatment, been able to converse so deeply and thoroughly with a patient on his own condition. At times, he had found that they were both discussing the problem in a manner and to an extent which excited and stimulated his own thought processes more keenly than since his college days. At other times, during the course of analysis, Mark could lead him into an abstract philosophical debate which was at the same time wholly relevant to Mark’s own psychological problems. Aynsley had more than once forced himself to re-­establish the doctor/patient relationship which had somehow drifted with the conversation. Despite this, he could still not isolate and explain the Impulse which forced Mark to make his constant visits to the station.

  Mark’s tale of the Ghost Train Man was far from abstract. He told it with a graphic conviction which made Aynsley feel uneasy for reasons he could not explain. There was no dream like quality about it in the way that Mark’s dreams of ritual sacrifices were so obviously fantasies. Aynsley realised that Mark’s subconscious had reproduced the event in a full and perfectly detailed flashback. Mark finished his story at the point when Robbie had arrived to rescue him, but the doctor sensed immediately that there was more to come.

  ‘That’s when I woke up. And that’s when I saw . . .’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I was awake, Dr Aynsley. I was wide awake and I saw the Ghost Train Man standing in the bedroom doorway. He hadn’t changed after all these years. He was just the way I remembered him. Just standing there, grinning at me. And there was something else . . . he had Robbie with him. He showed Robbie to me. There was a rope around his neck and he was dead. But the Ghost Train Man had brought him back. Oh, God, it was like one of those schlock-­horror zombie films. There were maggots . . .’