Bells and Whistles

Bells and Whistles

I was standing in the middle of the tracks, a half-empty, flat bottle of Miller High Life gripped in my trembling left hand. My adrenaline – even in my dull, drunken state – was pumping. The night was hot. It was early summer. The train whistle blared, bleating like a demonic, psychotic goat as it barreled toward me.

“Watch this,” I said, glancing off the tracks to Kolya, “Just like a fucking bull-fighter!”

At what I perceived as the last moment, I dove from the tracks, tumbling down through the mounded gravel. The train blared again as it passed. I stood triumphantly in front of Kolya, posing like a happy idiot, a grin spread across my face.

“Ole!” I slurred humorously.

From the cab of the train flew a beverage. It struck me directly in the head. It was a 64oz. big-gulp of cherry-red soda. Fizzing liquid covered me like the sugary, bubbling blood of Willy Wonka.

“God dammit,” I said, shaking my arms dry pathetically. We continued walking the tracks. Though the conductor’s car was distancing itself from us, the sound of the jarring blare from the horn somehow wasn’t fading.

“Can you shut the window? And close the curtains!”

It was my wife, Mary. Sun shone in through our bedroom window. The blare of the train from the nearby tracks was filling our small bedroom with a crazed, nightmare-inducing, frantic wall-of-sound. I shoved shut the window and yanked closed the curtains. Our house was in Erlanger, not far from the railway intersecting Dixie Highway. It was only 5:30 AM; the sun is an early bird in the summer. I’m not, regardless of the season. The train was still screaming. I muffled its wail with my pillow, wrapping it around my head as if the helmet of a lethargic hoplite. I nodded back to sleep.

The tracks were always such a great place to walk, especially late at night. Especially drunk as hell. There was no possible way of getting lost. Just follow the tracks, and you would always know exactly where you were – on the fucking tracks! After the train passed, Kolya and I stepped onto the middle of the railway and walked along happily. We were on our way home, after May Fest, unwisely deciding to walk the few miles from Covington back to Latonia, where I used to live. I hopped onto one of the rails, balancing like a trapeze artist, impressed with myself considering my current level of intoxication.

“You shouldn’t have done that, you know,” said Kolya, “Your foot could have caught in the tracks. That train could have crushed you. I don’t blame the conductor for launching that big-gulp at you. I wouldn’t want that on my conscience, either. And what a shot!”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said. I was still wet from the soda bath, but I was quickly drying in the muggy summer air. My whole body was sticky. I was trying, mostly unsuccessfully, to ignore it.

“How often do these trains run?” I asked.

“Who knows,” said Kolya, “I’ve never lived close enough to the railway to know. A couple times a night, maybe? Three or four?”

The following train blared. They ran all morning, seemingly continuously. Shutting the window didn’t do much good. I tossed and turned in my bed – rolling around and making a burrito of myself with the blankets.

“Hey!” said Mary, “I want some blankets, too!”

I shared the wealth. It was a chilly morning, for early summer. An uncomfortably cool breeze blew in from the opened window. I liked the fresh air, but hated the bleating train. It continued its abysmal siren, as if at any moment to crash through our bedroom window, hanging creaking like a metallic serpent, sounding its shrieking alarm from above the bed like a possessed baby-mobile.

I rolled back and forth, twisting in my bed. I looked outside; I checked the time on my phone. It was still early, but the day was already bright. The warning blasts from the tracks continued, haunting me, preventing me from enjoying my last few hours of sleep. Soon another, more melodic melody accompanied it. It was the bell-tower from nearby St. Henry church, jangling the tune of Holy God We Praise Thy Name. The organized, clanging notes of the traditional hymn merged with the screaming eldritch blast of the train created within my bedroom a frenzied, schizophrenic horror. My eyes, bloodshot and groggy, widened. I sat up in bed, abruptly shaking its creaky foundation. Out from beneath sprang my pet rabbit, Achilles. He darted out, looked at me, attuned himself to the chaotic, invasive symphony from outside the window, and thumped loudly, to communicate his displeasure. I reached down and clutched the metal frame of the bed. I was sweating, my organic moisture cooling from the breeze blowing in through the window, causing me to shiver.

My wife awoke briefly, looking up to me:

“Go back to sleep!” she said, “It’s not even six thirty, yet!”

