But that didn't mean that it would work.
Three of us headed toward the train station. But only two
made it back. I had to get the money you see. It was all for a good cause. My
Jessica, my little angel had been playing on the swing merry as can be.
I told her to slow down, but you know how damn excited kid's
can be, hyped on sugar and soft drinks. She must have been going twenty mile an
hour before she lost her balance, and toppled off.
Onto her head.
The doctor said that there was too much pressure on her
brain, I’m no medical man but I had to leave when he told me things were
leaking in there. She needed an operation. My spirit could not take it.
Where was I going to piss twenty grand from?
I would like to take credit for the plan, not for my ego,
but for the peace of mind of Keith's family. But you told me to tell the truth.
How my friend died, so here I go.
It was Keith’s idea.
True, he loved my little girl, had let her sleep in the tent
in his back garden with his daughter more than once — he liked to sneak out
there in the middle of the night knocking on the canvas with that damn plastic
Halloween axe — but I knew by the glitter in his eye’s that he wanted the
money.
You get nothing for nothing in this life, and maybe the
next.
But if he was going through with this, then he wanted a fair
share of it. Fairer then I intended truth be told. No matter. So long as I had
my twenty grand I cared not for a penny more.
Of course we had to take him along.
He worked there.
The story he liked to poke around the job centre was that
they had caught him sneaking kisses with the train master’s daughter, although
I got the story from the Horse’s mouth when pumping ten pints down his gorge.
He’d been stealing iron girders to sell down the scrap
merchants. How he snuck the things out the window and into the back of his
truck I never knew, but Keith had always been a most resourceful chap. As his
criminal file proved.
Of course, chasing these suspicions brought to light said file,
which angered the manager beyond belief that Keith had kept this from him in
the original interview. He gave him two weeks’ notice. He would have preferred
to dump him on the kerb now, but that would have the unions on his back.
He would only suffer him another fourteen days.
A criminal!
A damn criminal in his work shop! When he’d given his
employer the impression he was a teetotal priest in the making.
To Keith this meant only one thing.
Pay back.
Why we bought along Eddy was another of Keith’s bright
ideas, and immediately obvious when you take into account that I am a coward
and Keith fears only prison. Breaking and entering will only get you a comfy
cell for a lustrum at most.
But Keith had decided nothing would get in the way of
tonight. There was a cool fifty k in the managers safe and whatever lay in the
passengers pockets — in case someone acted a hero, tried to save the day strong
measures might have to be employed.
Eddy weighed twenty two stone.
If the terrifying size of him did not beat out the flames of
heroism in someone’s heart then should the worst come to worst at least Keith
could have someone else to blame.
Later at the station, he might point to me and the desk
sergeant would sneer. You mean to say an eight stone man like him killed twenty
and carried the safe out on his back?
The more conspirators, the less time Keith would get if he
made a deal and dropped us in it.
He was the brains, though his head was full of dark ideas.
Of course there was another reason we bought Eddy along.
I liked him.
Yes, he was a moron. Not the brightest bubble in the bath,
but he was a genuine soft soul really. What’s that friend, you’ve lost a leg?
Well hand me that axe and I’ll give you mine.
Keith had convinced him that the evil manager had locked his
life savings for he was Scrooge. HE WAS THE MAN. And the man must be bought to
heel at all costs. Of course, he never told him about the need to bash the
passengers.
In fact he never told me until, keys swinging he opened the
padlock.
I loved my daughter, but I could not hurt another soul. My
mission here was to save her life, not take others. Keith called me a fool, if
someone got in the way then stern words would not dissuade them. If you wanted
something, you had to take it by force. The world was cold and cruel.
He had learnt this by cool experience.
To me, train station’s were spooky places. Half finished,
still smoldering cigarettes butts burnt to nothing in vandalized ashtrays.
Surprisingly witty dirty poems had been spray painted across the windows and
with the awful spelling knew why the manager disliked Keith after all.
Anybody would be upset about the last lyric with him and
that Donkey.
My guts bubbled like bad champagne; the dark was total and
the cold awful, it hit me that this was a bad idea. If only it would be over
and I could be home. In the warm. Jessica in my arms.
So what the hell was taking so long?
Chink, chink, chink.
I could see by how many molars he cracked, gnashing his
teeth so tight that things weren't going to Keith's liking. “Bastard, the fat
bastard changed the locks on me.”
