Brian
Rosenberger

Arlene
Ang

Stephen
Collicoat

Christopher
Brown

Tim
Johnson

Ben
Farmer

No one speaks about the Dark Train.

I stare at this sentence. It can't be true. Someone must have said something.

It wouldn't have been in open conversation. Perhaps it was whispers in a playground or words overheard, seeping from behind a bedroom door. But it must have happened. I must have heard someone say something.

The odd thing is that I can't imagine who that would be. After all, the Dark Train is the last taboo. A conversational frontier that no one wishes to cross.

Sometimes, it seems to me that I was never told. One moment, I was innocent. The next, I was as thick with guilty knowledge as a leech with blood.

Some knowledge is a gift. This is a burden. I'll lighten my burden if I tell you what I know. If you don't wish to shoulder some weight, stop reading. Gentle delights await on other pages. You have been warned.

So what do I know? It's probably easier to begin with what I don't know.

I don't know for instance, where the Dark Train begins or ends its journey.

What I know of the Dark Train frightens me. It is anarchy in a world of necessary rules. Its logic is the reasoning of a mad or evil mind.

Mine is a busy town. Trains traveling on the up or down line include it as a stop. But not the Dark Train. I have stood on the platform at evening waiting for a train to take me to the city. Even as the signals change, the Dark Train has hurtled past. And I have looked at other people on the station, but no one catches my eye.

I puzzle about such things. The Dark Train must have cut in front of my train, arrowing out from some branch line.

But there's no consistency in the timetable. Sometimes, the Dark Train will hurtle back and forth down the line like a maddened insect. Other times, it will coast past when no train is scheduled. It may not be seen for months. Then, just as one senses an easing of tension among people, one hears the distinctive clack of the rails, the familiar muted whir of its great engine and everyone, even the gentlest souls like my father, become short tempered and unreasonable.

I wonder how passengers know when to catch the train if the timetable is so erratic. Yet the train carries passengers. One can see masses of heads bent over, huddled in the dim moonlight. Faces bobbing like pale balloons behind the fleeting windows.

The train shows no light. No headlight. No tail light. No illumination from any carriage and the Dark Train runs only at night.

When I was a child, I would wonder how the driver could see when everyone else was blind. I imagined a tall, thin man hunched over the controls in the blackened cab. Only his eyes - green and shining - gleaming in the night.

The thought of a man with cats eyes made me giggle, but then the thought of the Dark Train killed the laughter in my throat.

Yet, even without lights, it has never hit another train. Somehow, the signals switch on automatically as the Dark Train approaches. Just as well!

Now, there's a grim thought. Imagine a train being hit by a shadow. The next morning, you find the Dark Train derailed. Dead passengers spilling from broken windows and buckled doors. All the train's secrets revealed in the sunlight. Would the passengers be normal human beings or hideous freaks?

Human beings or monsters, it's hard to imagine where the passengers board the train. I suspect the Dark Train only stops at long abandoned country stations. The places that pass in a blur as you travel home. Boarded up ticket offices. Locked waiting rooms. Weeds breaking through cracked asphalt. Stations surrounded by quiet fields, brought to brief life so that passengers can board or leave the train.

It's true that the Dark Train has never hit another train, but once it caused a terrible accident.

Lone Pine Ridge is located several clicks out of town. It is a wild and lovely place. A favorite spot for couples who park out there to make love.

Well, there was a man I knew who took a girl out to the ridge. Afterwards, pretty full of himself, he drove her home.

They were probably laughing as his car approached the rail crossing. The boom gates were raised. It was late at night. Perhaps, their radio was playing.

They were halfway across the rails, when the train swooped like a bird from the dark.

People say that deaths like that are quick. I don't know. It seems to me that it's all relative. What seems swift to an onlooker may to a victim be an eternity of twisting metal, crushing bones, spurting blood and shredding flesh.

I can't tell. What I know is that the train dragged the mangled wreck over a kilometre down the track before flinging it into a gorge.

Now, let me be honest in the strict confessional of this page. I never liked the man who died. The girl? Well, I loved her. Hopelessly, from a distance. I thought her innocent. Her death and the thought of what she let him do to her angered me then. It angers me today. It wasn't the first time they went together to Lone Pine Ridge.

In some way, I feel responsible for their deaths. As though, I caused the boom gates to freeze and I summoned the Dark Train. I know that's absurd.

There was a cursory examination of the scene, a hurried inquest, a vague mention in the local newspaper and the funerals were swiftly held. They were private funerals, which is rare in our tight-knit community where the death of two young people would generally attract many mourners. It was furtive and meanly done.

I dreamt about the Dark Train last night. I often dream about the train and I'm sure that many people I pass on the street during the day - people with haunted, tired expressions dream about it as well.

Unlike my many other dreams, most of which I have forgotten in the morning, this was a horrid and vivid dream.

I dreamt that I was living in my house, but I was much younger than I am. My parents had warned me not to leave the house at night, cross the safe suburbs and watch the Dark Train pass.

Ignoring their warnings, I climbed out of my bedroom window and hurried to the station.

When I arrived, I was astonished to find many people, perhaps everyone from the town, crowded there. And the Dark Train was there as well. Its doors were open and people were pushing into the train, disappearing through the doorways that gaped open like a row of black, astonished mouths.

There was a little moonlight. Enough for me to recognize each person. There were men, women and children. All ages. Many professions. Here was the vicar. There the entire police force, including the Chief. The man who came to fix the air conditioning last summer. Mothers were plucking their babies from prams to pass them up to husbands, before the women mounted the stairs.

The boarding went on for a long time. Hundreds, no thousands, of people crowding into the train. An astonishing number, given that it was only a five-carriage train. But there was always room inside.

I think the windows must have been tinted because all that I could see was the sudden glint of moonlight on eyeglasses or the flash of a watch or ring.

The train was still and the night seemed silent. Gradually however, I became aware of a sound that rose and fell in a low moan. At first, I thought it was the wind, though the air didn't stir. I slowly realized that the sound came from the passengers inside the train.

At length, the crowd thinned and I saw my parents further down the platform. I called out, but my father, as one transfixed, wearily mounted the steps and entered the train.

My mother followed, staring ahead without expression, When she reached the top of the stairs however, she paused, turned to me and smiled. Her smile was so sad and loving, that I began to cry. Yet, there was also something so chilling in that smile that I felt my tears harden into ice on my cheeks. Then she disappeared and the door closed.

The train started and began to slowly move away.

Then I was running, my heart churning. Running down the station. I leapt onto the outside steps of the train, arms flailing, fingers gripping the steel guide rail.

I began to climb. First step. Second step. On the third and final step, my fingers touched the door handle. Then, filled with an overpowering terror and revulsion, I let my hand slip. I knew then that I must jump back onto the station.

And all the time, the train was gathering speed. Jump, I told myself. Jump now, before its too late. But as I turned, gathering myself to leap to safety, the door behind me was flung open and an arm - my mother's arm was thrust out and gripped me by the shoulder. I was astonished at her strength. She plucked me off the steps as though I were weightless and drew me into the carriage.

Then the door closed and I was inside the Dark Train.

I awoke before dawn and lay in bed for a long time, bathed in sweat. I heard a faint sound disappearing into the distance. It may have been a train.

Finally, I found a pen and paper and wrote down the story you have read.

Some time, very soon, I must leave my room. Face whatever truth lies on the other side of my door.

Some time.

Just not for a while.

© 2003 Stephen Collicoat