Ghost Train

by Stephen Laws

  Tadger had paid no attention to any of the people who had handed him tickets that day, and didn’t even see the family with the great big smile that bundled towards him with their suitcases. But when the man pressed the tickets into his hand, Tadger felt something he had only ever felt once before in his life and had hoped he would never feel again.

  The first time had been when he was twelve years old and staying with his Aunt Freda in Bermondsey. Aunt Freda was a huge fat woman who, in retrospect, he supposed must have been suffering from elephantiasis. Both he and his widowed mother were staying with her for the week, because Aunt Freda was very, very ill and the doctors had only given her a short time to live. Tadger’s mother was out in the back kitchen, filling a coal scuttle, and Tadger had been sitting in a chair next to Aunt Freda as she lay in bed. He did not want to be there. He would rather have been anywhere else but sitting in this dingy bedroom with its stuffy smell and this great whale of a woman lying under a mountain of bedclothes. Aunt Freda had started to make a noise; a low, moaning noise in the back of her throat, and Tadger had called in panic for his mother. But she was filling the scuttle and the sound of coal chunks rattling against metal drowned out his call. Tadger had just begun to rise to his feet when a huge, pudgy white hand snaked out from the bedclothes and fastened on his wrist. The grip was solid but clammy and Tadger had felt something like an electric shock shooting up his arm and down his spinal cord. It was as if a squid’s tentacle had suddenly flopped out and caught him. And Tadger had screamed until his mother finally came running to pry him loose from Aunt Freda’s dead grasp, finger by stiff finger. Tadger had never forgotten that moment.

  And now, Tadger felt the same dull, horrible thrill of horror as those tickets were pushed into his hands. It brought back with startling vividness that memory which had haunted his dreams since childhood. His stomach rolled in one convulsive heave and he looked up directly into the face before him, expecting to see the enormous figure of his long-­dead aunt standing before him in all its flabby white immensity. But it was a tallish man with a slight stoop, dark hair and white face, with a knowing grin that seemed to look right inside his soul, to that dull afternoon forty years ago in a dingy bedroom in Bermondsey. Tadger stamped the tickets and thrust them back at the man as if they were contaminated. The man smiled again and moved away. The woman behind him was looking at Tadger, too . . . and the little girl . . . and for an instant Tadger thought: Christ, they’ve all got the same face, before he realised that it wasn’t their faces. It was the smile. A horrible white, poisonous smile. Tadger’s stomach rolled again. And he began to wonder if Eric’s tales of over-­work might also apply to him. Maybe a coupla days rest . . .

  Thirteen

  Matt Jackson had been a taxi driver for the past fifteen years. It was a good life. You got to be your own boss (more or less). You could work whatever hours you liked. Late shift, early shift. All day. What the hell? So long as there was enough cash to pay the bills, keep Mavis happy and make for a couple of nights on the booze. In his day, Matt had been a brickie’s labourer, had done his National Service and had enjoyed it (which seemed to put him at a distance from every other square basher he had known), and had tried his hand on the trawlers that operated out of North Shields. He had been sacked from the latter when he had beaten the crap out of the skipper when the old bastard queered up the back wages owing to him. Being sacked made no difference to him – he had intended to pack it in anyway. And so to the taxi rank. Point A to point B, pay the man, next customer if-­you-­please!

  It had been a slow morning. It was drizzling lightly and Matt had watched as the thin crust of snow on the pavements dis-­solved slowly to slush. He had picked up two punters: total score – £4.50. Big deal. There were two taxis in front of him now and Matt wondered how they had been doing this morning. Two hippies climbed into the first cab. If this had been 11.30 at night, and he had been the first taxi in the rank, there was no way he would have picked those two up. The first taxi was pulling away now and Matt recognised the driver as Jack Fisher. He wondered if Jack’s wife was still screwing around with that night club owner. The next cab moved up and he followed slowly behind as a young girl climbed into it. The driver was Ernie Bishop and Matt knew that he would be using his best tap-­up patter on her for however long it took to get to where she was going. Poor old Ernie. Just like the old Benny Hill record, thought Matt. He never got anywhere with the birds. Never would, unless his best friend told him about the old b.o. problem. But then again, Ernie didn’t have a best friend, so Matt supposed that he was stuck.

