The Engine Room

"...and so, me Pa, he went a bit nuts, see - he said hardworking, I said, off the rocker. Wouldn't come out for days on end - didn't care when I caught Ma bringing home the postman, or when little Bowie disappeared. Only thing that mattered was what he was working on, and it sure weren't us. It would've made sense to lose your marbles after a bankruptcy, but not after you've done away with all that and you've money in your pocket, no? What sense's that, I ask you?"

You nod, even though you don't know, but it's enough for the short man to launch into a new story. You're not sure how long it's been since he beckoned you over into his compartment and started talking.

The man does have a watch, a rusty thing with thin straps and a square head, but although you've seen it from several angles under the dingy light, its face remains blank. No numbers, no hands, just blank white paper behind glass, and a buckle screwed deep into his wrist, piercing between the yellowed bone.

"Don't need to tell time," he'd told you. "But it's a nice watch."

You'd be more unnerved but it doesn't rank high on the list of unnerving things you've seen on this endless train to nowhere. You catch a glimpse of the grey ghoul in the metal tissue dispenser out of the corner of your eye. You turn your face away, switch your focus back to the man.

He's talked for long enough that your feet no longer ache and your arm has stopped bleeding through the wrappings.

"Will you tell me where the engine room is now?" you say

"That's all you care about, is it?" The man's face twists in anger, twists beyond what a human face should be able to. You think of taking a pencil to the center of a napkin and twirling several times. His nails grow long and jagged, gouging lines into the table between the two of you. "The engine room."

You think you're normally more leery of strangers, especially ones this bad-tempered, but you can't actually be sure. Maybe you always were brave, or stupid, or what-have-you that makes it easy for a kid to look at a monster and sit across him more than once.

"Always about the damn en-gine r o o m," the man's grumbling takes an increasingly hoarse quality, like the scratch of chalk on a board, the hiss of a snake shedding old skin. You have heard this from other passengers before, but not in this man. You shift in your seat, ready to run if you need to. It's a shame. You only just stopped bleeding.

"Here, at least take a peek out the window before you leave," the man's face doesn't quite untwist, but his voice jumps back to normal, a smooth tenor. It's an odd combination with the face. "The sights are not to be missed."

"No, I don't think so." You move to stand, but wince at the strain to your lower back. You sit, probing your tailbone. "I need to go to the - I need to go."

"So stubborn, so rude. Age is no excuse for rudeness, you know."

"I'm fourteen," you say, with more confidence than you think you should have.

What you do know about yourself reads like words on a history book - basic facts, maybe some pictures, but no smell, hearing, or touch attached. Semantic memory, not episodic, though you're not sure how you know that either.

"Hmm. Alright, then." He waves you off, face untwisting bit by bit, as you make to stand again.

You don't know quite how to describe the dull feeling in your back. The closest thing you can compare it to is a bruise, but there's no sharp sting when you press down, or drag when you shift. You think of gum wadded into a door-hinge, stunting the open-close movement.

"Keep going the opposite way from where you started," he continues, "And you ought to find it."

It's as nonsense an answer as any you've received. Your gummed-up back cracks when press your palms to it and stretch, heels sinking into the soggy mold-colored carpet.

"There is no opposite way," you tell him. "There's no direction on this train. I've been going in circles, maybe. This is the third time I've been back to you, you know."

"Then why'd you ask?" The man sounds surprised more than annoyed.

You don't really know. "Hoped for some luck this time, I suppose."

The compartment door, in contrast, slides open easily when you pull it open and step out. The hallway stretches endlessly long on either side, but remains narrow enough that if you pressed your shoulder to one wall, your fingertips would be able to reach the other even with your elbow crooked to your torso.

You take two steps to the right, then turn around to go to the left. It doesn't matter which way you go.

Here are the things you've found out about the train:

1. It looks like one long tube, but there are twists and turns you won't notice until you find yourself going past the same furniture, the same compartments, the same occupants.

2. Not all compartments are occupied. Some are locked, some have useless trinkets, some have the occasional gem, like the flats you found when your shoes fell apart.

3. The occupants can leave their compartments, as the short man was the one to drag you to safety and dress your wounds.

4. There are faceless staff around. They look human enough from the neck down, of varying body types with the same puke-green uniform and tiny hats. Their heads are shiny and smooth, like eggs. They come in varying degrees of helpfulness. Some will offer feasts in trays, others will barely offer you a hand up when you stumble in exhaustion.

5. If you look at a reflective surface too long, the grey ghoul will bleed out of it. No staff will help you when it attempts to slash you to ribbons. You are more terrified of it than anything else on the train.

And you need to get to the engine room, but that's a given.

You wander, and wander, and wander. You try to avoid the windows but you catch a glimpse outside once. It was neither night nor day, you saw a silhouette of a man and a woman walking away arm-in-arm in the vast desert of nothingness. The woman tosses something long and glittering out of her pocket, and it disappears into the shadowed sand.

Your feet begin to ache again when you find the compartment with flowers carved into its door.

