It began at ten minutes to midnight on Halloween night as we sat in the station master’s office watching the lights of the town in the distance. Just to the right of our view stood the Station Masters house, and though it was built barely thirty yards from the station itself it was still little more than a dark square of shadow between us and the town.
The last train had departed, and the ticket clerk had left for the day, leaving the Station Master and myself alone. The last vestige of the day hung in the air as the brown autumnal leaves clung to their branches in a doomed attempt at continued relevance. They would fall, as they always did, and the cycle of life would repeat.
Morosely I looked from the tree that the wind made dance against the office window, over to the station master who hung his gold braided jacket in the case created especially for it. Many thought the case the sad extravagance of a man clinging to a dying past, but I knew differently, which is why I was often welcomed in the office at this late an hour as scandalous as some saw my visits.
“Brandy…?”
The Station Master held out a crystal cut glass filled with an amber fluid. Hiding my surprise, I took it. The glass was heavy, and I clutched it tight with both hands, childlike, and watched the light from the gas-lamp flicker across its crystal facets.
“Thank you…” I said, wanting to say more, wanting to ask the old man why he had asked me to stay with such an air of importance, even though we’d often stay into the twilight hours sharing stories. But I remained silent; I recognised the unmistakable air of a man wanting to tell a tale. The Station Master left his peaked cap on his head and sat in the chair that had served him for the last twenty years.
“You’ve no doubt heard the rumour.” He said and I replied with a nod. The station master drank. “Well, it’s true. It’s not my decision. It’s not the one I would have made. But it’s true.”
The branch tapped on the window and the station master watched it a moment.
“This is my last night; I don’t know who will meet you at the gates tomorrow.”
I took a sip of the brandy.
“Surely they’ve told you?” I said and would have continued but the station master silenced me with the wave of a hand.
“Oh, they sent me the letter and asked me to train my replacement, but I didn’t read it.” He leaned over and grabbed the brandy bottle, tipping a quantity of it into his glass. “I don’t care; it’s my last night you know…!”
He looked up at the clock over the door, it read eleven-fifty. For moment he didn’t move, and I watched him.
He was grey and old and plump around the middle; but he wasn’t someone to put out to pasture, he wasn’t someone who had outlived his usefulness; but the old service was changing, it could be felt in the air around us. Women could vote, Amelia Earhart had travelled across the Atlantic single handed and someone had been talking some screwy-weird baloney about moving pictures being sent through the air.
Change was on everyone’s lips.
The tree branch tapped the glass again, desperate in its attempt to distract the man from his inner demons. On it a leaf broke free and fell.
“I’ve worked this station all my life; man, and boy.” He said, still watching the second-hand work around the clock-face. “When I was your age, I was a Senior Porter, just like you; and just like you the Station master took me aside one evening to tell me a tale.”
The second had swept in a full circle.
“I know you won’t believe what I’m about to tell you, but that’s okay.”
He slid the cap from his head and looked at the gold beading around its peak, it looked new.
“I never married and never had children; I’ve always been married to the job.” His eyes finally moved from the clock-face, but I didn’t like where they landed. His eyes bore into me, and I saw an immense sadness in them, regret like I’d never seen in a man before.
“If I had my time again, I don’t think I’d have made the same decision. You should marry, have lots of children; still…”
He drank the contents of his glass and refilled it; mine was still mostly full.
“It was about twenty years ago, probably in the spring of 1908 when I first heard of the Phantom Train, and I laughed at the man who told me the tale. He started the story at ten to twelve on Halloween night and I called him a fool for believing such rot at five to twelve; by twelve o’clock I was eating my words while the world around me changed forever.”
He paused.
Halloween night: this was tonight. Ten to twelve; this was now.
My eyes moved to the clock and back to the man in front of me.
He nodded.
“Every Halloween at precisely twelve it arrives, its doors open, and it sits in wait; but no one ever boards and no one ever leaves. It exists on no schedule and its fuel appears on no manifest.”
I wanted to laugh; but in all the years I had known him the Station Master had never lied to me, to anyone as far as I knew, and he had never told tall tales or made practical jokes. The Station Master wasn’t a joyless creature, but he was a stoic one.
I glanced at the clock; it now read eleven fifty-three.
He sipped from his glass and waited my response.
I didn’t have one; or to be more precise I had so many I had no idea where to start.
The second hand made a sweep of the clock-face.
“I…” I said and couldn’t go any further.
The Station Master smiled.
“It’s my last night…” He said and rose from his seat and made his way out onto the silent platform.
It was a mild night; the air was cool but not cold and the sky was clear enough to pick out the constellations. The Station master stood in his navy-blue uniform trousers and white shirt; topped with his gold trimmed cap. He looked up the platform, than smiled and looked down it.
Between the town and the station there were no houses but for the Station masters; and that one was empty, and so a belt of darkness separated us from the town, as two islands might be separated by dangerous waters; and any terrors that might await us we would therefore face alone.
The Station Master placed his hands on his hips and let his gaze move over the small station. Pride was unmistakable in the smile on his lips and the awe in his eyes.
“My last night…”
I pulled my watch from my pocket and popped it open.