  Girls were the worst when it came to bother on the taxis. He’d had more problems with ‘hen’ night crowds than he had ever had with bachelor nights. He remembered a night two years ago when a really smart bit of stuff had puked on his back seat and then had the bloody cheek to try and run away without paying. Matt didn’t have time for drunken bints. He’d chased her, taken her purse, grabbed the three quid that was owing to him and then chucked the purse straight into the canal, leaving the bird in question shrieking and yelling on the canal bank. He knew the type. All fur coat and no knickers. Never again, Matt had thought. No more hen party pick-­ups.

  Matt was a big man, had always been big. He knew how to handle himself, and on the occasions when there had been real aggro, there had been one or two sore heads the following morning. But trouble of that kind was rare. Matt had been driving taxis for fifteen years and he could sense trouble straight away. And when you sensed it, well, you just drove on, man . . .

  The girl in front was just shutting the taxi door when a face appeared at Matt’s passenger seat window. A knuckle rapped on the glass.

  ‘Are you free, please?’ It was a middle-­aged man with a big smile. Behind him, Matt could see what he presumed were his wife and daughter.

  ‘Sure. Hop in! The door’s open.’

  ‘We’ve got some suitcases,’ said the man as Matt leaned across and threw open the passenger door lock.

  ‘Okay.’ Matt climbed out on his side and moved round to the back; the man took another suitcase from his wife and followed him. The woman and the little girl were climbing into the back seat as Matt took the suitcases from the man and fitted them neatly into the boot.

  ‘I hope they’ll fit all right,’ said the man, with the same big grin on his face.

  ‘No trouble,’ said Matt, moving back to the front and climbing into the driving seat. ‘No trouble at all.’

  The man climbed into the front passenger seat and slammed the door. He was still smiling when Matt asked: ‘Where to?’

  ‘Osborne Road, Jesmond, please,’ said the man. Matt picked up the mike from the dash and radioed in his pick-­up and destination. He pulled away from the taxi rank.

  For the last time.

  ‘You on holiday?’ asked Matt after a while.

  Some punters liked to talk, others didn’t. It didn’t usually bother Matt one way or the other, but business had been really slow this morning, and the previous punters hadn’t been in the car long enough to say, ‘Hello, goodbye’. Matt was sick of the quiet, and besides, he felt like hearing his own voice.

  ‘Holiday? Yes . . .’ said the man, and from the corner of his eye Matt could see that he was turning to look at him, smiling again. Now why couldn’t everybody be as friendly as that? All those miserable faces wandering around town like extras from a zombie film. It made a change to see someone who was happy, particularly on a rotten morning like this.

  ‘Yeah? I can always tell. Accent plus suitcase equals business. Accent plus suitcases plus family equals holiday. Staying with friends or family?’

  ‘Both,’ came an answer from behind, and Matt looked in the mirror at the woman sitting in the back. She was smiling at him. And Matt could hear the little girl giggling into the back of her hand. No kidding, it made a change to see so many happy, smiling faces. Matt could not see the little girl. She was seated too low on
the back seat. The woman looked pale but fairly attractive. There were two hard lines at the side of her mouth and for an instant, Matt thought: There’s a face for frowning, not for smiling. But she was smiling all the same and it made him feel good as he cruised up from the city centre, took a slip road and headed for Jesmond.

  ‘Oh . . . I forgot,’ said the man suddenly. ‘I need to buy some . . . chocolates. A present, do you see? For the family. Do you think you could pull into that side street there? I think I can see a shop.’

  ‘No problem,’ said Matt, swerving from the main road. He could see the sign of a small corner shop. He had never been down this way before but he supposed that it was a sweet shop. The buildings on the other side of the street were in the process of being demolished. A silent bulldozer stood in a pile of rubble. There were no workmen to be seen. Probably on one of their half-­hour tea breaks while the country goes down the frigging drain, thought Matt. The car was rounding the corner now and Matt could see that the man had been right about it being a shop. But the place was derelict and looked as if it had been so for some time. Matt began to turn, to tell the man that there was another shop on the main road just a little way up and that it was on their way to Jesmond anyway, when something small seemed to bounce up over the back of the seat behind him. Two small arms were suddenly wrapped around his neck, squeezing tightly, and Matt started to yell: ‘What the hell . . . ?’ but the woman was lunging forward too and something had gone snap inside Matt’s head. Just before he blacked out altogether, he had a crazy, distorted view of the man sitting next to him, still smiling his big smile.