There is no way to measure time, so you measure by events - six-thousand-one-hundred-and-seventy steps, four egg-headed staff and two passenger-less compartments filled to the brim with paper, though their contents were of varying quality. One was occupied solely with childrens' chicken-scratch crayon drawings, the other with reams of financial charts and blueprints. You pocket a few of the latter.

You slide open the door, steel petals digging into your palm. Hyacinths, you think. The short man's had been chickenscratch carved into metal.

"Hullo there, back again?"

This is another compartment you'd been to, and you know its passenger is amicable enough, if frightful-looking.

The lady with the scarred finger waves at you. The side of the padded bench to her left is more rusted crimson than the fire-engine red of the cushions to her right.

She drops the hand she'd lifted in greeting and splatters more red from her constantly-bleeding finger. It's peeled to the bone, leaking more than it seems it should. You'd screamed the first time.

"Found the engine room yet?"

You aren't sure if she's mocking you, but you shake your head anyway. Where the short man had looked haggard, but quite young on close inspection, the woman was older, crow's feet and laugh lines marking her elegantly made-up face. You thought she was beautiful when you first laid eyes on her, before you'd noticed all the reasons she wasn't.

"You really should stop looking, poor dear. It's been ages."

"What else am I meant to do, then?" You aren't sure why you're defensive, but exhaustion fuels and sustains the feeling. "I'm meant to be off this train."

Her laugh is just on the derisive side of polite. It makes the choker of chains cut deeper into her throat. Unlike her hand, her neck doesn't bleed, but there is a chain-link of grooves that reveal pockets of rotted flesh. The largest dent is at the hollow of her throat, making way for the golden ring sitting at the centre of the chain.

"For bigger, grander things?"

You don't know. It's just an instinct you've had since you woke up in your own compartment. (You haven't run across that compartment since. It had Hollyhocks on the door.)

"Well, that's where I can find the controls to make this train stop, won't it?" You haven't thought of it before, but the reasoning forms as you speak, making more sense. "It'll stop, then I'll be able to get off."

"But why would you want to? Where would you go next? Another train? There are loads and loads of them, grander trains, but not much else."

You don't know. But you're sure there's better than this, this endless roaming.

"There are plenty of good things on this train," she says, reading your face with pinpoint accuracy the way she has since your first meeting. "Explored it more, yet?"

"I saw the short man a few times."

"Short man?" She pats her hair down, leaving stains in the dark strands. "One of the staff?"

"The man with the twisted face."

"Oh, him, such a darling - but, why - he's not short at all! He's taller than you a smidge, I'd say."

"He wanted to be a basketball player, he told me," you explain. "He's barely got two inches on me, and I'm the shortest kid in class."

"Class?" She frowns. "Well, no reason to be rude now, hope you haven't been calling him that to his face. He's quite the sensitive boy."

You haven't been calling him anything, just as you haven't been calling this lady anything, nor do you know what your own name is. You don't think any of these details are important.

"Why not sit and get a look out the window? There's sights you need to see."

You lean away from the glass as she peers out of it. You think you catch a flash of grey. "Like what?"

"Like - oh, look at that poor dog, on the tracks. It's dead."

"Why would I want to see that?" You say, aghast.

"I didn't say the sights were good." Her left hand comes up to cup the side of her cheek, smudging it with congealed red-black. Her eyes are faraway. "Not always."

You don't want to look at a dead dog, but you still ask. "What else's in the desert? Can I leave through there? I'd jump out when the train slows long enough."

"Why, no dear." She presses her hand to her chest. It pushes the ring further into the groove. "There's nothing out there. No one."

"You say there's a mutt."

"A dead one, not much good." She scratches the flaps of flesh left on her fourth left finger, and looks back out the window. "There isn't anything there but the past."

Her voice drops into a familiar low hiss.

You frown. “You’re lying, I saw people out there – a man and a woman, the woman threw a chain into the sand –”

The lady shrieks suddenly. Her eyes sink into hollow sockets and her neck and hand bleed and bleed.

“Filthy useless man! Hypocrite! Out! Out, you useless creature, murderer!”

She rises and reaches for you, and you stumble out of your seat, scrambling for the door’s handle. The metal flower stems have grown thorns, tearing your hands as you finally wrench the door open.

You slam it shut behind you and run.

Faintly, you hear the wails recede into sobs.

Seven-hundred-twenty-one steps from the woman's compartment, an emaciated looking staff member blocks your way, arms akimbo. The narrow hallway means you'll need to flatten yourself to the wall to move past him, and you debate turning around instead. The thought of brushing against him makes nausea churn in your stomach.

He runs straight for you, past you, and flings himself out of a suddenly open window. The body bounces into the sand with, a sound like smashing watermelon into concrete, leaving smears of darkness and shards of white in its wake.

You stand, paralyzed, as the window slides shut without prompting. Then you run for the window, digging sweat-sodden fingers into the sill to pry it open. You see a matted thing of fur on the desert that remains at the exact same distance, while the staff member shrinks further away at an alarming rate.

Too late, you notice the faint reflection. Growing less faint.

"Find it NOW."