“Well you have been stealing office supplies.” I reminded
him but he didn't appreciate my opinion, that water dispenser and photo copier
in his house hadn't come out a packet of cornflakes as a free toy.
Maybe this was a sign. We were already ten minutes late.
Maybe the train had already beat it.
“Eddy, do your thing.” Keith threw the keys away in disgust
and advised I get out the way. I warned against the noise it would bring, but
Eddy already had his head down like a Bull in heat, and charged.
The gate was double iron corrugated with barb wire. It didn’t
stand a chance.
The distance was only ten feet, but still the big man lost
his footing and fell on it like an Elephant crushing a toddler. For better or
worse we’d made it inside. Helping Eddy up with all my puny might it was Keith
who ran toward the offices, over the small bridge.
Why was he dancing?
Pointing.
“Do you have to swear so much?” I asked as he bounced a
pebble off my ankle to get my attention.
“The train!” He roared, “The trains on the move.”
Indeed it was, heading right for us. We would never catch it
once it got up to speed, it’s wheels spun madly like Catherine wheel fireworks
nailed to a fence, sparks flashed and then the wheels caught.
Pulled the Goliath forward like a steel bullet.
Then when Keith smiled, I knew he had another nasty idea.
“Come on, guys. This is us. Last stop.”
He crossed himself once and stepped up onto the lip of
bridge like a broke banker about to take his life. the train would pass under the
bridge and though the drop was less than five feet I wouldn’t have trusted
myself to land on a stationary train.
That was when I decided it had happened.
Keith was nuts.
“There’s no way.”
“Jessica.” he smiled again in a knowing way that made me want
to punch him. What would happen to her, how long would she live without the
money I had come for? Already done so much for. To Keith this was pay back, the
last great job before he went on the run.
So soon, after dismissal it would obvious to his boss that
he was the prime suspect, so he needed all the money he could get to start this
new life in the sun. Plane tickets were pricier then train ones.
It had to be now, tonight. He had already emptied his flat
of all possessions, burnt the pittance he could not carry in his pocket for
spite.
“Ladies.” He commanded, like a gent opening a door for a
maiden, the train was just pulling out, maybe topping ten mile an hour. This
was crazy. But so was the fire in Keith’s eyes. Twenty two stone suddenly
became nothing. I would sooner take on Eddy.
‘You will not take this from me.’ Keith said and I steered
Eddy to the edge.
‘I don’t wanna,” he said, very child like and how I hated
myself for bringing something so innocent on an adventure so cruel.
Keith had given me a knife just before we reached the gates —
Eddy had his fists — no, against the bosses advice I would not be using it
against the passengers. But Keith had his blade out, swinging at the star light
as he took a breath, and leaped.
Through the smoke, he yelled at us to get a move on.
He would find us no matter what. That man knew how to hold a
grudge.
I patted Eddy’s shoulder whose layers of fat jiggled like
margarine in a tub. It seemed he was crying. “Come on big man, we can do it.
Keep your legs loose when you land or you’ll break your ankles.”
He sniffed and held my arm. “You won’t leave me will you.”
I smiled and held his hand like a father taking a child on
the big scarier rides of the fun fair. A poor man like me has nothing to call
his own but his word. I gave it freely to Eddy. He had my promise.
He screamed womanly as we jumped and against my own advice,
my fear kept me rigid, the bones rattled in my legs like ribs in a skeleton as
I landed like a meteor.
Crunch.
“Fuck!”
My ankles did not break but it would be a while before I tap
danced again.
Eddy for his part had left quite an impact crater in the top
of the train; the chimney was bent, belching out black soot at a funny angle. “You
hurt, Richard?” he asked, concerned like I might die and break my promise
already.
Richard. Maybe it best I leave no trace of my I.D. on this
page for what you might think of me, what Keith’s family might do to me later.
But I swore to tell the truth did I not.
Eddy was the only one who called me by my real name. Keith
of course calls me Rick, like dick, he knows I hate it. Jessica calls me daddy,
the reason that I am here.
I forced a laugh like this was all fun and games and Eddy
seemed to brighten, he had a boo-boo on both his knees like someone had taken a
sander to them. But against the odds we were here.
ON A MOVING TRAIN!
Of course, it was Keith who grabbed my collar, then the hair
when I refused to move. Suddenly, my hands were better than glue, I hung onto
the dented roof like a fly on a windscreen, fear willed me immovable for love
or money.
But Keith had a knife.
You’d better believe I moved.
