The Motion Demon (15 page)

‘We are with you,’ echoed back several voices from all sides, and through the walls of the car ten figures passed and surrounded the talkers. These people were of various occupations and professions, including the engine driver of the train and three women. Everyone’s eyes were involuntarily looking for someone; everyone instinctively felt the absence of one companion.

‘There are thirteen of us,’ said a lean, sharp-faced young man. ‘I do not see Master Wior.’

‘Master Wior will not come,’ said Brother Jozef, as if in a dream. ‘Do not look for trackwalker Wior here. Look deeper, my brothers, look into your souls. Maybe you’ll find him.’

They ceased talking, and they understood. Across their faces flowed a great peace, and they glowed with a strange light. And they read their own souls and fathomed one another in a wonderful clairvoyance.

‘Brothers!’ resumed the monk, ‘our bodies are given to us for only a little time longer; in a few moments we may have to abandon them. Then we will part company. Everyone will go their own direction, carried by their own destiny that was forged in the book of fate ages ago; everyone will make their way on their own path, to their own area, which was preordained on the other side. Multitudes of our brothers’ souls await us with yearning. Before the moment of parting arrives, listen once more to a voice from the other side. The words that I’ll read to you were written ten days ago, measuring time in an earthly manner.’

Finishing this, he unfolded some newspaper sheets, barely rustling them, and began to read in a deep, penetrating voice:

‘NW., November 15, 1950. Mysterious Disaster. A mysterious, unexplained event occurred yesterday, the night of the 14th–15th, on the Zalesna–Gron railway line. It concerns the fate that met passenger train number 20 between the hours of two to three after midnight. The actual disaster was preceded by strange fears. As if having a presentiment of ominous danger, passengers had been getting off in droves at stations and stops before the place of the fatal accident, even though their destination was considerably farther. Asked by station officials about the reason for cutting short their journey, these people were vague in their explanations, as if not wanting to reveal their motives for this odd behaviour. More characteristic is the fact that at Drohiczyn several on-duty conductors deserted the train, preferring to risk severe punishment and the loss of their jobs rather than riding farther; only three persons from the entire train personnel remained at their posts. The train left Drohiczyn nearly empty. Several undecided travellers, who at the last minute had drawn back inside the cars, jumped out fifteen minutes later while the train was in motion through an open field. By some miracle these people came away uninjured, returning to Drohiczyn on foot around four in the morning. They were witnesses to the last moments of the ill-fated train before the disaster, which had to have occurred several minutes later.

‘Around five in the morning, the first alarm signal came from the booth of trackwalker Zola, situated five kilometres beyond Drohiczyn. The manager of the station got on a trolley and in half an hour stood at the place of the accident, where he met an investigating committee from Rakwa.

‘An odd picture greeted those present. In an open field several hundred metres beyond the trackwalker’s booth, a severed train stood on the tracks. The two rear cars were completely untouched, then came a break corresponding to the length of three cars; and again two cars in a normal state connected by chains—a one car gap—and finally a tender at the front, its locomotive missing. There were no traces of blood on the tracks, the platforms, or the steps, nowhere were there any wounded or killed. Inside the cars it was also empty and quiet; not one compartment contained a corpse, and not the slightest damage was discovered in those cars present.

‘The visual particulars were written down and sent to headquarters. The railway authorities do not expect a speedy clearing up of this mystery.’

The Carmelite became silent for a moment, put aside the paper, and then started to read from a second one:

‘W., November 25, 1950. Amazing revelations and details concerning the train disaster of the 15th of this month. The mysterious events, which were played out on the railway line beyond Drohiczyn the 15th of this month, have not been explained to the present time. On the contrary, ever-deeper shadows fall on the incident and cloud any understanding of it.

‘This day brought a series of astounding bits of information in connection with the accident that darken the affair even more and give rise to serious, far reaching reflections. Here is a summary of what telegrams from authentic sources tell us:

‘Today at daybreak, the 25th of this month, those cars of passenger train number 20, whose absence was noted ten days ago, showed up on the exact spot of the disaster. Significantly, the cars turned up on that space not as one solid train, but disunited in groups of one, two, or three, corresponding to the gaps noticed visually on the 15th of this month. Before the first car, at the distance of a tender, the locomotive turned up completely intact.

‘Terrified at this sudden appearance, railwaymen at first did not dare to approach the cars, considering them phantoms or a result of hallucinations. Finally, though, when the cars did not vanish, they plucked up enough courage to enter within.

‘Here their eyes were presented with a terrible sight. In one of the compartments they found the bodies of thirteen individuals stretched out on benches or in sitting positions. The cause of death is so far undetermined. The bodies of these unfortunates do not exhibit any external or internal injuries; also there are no traces of asphyxiation or poisoning. The deaths of the casualties will apparently remain an unsolvable puzzle.

‘Among the thirteen individuals who met with a mysterious demise, the identity of six has so far been ascertained: Brother Jozef Zygwulski, from the Carmelite order and an author of several deeply mystical tracts; Prof. Ryszpans, an illustrious psychologist; Engineer Znieslawski, a respected inventor; Stwosz, the engine driver of the train; and two conductors. The names of the other persons are thus far unknown.

‘News of this mysterious event flew like lightning throughout the entire country, bringing forth startling impressions everywhere. Already numerous, sometimes profound, interpretations and commentaries have appeared in newspapers. Voices are heard, branding the defined “railroad disaster” occurrences as false and naive.

‘The Society of Psychic Research is apparently already planning a series of lectures, which several distinguished psychologists and psychiatrists will deliver in the upcoming days.

