Empty Express

It was hard to sleep with that rumbling. It was time to get some more considerate roommates who didn’t make horrible noises at all hours. What was that noise? It wasn’t a coffee grinder or a vacuum cleaner.

Carrie woke with a jolt and was surprised to find that not only was she not in her bed but the noise wasn’t made by her roommates at all. She was fully dressed and asleep in a railway car.

“What the …?”

Just blink. This is a dream. You fell asleep in bed. It’s your turn to do laundry!

When she opened her eyes, she was still on the train. Carrie looked around, trying not to panic. There was no one else in her train car. She looked down at the little table in front of her, and checked her purse, rummaging as quickly as she could at first and then more slowly, and then slowly again.

There was no ticket anywhere.

“Okay,” Carrie said, “I’m on a train. I don’t have a ticket. No one else is in this car. I don’t know where I’m going.”

Don’t panic.

It wasn’t uncommon for Carrie to have strange dreams, or even dream of something and then have something similar happen later. This might be just that. It seemed like she was awake, but it was really a dream. It was a vivid, realistic dream.

“Did I drink or take something last night?” Carrie asked. “Maybe I drank and took something? No way.”

Having just graduated from college, Carrie was more of a bookworm than a party girl. Unless someone slipped her something to ‘loosen her up’ she was not in a drug-induced hallucination. Carrie thought about Hannah and Elliot.

“If one of you guys did this, I’m going to kill you!”

As she continued to inspect the train car, Carrie didn’t see any indication of brand names. Outside it was dark and foggy, so she couldn’t tell what countryside they were tracking through. There were no lights, so she assumed it wasn’t a city. The train itself was lit in low, nighttime lighting, as if to assist in sleep. The overall effect was spooky.

There was not a single other person in sight. As far as she could tell, Carrie was alone on the train. She had no idea where it was going. There was something she needed to remember, but it was distant and faded, and she couldn’t bring it forward.

“If this is an overnight, it probably won’t stop soon either,” Carrie said.

This thought was disturbing, because she didn’t like the idea of being on a train all night without knowing where she was going, and without knowing how she’d gotten there. Worse still, if this was someone’s idea of a drunken prank, she was just going to get thrown off at the next stop anyway for not having a ticket.

That would not be it though, because ever since she was a little girl, strange things had been happening to Carrie Mills. And ever since she was a little girl, Carrie Mills had been pretending they didn’t. So the odds were good that this was one of those things, and this was not a good time to pretend it wasn’t happening.

Because as much as Carrie wanted to sit back down and go back to sleep to hope she woke up to two annoying roommates instead of an empty train car, her instincts told her not to do it. And since she was a little girl, Carrie had learned to trust her instincts. Especially when it came to strange things.

Bracing herself for what she might find, or not find, Carrie walked from her train car to the next one. She held her breath before pulling open the door to the adjoining car. Not knowing what she would find, she had to be prepared for anything.

She was not prepared for … nothing.

More nothing?

How could the entire train be empty? One car could be a fluke, but two? This was getting stranger and stranger. Carrie looked out the windows, but still saw only darkness. She walked over, standing in front of the empty seats. Staring at the black foggy countryside speeding by was disorienting, and she was looking for any landmark.

Suddenly, she thought she saw nebulous lights up ahead. Thinking it might be a train station, she ran back to the last car to where her seat was. There was a suitcase there she’d hadn’t noticed before. Was it familiar?

Carrie grabbed the suitcase and ran to the train doors. She didn’t know if they were going to open, or if she could get out. All she knew was what she wanted more than anything was to get off this train. Something wasn’t right here.

There was a problem. The train wasn’t slowing down. Carrie watched with a sinking heart as the train rumbled straight through the station. She thought she saw shadowy figures sitting and standing there, but she couldn’t be sure through the dark haze. One thing she was sure of: she was still on the train.

Defeated, Carrie went to the first seat she saw and opened the suitcase. It was a small plain carryon that might have belonged to one of her roommates. She thought it looked vaguely familiar. Carry didn’t own any luggage and this was definitely not new, so if it was hers, someone might have given it to her. The clothing was hers. There were very few personal items inside. Some toiletries were there, but there was no identification and no train ticket.