  ‘No problem,’ said the man as Matt’s world slipped into darkness.

  Fourteen

  Chadderton wanted a drink more than he had ever needed one in his life.

  ‘I was right . . . you’re a carrier, Davies. It’s some kind of mental disease. And you’ve given it to me, you bastard!’ Something had broken the spell of nightmare and Chadderton felt able to move now, able to participate.

  For a while, Mark was unable to answer; clutching his daughter close to him, tears streaming down his face. He kept his face away from Chadderton who sounded as if he had just come out of a hangover. Joanne was moving now, saying sleepily: ‘Oh God, what was it, Mark? Am I going mad?’

  ‘You’re wrong,’ Mark said to Chadderton, his voice sounding choked and preternaturally loud in the bedroom. ‘You know you’re wrong. You’re just too frightened to admit it. It’s not a mental bug, or whatever you say . . . it’s . . .’ And Mark groped for the words to sum up what it was that had invaded their minds, knowing that somehow they had been saved from it; knowing that even though it had touched their minds and wanted to stay (wanted to stay, just as it’s stayed with me for all these months), it had been expelled by something Helen had done. Knowing that it had claimed him three times and that three times he had denied it. And that it was . . . was . . .

  ‘It’s evil,’ said Aynsley.

  The wild, ragged man was speaking in a cultured Oxbridge voice which Mark recognized of old. ‘Its name is Azimuth and it’s as old as time. And it’s evil.’

  ‘It was a bad dream,’ said Joanne in a small voice. ‘It was all just a bad dream.’

  ‘I told you not to play the tape.’ Aynsley’s voice sounded ridiculously normal; like a cultured English don trapped inside a huge, broken and dishevelled ventriloquist’s dummy. The wild glinting of his eyes had faded to a dull, unhealthy glaze. It was bizarre. ‘Azimuth was on the tape. When you played it of your own free will you conjured it up.’

  ‘Fuck you!’ Chadderton suddenly exploded, the abrupt burst of anger dizzying him so that he had to grope his way back to the bed. ‘Where do you keep the booze, Davies?’

  And Joanne, needing desperately to put everything in perspective, seized upon this simple request to bring her back to the ordinary world. A world where maniacs didn’t destroy your car, hack their way through your front door, into your house and into your worst dreams. ‘It’s downstairs. I’ll get it.’

  Mark did not like the way she was reacting now. ‘Your head, Jo . . .’ he began.

  ‘It’s all right. Really, it’s all right. I’ll be back in a minute.’

  Back in a minute, thought Mark. I’ll just get the meat out of the freezer. I’ve got one hundred and one things to do today, Mark. Try to keep Helen out of the kitchen. You know what she’s like.

  She was gone now, moving through the shattered door frame as if she had a slight hangover. Just like two wedding anniversaries ago when they had got stoned on her home-­made wine. Bitterly, Mark remembered that he had missed their last anniversary. He had been lying comatose in a hospital bed and she had been here with Helen, praying for him. And something evil had been riding the lines. Mark laid Helen gently down on the bed next to Chadderton. She was sleeping soundly as if nothing had happened at all.

  ‘It’s a bug, that’s what it is. We’ve all caught it, now,’ Chadderton breathed angrily.

  ‘It got into my mind, Mark,’ said Aynsley. ‘I’m sorry. It got into my mind and I had to do what it told me.’

  ‘Where is it now? Where has it gone?’ Mark heard himself say.

  ‘It’s been cast out again. But it’s stronger now than it’s ever been. You’ve got to do something now while there’s still time. It’s been trapped on the line, feeding on the line for a long time, Mark. Feeding and growing strong. It could never venture very far from the rails before but it’s getting stronger every day. Soon, it won’t be trapped on the line any more. It’ll be free to move where it wishes. But it’s still a prisoner, Mark. You’ve still got time . . .’ Aynsley retched, a convulsion that seemed to shake his entire frame. ‘It used me. It got inside me. It got inside the tape. That’s how it came here. It’s a prisoner of the lines. But the time is coming soon when it’ll have fed and grown strong enough to escape . . .’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, let’s get out of here,’ said Chadderton, still leaning heavily on the bed, running one hand through his ruffled hair. ‘We’ve got to get this nutter to a hospital. Your wife and kid need help, too. Just give me a minute to pull myself together, that’s all.’

