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The Midnight Train

Inspired by recent happenings.

By Eloise Robertson Published 3 years ago 10 min read
21

The train station was a decrepit building with a veranda shading the platform overlooking the tracks. Beyond the tracks was only a glowing, snow-covered field. Shadows of trees in the distance created a black wall of darkness that the moon’s light could not penetrate. The beginning of winter struck when I first sat on the wooden bench, watching the travelers take the night train.

I felt safer here at night than I did in my bed; a place of nightmares and blood-chilling terror. Every night I would awake in a sweat, tangled in my damp sheets with my heart hammering in my chest. My room became a box too small to contain me in my claustrophobia, so the open midnight air became my haven.

Occasionally I saw someone at the station during the day, but no trains came. I thought they decommissioned our train line until I discovered a midnight train arrived to collect weary travelers and take them to greater, greener places. I was surprised by the number of travelers our small town had hidden in some unknown accommodation. I couldn’t fathom why anyone willingly visits, and I supposed that is why they were leaving in the dead of night.

In the stead of the broken lanterns, the streetlight illuminated the tracks and platform in its soft glow. Each night I visited, I wore my earphones listening to music, and observed the handful of people arriving through the night. None seemed to pay me any attention, and I didn’t expect them to; I doubted they had the small-town nosiness of the residents here.

With each night that passed, I noticed more unusual behavior. Nobody would turn their heads to look around, not even to glance at me. I only saw their backs as they passed me to stand at the edge of the platform, staring out at the snow. It looked very eerie. There was an absence of movement. Nobody shifted their weight from side to side with sore feet, nobody cleared their throat, nobody checked the time, and nobody carried luggage.

As the temperature plummeted and the snow hardened into ice, I noticed the night traveler’s did not have the same plume of fog billowing from their lips like I had, nor were they wearing large coats or beanies to keep warm.

I told my dad that tourists were going to freeze to death in their ignorance of the harsh weather. He laughed, and hinted he and mum wanted to go away somewhere warmer for their anniversary.

“Alright, bud, we can ask the Halverson’s to look after you -” he had said, before I cut him off.

“Dad, come on, I’m fifteen already. It’s school holidays, I can cook for myself, I can chop the firewood, it’s fine. I can look after myself for a week!”

My dad was pretty relaxed, so he didn’t need as much convincing as I thought. Mum was an anxious wreck, but that’s okay. As soon as she got in the car to begin their trip, she was as excited as anything to leave and forgot any worries she had about me.

Night two of being on my own, I walked tiredly to the train station on just an hour’s sleep. I pulled my coat around me tightly and tucked my scarf in, bracing against the freezing temperatures. I rifled through my pockets and cursed, pissed I left my earphones at home. The station was already busy when I arrived; I had to slip in the gap at the back to reach my usual seat. Then eleven appeared, followed by nineteen others, then another five, twenty-four, eight… The platform was full.

“Hey, sorry, where is everyone going?”

I touched the elbow of the person standing beside me. They did not respond. A crowd of people pushed through onto the platform and I found myself trapped, sitting on my bench, unable to even stand. I brought my legs up and stood on the bench, peering over the heads of people squished together. Each body was utterly still and shivers ran down my spine, only not from the cold. They looked like a sea of statues.

“Excuse me, what’s -”

Midnight brought with it the large ebony-black train into the station and the people boarded. My breath caught in my throat and my heart lurched in fear. The night was dead silent: the train seemed to float in without even a creak to announce its arrival, not even the rustle of a coat or the padding of footsteps sounded. My heartbeat thudding in my ears was deafening. The train was like a black hole, a shadow that swallowed light, untouchable by the moonlight or streetlight as it slid smoothly along the tracks, departing into the night without a noise.

I gaped like a fool, unable to shake the shock, and exited the decrepit building in a hurry only to freeze in my tracks, stilled by fright. A crowd ambled down the street. I could see not an inch of pavement in the ocean of bodies approaching. Some faces I knew but barely recognized. Skin pale and eyes sunken, faces gaunt, like they had not slept for days.

They did not acknowledge me, only filtered into the station one by one, not a sound breaking the quietness of the night. Men, women and children filled the platform of our usually abandoned station and a line formed out the doorway, down the footpath and down the street until the crowd came to a stand-still.

“What’s going on?” My voice was too loud; the sound bounced off of the nearby houses.

I walked carefully through the unmoving bodies, back to the footpath. Tears pricked at my eyes as my panic bubbled to a head, and as soon as I found myself at the back of the crowd, I was running. My feet were numb through my boots. I couldn’t feel my face anymore, and my eyes were watering.

