Weird Tales volume 38 number 03 Canadian (21 page)

With a series of ominous jerks the train gained speed and Larue watched the black ties flash out from under the belly of the

car. Not uittH then did the onpossibileness

of his situation strike him. The train was going too fast by now for him to get off . , . running a trip that had never been meant, for the el was no more after noon that day. This unscheduled run was sheer madness. Suddenly, with horror, the memory of the demolition crew on the bridge came back to Larue. Good God, by now a lot of those bridge rails would have been pried and ripped and loosened. What was Nevers thinking of ... if it was Nevers!

Larue got to his feet and started into the interior of the coach, feeling his way up the black aisle, his hands guiding him as he touched the worn backs of the seats. The train lurched around a curve and Larue teetered to keep his balance. Never in his years of riding the elevated had it traveled so fast, of that he was sure. Lights from houses they passed flickered feeblv through the dirty glass windows and the scat backs took on the sepulchral outlines of ghostly monsters. He forced himself onward and gained the division between car number three and number two.

Looking ahead along the aisle, he could see through the open front the swath cut by the headlight. Lord, there was something eerie about this. He fought hack the whimpering cry that rose in his throat. Suppose no one was aboard Suppose the train were running by itself! Even as the superstitions of his ancestors threatened to crowd his mind, Larue's reason fought them back. Of course, there was a man up there. It was Nevers, he thought. Or maybe it wasn't Nevers. Could be there was some reason foi this trip. An inspector going down the line a ways for some purpose. A thin chance, but the idea bolstered him.

HE STUMBLED through the silent middle car and came to the first. His steps slowed, his fears powerful within him again. The car grew brighter around him as the train thundered into a more brightly lit section. The F Street station loomed ahead. But desolate tonight. No persons watching, no lines of children with flags, no band,

RIDE THE EL TO DOOM

no dignitaries. Only loneliness. They flashed through the station and out. As the el thundered along in its cavern between buildings, here and there Larue fleetingly glimpsed a face at a tenement window or a person gesticulating.

These people knew the el. They had lived with it for years just as he had, lived with its noise and rattle and dirt, and they knew it had died at noon that day, died forever-more, and yet here was this monster ghost thundering again, this magic symbol of the railroad on stilts that refused to die. He could tell from some of the flash glances that they were startled, disbelieving what they saw —a yellow finger of light and then the rumbling clattering black train following the thin cone of brilliance, speeding through the night on the condemned el. And they knew as he knew that the train must stop, for men had killed the creature called the el. They had cut at it and torn at it and broken its structure. Larue's mouth went dry. Thin factory funnels, gray in the night, loomed past outside.

From that he knew they weren't many blocks from the ramp that led up onto the bridge. And the bridge tracks, he knew, were already in a state of partial demolition. He staggered forward, then again the car swayed beneath him. As he edged closer to the motorman's compartment at the very front and right of the first car, the fear that no one would be within that compartment took him by the throat and seemed almost to shake him in rhythm to the swaying of the car.

With a great effort of control, he threw himself ahead, wrenching at the motorman's door. He pulled it open and the words burst forth then.

"Oh, Pete! God, man, I'm glad to ?ee you! Look, you've got to pull this thing down. You know the tracks are down up ahead!"

Gone was the picture of the watchman lying back there in the yards, for here instead of nobody, instead of some ghost, was old Nevers crouched reassuringly as always over his controls.

"Pete," said Larue again, grabbing the

man's craglike shoulder, "slow her dow r n. The bridge's not far away."

But the old man just sat there, his eyes staring ahead.

The moment of relief was gone for Jack Larue. The foundry worker cursed and pleaded. He wedged himself into the tiny compartment with the motor-man. He screamed at Nevers.

"For God's sake, man, don't you understand? There's no more track up ahead. I saw them pulling it up myself. You'll wreck her, I tell you, Pete. Yotfve got to listen to me."

