Traintober Day 28
This was going to be day 31, but I decided it fit today's theme while I was writing it - hence the late upload time. (11:30 on the 28th is still the 28th!)
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Today's theme is: Fate Comes to Collect.
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That's a line that can go either way.
Here's a (good) but sad ghost story, and a story about a demon confronting a man.
Angel
September, 1994. Barry Docks, Wales
The cold sea wind scudded through the empty field. Dai clutched his coat around him tightly. He didn’t remember getting cold so easily, but the sickness coursing through his body had taken many things from him.
He kept his head down, making sure that he didn’t trip over the industrial debris laying about the site.
As a businessman, he shouldn’t have felt so pleased at seeing a once-bustling worksite so empty, but this place was so much more than that. Emptiness meant that he’d succeeded.
Looking up, he found what he was looking for - or rather, who he was looking for.
The decrepit hulks opened their eyes as his footsteps grew nearer. Ten in number, they were all that remained of his life’s work.
“Sir?” Croaked the the nearest one. Once they had been a freight locomotive - the biggest to ever tread on British rails. Now they were little more than a rotting husk.
Just like Dai.
“Hello, old friends.” He said, his voice barely above a whisper. “I’ve come to say goodbye.”
“Goodbye?” Another one said. He still had his voice about him - for all that it mattered. “What do you mean sir?”
“Look at him! He’s wasting away, that’s what.” Coughed another. She had given up on any pretenses about what she now was, but her dignified voice gave some evidence to the fact that she had once been an elegant passenger engine. “He’s more coat than man!”
Her eyes, hardened by many years in the yard, softened dramatically, as did her voice. “How much longer, sir?”
Dai had always liked her - straight to the point and no nonsense. “Not long. Almost didn’t have the strength to make it here.”
The engines all looked impossibly sad at that, to the point where the smallest of the tank engines started quietly weeping.
“Don’t cry'' is what Dai wanted to say, but he was overtaken by a bout of coughing that went on for a long minute. He wiped his mouth with a cloth handkerchief, and was unsurprised to see specks of blood on it.
The engines now ranged from horrified to melancholy. The express engine - the eldest of their group, she’d always claimed - looked deeply sad, and bade him to come closer. “My bufferbeam’s still intact.”
“Much obliged.” Dai sat down, feeling very, very old and weak as he shivered in the cold.
Is this what they feel like? He wondered, the thoughts flitting though his mind as he contemplated his mortality. They were like him, now. Once proud and full of life, now they were all just waiting for the end.
Dai sat there for some time - maybe minutes, maybe an hour, maybe longer. He’d stopped caring ages ago. No words were said - the engines knew where they stood with each other, and with him. He didn’t have the breath to say much either.
A rumble of thunder sounded in the distance, drawing Dai’s attention upwards. The sky was clear, and no cloud was present.
Looking back down, he noticed a wisp of smoke curling along the ground. It appeared from nowhere, and had no source or endpoint. He considered getting up and looking at it closely, but his body didn’t let him up from the bufferbeam.
Above and next to him, the engines grew stiller and more silent. He turned his head for just a moment to see what was wrong, when a steam whistle sounded.
It was a loud shriek of a noise, as though he were standing next to it, and Dai was lucky his heart didn’t give out there and then. Whirling around, he found a train sitting where it had not been before.
It was an engine and five coaches. The coaches were different, ranging from an old compartment coach without bogies all the way to a first class Mk.1.
The engine was different - it was a steam locomotive, but in the terms that they seemed to be made of steam. They were almost formless, changing every few heartbeats to a new shape. One minute they were a Standard 2, the next a GWR Castle, then a Gresley V2, Southern Battle of Britain, Hughes Crab, and so on. Occasionally they blurred into the form of an electric or a diesel - AL2, EM1, Deltic, Western, even an original NBL Warship.
“Mister Woodham?” The engine called out, its voice mixing between male and female, young and old. “I’m afraid it’s time.”
Oh.