“Don’t be scared.” Eddy said softly as he inserted me into
the carriage window like a penny in a charity box. I collapsed to my rear as
the train tooted and lights went out completely as it went under the bridge and
total darkness took over me like the inside of a hungry caves mouth. I do not
shy from my cowardice, it has gotten me through many situations where a braver
and dead man would have stayed and faced.
Going on feeling alone, I thought myself on some ugly shag
carpet which my body left completely as something touched my arm. “Come on,
Richard. We gotta get Keith’s life’s savings.”
I blinked rapidly till the dots went away when Keith laughed
and found a switch. “Thats right my boy, cuz we’re the good guys here. Ain’t
we, Rick?”
His eyes advised no mutiny in the ranks. Have I mentioned my
cowardice once or ten times? I was no hero. I did as well told and nodded for
Eddy’s benefit, yes, we were the good guys.
Mollified, Eddy gave a dumb kid smile and skipped along the
corridor. Keith helped me up, finger nails digging into my arm gave me a
warning his mouth did not.
Don’t screw this up for me, Rick.
So I did my good soldier routine and did as told.
The interior of the train was something of a regal affair.
The carpet crimson like the prettier side of a royal welcoming rug and the
gleaming chandeliers were poncy but promised a wealthy grade of passenger. The
air smelt of jewelry boxes and dead roses.
Keith told me he’d never known a toff with a backbone, these
cream of society's crop would be easy pickings. We got our knives ready and
opened the door. But there was a problem.
There was no one there.
The ballroom carriage was the natural meeting centre of the
elite wishing to show off their diamond necklaces. To tell people green with
envy how many times they’d been abroad this year. This was the belly of the
beast where all mess collected. The chatter, the lies. The hypocrisy.
But there was nothing. No music, no tables full of wine and
fresh oysters.
Just the chairs like empty pews at an unpopular wedding.
I checked my watch. It was far from bed time but maybe the
time stamped on the dinner tickets promised a later date. Maybe they were all
getting ready in there. Maybe they were having an orgy in room 102.
Who knew what the real lords and ladies were like behind
closed doors.
Keith suggested we go knocking them up room by room, telling
Eddy it was only to ask directions to his safe though really it was to rob
them. Oh mom, if you could see your boy now.
I do it for love. That is my only, poor, excuse.
But again, as usual I was wrong. We were not as alone as I’d
originally believed. My heart leapt to my throat and refused to let me breath
when the conductor asked for our tickets.
“Where the hell you come from?” Keith asked somewhat
redundantly, for all his arrogance I felt a tremor roll through him, contagious
it seemed for it struck my core too. A nasty smell emanated from the man like
he had stepped in something nasty or messed his pants.
He showed no fear when he saw the knives in our hands but
suggested if we wished to make a sandwich with those things all we had to do
was ask and he'd be more then happy to make us a snack.
Busted.
To my astonishment, Keith dropped the knife. Hurray. Reason
returned. I doubted the guy would let us ride the train for free but hopefully
we hadn't done enough damage so that he might call the cops.
“Gun.” I thought as Keith opened his coat.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The conductor gagged like something foul tasting had caught
in his throat, all the tickets he'd collected from these invisible passengers
rolled to the floor like confetti at a wedding.
I must have screamed for suddenly Keith was slapping me.
“Stop that.” He said, waving the smoking gun in my face. “It’s
quite annoying. Yes, it’s a gun. Yes, I used it. Get over it and remember your
daughter.”
He only stopped talking because the conductor was laughing.
Standing.
The shadows the chandelier birthed round his feet where the
light did not touch grew. He filled his lungs and with a ping like dropped
pennies the bullets fell out of him. His eyes were orange as Hiroshima's 45
crown.
“So your alive. How exciting.” He coughed smoke once,
spitting the taste of metal from his mouth. “Your kind are not welcome here.”
Keith fired again and I cut the inside of my cheek. His shot
went wild till he recalled how to breath, aimed and fired till the chamber
emptied.
“I’ll have to see your ticket.” the conductor said and
started toward us.
“Eddy, he’s all yours.” Keith said, then took off running.
I grabbed Eddy by the collar and used his surprise to pull
him back.
“Do not fear death.” The conductor said. “It is so simple.
So quick.”
“And how would you know that.” I asked, backing away like
the floor were opening before me. If only my heart would slow and let me think.
If only Eddy would stop crushing my hand like a cruel child
might wrap his fist round a Dandelion.