I saw another wave of people ahead of me walking toward the station. “Don’t go that way! The street is blocked!”

They didn’t react to my warning and as I passed them I noticed the same vacant expression pasted onto their faces. My legs lost power and I stopped running, puffing. Nobody seemed to realize I existed; my words fell on a silent world and eyes slid right past me.

Am I dead? Am I a ghost? Did I die from exposure in my sleep? I thought.

I hyperventilated and sobs wracked my chest. My head was spinning. I forced myself to continue walking and saw the glowing light of the fuel station ahead. Mr. Halverson would be on the night shift there, so I ran on, passing groups of people herding toward the station. A smoky grey pickup truck idled by the fuel pump, and a figure inside the cab terrified me beyond belief. Inside was a man slumped with blood down his chin from his mouth. I rushed to the door to help, but it was locked. I sprinted around the truck and hurled myself into the store.

“Help! Mr. Halverson, there’s someone hurt outside!”

I rushed through the aisles of shelving, searching for the shop owner. I found him. My knees buckled. I collapsed to the floor beside Mr. Halverson’s body, crumpled by an open fridge door, bloodstains on his mouth and collar.

My hands shook as I reached for him, feeling for a pulse.

There was nothing.

Through the windows I watched a mob of people trudge soundlessly down the street, unified in their mass and direction. I twisted around, running for the door again, but a figure lurching toward the exit in front of me struck my heart with horror and the sight ripped a scream from my chest. The gaunt figure of Mr. Halverson opened the door and shuffled outside, joining the mass. I fell backwards, crying, shrieking until my voice was hoarse, falling apart in my panic. I couldn’t breathe in. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t do anything but shake uncontrollably beside the corpse of Mr. Halverson, hiding from the population filling the streets.

I hid in the petrol station for three days. I barricaded the door, used the bathroom there, and ate the food from the shelves. For three days, ghostly figures which had separated themselves from the dead filled the street outside. They only shuffled forward at midnight. I would have stayed longer, but the power went out and the temperature decreased until huddling in a corner was no longer enough to survive. I had to get home to my wood fire. I tried to go with a stealthy approach, but the unmoving bodies that waited outside were so silent that my movements were painfully obvious. There was no clear pathway to escape this hellish street. I had to immerse myself into the bodies and push against the flow of movement toward the back of the crowd. I can’t recall exactly what happened; it is all a blur now.

Running home, I saw the entire population of our town standing like poles in the exposed night air, unperturbed by the chill. My neighbor was lying face down in his carport, dead, although I know I passed his figure as I was running home.

My parents didn’t return at the end of the week.

When my house ran out of food, I ran to the supermarket, sickened to find the employee’s dead bodies within. Emily, a girl I went to school with, perished choking on her own blood. Each night I barricaded my home and watched the figures inching closer toward the station at midnight out the window. Otherwise, they were as lifeless as statues. On a supply run, I saw Emily standing in the crowd, vacantly staring with dark and dead eyes at the station ahead.

I was not a ghost like I had originally feared; I was the only person left alive.

After six weeks of stagnation, I began packing. I brought food, water, matches, my phone and charger should I find a nearby town with electricity. The last things I grabbed were my dad’s multi-tool and my mum’s favorite necklace with a heart-shaped locket.

I travelled on foot to the back of the crowd which had doubled in size and broke into a home, stealing the keys to the resident’s car. Ghosts of the dead waiting to board the midnight train filled the town. People were arriving faster than they could leave.

As I drove East, I passed a long line of figures walking on the side of the road toward our town. I dreaded what I would find as I left my home behind, but I had to know what caused the disaster that murdered my town in an instant. My parents had not returned, and I worried they never would if this phenomenon reached farther than I thought. It cursed the surrounding towns with dead bodies and ghosts on a long journey toward the midnight train.

I am eighteen now and I have scoured the country for life only to find millions of mindless figures walking toward the Midwest, toward my hometown. I went to the cities first but as the weather warmed the bodies smelled and festered. I search for survivors, but in three years I have seen no signs of human life, only bodies littering the country and their souls walking toward the afterlife. Sometimes I wish I could join them and board that train on to a better place. I tried to return home once, but the dead figures surrounded the town for hundreds of miles at every angle. It would take months of walking through the mass of death to reach that station again.

Here I remain; desperately searching for life I fear doesn’t exist. I can never give my mum her necklace back, so I carry it always. If only whatever caused this apocalypse sent me to board the train that I’m sure my parents have already taken.

Horror
21

About the Creator

Eloise Robertson

I pull my ideas randomly out of thin air and they materialise on a page. Some may call me a magician.

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