The Dead Ticket Collector

BOOM! CLATTER

I awoke with a jar and sat up as my eyes flew open.

The world swayed first to the left, then to the right and for an instant I could not fathom where I was. Then a loud whistle blared out and it caused me to spring to my feet and lunge for the window I saw just above me.

A train.

I was on a train.

White smoke poured past the window. The train was cornering. I could see the curve of the tracks, but it had not slowed, and we barely seemed to cling to the tracks as it made the bend.

Who was driving this thing?

Suddenly we were back on the straight and the train bumped, and I stumbled backwards, catching my foot on something, and falling.

I was startled to see a man lying on the floor. I had caught my heel on his stretched-out legs. He was lying face down and was not moving.

“Sir!” I said, shaking his shoulder urgently.

He was dressed in the blue uniform of a railway employee, perhaps a ticket collector.

“Sir!” I pressed my fingers to his neck and found no signs of life.

I turned him over, nonetheless, and listened for a heartbeat. There was none, and his chest did not rise and fall in the slightest. He was dead.

I fumbled in his uniform, looking for a clue as to who he was and what was going on. My memory up to the moment I awoke on the train was blank. I had no idea what I was doing here, or even who I was. It was an alarming predicament that I was endeavouring not to think about too hard.

My search of the dead man produced a set of ticket clippers from one pocket and confirmed my notion he was the ticket collector.

The train rocked me back and forth as I tried to focus and think.

Tickets!

My ticket would inform me at least of where the train was heading and where it had come from, which might spark my memory. I fumbled in my own pockets, for the first time noticing my own attire.

I was wearing a brown suit, with a matching waistcoat and a white shirt. The suit seemed new. For some reason that seemed important. I found a handkerchief in my pocket and a comb made from brass, but no ticket. There was nothing about the objects that suggested who I was.

The train made another savage sway to the side, and I assumed we had met with another corner. I fell onto one hand and slid until I was against the wall.

The carriage I was in was one for cargo and was virtually empty, save for the tall metal shelving units fixed to one side and the loose leather straps that would normally be used to fasten luggage in place upon them.

I looked at the dead man once more and decided I could not wait in here until the train concluded its journey, especially with the recklessness of the driver. I needed to know who I was, what I was doing here and how the ticket collector had died. Perhaps he had been thrown by the motion of the train and struck one of the shelves? If so, the driver had to be held responsible for his death.

If I waited much longer, I feared he might be responsible for mine also.

Resolved, I stood up, balanced myself against the sway of the train and headed for the door.

We reached a straight stretch of track as I opened the door and looked directly outside. I could see the tracks flicking past beneath my feet. Why on earth were we going this fast? I felt a tremor of fear as the tracks rushed by and the wind caused by the speeding train swept between the two carriages and flapped the edges of my jacket. I could have stepped back inside and forgotten my mission, but I knew I would not.

Something was very wrong on this train, and I had to find out what it was, or we might all end up derailed.

I tried to concentrate on the carriage opposite me rather than the world speeding by. There was a small door, no taller than five feet, which the late ticket collector could use to travel between carriages. I reached out perilously towards it, one hand clinging desperately to the frame of the doorway of the carriage behind me. I almost had my hand on the door, when there was another loud whistle, and I was so startled I nearly tumbled upon the tracks.

As I steadied myself, I felt a change in the breeze blowing about me. I looked to my right, and I briefly saw a train station as we flew past it. People were on the platform, but I only saw them as smudges of colour. I imagined their looks of horror and amazement at the speeding train.

I wondered if they had seen me?

What if that very station was the one I had meant to end my journey on? What if someone was waiting there for me?

I felt a new determination surge within me. I had to stop this hooligan of a driver and regain control of my life. Braver now, I dared to stretch out a foot to the narrow running board of the opposite carriage. I grabbed at the door’s handle and was relieved when it opened freely. I dived through and found myself in an empty passenger carriage.

There was something infinitely disturbing about the scene of all those empty seats as the train gently swayed. A terrible thought occurred to me that I might be the only person upon this train, and the reason for the madness of the driver was because there was none, and the train was driving itself.

My heart was pounding like it would explode. I told myself to be calm. Perhaps the other passengers had been able to get off and I alone with the ticket collector had been overlooked because we were in the luggage carriage.

Bouncing back and forth between the seats, I made my way to the far end where there was another door. I opened it and found myself staring at the tender for the engine. I could also hear voices shouting over the roar of the wheels cantering over the tracks.

“Hullo!” I cried out, both elated and angered that there were people in the engine.

At least I should not die alone, if that was the way things were going to go.

Someone scrambled up onto the top of the tender and peered toward me.

“Donovan! What are you doing man? Where have you been?”

The man knew me!

I looked at him, noting he wore a suit much like my own and was not dressed as a train driver or engineer. My initial delight at being recognised turned to despair as I realised the man must be a fellow passenger. Where was the train driver? Or was he the man behind the other voice I heard.

“Get up here! We need help!” the man yelled at me.

I hurried to jump the small gap to the coal tender and then clambered up on top, ignoring the coal dust smudges I was necessarily soiling my suit with. The man who had called my name disappeared back into the engine and I followed, seeing at last the second man I had heard shouting. He was also wearing a suit and my faint hope he might be the driver was dashed.

“Donovan, where have you been?” snapped this man. “They have done something to the controls! We cannot use the brake and the regulator is jammed open so we cannot control the steam. What do we do?”

I stared at him, open-mouthed.

“How should I know?” I asked.

It was his turn to look astonished.

“Did you bang your lights out when you went to deal with that plain-clothes policeman masquerading as a ticket collector?”

