Chapter Seven: The Train
Chapter seven is yours, but don’t hesitate: the clock runs out for eight. Get in your reblogs before half past 7 - the total must be at least three by… eleven.
As Rishley flapped down the side of the hill back toward the town, the new, elevated, perspective revealed, tucked behind the backside of the town hall’s hill, a train station. It was the same sepia as the rest of the town, rounded glass ceiling dulled and unreflective. The tracks were obscured entirely by thick reddish-brown bushes and trees, hiding from Rishley the object of his hurried run. He flew past the town hall, the library, the grocery store, and skidded to a stop in front of the station’s large door. Like the rest of the town, it was in ruins; windows were broken, it was covered in an unhealthy layer of dust, and, upon closer inspection, the magnificent glass dome was broken in many places, allowing birds and other elements to drop into the large building. Rishley gave a cursory glance to all of these things, pausing only because he wanted to remember the ambiance for this novel (which was rapidly becoming six or seven novels; after all, such a strange journey could not possibly be described in just one book!) he had decided to write.
It was during this cursory glance that Rishley’s gaze grazed the train tracks. Relatively unremarkable, they seemed dislodged in places, perfect in others, and rather like (what else) a track for a train. He raised his eyes up the track in search of the train that had to be just ahead – and yet, it wasn’t. There was no train, no train whistle, nothing. Rishley was not sure what he expected, really, given that he knew the tracks had been redirected long ago and, save a few very creepy spirits, there was no one left in this town to man the station.
“But that noise!” our young poet said aloud, startling himself (and a chorus of pigeons) with the sound of his own voice.
It was undeniable; there had been a train whistle while Rishley was in the Gildonarette’s house. And yet, there was no train. And, by virtue of the same law that brings us smoke to fire, if there is a train whistle, there must have been a train. It seemed impossible that it could have left so fast for, while flailing and ridiculous looking, Rishley was a pretty fast runner and the hill was not so hilly that rushing down it would mean one missed a train entirely.
Poor poetical Rishley spun around a few times, mirroring his confused action when he first arrived in Addlesbury, and began to speak (I sigh, reader, to share this with you, but it’s fairly important, so … my apologies):
“A curse upon fair town and bare of people hither, fro. Not one remains in secret lair but still a train whistle did blow. A mystery have I found, trapped in this poor town. The path to the house could not have been more cliché and atmospheric if it had been constructed right from Rishley’s rather predictable mind. It was a dark, windy, dirt road (and not of that dusty tan dirt from the town; this dirt was hard, burnt sienna that clumped under Rishley’s footsteps) with huge trees looming into it. Spikes and sticks pressed into Rishley, he had to sidestep several pieces of foliage during his journey, and it suddenly looked as if it might rain (whereas, in the town, Rishley had a passionate desire for a drink of water). He followed this path up, up, up, around and around, until Rishley finally stopped and stared at the house. It looked just as far away as ever and each step he seemed to take only led him distinctly not-closer. Our poet found himself irked; not only was there no train for him to take, this town was entirely dead, and the most interesting thing in said dead-town was a house he could not reach! Rishley stalked on but he was quite stompy the rest of the way. He stomped himself right up that dastardly path and, since there was only one path, it absolutely did lead to the house (just in a terribly roundabout way) and, upon arrival, what Rishley saw stunned him.
The house was completely charred (this was, obviously, not surprising) on the outside – burnt to a crisp. As Rishley stared, a small breeze knocked black pieces of wood from the railings and tossed them about until they disappeared into soot. But the inside, which our hero could see just barely through sheer white curtains, was completely normal. Chairs stood proudly, bright red flowers on white silk, railings shone with polish, paintings adorned oak walls, and everything seemed precisely as it was before the blast of heat snuffed lives. Intrigued, Rishley began to stalk around the house, looking for a safe way (or at the very least, a stairwell that wouldn’t turn to dust under his feet) into the very strange house.
