Fantastic Trains Read online

  Rounding the corner of the building, she saw him. There was no time to talk; they just nodded at one another and took off, Sam in the lead. They ran down alley after alley, changing direction so often that she had no idea where she was. But they weren’t alone. A few turns in, she heard the shouts of Yellows. Their lead began to diminish. And the occasional flash of red among the yellow was making her stomach turn.

  Just as her legs were beginning to give out, her breath stinging in her chest with every pace, the pair darted around a corner into another alleyway and Sam grabbed her arm, forcing her to stop in the center of the alley. Sam dragged her over to an old rusty metal door in the side of a large building.

  “In here.” He beckoned to her and she squeezed in behind him.

  Closing themselves in, they realized they were in some sort of supply closet, filled with brooms, buckets, and spray bottles of various chemicals. The two stood next to each other, breathing heavily with their hands on their thighs. There was a white door with a portal-like window on the far wall. Gathering up her courage, Orilly peered through. A market. Cleanly dressed hawkers stood at rounded desks topped with holograms of various wares: cords of wire varying in thickness and color, bot parts, and metalworking tools. Clearly, they had stumbled upon the dome’s metals market and it was busier than Orilly had ever seen the one back in her dome.

  “We have to get to the other side,” Sam said. “We can’t go back the way we came, or we’ll get caught.”

  “But there are guards everywhere,” she replied. “We’ve got to think of a better way, and fast.”

  Orilly concentrated. She had to put her mind into gear like she did in Calculus, when a particularly difficult problem was given. She scanned her environment. The cleaning chemicals, the mops and brooms, the bin of rags, a few yellow contamination suits. That was it. She knew what they had to do. So she gritted her teeth and started grabbing an armful of brooms and mops.

  “What are you doing?” Sam was watching her in utter confusion.

  “Plugging the aeration modules.”

  Sam’s eyes widened as he started to catch on to her plan. This building had a complicated aeration system with tubes that spilled air from the filtration plant, where outside air was sucked in to fill the domes. That meant that it got air not from the purified air already inside the dome, but from the contaminated air outside. It was an antiquated system that was being phased out. In an air emergency in a building like this one, everyone would have to clear the building until the breach of the system was inspected by officials and cleared. It happened every once in a while, so it wouldn’t be too suspicious, and it was the one emergency a Yellow wasn’t cleared to address. Orilly grabbed up some of the cleaning chemicals and began to spray them into the aeration holes, then re-plug the holes with the handles of brooms and mops. No sooner had she plugged the last one than the contamination sirens began to wail.

  “Hurry,” yelled Sam over the noise, “we don’t have much time.”

  Orilly grabbed for the doorknob into the market. “Oh no.” It was locked. As she dropped her hand, Sam’s replaced hers in trying desperately to wrench open the door, but to no effect.

  “My curse won’t work,” said Sam. “This door is made out of solid wood.”

  But Orilly already knew what had to be done. She couldn’t give herself time to think it through. She would have to reveal more of her curse. There were no two ways around it. Concentrating, she felt in the air as if the doorknob was in her empty hand. She pushed and pulled, frustrated, for what felt like forever, feeling the metal bits inside the lock begin to line up. Then, finally, the door flew open and, with Sam behind her, she raced through the now-empty metals market.

  “Oh my God, I can’t believe I just did that,” she said.

  “That was awesome!” Sam said. “Right, just follow me. There’s a safe place I’m supposed to take you to for the night. Then we can get farther away from here in the morning.”

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea? Won’t the Yellows search the entire dome?”

  “I’m sure.”

  And he looked it, so as he took off, she followed.

  Just as she felt like she couldn’t run any longer, Sam pulled up in front of a corner pub with a neon LED sign that blinked out the name Old Frog Pub and Lodgings. Sam whispered something into the com by the door, and gears of green, black, and silver creaked to slide open the circular door.

  Sam dragged Orilly through benches and tables full of rambunctious customers and the thick smell of alcohol. A quick nod to the bartender and he started up the spiral staircase. At the top was a door with a locking panel. The door scanned Sam’s hand as he pressed it against the screen.

  “I wish I could stay longer,” he said, opening the door to the first room on the left and gesturing to her to head inside, “but I’ve got to be somewhere. Make yourself comfortable. And get some sleep. This place will be safe for the night, but we’ll have to clear out in the morning.”

  Orilly was about to ask exactly what they were going to do in the morning, hoping he meant to take her somewhere even higher up in Resistance secrecy, but he dashed off before she could get out the words, the door locking behind him.

  Orilly looked around the small room Sam had left her in. Three sets of bunk beds and a few floating shelves were her only company. She was finally alone. For the first time since those handcuffs had clicked down on her wrists, she let out a sigh of relief and a grin. She flopped down on the bed’s neon blue sleep sack and let her aching body relax. She had them just where she wanted them. It had almost been too easy. She felt against her calf for the gun she had hidden in its holster, even though she knew it was still there. Just like she knew her knives were still sheathed in the lining of her boots. She only allowed herself a short while to bask in a job well done. She had found the Resistance, but that also meant that her infiltration had only just begun.

