Tickets, Please

The sounds of a train in motion were hauntingly familiar. The clack-clack-clackity-clack of metal wheels on metal tracks, the clanging of bells, the mournful wail of the whistle all penetrated the depths of his sleeping brain, calling to mind his boyhood home across the street from the train depot.

He’d grown up with these sounds from birth. The trains that made their stops for loading and unloading passengers, railroad cars and cargo were the backdrop and background music of his life. The crashing of cars connecting one-by-one to form the next train out of the station were so familiar that the sound never interrupted his sleep. The trains that passed by without making a stop produced the rapid-fire clackity-clacking and vibrated the ground beneath his childhood home, effectively rocking him to sleep.

But…

He hadn’t lived in that home for over twenty years now.

His eyes flew open.

He was lying on a bed, pillow beneath his head. He rolled, tucking his hand beneath his head to cradle his cheek.

“What the—?”

It was pitch black. He should have been able to look across the room and out the large window of his studio apartment to see the well-lit cityscape beyond.

This wasn’t his bed.

I must be dreaming, he thought.

But the clacking of metal on metal continued. There were the intermittent sounds of clanging bells and the warning blast of the whistle. And the rocking motion was much more pronounced than the vibrations of the ground underneath the house. It was almost as if—

No! It couldn’t be!

He rolled to his back and sat up. His head struck a surface above him. “Ouch! What the—where—shit!” He groped in the darkness, encountering a ceiling just above his head and curtains to his right. He clutched the fabric and pulled it aside.

A dimly lit corridor was revealed. He swung his legs over the side of the bed—

The berth. It’s a berth, not a bed. Do trains even have berths anymore?

—and let them dangle.

This has to be a dream, he thought.

He looked up and down the corridor. Closed curtains hid sleeping passengers in berths—at least, he assumed so—and open curtains revealed unused sleeping accommodations. He didn’t bother to count, but guesstimated there were about a dozen upper and lower bunks on each side of the car.

“This isn’t possible,” he whispered.

He’d gone to sleep late, and had actually taken the time to change into pajama pants before sliding between the sheets of his own bed. But now, he was clad in jeans and a tee-shirt. He had socks on—a particular no-no of his. No one should suffer the discomfort of sleeping in socks!

“See?” he chided himself. “It’s a dream. I would never sleep with my socks on!”

He slid to the floor from the upper berth, careful not to disturb the lower bunk, just in case there really was someone sleeping in there. Just because he was dreaming, it didn’t give him license to be discourteous.

He stood for a moment, letting his body adjust to the sway of the train. He knew it was a train; he’d ridden trains a lot when he was a boy. He’d never slept in a berth, though. As a matter of fact, he couldn’t remember ever seeing a car with berths, except in old movies. The rides he’d been on had been day trips with his mother, mostly for doctor appointments.

Sometime in the 1980s, passenger trains had been discontinued on the line through his hometown, and now only freight trains went through. It had been heartbreaking to lose that service; his mother didn’t drive, and had to depend on friends to get her to her appointments after that. It had been difficult, and she began to neglect her health care rather than ask for help. He was convinced that her early death could have been avoided if not for the lack of transportation, and had deeply resented the railroad for discontinuing services.

After her death, he’d stayed on in her house, located just across from the old depot. He’d continued to go to sleep with the lullaby of clacking wheels on tracks, bells and whistles and the crashing of cars.

When he finally made the move to the city, it had taken him months to learn how to sleep without the nightly cacophony. The buzz of traffic and honking horns and wailing sirens were no substitute for the familiar sound of trains.

An old friend had recently told him that the railroad towns they’d grown up in were in discussion with Amtrack, trying to resume passenger service after all this time. He figured that chat had triggered this crazy dream.

He patted himself down, pulled his wallet out of his pocket and opened it to examine the contents. “Thaddeus Mattson.” Well, his driver’s license hadn’t changed, at least. He was still good old Thad, even in his dreams.

He fingered through his credit cards and a small stash of cash and thought he’d be okay if he had to pay for something on this trip. But—

It’s a dream. Why would I have to pay for anything in a dream?

—dream things should be free, right?

Well, that remained to be seen.

He turned and gave his berth a quick search, hoping for shoes. There were none. He sighed.

Thad walked up the corridor, passed a small bathroom at the far end of the car and then faced the door that would lead to the next car on the line.

I’ll open it, and it will lead back to my own room.

That was a comforting thought. He reached out. Hesitated. Took a deep breath and reached out again. Froze in place, his hand inches from their goal.

“Jesus, Thad, just open the door!” He was appalled by the rapid thudding of his heart. When had he ever been scared to go through a door?

The door, though—it was odd. It was an old wood panel door, with a brass door knob. Had any train in the history of the world ever had such a door? Weren’t they supposed to be metal, with some kind of latch or lever?