He found it by way of the cellar around at the back of the abode. The doors gave way immediately, blackening Rishley’s hands, and he stepped onto the cold stone stairway, ducking into the basement. It was a bare stone room, a few wine bottles on racks (which Rishley confiscated, disappearing them into his suitcase for future use), and otherwise entirely uninteresting. The writer climbed five steps and then paused, grabbed one more bottle of wine by leaning over the banister, and uncorked it with his teeth. As he continued to head up into the pristine Gildonarette house, Rishley drank their wine, wondering how in the world the bottles didn’t explode during the fire.
He pushed open the basement door and found himself in the kitchen, generally an unremarkable location – save for the large (almost obscene) pot on a very large range.
“I say,” Rishley whispered, swigging more of his wine. “That is quite,” he paused a while, recalling something chilling from his notes, “the pot.”
Slowly, with the sort of gait that one takes when one senses the inevitable and the inevitable is decidedly frightening, Rishley advanced toward the stew pot. He shut one eye, turned away, then opened it and shut the other, his chin held high in the air both to peer into and avoid seeing that pot. He took a long breath, another deep swig of the wine, and leaned forward to see what was in the huge cooking utensil.
His notes did not lie, readers. Mister William Rishley saw exactly what he expected to see – and yet, he had not expected what he saw. You see, he knew (he just felt it; it’s inexplicable) he would find a body, though the state of said body was quite up in the air. Perhaps he would have been less surprised if the cook had been black and burnt like the outside of the house, or maybe if she was decayed into the stew, or really, anything other than what he happened to see. For Rishley did not witness the horrors of death in the expected manner; he witnessed the horrors of a life caught within the web of a death not yet had. The cook was alive, her eyes wide and glassy, skin bubbling with the stew, and almost quite well. Her large face was greasy with gristle, hair stringy with spinach, and as that skin boiled with the stew’s stock, one side of the cook’s face crinkled in a smile not altogether unfriendly.
Rishley screamed. He dropped his bottle of wine (and his poetic mystique) and stumbled backwards right over an assortment of various cooking surfaces. Eventually, he regained his footing and ran loudly out of the kitchen, into an empty dining room, and then through to the sitting room where, as we well know, he encountered three (also half living) beings. Two were in chairs, one at the window. Our poor hero, who has already been subjected to much abuse all in the name of getting to a city, stopped and stared at these ghastly beings, these entities, waiting for them, too, to turn around and scare the daylights out of him.
But the Gildonarettes were not as uncultured (or bubbly) as their cook, so this stranger storming into their living room was not met with an eerie smile. Instead, the mistress of the house, the Pernella Atrina, looked over at Rishley with her disapproving gaze, hair swept into a style long since out of fashion, and scowled.
“Husband,” she said, turning to Pailey Brokenstoff and arching a brow, “There seems to be a man in our home.”
Pailey Brokenstoff Gildonarette peered over at Rishley, “So there is. …Um, man. What is your occupation?”
Rishley, too stunned to do anything but reply, tried to straighten up. He declared, proudly, “I am a writer.”
“Oh, delightful,” Pernella said in a chipper tone (as chipper as any dead woman can, I suppose), “You simply must tell us a story – my daughter loves stories.”
Krysanthe, who had been staring out the window, looked over her shoulder at Rishley and rolled her eyes. Rishley started just slightly; this girl, with her snow-white skin and black ringlets, looked almost precisely like the muse I mentioned (and promised elaboration of – this is not it) several chapters ago. She had long black lashes that covered bright green eyes, a green bow, a white dress with green trim – the image was uncannily familiar. In fact, Rishley swore up and down for years that this child was his muse, but in some sort of space-time vortex that rendered her a child again and he the same age. Most people laughed at him, but there was an almost interesting short story milked from the notion that I had the misfortune of trying to edit.
This girl, muse or not, did not move her body when she looked at Rishley: only her neck. It looked awkward. It was at this moment Rishley realized that none of these people had moved their bodies; they were all quite rigidly stuck to their seats. The poet, considering himself quite the deductive genius, took two steps further into the room to look closely at the trio. His hunch was disturbingly correct; the parents were seared to their chairs and the girl was stuck to the window ledge. Still terrified, but a smidgen less so since they were immobile, Rishley absently muttered a few words of one of his stories, one about a maiden stuck in some tower or something, but just as he was beginning to actually become involved in the telling of his tale (and very probably forgetting that he did not want to be around ghosts for very long), a rather loud whistle came from the town.