Dai wasn’t entirely sure how his body found the strength to get up, but it did. Each step brought him closer to the train, and with each step, his body felt stronger, healthier, younger even. By the time he reached the train, he was able to breathe easily, and he put a foot onto the Mk.1’s steps with an ease he’d not had just a few minutes ago.
He turned around to the yard. He wanted to say something, he almost needed to, but when he locked eyes with the old express engine, she merely mouthed the words thank you.
He couldn’t say anything after that, and he disappeared into the coach.
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The engine spoke to them, its voice a chorus of achingly familiar voices. “Are you sure I can’t convince you to come with me?”
The old express engine was tempted, sorely so. But what was the point of giving in now? She’d spent so long waiting…
“Will he be there?” She asked at last. “When it is my time?”
The engine morphed and swirled, its lines changing into something that was so familiar it brought tears to her eyes. “I’ll wait until the end of time.” It spoke in her brother’s voice.
“I’ll see you then…” She said, barely able to keep her voice in check. “Goodbye.”
The engine’s form changed again, and it smiled a sad smile. It did not relish its duties, but it could not shirk from them either. It would meet each of them in time.
With one more piercing whistle, it vanished from sight, disappearing back into the smoke from which it came.
----
Dai Woodham’s death was mourned across England. His family expected the condolences from railway enthusiasts as well as friends and family, but as the weeks following his death passed by, the parcels and letters kept coming. From as near as the Vale of Glamorgan and as far as South Africa and Korea, the condolences kept coming.
“Who sent these?” Asked his son, who held aloft another stack of mail with international stamps.
“I don’t know.” His other son said, brow furrowing as he examined a letter that came from Lancashire - a comparatively short journey. “It’s signed by someone named ‘Olton Hall’? What kind of name is that?”
“It’s an engine…” Said a grandson, who was inspecting the name tag on a bouquet of flowers. “This one just says D600 - wasn’t that an engine Granda’ sold? To a ship captain or summat like that?”
The first son opened up a box - the postmark here said Israel. Inside it was an honest-to-goodness medal, along with a note. “If I could, I would induct your father into the Righteous Among Nations. However I do not have that ability, so please accept this medal - it is forged from my own boiler jacket taken during my last overhaul - one I would not have had if not for Dai’s intervention. He is forever Righteous Among Engines.” He read, his eyes widening. “Are these all from locomotives?”
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Demon
Monmouthshire, Wales. 1976.
Norman had been incensed when he’d arrived at the yard, and his mood had yet to return to more sedate levels. This yard wouldn’t even be his anymore next week, but of course this rubbish was happening now, so here he was.
He bit down a swell of anger as he rounded a pile of metal. Something or someone was attacking his staff, and doing so in broad daylight!
In the days leading up to this, at least four men had been gravely wounded, two severely enough to go to hospital, by something that they could not identify. Their reports were only consistent in their inconsistency: it was not man, nor beast, nor an industrial accident. Norman had thought them to be liars when he first heard, but merely looking at photos of the wounds managed to convince him otherwise.
Nothing could cause those wounds without deliberate intent. It was not a mad dog, a careless cutting saw, or a panicked thief. This was something more.
Never let it be said that Norman was a bad employer. When the news of a fifth such injury had been reported, he had come down himself, on a Sunday, and ran the first watch. The authorities had been summoned at some point, and he was now trailing behind the yard’s manager and a constable of some rank as they toured the areas where the attacks had taken place.
“Huh,” Said the constable at one point. “My brother would ‘ate me for coming out ‘ere and ‘elping you.”
“How so?” Norman said, sharper than he’d meant to.
The bobbie continued, unphased, and motioned at a pile of metal that had once been a great machine. “Fred loikes this old stuff - ‘e ‘ates you for cuttin em all up!”
He picked up a nameplate or a number board. “Oh ‘e’d love this. How much?”
Norman looked at it. Only a few pence of metal, really. It should have been melted down ages ago - unlikely to be worth anything except to one of those sentimental duffers. “Keep it.”
“Oh! Many thanks!”
They continued on for a while. Suddenly a burst of thunder crashed out, almost overhead. All three men almost jumped out of their skins at the sudden noise.