The el jiggled bale fully around the corner and then Larue sensed rather than saw its upward pull. The grade leading toward the ramp! Larue screamed then and looked ahead. The yellow cone of light fumbled through the darkness and then picked out the ramp far ahead. Larue looked away and at Nevers again.

"You're crazy, man," he screamed. "Stop her, Nevers, for God's sake!"

BUT the motorman sat his seat with steely determination. The light that fell in irregular squares in the compartment seemed to strike and reflect from Nevers. There was a quality about the man that terrified Larue. Suddenly he flung himself across the motorman's body and lurched frantically at the controls. He got one hand on the brake and the other hand closed over the long metal lever that controlled the speed. His arms and back strained with the frenzied effort to move them against Nevers' strength and will. He could not. The old man possessed a superhuman steellike strength. The metallic resonance of the steel el structure suddenly gave way to the ominous hollow-like nimble of the ramp. The wooden cross-beams beneath the ties echoed back the thumping of the train like evil demons pounding in derision. Larue redoubled his efforts and each split second seemed an eternity of fear and struggle and decision. He jerked his hands from the levers and turned them on Nevers. He struck the man with all the strength of his hard workman's body. His hand cracked and bled and broke against the rocklike u:i-

RiDE THE EL TO DOOM

yielding creature before him. His Oay-ings caught the whistle cord and the banshee hoot of the train joined in mournful discord to Larue's own scream. His picas were incoherent now. He must kill this man before him or he would die!

The ramp vibrated hollowly beneath the coach. The laborer shot a fearful glance ahead up the ladder of light that groped along the ties in the distance. The rails were still there as far as he could see, but out in the middle of the West River Bridge, out over the swirling dark water dozens of feet below, there were no tracks and the train would suddenly be out of its element, helpless, forsaken. The image of this morning lighted up in I-arue's mind. Looking* back out dtf a window as the el rumbled the other way across the West River . . . looking back and seeing the crews coming together with their trools attacking the rails and destroying them section by section. That was ahead, he knew. The incline grew steeper and the echoes from the ramp fell away to become deeper, longer. They were on the bridge!

I-aruc started to back out of the motor-man's compartment. He looked ahead, and there, oh God, there he could at last see the shining reflection of the rails was broken, somewhere out there ahead near center-bridge. With ghastly suddenness he felt a hand of iron close on his wrist and turned away from the sight ahead. Nevers had turned his head and was looking at him. A glinting skull-like visage leering with evilness. The face was like an old carving.

"Pete, for God's sake!" Larue screamed. "We've got to jump. It's our only chance."

But the look from the other man told him what Nevers meant to do, and Larue's only thought desperately was to get free, to hurl himself out the front to one side. The space lie still had to go, the seconds he had to fight with, both were shortening.

Larue hurled his body backwards, clawing at the arm that imprisoned his own. He Lhen realized suddenly what he -was up against. This was a monster —no creature of God, of flesh and blood.

On either side was the blackness of empty air. Somewhere far down there was the water. Ahead, much too near now, was the begipning of the destroyed sections. Rails pulled aside, twisted and bent, missing. Larue charged forward then, straight at the .creature who opposed him, his hard body rammed against the other. Everv muscle developed from years at the fotmdry came into play. The thing hefore him gave ground slightly to counter this new assault, then Jack's free hand came down in a wicked slash over the hand that held him. He reversed his direction and lurched backward toward the opening in the front of the train. His monster opponent, surprised, came with him for a few groaning, precious feet. Larue gained the front of the car vestibule and levered his shoulder around me coping. The guard chain across the front broke. The thing named Nevers groaned. There was a sudden scream of twisting metal, a distinct snapping sound, and Larue was free. The least horror of the moment was that Never 1 ;' hand unaccountably had come with him as though wrenched from its very socket. He was staggering, flying out onto the side to fall clear in a somersaulting, bouncing heap along the right of wav or. the bridge. The train rumbled on past.