“…what the hell was that?” Rishley asked, darting to a window not occupied by a strange little girl with black hair.
What it was was a train. The train that had stopped running through Addlesbury years ago (thus supporting Rishley’s time-travel theory, in his mind at least). It was a low sound, down in the town somewhere, and Rishley about bolted toward the door once his mind recognized what made that sound. The three people in the room all cringed and cried, “No!” with such passion, Rishley stopped dead in his tracks.
“You cannot open that door,” Krysanthe said, voice low and otherworldly. “We all die if you open the door.”
“What? That’s nonsense, you’re already dead!” Rishley replied, curtness now restored in the man.
“The wind carries the death,” the girl said, looking back outside at the charred porch. “The soot and the ash.”
Rishley stared at the three people for a while again, about to argue that, despite their very clear presence in the room, they were all three already dead and opening a door would not make them any more dead than they already were. But that train whistle blew again and Rishley decided he hadn’t the time to debate the philosophy of death with three people who had already knocked on His door, so Rishley simply tipped his non-existent hat and, with one odd look at the girl, ran out of the room, through the dining room, into the kitchen (shuddering involuntarily at the cook’s pot), down the stairs, and out the cellar door. Then he tore off down the hill, path be damned, at breakneck speed, limbs all flailing quite comically.
So wait and see, remember me, and…”
Here, Rishley paused. He seemed to recall something in his notes. Amy, the nanny of that doomed well-to-do Krysanthe, had written a line Rishley could not understand – but fortunately, that last word (which I will share soon) was one that rhymed with ‘me’.
“'I call upon the Left Soul: set free! set free!”
(You see why he had trouble understanding that? It really made no sense at all; Amy, the nanny, was a bit bothered in the head after the cook had her try some pocket pies that had more than a bit too much oregano in them, not knowing that Amy was allergic to oregano. The nanny was almost entirely blind for three days after that, during which time Krysanthe was scheduled to go to the zoo and, never one to shirk her duties, Amy took Krysanthe to said zoo. Needless to say, monkeys are not very understanding to nannies reeking of oregano who blindly wander into their cages. One of them threw a very large banana right at Amy’s poor head and she lost a few marbles that day.)
Strangely enough, by mere coincidence, the line Amy had writ was not entirely gibberish. The nanny had heard the line at a historical convention (avid follower of history); it was rumored to have some sort of magical powers several centuries ago. She had stored it somewhere in the recesses of that addled mind and, years later, it just happened to fall out onto the same page as her note about the fire. (And, I realize that a more proper writer would have set all of this up beforehand; given the reader some clues to both Amy’s insanity and the prophetic line several chapters ago, but I stand by my rather sudden introduction of this plot twist. You see, Rishley did not know chapters ago that Amy’s bizarre line would have the effect it will have in a short moment and summarily dismissed it when he read said line. It was not worth mentioning then. It is worth mentioning now, so now is when I mention it. If you have opinions of the writing style I have adopted, may I suggest you either pick up another book or write your own? Very good then.)
In any event, Amy’s bizarre, cryptic line did have a rather fantastic effect on the train station. There was a harrowing pause, the entire world seemed to stand still for just a moment, then a volatile stirring began. A wind Rishley had never felt before began billowing from above, through the broken glass, and over him. The cold wind eddied through the room, passing over Rishley and chilling him to the bone; and it was the sort of cold a person can’t shake: an otherworldly sort of cold. The wind carried debris, old pieces of wood, dust, and glass on it, picking up and tossing around everything that littered the station’s floor. Rishley struggled to keep the more dangerous pieces of refuse from piercing his pale skin, suitcase held in front of his face, and danced around, walking backwards to escape whatever it was he unwittingly unleashed upon the little town of Addlesbury.