You shout and throw yourself to the side long claws gouge at where you were before. It snarls from the window, its torso still encased in glass.

The first passenger you ever encountered. The passenger that came with you from the single square mirror in your compartment. The ghoul with the grey, sunken face, sparse white hair clinging to its scalp.

"It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter. Fin d it, just f i nd it, fi n d the EN -"

You waste no breath screaming and tear yourself away, but the hallway is suddenly blocked with rows of staff, their egg-heads cracking to reveal sunken faces and screaming mouths.

You barrel through them, between them, shove some behind you. Their shrieks fill the air, mingled with tearing noises.

"None of them matter. Not the blasted dog, not the boy, not the woman."

Its voice is permanent snakeskin, growing louder and stronger, until its so loud it feels like the ghoul's mouth is pressed to your ear.

You shudder and lose your footing, stumbling down. You catch yourself on your hands and a loose shard of glass tears the fingertip of your fourth left finger. You watch as your flesh unravels to the bone, all the way up to the third knuckle.

"Find it - "

"Whoa, whoa now, back in there you go."

The short man is there. He shoves the ghoul gently into the window as it screeches, folding it bit by bit until it flattens into the glass, bleached of its color, leaving a fake imprint behind.

"Sometimes they do that, the reflections. Tricky little things, we conquer them or they conquer us, or somewhere in between, you know? Gets the better of us, once in a while, though."

"Reflections," you repeat.

You catch your breath. Stare at the ghoul. Tilt your head and feel long, sparse hairs brush your shoulder. Its leathery fingers shake as it touches its grey face. The ring on its fourth finger gleams. The short man's reflection is next to it, clapping the ghoul on the shoulder as pressure falls on yours, and you jump slightly.

The ghoul in the window mimics your movement. It no longer looks terrifying. It - you - look exhausted.

You have been tired this entire time.

"Yes, reflections. See, I found it funny when you said you were fourteen, figured there was something not quite right - but we're sorted now aren't we? Sort yourself and get back up, just like my Pa used to say - "

"Is there an engine room, even?" You say, and the ghoul's mouth moves with yours.

The man claps you on the shoulder, and you feel the aches and pains of old bones.

“You tell me, Pa,” nails dig in, drawing not blood but black, black oil. It spills down your shirt, traces the ring of bone on your finger, drips to the ground and rolls out between the doors to feed the desert. “You ever find it?”

You think you see a door out of the corner of your eye. Hollyhocks climb up from the floor to the ceiling, wedging into the rusted hinges. But it is gone as soon as you turn to look.

Somewhere in the train, your wife wails.

End

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.

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"Say, I ever take you on a train?"

"Me? No, I don't think so."

"Mm. You sure? Well, that's another regret, innit? I've got a lot of those, it seems."

"Why do you say that?

"Lots. Letting that dog run. Stopping you from basketball. You would've been pretty good - you ain't short at all, I see, 'specially with me layin' here, can't get up with all the tubes and doo-dads - "

"Those doo-dads are keeping you alive -"

"Did a lot of bad things in the business, too. I made a lot of people miserable, and I told myself - that's just business, you do what you need to get ahead. Push down who you need to. I tried, with some - but some things, you just can't pay for. And your ma - "

"That's enough. It wasn't all bad - you were a successful guy, Pa. Still are, I mean, look at the size of this place."

"Sickroom I'll die in, you mean? Is this all there is, at the end of it?"

"Aw, Pa, don't... Hey, come on, remember when you got me this watch? First day on the job, and you said, make me proud?"

"Hmm. No, I don't. Sorry."

"Oh. Hm. Well, did I? Make you proud, that is. I know I didn't continue the - the business, but I'm pretty successful, and - I, well, did I?"

"Kid..."

"Ah, never mind. Oh, I remember. The, uh, train question. You said grandpa used to take you. Your dad, every Saturday, to and from his work, 'cause your grandma'd be working then too, so there was no one to watch you."

"That's right. From when I was tiny up until I was - mm, I don't know, three, four, fif-teen, around there. Old enough to be on my own."

"Okay."

"I used to think trains went on forever. Got older, and I didn't think that anymore, but I wanted them to. Most time I ever got to spend with my father."

"Oh."

"Ah, don't mind me, had a bad dream, is all."

"Hm. Must've been some dream."

"Yeah. Been having the same one every night. Can't remember it, but I feel like I'm getting closer to something each time, you know?"

"Mm."

"How's the kids? Sarah?"

"Good. All of them."

"Keep 'em that way. Be quick to apologize when you fuck things up, be quick to make peace when you don't. Don't - don't waste time on the meaningless, don't try to control everything and - and reach for something that's not even - "

"Okay, okay, okay, just take a breath, alright, Pa? With me, in, out, in - "

"Yeah, yeah. I'm fine. Donny?"

"Yeah?"

"You're a good kid. Claws n' all."

"What?"

"Nothing. I'm tired."

"Already?"

"You try getting old. Go pick up the kids. Play basketball with them, or what ever it is kids do these days. Go on, git."

"Good night, Pa."

"Good night, kid."