“I must confess I didn’t tell you the whole truth earlier,” he said staring into the distance where the tracks fell into darkness, “someone did step on board, and someone did disembark.”
“You…” I said, there was nothing more to add.
He nodded.
“I’ve tried…” He sighed. “I’m no good with words; I think you’re better with them than me. I’ve seen those notebooks of yours filled with that tiny script you write. If it were not for how you were born you would be a writer by now, I think; and not one of those sob-sisters for the rags but a real one, you know? I’ve tried to think of the words to describe what I saw; but I don’t have the learning.”
The watch was still in the palm of my hand, open and awaiting my scrutiny.
It read eleven fifty-six.
“I’ve asked myself all the questions and for a time I tried to find the answers but…” He let the words drift away then consulted his own pocket watch. “A little over three minutes I intend to board that train and perhaps find the answers to those questions I have always pondered.”
He slipped the pocket watch away and took my hand. His skin was warm against the night and in me the anticipation was building. I told myself nothing would happen, and these were merely uncharacteristic flights of fantasy from the man; but no, I didn’t believe it.
I clutched his hand tightly; his skin was as smooth as the expensive cloth I had purchased the week before, cloth I was too afraid to cut for fear of wasting it.
I stepped closer and glanced at the time.
Two minutes.
One Minute.
It happened in the blink of an eye. There was no arrival, no whistle or rumble of tracks under duress. There was no grinding of brakes or squeal of wheels; the train just appeared beside us, the air breathing over my flesh as it rushed to escape the space the metal machine now occupied.
I clutched the Station Masters hand more tightly still and stepped back from the platforms edge.
The train was a beauty, all three carriages and an engine of it, but I had never seen its like; I wondered if anyone had.
It was a train; it had an engine and carriages but everything about it was otherwise unrecognisable. There was no tender, no smokestack and the shape were a steady curve from the blackened windows of the cab to where the front handrail would have been; if there was one, and its wheels poked out from a skirt that ran around its engine.
My eyes could not discern its colour, light spilled out from it, through it; could it be made of light? Could light take form?
I could see no windows, but where windows should have been, were darker patches against the trains’ flawless body. I saw no doors…
And then one opened.
It was the silent movement of flowing muscle rather than that of cogs and gears; and the train revealed itself to me.
“My last night…”
There were unmistakable tears in the Station Masters eyes, tears of joy or perhaps of fulfilment. He stepped forward and, my hand still in his, I did too.
I stepped into the carriage, felt no vibration from the engine, and saw no lights illuminating my way; but still I saw. I followed the Station Master with my gaze as he walked between the seats towards the engine compartment and my breath caught in my throat and my feet rooted to the spot.
There were people.
They sat and laughed, and chatted, and played; but I didn’t hear a word of their discourse. Then I realised I could see through the people to the seats on which they sat, and then I saw that they were not people but many people, an after image within an after image, souls within souls. My flesh tingled at the sight of it, my heart pounded at the implications of it.
There were white people and black people and many more besides, some within others to a point where one didn’t begin and the other didn’t end.
I must have gasped because the Station Master smiled back at me.
“You see,” he said, “this is why I never cared.”
And he leaned over and did the unthinkable; he kissed me.
“You’re the daughter I always wanted.”
And then I knew I was crying too.
Then a whistle, or something like it, blew.
“Go…” He said and for a moment I could not move. Gently he pushed me away and reluctantly I released him. I stepped back towards the door, my eyes moving over everything. There were no lights, but everything was lit, there were no windows, but I could see the world outside.
It was our platform, but it wasn’t.
It was our station, but it wasn’t.
People stood on the platform staring back at me, but they could not see me, they saw the train and nothing but the train. I could almost see it reflected in their awestruck eyes. Some dressed in styles I could recognise, while others dressed absurdly in colours I couldn’t place; some I recognised from pictures of the past while others…
I stumbled back towards the door, seeing the platform, my platform, through it and with a glance back at the smiling Station Master I stepped through.
As my feet touched the stone slabs that made up the platform, I knew the train had vanished. It wasn’t because of the air that pushed past me to fill the sudden empty space and it wasn’t because of the veil of darkness that the lack of its light produced.
It was the realisation that the Station Master was gone.
It ended at midnight on Halloween, or it will if I have my way. I watch the lights of the city around me, the Station masters house long gone; the sea of darkness that once surrounded the ancient platform eaten up by the city’s growth. The last train had long since departed the station and the ticket clerk had last locked up for the night many years ago.
The station sat in silence and solitude as the world moved on around it.
I wondered what the station would think about if it were capable; I wondered if the city thought of us kindly.
The autumn was colder now than it was in my youth, and this wasn’t the only sad realisation that time had gifted me. The aches and pains had moved in by stealth and slowly the person in the mirror became someone I did not recognise. Thankfully, time has not been as cruel to me as it was to my ancestors; I had my children and wrote my tales, all my stories – except one.
I’ll finish that last story by midnight, and I will leave it here for you to find; whoever you might be. I hope you’ll read my story and pass it on, I hope some kind readers will sit and wonder; while I suspect others may not.
I won’t mind either way; by then I’d have caught my train.