The walls of the cars, misty like clouds, started to part, dissolve, deteriorate…. Indistinct sheets of roofs were sawn off, ethereal coils of platforms were deflected forever into space, together with gaseous spirals of pipes, tubes, buffers….

ULTIMA THULE

IT HAPPENED TEN YEARS AGO. The event has already taken on dispersed, almost dreamy forms, covered by the azure mist of things past. Today it seems like a vision or a mad reverie; yet I know that every detail, even the most minor, occurred exactly as I remember it. Since that time many events have passed before my eyes; I have experienced many things, and more than one blow has fallen upon my grey head, but the memory of that incident has remained unchanged, the picture of that strange moment is permanently and deeply etched into my soul; the patina of time has not dimmed its strong outline—on the contrary, it seems that the passage of the years has mysteriously brought its shadows into relief….

At the time I was the stationmaster of Krepacz, a small mountain station not far from the border. From my platform one could see the extended jagged mountain chain of the boundary as clearly as the palm of one’s hand.

Krepacz was the next to the last stop on the line heading to the frontier; beyond it, fifty kilometres away, was Szczytnisk, the final station in the country, which was watched over with the vigilance of a borderland crane by Kazimierz Joszt, my fellow colleague and friend.

He liked to compare himself to Charon, and the station charged to his care he renamed, in ancient style, Ultima Thule. This fancy was not just a remnant from his classical studies, as the appropriateness of both names lay deeper than outwardly apparent.

The Szczytnisk region was truly beautiful. Even though it was only a forty-five minute drive by passenger train from my place, it betrayed a fundamentally separate and individual character not met with anywhere in these parts.

Nestling against a huge granite wall that fell straight down, the small station building reminded one of a swallow’s nest attached to the recess of a rock. The encompassing peaks, two thousand metres in elevation, plunged the surrounding wide areas, the station, and its warehouses into semi-darkness. The gloom blowing from the tops of these colossi covered the railroad haven with an elusive shroud. Perpetual mists whirled about the peaks and rolled down in wet, turban-like clouds. At the level of a thousand metres, more or less at the middle of its height, the wall formed a ledge in the shape of a huge platform, which, as if magically gouged, was filled to the brim with a silvery deep-blue lake. Several underground streams, fraternizing secretly in the bowels of the mountain, gushed from its side in rainbow-coloured waterfalls.

To the left were ranges eternally draped with a green cloak of firs and stone pines; to the right was a wild precipice of dwarf mountain pines; opposite, as if a boundary marker, was the unyielding edge of strong winds. Above was a sky cloudy or reddened by the dawn of a morning sun. And beyond—another world, strange, unknown. A wild, sealed-off spot, ominous with the poetry of peaks forming a boundary.

The station was connected to the rest of the area by a long tunnel forged into the ranges; if not for this tunnel, the isolation of this recess would have been complete.

The rail traffic, wandering among the lonely peaks, dwindled, slackened, spent itself out. A small number of trains, like meteors thrown out of an orbit, emerged infrequently from the depths of the tunnel, and drove up to the platform softly, silently, as if fearful of disturbing the reveries of the mountain giants about.

A train, after unloading its cars, would glide a few metres beyond the platform and into a vaulted hall hewn out of the granite wall. Here it stood for many hours, looking out from the sockets of empty windows to the dim cavern and waiting for a replacement. When the longed-for comrade arrived, the train lazily left the rocky shelter and went out into the world of life, into the fervour of a strongly throbbing pulse. Then the next train would take its place. And again the station would fall into a dreamy slumber wrapped in a veil of mists. The quiet of this secluded spot was interrupted only by a chirrup of eaglets in the surrounding gullies or the noise of rocks tumbling in the ravines.

I loved this mountain hermitage immensely. It was for me a symbol of mysterious lands, a mystical frontier between two worlds, a sort of suspension between Life and Death.

At every available moment, entrusting the care of Krepacz to my assistant, I took a trolley to Szczytnisk to visit my friend Joszt. Our friendship was long-standing; it had been struck up when we were schoolmates and had been strengthened by the bond of our profession and our close proximity to each other.

Joszt never repaid my visits.

‘I will not set one foot out of this place,’ he would typically answer my rebukes. ‘I will remain here to the end.’ Taking in the surroundings with an enraptured glance, he would add after a while, ‘For is it not beautiful here?’

I would silently acknowledge this, and everything continued on as it had before.

My friend Joszt was an unusual person, in every respect strange. Despite his truly dovelike gentleness and unparalleled kindness, he was not well liked in this area. Mountaineers seemed to avoid the stationmaster, getting out of his way from a distance. The reason lay in an odd belief of unknown origin. Joszt had the reputation among the country-folk as a ‘seer’, and this in the negative connotation of the word. It was said that he could foresee in his fellow creatures the ‘character of death’, that he had, as it were, a presentiment of its cold breath on the face of those chosen to die.

How much truth there was in this, I do not know, but, in any event, I noticed in him something that could have upset a suggestible and superstitious mind. The following strange coincidence made a particular impression upon me.

There was at the Szczytnisk station, among other employees, a switchman named Glodzik, a diligent and conscientious worker. Joszt liked him a good deal and treated him not as an inferior but as a friend and fellow professional.

One Sunday, arriving for a visit as usual, I found Joszt in a gloomy mood, sullen and forlorn. When I asked what was the matter, he put me off and maintained his sombre expression. Just then Glodzik showed up, reported something, and requested instructions. The stationmaster muttered something, cast a strange glance at the other’s eyes, and clasped his coarse, toil-worn hands.