Hell Train (22 page)

He had ridden a motorcycle before, but had trouble turning on the headlamp. The train was building speed, leaving the station behind. He set off after it.

The road ahead was filled with potholes and poorly lit, but it appeared to follow the tracks. There was no other traffic. Accelerating as much as he dared, Nicholas followed in the wake of the speeding locomotive.

Zoribskia had been the last station marked on the
Arkangel
’s route. Unless it made an unscheduled stop further down the line, he would have to try and board it from the speeding bike. That meant drawing alongside the open observation platform and jumping in, but to do so he would have to leave the road and somehow cross the gravel track. He knew it was an almost impossible feat at the speed he was travelling. He could be killed in the attempt, but there was no other choice open to him.

I finally get the freedom I craved and now I risk everything for a girl I barely know,
he thought.
What an idiot.
He had almost drawn level with the train. He needed to wait until the bed along which the track had been laid was the same height as the road. His headlamp picked up the line of bushes, broken fences, scrub and rocks that separated him from the railway. He had to get closer.

The red tail-light of the train swung back and forth in his beam, taunting him. The
Arkangel
appeared as deserted as the
Flying Dutchman
. His front wheel was almost level with the rear buffer. He twisted the throttle and the bike surged forward.

Ahead he could see a point where the road crossed the track—the railway line dropped down to lie flush with the stones. As he approached, he gripped the handlebars with his right hand and reached out with his left, but the bike quickly became skittish and unstable.

He looked up and caught sight of a dark figure standing at the rear of the train. The Conductor was at the rail, watching him. The crossing-point was approaching fast. Pushing forward harder still, he drew alongside the train and rose in his seat, disengaging his right leg.

Then he leapt.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

THE DOLL

I
SABELLA COULD NOT
catch her breath.

The porcelain arms tightened their grip still further. How could something so graceful and delicate be so strong? She was being crushed against the doll and found it difficult to draw in any air at all now. Her hair was caught in its joints. She felt herself slipping against the rocking floor, and the doll sang on, more harshly than ever.

‘Please,’ she gasped, ‘make it stop, I can’t—’

The singing was growing more shrill with every passing second. The noise was unbearable. The Professor seemed not to notice. He smiled to himself and tapped his foot along with the music.

‘Isn’t that a pretty tune?’ he said, ignoring her pain. ‘I could hear Gounod over and over, and never grow tired of it. Just as well, ’cause I don’t get much choice about that.’

She felt herself starting to lose consciousness. Her arms were bruising, the joints cracking. It felt as if the very marrow from her bones was being forced out. Seams of fire shot up her spine. She could hear the clockwork ticking now, the grinding of gears, the hiss of tiny pistons. The eyes in the porcelain face seemed to belong to a live girl, and were filled with pain.

Isabella’s sight and hearing began to fade.

Suddenly the train lurched as it ran over a set of points, and the doll rocked and threatened to tip over. Isabella used the momentum to push as hard as she could with the tips of her toes. Secured to the doll, she felt her weight pull the pair of them over.

The Professor was in the process of tapping the ash from his cheroot, and was too late to stop them from falling. Isabella and the doll crashed to the floor, and the china arms split open. Tearing herself free, she kicked out at the doll’s face as the Professor came for her, crying out.

She looked back at the nightingale and saw the truth; there
was
a girl inside it. The face was raw and bloody, the teeth and jawbone exposed, the skin of the arms split apart to reveal the meat and bone beneath. The Professor gave a cry of anguish. ‘My precious darling,’ he called out, ‘my little songbird, my poor daughter.’

At that moment, Isabella knew that the Professor had failed his own test on the train many years before. ‘How could you have done that to your own child?’ she asked, revolted.

‘I had no choice,’ he moaned, clutching at her broken, bleeding head. A row of china teeth had fallen out. A dead tongue lolled inside her china lips. ‘She was dying of a rare anaemia, and I was offered the chance to save her life.’

He pulled the plates of porcelain from her face to reveal the diseased and rotted flesh beneath. Isabella saw the clockwork mechanism that had been inserted into her body to make her sing and dance, the cogs and wires and bloodied pistons that had been woven through her ravaged form.