The suitcase did nothing to help her remember what she had forgotten. She had a feeling that it was important, but when she searched for it, it was gone. At the moment, it wasn’t her biggest problem either.

Deciding to put aside the question of how she’d gotten on a train with no ticket, Carrie picked up the suitcase by the top handle and walked back through the train. It turned out to be fairly short. It must have been three cars because soon she had arrived at the locomotive cab.

Since during the entire time she’d been walking she hadn’t seen a conductor, and this was a rather old-fashioned looking train, Carrie decided to take a chance and open the door to the cab. She knew hardly anything about trains, having only ridden one once before to go to her grandmother’s house as a little girl. She did know that there should be a driver.

Carrie opened the door. There was no driver. No one was in the cab at all.

No one was driving the train that showed no signs of stopping.

Trying not to panic, Carrie looked around for a book or instructions or a large button that said, “Push me to slow down the train.” There was nothing. The train had instruments indicating that it was moving at a speed of 150 miles per hour.

I’m going to die.

That was her first thought. Carrie’s second thought was that she had to figure out how not to take anyone with her. If she was going to crash this train, she had to make sure not to crash it into anything. She didn’t want to just randomly start pushing buttons, but panic was also starting to set in. So, Carrie pushed a button.

The train started going faster.

Nope.

She pushed another button, and an alarm started sounding through the train behind her. That might have been useful if there was actually someone on the train besides her. So she pshed another button. A horn started blaring. She pushed it again, holding it down. That was better.

Carrie’s solution of randomly pushing buttons was a stupid one, she had to admit. She tried to read the faded text above the buttons or instinctively figure out what they were. She wanted to slow the train down, not just stop it. Stopping it outright might crash it or cause an explosion. It wasn’t getting any lighter outside and even with the train’s headlights, she couldn’t see much through the thick fog.

The absence of light had to mean they were in the countryside. It was the safest place. Carrie steeled herself for what she had to do.

After counting to three in her head to give herself the courage, Carrie grabbed the large lever and pulled. Her ears were assaulted by the screeching of metal on metal as the train’s wheels searched for purchase. Carrie closed her eyes. At least she had made sure that the train didn’t take anyone else with her.

***

It was dark. And hot. Carrie realized she was waking up or coming to.

When she opened her eyes, she was in a decrepit train station, sitting on a dented wooden bench. She was the only one there. The station had only a roof and benches. There were no walls. At least the roof offered shade.

The heat was the first impression Carrie got as she stepped out of the train station. It felt like walking out into a furnace. She had done research into the climate and knew that there could be hot days in the summer here, but this heat was oppressive. Carrie found herself wishing she’d brought an extra water bottle.

Looking around, she saw that the train station was all but deserted. It appeared that she was the only one to get off there. If other trains had passed through, they hadn’t stopped. A rickety sign hung above her head but there was no breeze to move it. In faded letters it proclaimed she was in the fight place: Claymore.

Since no one had come to greet her, Carrie picked up her carry-on instead of wheeling it and walked to the ticket booth. It was closed up. She had not really expected to find it manned in such a small stop, but thought it might at least have a place to cool off. Reaching into her purse, she pulled out a phone with a dying battery and no service.

Since there was no way to call, Carrie walked out to the street. She was already wishing she’d worn lighter clothes than jeans and a three-quarter sleeved blue blouse and better shoes for walking than brown leather clogs. Out of habit, she brushed her dark hair up into a bun and tied it back loosely with a hair tie from her purse. It helped a little in the oppressive heat.

The road was hardly better than dirt, but Carrie followed it to the highway. It was all starting to feel like some kind of dream. How had she come to be here? Was this a mistake?

Then she remembered. The train had been speeding with no sign of stopping. If she’d stopped the train, how had she gotten here?

She didn’t remember the train stopping. She didn’t remember getting out. But she was starting to remember other things.