The dead man opened his coat to show no armour. “This train
is the last stop of the dead. Once a night those souls who have been good shall
leave the underworld and come to walk the earth one last night. See the moon.
Sniff the flowers. But now it is time to go home. Your kind are not welcome
here. I’ll have to see your ticket.”
“You’re crazy.” I said and threw a chair at him.
He howled and cupped his face as if something—a mask—had
been displaced. I did not stop to see if the missile completely passed through
him or not but grabbed Eddy and jostled him into the next carriage.
“Where we goin’?” he asked like he’d missed the last few
moments and I would have told him we were heading to a magical winter
wonderland so long as it got him moving. Away. Anywhere but here.
This time I did not steer, but rather followed him into a
cubicle, the door said 602 and the dead woman inside screamed as she was in the
process of getting dressed. Though she yanked a sheet up to her chest like a
poorly prepared ghost costume all that I could stare at was the horrid gash at her
neck like she’d lost her life by having her throat torn out by a Dog.
I could see right through her blue shimmering chest in which
I could see no organs, vital or otherwise. She was dead. Dead like we would be.
Dear God, it was true.
Eddy covered his hands with his massive sausage fingered
hand. “My girlfriend won’t like this, tell me when it’s over.”
“Get out, you perverts.” the dead woman screamed as snakes
came out her hair, her eyes melted in her fury and ran like egg yolk down her
blue face.
One night only I thought, the conductor had said they’d had
their time smelling flowers. They were going home.
Back to hell.
“We gotta get off this train!” I said as the conductor flung
an axe through the door. No, not an axe. It was a scythe like I’d seen in many
farmers hands, breaking their backs as they harvested corn in late Autumn’s.
The conductor had a cape and sharp, small teeth.
“I’m going to have to ask for your ticket.” he repeated, the
scythe made short work of the wood so I pushed Eddy toward the window, I make
no bones about it — so to speak — I kicked him. I kicked his fat arse until he
moved.
I didn’t want to be here and very much didn’t wish to be
dead thank you very much. “Move yourself!” I shouted. To accommodate his
massive girth he bought his boot against the glass and kicked the whole frame
out in two efforts. The panelling bounced once and slipped down the hill into a
ravine. In the dawn it would be the only part of the train remaining this side
of the world.
“He’s gonna get us.” Eddy wailed and I felt like kicking him
harder.
The conductors head swiveled when he saw the woman and
stormed toward her with vengeance in his face. She rummaged in her pocket and
held up her ticket like a knight would hold a shield before a Dragon to block the
flame.
Pass. One ex life.
His eyes quickly read her details and when he decided she
was not part of our team he tipped his hat and begged her pardon. “Enjoy your
evening, ma’am,” when he smiled I saw that he had a black slug for a tongue, it
lolled and squirmed in there like a blind earth worm burrowing a home for
itself beneath the earth.
“Hold on.” I told Eddy but of course, he needed no
encouragement. The step that ran the entire side of the train to help ladies
with their bag was hardly thick enough to hold our big toes, but as we
clambered out the window we balled our toes to fists and hung onto the side for
all we were. I had to blink away the tears to find the step to put my weight
against, hanging there like a Spider Monkey.
“Don’t touch him!” Eddy shouted and the wind sucked his
words into my ears like in a turbo engine.
“I know what the reaper does, man.” I yelled back, again, I
was wrong. The skeletal hand came through the wall and grabbed my coat. I
screamed when my lapel solidified like dried mud. Turned to ash and blew away
in the wind.
“He’s touching you, man.”
“I’ve noticed!” I screamed.
“No ticket, no ride.” the conductor said.
“Shove your ticket.” I pressed my body against the train for
balance and slipped out of my coat, letting him have it as it had cost so
little and punched Eddy’s kidney harder then I meant, his fat acting like rugby
player pads I doubt he felt it. “Come on.”
As we passed a window I saw Keith.
Or what was left of him.
He was laughing as the ghosts caressed him, kissed him. Ate
his arms in corner of the room and his leg’s in another. He was a human jigsaw,
still watching us, still laughing.
Eddy tapped my shoulder to snap me awake and to my credit, I
splattered myself only slightly in vomit. By how big he was, he did not have
the room to crouch down and peer through the window, he’d not noticed. I
thought him lucky till I squinted in the moonlight.
“Where the hell’s the front?”
He blinked and faced me. “What?”
The moon was out over the hills. The front of the train was
gone. The dented whistle, the massive damage that Eddy had done on landing was
nowhere to be seen. The engine was gone.