‘The men who built the
Arkangel
said they could rebuild anything in the world. They saved her.’

‘But at what cost?’ asked Isabella, aghast.

‘You would give up your soul if it would save a loved one,’ said the Professor, cradling his shattered doll. ‘Anyone would. That’s what real love means. My poor, poor baby. Run now, little girl, run before I tear your head from your shoulders.’

Isabella rose and fled.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

THE SIGNALMAN

N
ICHOLAS KNEW AT
once that his leg had not cleared the motorcycle. Driverless, it twisted and fell beneath him, catching his left boot, turning his body.

He was not going to make it.

Throwing up his hands to protect his head and bringing up his legs, he fell short, landed and rolled, slamming into a thick clump of bushes. Their stems were soft, though, and covered in springy leaves that cushioned his fall.

He raised his head in time to see the train’s crimson lamp swinging away from him. The whistle gave a mournful double hoot.

At least no limbs were broken. Standing, he looked about; dark hills to the North, low forest to the South, no street-lamps or towns. Rain fell softly on his face. Ahead, a single square of light shone from a cabin. He had no choice but to head in its direction.

The narrow, brown wooden hut looked like a signal box, and as he approached he could see a bearded bear of a man moving about inside. When he got close, the man came out with a shotgun held at his chest.

‘Easy, friend,’ said Nicholas, raising his hands, ‘I’m not here to hurt you.’

‘English,’ said the signalman in surprise, lowering his weapon. ‘Well, you’ve chosen a bad time to visit us. What are you doing out here?’

‘I was on the train that just passed through.’ Nicholas pointed along the track. ‘I jumped from it.’

‘Wait, you were on board the
Arkangel
?’ He raised the gun again.

‘Yes, but I escaped before harm could befall me.’

‘You’re lying. No-one escapes that train. I’ve worked on this line for two decades and I see it pass at this time each year, when the August moon is full. I know what it is, and what it does to people.’

‘Then you know that every passenger must undertake a wager with the Devil, and the outcome decides his fate.’

‘I come from Chelmsk,’ said the signalman. ‘Of course I know.’

‘That is why you speak English.’

‘Yes, we had a teacher from England but—’

‘He was shot, I know. I’m Nicholas.’ He held out his hand.

‘And I am Dimitri.’

‘I need to get back on board that train.’

‘What? Are you insane, man? If you really escaped as you say you did, then you know by now that your very soul was at stake.’

‘There is a girl on board. She has not yet been tested, but she will be, and I fear she will fail. I need information.’

‘There are things about the
Arkangel
it is best not to know, Nicholas. Not if you value your sanity.’

‘Have you ever been on board?’

Dimitri gave a hoarse mirthless laugh. ‘I was raised to be afraid of that accursed engine. I have stayed out of its path ever since.’

‘Tell me, where does its journey start, and where does it finish?’

‘Now, that’s an interesting question. It emerges from the line beyond the foundry in Chelmsk, but I know not from which station, or if one even exists. And the journey ends...’ He raised his hands and moved them apart.
In thin air.

‘The maps on board are all obscured. What happens?’

‘After it passes Zoribskia it goes further down the line beyond this point. The tracks past here branch in several directions, inland and to the coast, and another that passes over a viaduct, but the
Arkangel
takes none of them. One minute it is on the line, and the next it is not. There is something you must understand about the train. It was built in this world but belongs to the next. What you see from outside, and what you see from inside—they do not match.’

‘How do you know this?’

‘My son was taken, and just before the train disappeared, he too, jumped. But he was not so lucky as you. He spoke to me of the sights he saw, and how his soul would remain on board no matter what happened to his physical body. Moments later, he died in my arms. I buried him beside my signal box, where he had loved to play as a child.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘There are many of us who lost children to that monster,’ said Dimitri, his voice sharp with bitterness. ‘There is no way of fighting it, any more than there is of fighting the Devil himself. Believe me, if there was a way I would have thought of it.’

