I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. But now it all started coming to me. Mallory’s warning. The bones we found on the tracks. The missing little girl.
What was this train?
I started putting on my shoes, Connor looking at me with wide eyes. “Wesley, what are you doing?”
“I’m going to go see the train,” I said.
Connor looked out the window. He was wringing his hands together, licking his lips nervously. “But it’s…it’s…”
“You don’t have to come,” I said. “I just want to take a look.”
“No!” Connor grabbed my arm as I was headed towards the door. “Don’t leave me here! I’m scared!”
I felt a flash of annoyance. “Connor, you can stay here. You’re just a big baby anyway.”
I wasn’t sure where that had come from, and it wasn’t like it was the first time I had told him that, but when I had said it, there was something in his eyes that broke. His hands slipped from my arm and flopped by his sides, and he just stared at me like he was lost.
The train wailed again.
I didn’t know how much time I had before it took off again.
“Just stay here,” I said.
“Wesley!” Connor called behind me, but I didn’t turn around.
It was super cold, and I huddled into my jacket as the icy wind bit at me with frigid teeth. The moon glowed above me, and the mist rippled around me like thick ribbons of silver as I ran toward the train tracks. I crept past dark houses—not a single light was on. There was no noise, not even the barking of a dog, or the quick chirp of a bird.
How was it that the train had been making all that noise, and not a single person other than Connor and I had woken up?
The train loomed above me as I came to the tracks. Up close, I finally saw how big it was. It was bigger than any major trains that you usually saw, and its outside structure was knitted together with an assortment of black bones. Wheels gleamed silver in the moonlight, and the train’s engine hissed with white steam as if it were a vampire that had been caught in a ray of sunlight.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, and I couldn’t make heads or tails of it in my mind. Then I heard a voice.
“All aboard! All aboard!”
A man had stuck his body out of one of the compartments, but he wasn’t really a man. He was just a skeleton covered in conductor clothes. He was waving his lantern about, which gave off an alien-green glow.
Through the thick fog moved shapes. Shapes I couldn’t make out. One by one they climbed onto the train, disappearing behind the light of the windows. They passed through me and I felt cold, and slimy, and sickly, and every other bad feeling that you could think of.
I couldn’t help it. I yelped, and ran along the edge of the train. It was like trying to run underwater, as if the mist was trying to hold me back. Finally I passed out of the mist and reached the engine of the train. I placed my hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath. And that’s when I heard another voice.
“Something scare you boy?”
I started and looked above me. In the locomotive cab where all the controls for the train were, there was another skeleton. This one was different. He was tall and lanky, taller than any normal human should of been. He was dressed in a tattered and torn conductor’s uniform, and his hollow eyes had a gleam of ethereal gold in them.
I was frozen in awe and terror. I couldn’t speak, but my mouth hung open as if on a loose hinge. Before I knew what was happening, the engineer skeleton was crawling out of the window and down the front of the train like a spider. Clack, clack, clack went his bones as he moved downward. I fell back on my butt as he towered over me, the train gleaming sickly behind him in the moonlight.
“What do we have here?” he asked. His voice was raspy, like his throat was nothing but a scrap of old leather. “Do you want to go to DarkMare, Son of Adam?”
I still couldn’t speak. Was I dreaming? Was this all some sort of a weird hallucination? DarkMare? Son of Adam? What kind of weird illusion was this?
The skeleton clicked his cracked teeth. “Well? Speak up, boy!”
I shivered and licked my lips. “W-what’s DarkMare?”
“That’s where this train goes,” he said. “We take children there occasionally. We took another child there not too long ago. She was a pretty little thing.”
Another child? Wait, but…
Suddenly I heard a cry. I turned around. In the opaque fog, among the indiscernible shapes, I saw the conductor skeleton struggling with something. Then I saw a flash of the curly brown hair.
“Connor!”
“Wesley!” He was being dragged onto the train by the skeleton conductor.
“Come on now,” the skeleton said. “You re obviously a rider, so in with you.”
Connor yelled as the skeleton tossed him inside the train. The skeleton went in after him and shut the door. Then he stuck his head out an open window.
“All aboard!” he cried again.
“Connor!” I ran straight towards the back of the train, straight into the fog. But just like earlier, I felt myself being hindered, being choked off, like I was being suffocated. It was like walking through jell-o, despite nothing being solid.
The train started to move, its shiny silver wheels turning in the night. Oh, no.
“Connor! Connor!” I didn’t even know if he could hear me.
The compartment he had been shoved into came toward me. I grabbed one of its rails. I got it! Now I just had to swing myself onto it…
The train jerked and went into hyper-speed. I lost my grip and slipped to the ground. Now the train was moving really fast. I got to my feet and started running. “Connor! I’m coming!” But before I knew it, the train had zoomed away, slowly fading into thin air, into the moonlight and the dissipating mist. Into the darkness.
I stopped running. I was all alone.
“Connor…” I felt cold, my heart hammering a million miles an hour. Where had my brother gone?
The sound of sneakers skidding to a stop caught my ear. “Oh, no! I missed it! Wait, what are you doing here?”
I turned around. Her eyes were wide as she stared at me in disbelief.
It was Mallory.