Thad searched his memories of riding the train with his mother. All he could remember was boarding and disembarking, and there was a doorway…but…was there a door?

“Damn it!”

He reached for the knob. Turned it. Opened the door. Walked through.

It did not lead him back to his own room.

It was a train car, much like the ones he remembered from his childhood. Rows of seats on either side of an aisle, upholstered in a muted orange fabric, were mostly unoccupied. The car was well lit, and the large windows on each side of the car reflected images of empty seats against a black backdrop. It was pitch dark outside, leading Thad to believe they were deep in the middle of nowhere.

Near the front of the car, a lone woman sat, her head leaning against the window. By her reflection, Thad surmised that she was asleep.

In the middle of the car, on the opposite side, a man with a newspaper lowered his reading material when Thad shut the door. He turned his head, nodded an acknowledgement, and raised the paper again.

Thad moved through the car and took a seat just behind newspaper man, but on the other side of the aisle. He slid to his left and leaned his cheek against the window, peering out in hopes of catching some sight of the landscape beyond.

He could see a couple of yards past the train: rail tracks, occasional mile-marker signs, a shrub or two growing nearby. Beyond that, nothing; it was pitch dark out there.

He raised his arm to look at his watch, but the timepiece wasn’t on his wrist.

He didn’t remember taking it off—he slept with it on, to time the frequency between waking and sleeping each night. Most often, it was used to remind himself that if he fell asleep right now, he might get X number of hours of sleep before he had to get up for work. An hour later, after fruitless attempts at counting sheep, he would subtract time from his first estimate. If the countdown got to two hours of sleep or less, he’d give up and rise from the bed, defeated.

He hadn’t consciously thought of it until now, but he supposed he’d missed sleeping with the background noise of trains more than he’d realized. His sleep had been fitful at best ever since he’d moved to the city.

“Weird.”

Newspaper man glanced over at him, but offered no comment.

The door at the far end of the car opened. A little girl walked through. She closed the door behind her and came toward him, tiptoeing up the aisle. “Mama?” she whispered, checking each row of seats. “Mama?”

Thad watched her, concerned. She looked more than frightened—she looked terrified.

Newspaper guy gave her an inpatient shake of the head in response to her inquiry, and she continued on to come face to face with Thad. “Mama?” she whispered.

“Thad,” he replied, not knowing why he felt compelled to tell her his name.

“Have you seen my mama?”

“No, I—”

He faltered, realizing he was about to say he hadn’t seen anyone at all except the people in this car. She was scared enough already; he didn’t need to add to it.

“No, I haven’t.”

“I woke up and I was here,” the little girl said. Her eyes filled with tears and she tried to blink them back. Instead, they cascaded down pale cheeks. “I can’t find anyone.”

Thad patted the seat beside him, and she sat. He wanted to put a comforting arm around her, but restrained himself. In this day and age, the most innocent of friendly gestures could get him thrown in jail.

The world had grown cold and stupid. How had things deteriorated so badly that a person couldn’t offer a child a moment of sympathetic comfort without worrying what others might think?

“What’s your name?”

“Abigail. Abbey.” She looked sideways at him. “Thad?”

“Short for Thaddeus,” he explained. “My mom thought it sounded smart and sophisticated.”

“Mine sounds like an old lady.” Abbey chuckled ruefully. “But my mom's great-grandma died right before I was born, so I got her name.”

Thad nodded. “Used to wish they’d let me pick my own name. I’d be Richard.”

“I’d be Melody. I like to sing.”

“Where are you going, Melody?” Thad asked.

Abbey giggled. “Nowhere, Richard.” The grin slipped off her face. “I just—I went to bed, and when I woke up, I was here.”

“Crazy.”

“Where are you going?”

“Nowhere. Same thing happened to me. I don’t remember boarding a train. I didn’t plan to board a train.” Thad shrugged. “I planned to get out of bed and go to work, like always.” He looked at the solemn child beside him. “I think it’s probably a dream. I must have eaten too much junk food before bedtime.”

Abbey sighed. “I didn’t eat any junk food. I think Mama must have brought me here while I was sleeping—she’s always talking about going on trips someday.”

“Well,” Thad replied, “you should just stay here, then. She’s probably looking for you while you’re looking for her, and you just keep missing each other.”

“I hope so.”

Thad hoped so, too. He looked down as Abbey sagged against his shoulder, threw caution to the wind, and put his arm around her. She was asleep in minutes, and Thad no longer gave two shakes of a lamb’s tail what anyone might think. Circumstances being what they were, what could possibly happen?

“I could get accused of kidnapping, I guess,” he whispered. He sighed. He couldn’t summon up enough give-a-shit to even worry about it.

The sky was beginning to take on a pre-dawn glow at the horizon, and he was able to see a bit of the landscape. It was mostly barren, with occasional trees and a lot of scrub bushes, which brought to mind more memories of his childhood. There was a lot of dessert in the Midwestern areas he’d traveled through as a boy.