She reached into her purse to pull out the strange letter she’d received a week before. It had so many red flags she should have known it wasn’t real. For one thing, she’d been offered a job so quickly it should have made her suspicious, since she’d never interacted with anyone by telephone or in person. There hadn’t even been an interview. She’d sent them her resume based on a friend's recommendation that the job was ‘odd’ but stable. A job offer has been mailed to her a week later, typed on a strange thick cream-colored paper in a courier-like font that looked like it was written from a typewriter.

Carrie had just graduated and the job included housing. How many teaching jobs could say that? It didn’t pay much, but she would save a lot just by not paying rent so she figured she was coming out ahead.

Then there were the red flags. The town was in the middle of nowhere. No one she knew had even heard of it. She only vaguely knew where it was because she had been told it was ‘a few hours south of’ a well-known area. She needed to come right away.

She remembered getting the letter. She did not remember getting on the train, or packing, or accepting the job, or most of all waking up here at an apparently abandoned train station.

I’m not alive. This is the afterlife.

Maybe she had died before. Maybe the train itself was part of the afterlife. Maybe that was how she got there.

Carrie started walking down the road, less worried about the heat now. If you’re dead, you can’t be hot, can you? Carrie preferred not to think about what that might mean. She had always considered herself a good person, but this might be Purgatory.

So she walked.

The sun was barely breaking dawn, which would not help the oppressive heat. She could see where she was going in the early light and made her way along the deserted road with a mixture of angst and curiosity. So far, nothing on this trip had been as she’d expected or experienced.

Eventually, she saw what looked like the vague outline of a figure in the distance. As she got closer, she could see that it was a man. He was wearing vintage clothing, dressed in brown trousers and a button-down white shirt with a gray Sanfordized hat.

“Hey, there,” he said, once he was within about ten feet of her. “I’m Bert. Your welcoming committee.”

Relieved that there was another person after the experience on the train, and a friendly one at that, Carrie smiled back at him. She decided to ignore the fact that he hadn’t met her at the station or with a vehicle and just make the most of it. It would be rude to remark on anything else.

“Hi,” she said. “Nice to meet you, Bert. I’m Carrie.”

“Well, of course,” he said with a chuckle. “Who else would you be?”

“Right,” she said, looking around at the desolate country road, which seemed to have nothing but dead grass and a few tired-looking trees. There were no crops, houses, or cars as far as the eye could see.

“How far are we going?”

Carrie didn’t want to be rude, but her shoes were not really made for long-distance walking and she was carrying her suitcase rather than wheeling it due to the road. Bert seemed untroubled by either the heat or the road. Maybe he had better shoes; Carrie didn’t know, they looked clunky and made of leather.

“Oh, not far,” Bert said with a light wave of his hand. “It’s about a mile more to town.”

“Oh,” Carrie said.

Their perceptions of ‘not far’ differed, it seemed. They walked in silence for a few minutes. Carrie couldn’t take it any longer. She was struggling to remember a patchwork of foggy memories but they weren’t coming together. It didn’t seem wise to come out and admit that she didn’t remember how she’d gotten there.

“Can you tell me anything about the town?”

“It’s a fine town,” he said amiably. “I’m sure you’ll find it to your liking.”

In response to this vague answer, Carrie nodded. It didn’t seem to invite any specific follow-up questions, so she just looked out at the scenery they passed which was again nothing but empty fields. Her feet were starting to feel heavier.

“How much farther?” she asked.

“Not long,” he said.

It wasn’t long, in fact, before they reached what seemed like the edge of town. There was a small house, plain and far from the road, and then they came to a classic downtown, the fixture of many small town revivals. It was in surprisingly good shape considering the age of the buildings. There were no people outside, but that made sense, as it was still early morning.

As they stepped into town, a woman came out of one of the closest shops. She was wearing a yellow flowered cotton dress with a white straw hat. Her expression was friendly. She stepped off of the sidewalk, which Carrie noticed was a wooden boardwalk.

“Welcome to Claymore,” she said. “We’ve been expecting you.”