‘Still, I have to try,’ Nicholas replied. ‘I cannot let Isabella face her fate alone. How far is it before the train vanishes?’

Dimitri pointed behind him. ‘Not so many kilometres from here.’

‘Then I am lost.’

‘The distance is not great, it’s true. But the train must slow down as it heads into the forest. It passes this way but once a year, and until it heads off into the netherworld it is subject to our laws of nature. The
Arkangel
is taller than all other trains that pass, and the forest grows thick and deep, so that the topmost branches of the trees catch its carriages. When it reaches the wood it reduces speed, and the stoker must cut away the obstructions.’

‘Could I board it there?’

Dimitri glanced at the clock on his wall. ‘You would have to be fast. Even now, it approaches the forest.’

‘Do you have a vehicle?’ Nicholas asked.

‘No,’ said the signalman, ‘but I have a horse.’

‘Then I must try.’

‘Friend, I do not doubt you but I would not allow a man I have just met to take my horse, even if I was related to him. However, I will take you.’ He closed the door and ran down to a tumbledown stable. ‘We must go right now if you are to succeed in your mission.’

There was no time to saddle the enormous black stallion that Dimitri released from its stall. He swung his bulk onto the animal’s bare back and reached down, pulling Nicholas up as if he was weightless. ‘Hold on tight,’ he warned. ‘Every second we lose bears the train farther from us.’

They set off, reaching a crossroads and cutting over the meadowland that led to the forest.

The stallion galloped hard, but Dimitri thrashed his steed until it cried out in anger. Nicholas clung tightly to the signalman’s immense back. ‘I can see it through the trees,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘You must be ready to climb aboard when I shout.’

They cut down into the forest, the branches whipping their faces, the horse’s hooves skipping on loose shale. Several times it threatened to unseat Nicholas as it vaulted fallen pine branches and ploughed on through narrow paths cut into the woods. Here, away from the hazy glow of the moon, all they had to guide them was the light of the passing train.

Nicholas could hear the familiar
clackety-clack
sound growing closer now, slowing down like the tick of an unwound clock. For a brief moment, moonlight shone a quicksilver outline around the carriages. ‘There is an open deck at the rear of the train where I can board,’ called Nicholas. ‘If you can get me close, I’ll try to jump on.’

‘If you make it, I want you to promise me something. You’ll kill the bastard who murdered my son,’ shouted Dimitri. ‘He’s they one they call the Conductor.’

‘If I make it, I’ll bring you his head,’ Nicholas shouted back.

Dimitri kicked his bootheels into the stallion until its sides bled. ‘Come on, then.’

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

THE SEDUCTION

T
HOMAS RAN ON
through the rocking train, witnessing the trail of sickness and death that lay in the wake of the Red Countess.

So many passengers were dying of the virulent plague, which aged their bones and rotted their skin. They lay collapsed in their own blood, their eyes vanished. The very air grew miasmic and foul, the nightmarish scene sweetly reeking of contagion. It seemed obvious to him now that everyone on the train was dead except for himself and Isabella. There was nothing that could be done to save the others, but he wasn’t meant to; perhaps he was seeing them as they really were—how they would be after the train’s arrival at its final destination. How they were for every night apart from this one.

Thomas pushed on along the corridors, searching for the woman he needed to confront.
All those years in England, talking to families about facing up to evil and overcoming it,
he thought,
all those empty words when this—this is what I should have been doing, fighting real harm—pestilence, war, corruption, degradation, societies rotting from within, and in my safe little world I could not see the truth, for I was blinded from it. I am glad to be tested. If I fail, at least I can say that I faced my demons and found a form of redemption.

He was approaching the private section of the first class carriage. He knew he would find her here. There was a set of four suites, artfully arranged and bedecked with tasseled velvet curtains and banks of cushions, reserved for the most moneyed of travellers. And here, the Red Countess had sunk onto a grand filigreed chaise, distractedly turning her cards on the table set before her, in time with the rocking of the carriage. Joss-sticks burned in the corners, removing the bitter tang of death, filling the compartment with a nauseating sweetness. The light from the sconces flickered across her veiled face.