“Strange,” Said the constable, once they’d collected themselves. “Not a cloud in the sky…”
“Perhaps it was an automobile.” Posited the manager. “The road’s right there.”
Norman said nothing. The road really wasn’t right there - it was some three hundred yards distant, but he let the man calm himself however he wished.
Rounding another pile of scrap, the thunder roared again, this time accompanied by a bolt of lighting - one so blinding Norman felt a brief moment of panic that he may never see again.
Blinking spots from their eyes, Norman and the manager found that the policeman was nowhere to be seen, and a loud hissing noise could be heard not too far away.
“Coward…” Norman groused as his employee went in search of the noise. The officer had been right next to them - he truly must have been scared witless to have run out of sight in just a few moments.
“Sir!” His employee yelled, his voice tinged with fear. Norman set off at a run, suddenly wondering if the bobbie had been found by whatever was out there.
Rounding another pile of scrap, (How were there so many? They’d almost emptied the yard in preparation for the sale.) he found the man staring at an engine nestled in between piles of scrap.
“What is it man?” He huffed, unused to running.
“Sir…” The manager’s voice was trembling. “That’s not supposed to be here.”
“It’s an engine.” Norman said slowly. “This is a scrapyard.”
“That’s not an engine…” The man said slowly, as though the machine might hear them.
“...” Norman wanted to castigate the man for his simplemindedness, but looking closer at the engine revealed that it did look… off. Its body was covered in weld marks, and it looked like it had been stitched together out of many locomotives. There was a boiler from a Black 5 on Saint frames, the cab still had the SR logo on it, and there was a distinctly Gresley look to the front end. The tender could have been from any railway, and sat on bogies from a diesel.
As the two men stared, the eyes opened, the lids creaking upwards with the screech of unoiled metal.
Norman recoiled. The eyes weren’t there. There were just two deep holes going into the engine’s smokebox. Small red lamps flickered deep inside them.
The manager whimpered as the locomotive’s mouth opened. Instead of teeth, there were jagged pieces of metal, most of them appearing to be spokes taken from the wheels of a locomotive.
“Norman Cashmore” The engine didn’t so much speak - that would imply some level of rationality. Instead its mouth moved, and then roughly at the same time a demonic chorus of the damned seemed to whisper directly into Norman’s ears. “We’ve been waiting for this.”
“What?” Norman said, his voice small and trembling. “Waiting for what?”
“You. This Time. This meeting.”
“Why?”
The ‘engine’ laughed. It was a sound that could not be described. “You ask why? Look around you. That is why.”
Norman looked. The piles of scrap filled in his entire sight. The sky was barely visible over the towering heaps. “I don’t understand.”
The laugh again. “Look now.”
The piles of scrap had solidified into… more scrap. Locomotive parts were stacked as high and as wide as the eye could see. Wheels there, cabs here, loose boiler sheeting everywhere.
“Scrap metal. What of it?”
The engine’s demonic visage darkened. “They were innocent. They had not asked to be brought into this world.”
“Neither has anyone!” Norman protested almost before he was aware of doing so.
“They did ask to stay in it.” The engine’s lips formed into a scowl. The ‘teeth’ were pushing into the opposite lips, and ‘blood’ of oil and coolant was running down them. It didn’t seem to notice. “You denied them that. You denied them life, or even mercy.”
It sounded particularly incensed at that last word, and Norman became aware that his employee had fainted at some point, blood streaming from his ears. “I have to run a business!”
“You do not deny the charges?” The metal around him was beginning to shake.
“What, are you the law? They’re merely engines.”
“You admit it then.”
“What of it?” Norman knew it was time to go, and started walking backwards over the gravel and chunks of metal. “Anyone could see what was going on! I made no secrets about it! If you were so concerned, why didn’t you do something sooner?”
His feet abruptly stopped, and he looked down to find the metal now encasing his ankles. “What? Let go of me!”
“We will do no such thing.” The engine’s mouth opened impossibly wide, and then it moved.
Norman Cashmore screamed.
---
The constable found the manager some minutes later - his injuries identical to the others. His memory of the events leading to his injuries was nonexistent.
Norman Cashmore was never found.