But the train was still moving.
Had it gone back to the other world?
Then I saw it.
The carriage ahead of us was glowing. It shamed the moon,
and then it was gone. Poof, no smoke, no mirrors. Inch by inch the train was
dissolving.
“Richard? I think this train’s going home.”
I hit Eddy then. I had to. “Thank you, Mr. Obvious. We’re
gonna have to jump.”
Suddenly the wheels beneath me glowed. My ears were
assaulted by a loud humming; the windows behind me were cracking, erupting a
collection of spider web cracks as if emitted from the tail end of a penny
dreadful spider.
The train was vanishing. And taking us with it.
“Jump!” I said, hoping it would give me courage, if someone
like him could fall and live then maybe there was hope for little old me. Maybe
if I landed on him. No, that was Keith’s thinking. I had come here for a
different reason. Even if I’d failed in getting something else, I would keep
what I had come with.
My life. My soul.
I had never really believed in such a thing before. But I
had been wrong before and wished to keep a hold of it for all that I was worth.
For once, Eddy stood up for himself. “Nuh, huh. You jump.”
“Eddy, this is no time to argue.”
The conductor laughed as he came through the wall and
wrapped his boney arms around Eddy. Stupid Eddy who for maybe death would be a
blessing. He’d no friends, no one liked him. No one wanted to be by him. Our
friendship had been through desperation, for his muscles rather than his
company.
He would not be missed by anyone.
“Richard!” he squealed, his clothes greyed like January
rain, the reaper cackled and tried to find a lump of flesh.
I could have gotten away. Could have jumped and saved
myself.
But then I would have been like Keith.
Besides, I had promised.
A poor man only has his word.
“Son of a bitch.” I moaned, hating myself immensely as I
started to move forward, toward death. “Hey, fuck face.” Truth be told, I had
not planned to use my knife, but I did.
This was the being who’d taken mom with a heart attack back
in forty eight. My father with a stroke shortly before my fifth birthday. Now
he was looking to take my daughter.
My friend.
The only one who called me Richard.
I bought the blade down with all my hate. The blow was not
clean, it scratched a chunk of bone from his cheek before it chipped into his
eye socket. The reaper I guess is an eternal being, I knew I could not kill it.
Maybe not even hurt it.
But boy did he drop Eddy in a heartbeat.
Eddy looked up at me in an expression of extreme surprise
like he’d just waken from a dream and seemed to fall forever into the dark.
“Eddy!”
“You!” The reaper said and grabbed my hair. Immediately it
aged, greyed and came out at the roots. I screamed, feeling the blood from my
torn scalp rupture down into my ears to drown out the high pitched whine.
“I want a word with you.” the reaper smiled.
I offered no resistance.
What could I do against the dealer of death?
I am one man. I am a coward.
So I did what all cowards did.
I let go.
And fell forever too.
***
Hospital food ain’t as bad as they make out, you know.
Honestly, if you scrape away the three-inch thick skin on
your custard then it’s surprisingly nutritious. Lucky for me, Eddy is in the
bed next to me in a four-bed ward.
He doesn’t talk much since the nice nurse gave him pain
killers, although I think that’s a good think. Considering what he might tell
her she’d call the men in white coats in no time. It’s hard to see him under
all those bandages, the trees he fell on to cushioned some of the blow, but the
doctors doubt he will walk again.
I am luckier, if you can call it that.
At least the surgeons removed only one of my arms to save my
life. Apparently I landed on it wrong, messing up the veins and arteries inside
badly, it would have made my heart go pop. They had to take it to save the rest
of me.
But my depression would have made me kill myself, stab my
eye with that damn I.V. tube. But late at night when the drugs lost their edge
Eddy told me he’d a secret for me. A thank you almost. No wonder the dead woman
had been so angry when we burst in her room.
Especially when Eddy stole her necklace off her bed. He
doubted she would need it where she was going, and each lovely diamond on those
beads would pay for Jessica's operation twice over.
As well as our own.
So, my friend things are looking up. I just have to wait
till the damn drugs wear off so Eddy can tell me where he buried them in the
forest. He only had a few minutes of conscious after landing so heavily and
fearing the ambulance men might take them, in a rare moment of brain power had
secreted them in the ground.
To stave off boredom, I asked the nurse for a map to pass
the time.
The forest covers a hundred square miles.
A needle in a box of needles.
Have I told you I’m unlucky as well as a coward?