A chill ran down my spine.

“I did bang my head,” I mumbled, trying to buy myself some time.

“There looks like blood on the back of his head, boss,” the other man stated.

For the first time I allowed myself to notice the throb at the base of my skull. I had been so swept up in the emergency I had ignored it. Now I raised my hand and touched the back of my head, wincing as I found the injury.

“What happened to the plain-clothes?” the ‘boss’ demanded of me.

“He… he is dead,” I stuttered, horror filling me at the thought that I might have killed the man.

Who exactly was I? And what was I doing on this train?

“Didn’t think you had murder in you,” the ‘boss’ said, something like amusement creeping onto his features. “But I didn’t bring you here to kill people. You are the only one who knows how to drive this thing!”

He was back to yelling at me. I did not dare say again that I had no recollection of how to drive a train. I would have sworn I had never been in a train engine before that moment. They were both looking at me with anticipation I would save them. With nothing else I could do, and also desperate to save myself, I started to look at the many gauges dotted across the wall of the train cab. As I read each one in turn, I began to feel a sense of recognition. I understood what these valves meant!

I did know how to drive a train!

“You have kept the firebox stoked,” I said, pointing at the small furnace within the cab wall that kept the boiler steaming.

“We thought it best, as we wanted to get as far away as possible,” the ‘boss’ answered, a sudden hint of uncertainty in his voice.

I realised that in the face of my expertise his arrogance had diminished, and he was prepared to listen.

“With the regulator and brake disabled, it is best we let the firebox die out. The train will run out of steam, and we shall come to a natural halt…”

As I had been speaking, my eyes had darted unconsciously to the water gauge that told me how full the boiler was. I looked in horror as I saw the boiler was close to empty.

“No one has been filling the water!” I cried.

“I don’t know how!” the first man yelped, frightened by my sudden panic.

“The boiler is going to explode!” I shouted as I was already clambering back onto the tender, trying to put distance between myself and the cab.

The other two did not react fast enough. I was barely on the tender when the explosion occurred. Hot steam and flying coals crashed over us. I heard the men behind me screaming in agony for a moment, then their voices were cut off.

I was thrown violently off the tender and only the luck of hitting some bramble bushes saved me from a broken neck. As it was the steam had burned my face and hands, only my suit sparing the rest of me.

I lay in the bush, trying to stay conscious, watching the train come to a slow halt. The front of the engine had disintegrated, tenacle-like pipes sprawled from the exposed mouth as if it were some monster from the depths of the sea. I saw the bodies of my cohorts lying on the floor of the cab, blistered, and scalded beyond recognition. I was not sure whether I had been fortunate or unfortunate to survive.

My hands and face were agony, like fire and acid were eating at my skin. I tried to move and realised I could not. In the end, I drifted into a faint, surfacing once or twice to catch snippets of what was occurring around me.

The hurried arrival of the railway police.

The gentle voice of a doctor.

The calm snorts of the horse pulling the ambulance.

My first difficulty was to survive my wounds, which ran the risk of becoming infected. For two days they wondered if I might lose my hands. On the third, I was deemed far enough out of danger that the police could speak with me.

Two grave men entered my hospital room, hats in their hands. I was ready to be arrested for murder, I was not ready for what they actually said.

“You did well Donovan,” the taller man said. “Shame you were injured in the process, but the doctors think you will recover.”

I was stunned.

“The ticket collector!”

“Nasty bang on the back of Hodges’ head, much like yours. We suspect it happened when the thieves first took control of the train. There is a nasty corner and they nearly derailed. You both must have fallen and hit your heads. Sadly for Hodges, it was his undoing.”

I took this information in slowly.

“Thieves?” I mumbled to myself.

The taller policeman thought I was asking a question.

“Both dead. While I had wanted to see them in a courtroom, this outcome is almost as satisfactory. No more train robberies.”

He paused.

“We just wanted to check on you, Donovan, and to promise you, you will be compensated for all this. It was brave of you volunteering to be the mole in their plot. The railway company will handsomely reward you. Now, get plenty of rest.”

The two men departed, leaving me more confused than before. I had thought I was a murderer and a criminal, now it seemed I was some sort of hero.

The final pieces of the puzzle slipped together when the next day’s paper was published. My hands were healed enough to enable me to hold and read it. The front page was full of a story of a daring scheme to catch two train robbers who had held up and robbed five trains in the last two years.

They were unscrupulous men who had shot a driver in the past and yet attempts to catch them had failed time and time again.

The only hope was to lay a trap. News of a train carrying Bank of England stocks was ‘accidentally’ leaked to the thieves through an intermediary – a former train engineer who had been recently laid off and had a grudge against the company. With his information and knowledge of trains, the thieves plotted their most daring escapade – they would steal the whole train and be halfway across the country before the railway police could catch up!

Little did the thieves know that the train had been rigged and the controls tampered with. Only the mole could stop the runaway train, and he was to do it at a specific point on the track where an ambush was laid. Having forced the real train driver and engineer to jump off the train when the heist began, the thieves soon found themselves in trouble.

I was their only hope, but my accident in the luggage carriage had delayed me (among other things) and the thieves’ ineptitude had resulted in the disaster of the boiler running dry.

That was my story. How I came to be on a runaway train with no memory, no ticket, and a dead man at my feet.

I had scarred hands to show for my actions, and a disfigured face, but the railway was proud of me. I had avenged the murdered driver and saved future trains from being robbed.

Now all I had to do was regain my memories of the man I was before all this.

The doctors promise with time they will return.

Everything is healed with time, they say.

I suppose I shall just have to wait and see.