She flipped on her sleep mask and rolled over, back to snoozing.

Another train was coming:

“Come on!” I said, looking to Kolya, punching him in the arm, “You give it a go this time! It’s a hell of a feeling, dodging these mechanical bulls! You know, that’s exactly what they are, right? Trains are bulls! They both have the same job; they’re both beasts of burden!”

“You’re fucking drunk,” said Kolya. He nevertheless stayed on the tracks. I hopped off, down the manmade gravel hill, to the dirt below:

“You got it!” I said, “You’re a bullfighter! You’re Francisco Romero! You’re Clint Eastwood!”

I put my hand on my hips and watched, waiting in excitement. Kolya stood – looking nervously to me – firm on the track. The train continued its approach. It blared it horn – again and again – screeching. It was as if the train were itself afraid, as if it wanted at all costs to avoid this inevitable fate – as if it felt forced to kill. Kolya dug his feet into the rock, twisting the toe of his left shoe back and forth like a baseball player readying himself at the plate. The train approached. It grew noisier.

I awoke again. I couldn’t sleep. I was done trying. I got out of bed and walked toward the bathroom. Achilles was now perched in his usual spot, loyally guarding the entrance to our bedroom, as if a rabbit could possibly ever stop anything from getting in. Achilles thought he could, though. He could stop a train, if he wanted to – he was confident about that. He looked at me inquisitively, twisting his head slightly, as I – sliding horizontally to avoid kicking him – stepped past, out of the room. I looked at myself in the mirror. I wasn’t tired, but I looked it. I splashed water on my face. The train blared its horn again. I remember that night, again. The train always reminded me of that night. Forced me to dream about it, again and again.

Kolya was frozen in fear. The train kept barreling toward him, its already frantic horn growing somehow more chaotic, its lights brightening – blinding our already dim view of the dark, shadowy, surrounding foliage comprising the canvas of the night.

He was incapable of movement. The train was incapable of stopping. An object in motion will stay in motion. An object at rest will stay at rest. The train plowed through Kolya like an over-enthusiastic beast of burden. Kolya may as well have disappeared. His body was there, in the middle of the tracks, and then it was gone. The conductor’s car passed by; no big-gulps were thrown this time. Wagon after wagon whizzed by, brushing me back from the edge of the tracks. I screamed and screamed. I ducked, looking below the tracks for Kolya’s body. I saw nothing. The train cars kept passing. It was a long, slow train. Slow train, coming, just like Bob Dylan said. My vocal chords void of vowels, I stood in silent horror. The train passed, eventually. I scrambled onto the tracks. Kolya was nowhere to be seen. Only rocks – bloodstained rocks. He had disappeared.

The whistle of the train finally subsided, but the bells coming from St. Henry continued. They would play all morning, I knew. The tune had changed, though – now the bells were clanging along to O Sacrament Most Holy. The day was brightening. Wide-awake, I opened the curtains fully:

“Hey!” said Mary, “What are you doing? I’m trying to sleep, here! Give me some peace!”

Achilles, still in the doorway, thumped and ran from the room, away from the light. I looked outside. The sun was already high, though a cloud hung atop the hill, near Dixie Highway – near the tracks – above St. Henry’s. I saw the swinging bells in the tower. I also noticed – through the dim light shining through the stagnant, lone grey cloud, between the pillars of the cupola – a shadowy figure. It stood swaying in organized, though chaotic rhythm with the bouncing bells. Its wide eyes were blindingly bright. They shined, as if a warning, straight from the top of the tower into my bedroom – into my eyes. I shielded my face, wincing. I looked again. The figure opened its gaping mouth. The church was far off, but due to the obviously unnatural detachment of the drooping jaw of the figure, I could tell that its swirling, black maw was agape. It screeched – it sounded like a train, like the chaotic, frenzied whistle of impending doom. It closed its demented mouth, its body twisting in wavy, non-Euclidean fashion. It again looked at me. It was Kolya! I screamed, closing the curtains and hurling myself deep beneath the covers. I heaved. I panted. I closed myself off; I would never sleep again.

That night was so long ago! That night on the tracks… But it haunted me, still. That figure – that demonic entity – haunted me incessantly.