Jack raised himself up. He was still

clutching in his hand the weighty something. .The train was silhouetted for a splendid moment against the lights of the city a? it charged relentlessly onto No Man's Land where tracks had been razed. With reeling senses the foundry worker watched the spectacle. The train suddenly bucked. The first car went up in the air as though it had gone over a gigantic bump. Then it slid sideways at incredible speed, dragging the other two along. All this seemed soundless to Larue. The el glided sideways then and tumbled off the bridge. Only then did he become aware ef the sounds. The awful shrieking and grinding of iron upon iron, the crash of impart, the rending noise of rubbing, protesting metal, the bump and whining, and then from below a long-drawn out splash . . . and silence!

RIDE THE EL TO DOOM

For a time he lay there, too stunned to do other than look weakly around him on the ghost-like bridge. Then he got to his feet. He forced himself to the side of the structure and looked over. The water below was running silently, covering its loot without trace. Trembling violently Jack stumbled on across the bridge and found his way home, still clutching a bulky weight in his hand. This horror— something lie was too dazed to look at and appraise, afraid that it was what he most feared, no more incredible than anything else his evening—Ncvers' hand!

BY NOW, sirens were sounding in the streets below and Larue knew that rescue squads were on the way to the piers. Sc much had happened that evening that the foundry worker's mind was numb. Still hypnotized with horror, he dropped the something he had sneaked home with him from the bridge in a corner and hurriedly covered it with newspapers. Then he went down into the street again, down to a waterfront excited and packed now with eager, watching people In addition to the apparatus at the wharves, there were police launches and small craft of all types cruising around in the river directly beneath the bridge. On the span itself he could see figures moving. Searchlights were shining down onto the water. Larue watched for hours as people around him came and went, and as dawn finally streaked the skv to the east. The boats drifted and crossed in eccentric lines around the center of the river, their white wakes criss-crossing over the grave of the el train

Full morning came and Larue reluctantly left to have breakfast in a little restaurant and then headed for work. Somehow he got through the day. He bought all the evening papers. "A mentally deranged employee of the el line," it is stated, "stole a train last evening alter fatally beating his roommatae and a guard, both employees of the el, and ran the train of three cars off the West River P.ridge where demolition of the tracks had already started. Police stated that they expected Nevers' body would be

recovered when wreckage of the el could be raised."

Larue worked his time at the foundry in a daze. For him, the river had a morbid, fateful fascination. He was on hand when the smashed cars of the el train beg-ir to come up, caught and drawn up laboriously with grappling hooka. But Never? was not found. Still the police trawled the river, for, as was pointed out in the newspapers, the engines were supplied with an automatic device that caused the train to stop of itself if the motor.man left the controls. Somehow, the press speculated, Ncvers' body might have wedged itself through a window and was even now somewhere at the bottom of the river.

Larue knew at last, and he lived with his terrible secret, not wishing to confirm it, clinging to the doubt, slim though it was, that he was crazy, that his memory of that night was wrong. A nightmare delusion, although the livid bruises still apparent on his body testified olherwi^. Days passed, and the foundry worker shunnec 1 the corner of his room. After several weeks, the police and press admitted grudgingly that possibly Nevers had escaped on the bridge just before the train went off. Police nets were spread for the deranged murderer and Larue watched the papers closely. More time passed and nothing new was uncovered.

Finally, very desperately, the foundry-worker went to the corner of bis- room one night and dug out the object which had rested there for so many weeks under an increasing pile of newspapers. Tie took what he found there in trembli>v: hands, horror-stricken, and headed out through the foggy darkness for the wharves, the bundle under his arm. He got to the water's edge and stood for a moment looking around to see if he was observed. Satisfied, he took the paper covering off and held Nevers' arm in his hands. Something the dead Philpot had said came back to him poignantly. No. the motorman hadn't been human.

And Larue dropped the metal throttle lever he'd been holding into the water to join the rest of Pete Ncvers of the el.

These Popular Works of Fiction

Now Offered for Sale at

NEW LOW PRICES

LOVE'S LOVELY COUNTERFEIT. MILLIE'S DAUGHTER.

James M. Cain. Donald Henderson Clarke.

The author ot The Postman Always "Millie's Daughter" has been sold to