  Aynsley convulsed again, his breath catching and spuming with a sibilant, rattling sound as if his insides were likely to bubble upwards and outwards through his mouth at any second. His eyes started from their sockets. ‘Please . . .’ And now he was holding out his hand to Mark in desperation. ‘Take my hand, Mark. Take it and you’ll know.’

  Mark could feel an old familiar feeling creeping around the base of his spine, curling around his nervous system and snapping at his soul. It was a familiar fear. And it was saying: What if whatever he’s talking about is still in him? What if he wants to touch me so that it can get back into me again?

  Aynsley retched again, spittle spraying onto the carpet. He looked up at Mark and seemed to see what was going on in the latter’s mind.

  ‘It’s gone, Mark. It’s not in me any more. I’m no more use to it. It’s used me up. Take my hand, damn you! There isn’t much time left. Don’t you see? Azimuth used me, burned me up inside so that it could make all your nightmares.’

  Chadderton was slowly standing up, finally orientating him-­self and pushing all of this lunacy back into the dream world where it belonged. Reality had taken over again. ‘We’re going to the police,’ he said in a manner that brooked no disagreement.

  ‘No, don’t listen to him, Mark! You’ve got to trust me and take my hand. He’s too frightened to believe. I saw all your bad dreams. I saw your wife burning in that glass case. I saw you killing Mark, thinking that it was Trafford. That’s what Azimuth wanted!’

  ‘Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP, YOU CRAZY BASTARD!’ Chadderton refused to look at him, refused to let reality blur at the edges again. The man was a dangerous homicidal maniac; the fact that he knew what only Chadderton had seen in his hallucination did not fit in with the equatio
n. It was not real. The only thing that was real was . . . was . . .

  Mark moved quickly across the room to Aynsley and Chadderton saw the look on his face: as if regardless of the consequences he had made a decision to grasp a poisonous snake lying on the floor. Aynsley’s claw-­like hand was clutching upwards at Mark as he reached for it, and something inside Chadderton, something which had as yet refused to submit to rationality, made him lunge forward to prevent the contact being made. But it was too late. Mark had taken the outstretched claw with both of his hands an instant before Chadderton’s hand closed on Mark’s shoulder.

  Two years before, Chadderton had been changing a bulb in his living room, standing on a chair and twisting at the small glass globe which refused to part from its socket; cursing and swearing at it while his wife looked on, laughing helplessly. Her laughter was choked off when his finger had completed a circuit and the resultant shock had sent him sprawling to the carpet. What he felt now was the closest comparison he could make. As he touched Mark, a dull, buzzing, dragging feeling shot along his arm. As if something had seized every nerve ending in his arm and given a short, hard tug. Chadderton pulled back quickly, gasping. Mark was kneeling down beside Aynsley and they were looking at each other; just staring at each other as serious as hell. Chadderton moved back to the bed, while the two men continued to stare into each other’s eyes. And in Chadderton’s spinning thoughts, he could hear himself thinking: No. Not ready yet. Do not pass Go. Do not collect £200. What the hell . . . am I cracking up? Have I really gone over the top?

  Joanne entered the room again, a bottle of Bell’s whisky dangling from one hand. Vacantly she brushed a strand of renegade hair from her forehead, appearing not to see Mark and Aynsley. She moved to the bed and cradled Helen as Chadderton seized the bottle from her. He unscrewed the cap, dropped it to the carpet and swallowed a mouthful of whisky, still watching as Mark and Aynsley stared and stared. Davies’ face was deathly white, concentrating hard on something. Even from where he sat, Chadderton could see the beads of moisture on the man’s brow. Aynsley’s eyes were dull and vacant, far away. Chadderton could sense that Joanne, sitting beside him, had finally seen them and was leaning forward in alarm. Without realising why, and to his consternation, he realised that he had gripped her arm and was preventing her from rising. The little girl was mumbling in her sleep. To Chadderton, it seemed that she was calling for her father. The woman turned to her daughter again but Chadderton retained his grip on her arm while he took another swig from the whisky bottle. He thought: I’m waiting for something. Waiting until something has been completed. And again, he had the feeling that reality, his reality, had temporarily blurred around the edges. He began the task of ignoring these insane, instinctive urges and feelings, to pull himself out of the nightmare and back into the real world. And while Chadderton struggled, Mark and Aynsley continued to stare at each other in silent communication. Next to him, he could hear that the woman was crying. Soft, bitter tears. He drank again.