Rishley continued to paw at the airy maelstrom, backpedaling as quickly as he could, desperately trying to reach the exit. But, just as Rishley was about to fall onto the train tracks, the wind stopped; it was as if someone had flicked a switch and God’s great fan turned off. There was absolute silence for three seconds (Rishley counted) then, to his left, a train whistle sounded. And this time, where there was a whistle, there was a train. A grand steam engine made of shiny black iron glistened its way into the station looking wildly out of place considering the gloom and doom to which the town (and station) alluded. It was a proud vehicle, polished from the wheels’ spokes right on up to the locomotive’s steam dome. From one window, a man hung precariously; given the rest of the day’s startling discoveries, Rishley was quite sure that he was dead and merely being dragged along by the train until the fellow gave a long wave and a slight smile, casting a warmth over the station of Addlesbury that hadn’t been seen in decades. Rishley turned around quickly, figuring that the station was alive and bustling again – he was almost entirely wrong: there was one other person in the train station.
For a brief moment, the train was forgot and this new revelation took over Rishley’s entire existence. It was her. That muse I promised to discuss all those pages ago was standing directly behind Rishley! Oh, he couldn’t tell it was her, really, since she had one of those fashionable frilly (and wholly unnecessary) umbrellas shielding her face, but he knew. The way she stood, the shape of her body, it was all entirely familiar to him (she was his muse, after all) and nothing, not even a very grand train, could make Rishley stop drinking in this beautiful creature. She wore a long, fitted dress of green silk, sleeves ending just at her elbow before exploding in a lattice purfle of white lace. At her hips, peplum bloomed in more delightful green silk before the skirt wriggled its way down her legs. From behind that cursed umbrella, Rishley could see a long black curl twirling over her bosom (which was not quite hidden, but still certainly within the realm of chaste dress). This was her: the lone person Rishley could tolerate and he was not entirely certain that he hadn’t just made her up.
As he stared, the train blew another whistle and Rishley was jolted back to what resembled reality, forced to turn around and acknowledge this large black beast behind him. It roared into a stop, pulling right into the station, and blew its whistle again while the dangling fellow hopped off onto the ground and cried for tickets.
Rishley and his muse were the only two people in the station.
The author turned around, desperately searching for anyone selling these tickets, trying to figure out away to get on that train and get out of the damned town – he had a city to culture! Unfortunately, he was met with no one other than the girl in green who headed for the conductor.
“Tickets!” the man shouted, letting the muse step into the locomotive, “Tickets!”
Rishley stroked his chin as he walked, trying to regain a little bit of his calm, uninterested, apathetic worldliness, and stopped just in front of the conductor, “I say, I say, sir, where in the world would I get this ticket from?”
The conductor stared blankly at Rishley for a long while, gaze unfocused and simply bizarre. The conductor was blind. He gave an agreeable nod of his head and said most helpfully, “You’ll need a ticket, my boy. We might very well be sold out, this here is a popular ride.”
Rishley stared at the cryptic conductor for a while and then looked at the ticket booth, which stood in shambles. He held up his finger and said, “Give me a minute,” while darting toward the booth, hopping the counter, and shuffling around.
“You’ve got seven! We head out in seven minutes,” the man called to Rishley before disappearing back into the train.
Rishley flew yellowed papers around, searching and scouring for anything that might be even remotely passable as a ticket. He found a few pieces of tickets, torn up and discarded old ones, and tried to piece them together by licking their edges. This worked very poorly and eventually Rishley abandoned that technique altogether. He began talking to the papers, crying out in agony when they were not tickets, wondering why, o Why, God, could these pieces of processed trees not be what he needed? He found absolutely nothing worth finding, not a single ticket, and was beginning to wonder what life in a ghost town might be like for a budding writer (probably very “author”y, he thought, and perhaps worth pontificating further) when Rishley found a very large record book in a drawer long since shut.
He pulled the tome out, struggling under its hefty weight, and opened it, skimming the first page. It was, rather unsurprisingly (but certainly fortunately!), a ledger of ticket sales. After figuring out how the book was kept (chronologically, by date), Rishley hurried his fingers and shuffled the pages to the last one, staring at the names. As you have surely guessed, one, and one alone, stood out:
Gildonarette.
!!!!