After a good look around, he surmised that the sun was behind them; they were headed west. But west of his city home would still be a suburban sprawl, even traveling overnight. How long had he been sleeping? How fast could this train travel?

“Too far west,” he muttered. “Too far south, too.” He lifted his free hand and scrubbed at his face. “Where the hell am I?”

He could feel himself drifting off, and fought it. The last time he’d slept…well, look where that had led him. He looked over at newspaper guy, unable to believe he was still reading. Had he turned a page, ever?

He heard the door open and looked toward the front of the car, hoping to see a worried mother looking for her child.

It was the porter.

The stout little man poked the sleeping woman in the first seat. “Destination?”

“Huh?” She sat up straight, rubbing her eyes vigorously.

“Your destination?”

“Detroit.” She fumbled in a bag and handed him a ticket. He took it, punched a hole in it with a awl—

An awl??

—and returned it to her.

The porter shambled up the aisle and repeated the questions to newspaper guy.

“Boise,” he replied, setting the newspaper aside and pulling a ticket out of his front jacket pocket.

The awl stabbed through the ticket, and Thad felt a species of terror beginning to roil in his guts.

Detroit? Boise? On the same train?

Abbey muttered in her sleep and he patted her shoulder reassuringly.

The porter planted himself in front of them.

“Destination?”

“I—I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? Well, let’s just have a look at your ticket.”

Abbey woke with a start, and stared up at the portly porter. “Have you seen my mama?” she asked.

“No mama here, kid. Where are you going?”

“Nowhere.”

The porter raised one eyebrow and gave her a sardonic sneer. “Got a ticket for that?”

“I don’t have a ticket,” Abbey informed him haughtily. “I’m not even supposed to be here.”

Thad stopped patting his pockets and said, “I don’t have a ticket, either.”

“Tsk, tsk!” the porter shook his head. “No tickets, no destination. Well, ta ta! Have a lovely trip.” He started to walk on.

“Wait!” Thad cried. “Aren’t you going to put us off the train?”

“Put you off—why, no.”

“But—”

“If we don’t have tickets and don’t know where we’re going, how will we know when to get off?” Abbey demanded.

“Get off?”

“Where is the next stop?” Thad asked. “How long before we get there?”

The porter frowned. “You ask a lot of questions.”

“We have no tickets,” Thad reminded him, exasperated. “Where are we going?”

“You’ll know when you get there.”

“Where did this train come from?” Abbey asked.

“From the beginning of the line.”

“Where’s that?”

“At the start.”

“Where’s it going?” Thad asked.

“To the end of the line.”

“Where?”

“You’ll know when you arrive.”

“But—you’re not very helpful.”

“Why should I be? You don’t have tickets. You don’t have a destination. And,” the porter added, shaking his awl at them like a lecturer at a podium, “you ask too many questions!”

“So, that lady said she’s going to Detroit.” Thad pointed at the woman who had since gone back to sleep in her seat.

“Yes.”

“But we’re going west!”

“So?”

“And that guy,” Thad added, pointing at the gentleman who had returned to reading his newspaper.

“What about him?”

“He said he’s going to Boise.”

“So?”

“Those cities are in opposite directions!” Thad tried and failed to keep his voice low. “And we’re going west!”

“Sir.” The porter let out and exaggerated sigh. “What is the problem?”

“The problem is, I didn’t board this train.”

“Neither did I,” Abbey interjected.

“We don’t have tickets.”

“Really? I didn’t notice.” The stout little man’s voice was dripping with disdain, and Thad was grateful that Abbey was between them; he didn’t need an assault charge on top of everything else.

“When will we be stopping next? Where will you be putting us off the train?”

After another prolonged sigh, the porter said, “Thaddeus Mattson, you and Miss Abigail will disembark this train at the time and destination you’re supposed to do so and not a moment before.” He lifted his nose in the air and marched off down the aisle and slammed out the door leading to the sleep car.

Thad and Abbey had turned in their seats to watch his huffy departure.

“How did he know our names?”

“I…I don’t know.”

“Thad?”

“Yeah?”

He dreaded her next words, but couldn’t think of a way to keep her from asking the next question.

“Are we…dead?”

“I don’t…I think…” Thad wasn’t capable of putting a sentence together, it seemed. “Abbey—I just—I—”

The little girl reached up and patted his cheek. “I think we are.”

“Yeah.” Thad reached up, took her hand, and squeezed it gently. “That would explain a lot.”

“Well…let’s go see the engine, then. Let's blow the whistle. I don’t think anyone can stop us.”

“Sure. What could they do—kill us?”

Laughter was a relief. They stood up, clasped hands and headed for the door. Destination, train engine.

They were going to blow that whistle.

After that—well, who knew?

~~~*****~~~*****~~~