  —— « o » ——

  Kendall Eifler

  Kendall Eifler lives in a cottage on Cape Cod with her partner and two cats. She majored in counseling psychology at Lesley University, where she also took writing classes. She enjoys drawing, reading, and nature. Born in Boston and raised in West Concord, MA, Kendall has been telling stories since she can remember.

  Twitter handle: @KendallEifler

  Website: https://kendalleifler.wixsite.com/home

  Devil on the Night Train

  by Samuel Marzioli

  A broiling summer day and sporadic rains turned the house into a sauna. Maja and her grandfather Esidro paid their dues by resting on the front porch step, waiting for a touch of cold that only night would bring. While she read, he soaked his old bones in the quiet, gobs of smoke spewing from the fat cigar trapped between his lips — a smell like earth and wood and spices.

  “I finished another scary book yesterday,” Maja said when the light began to fail. She crimped a page to mark her place and set her book aside.

  “Oh?” Esidro said, tapping an inch of ash into his ashtray.

  “Yeah. This one was about a clown who lives in the sewers and feeds off the fears of children.”

  “Clowns aren’t scary. What did he do? Pop a balloon and make the children cry?”

  Maja had to lean in close to understand him. Not because his accent broke syllables into separate words. It was the way he sometimes let his voice lapse, a thin reed of sound that wavered with a tired flourish.

  “Oh, Grandpa,” she said, when she finally caught his meaning. “I guess you’d have to read it to understand.” And then, “Do you have any stories for me today?”

  “Filipino stories? Or monster stories?”

  “Both.”

  “Maybe. Did I ever tell you about Ongloc, who hunts bad children and turns them into coconuts?”

  “And eats the coconuts with his razor-sharp teeth whenever he’s hungry? Yeah.”

 
; “What about the aswang, who can transform into an animal and suck a baby right out of their mother’s stomach?”

  “The shape-shifting, blood-sucking human eater? Yeah, that too.”

  “Then maybe it’s time you heard about the Devil Man.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “There are many versions of the story, but the one I know is this: they say he drives a train around on the darkest nights, searching the world for a victim. Once he finds one, he kills them, leaving their souls trapped in the passenger cars forever.”

  Maja pursed her lips, sucking on the taste of indecision. “I guess that’s kind of creepy.”

  Esidro humphed. “You guess?” he asked, and diverted his attention to the sky.

  Maja followed his gaze. The sun had dragged the clouds along its westward path, leaving a full moon and ample stars, their soft light glinting in the smear of gray above them. Night had come, and — Maja knew — so had bedtime.

  “It’s getting late. You should go inside,” said Esidro.

  “How about one more story. Please?”

  “No.”

  “Fine,” said Maja, slapping her knees and standing. “But you should know I won this round. My story is definitely scarier.”

  She waited by the doorway for a hug, but Esidro didn’t rise, didn’t say goodnight, didn’t even turn to face her. When she at last picked up on his sulking mood, she rolled her eyes and sighed, letting the front door bang shut behind her.

  —— «» ——

  Maja barely slept that night. A black train invaded her dreams, its polished dome cover glinting in the moonlight, its endless cars grinding, clacking, squealing on phantom rails. The dead pressed up against the windows as they hurtled down her street, staring through the open curtains of her bedroom, to her dream-self sleeping oblivious within. Worse, she realized her grandfather had been a passenger. Huddled in his chair, his expression wasn’t simply sad, but lost, defeated.

  That image of her grandfather stayed with her long after she woke. The diversion of a school day helped, but it was never far outside her mind, and filled her with thoughts of death and pain and misery. Only six years had passed since she’d lost her parents, but her memories of them were too distant to be real. The idea of losing her grandfather — the only family she could truly remember — made her feel sick, a profound ache beyond the reach of any words she could muster.

  She did her best to cheer herself up during the bus ride home and as she whittled the day away playing on her computer. She pictured the Devil Man’s train painted all the colors of a rainbow, spewing cotton-candy clouds, with zoo animals sitting in the passenger cars like humans. The idea made her smile, but wasn’t strong enough to calm her. By the time she and her grandfather went outside, to enjoy the final dregs of light, she could no longer hold it in.

  “Grandpa. Remember what you said about the Devil Man last night?”

  “Yes.”

  “That wasn’t real, right? It can’t be.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Because it doesn’t make any sense. How would a devil get a train or know how to drive it? Also, trains aren’t exactly quiet. Why couldn’t someone hear it coming from a mile away and run in the opposite direction?”

  Esidro tapped his cigar’s ash against his shoe, watching the swirling nimbus of gray smoke suspended above him. “I don’t know.”

  “So it was just a story!”

  “I didn’t say that. While growing up in the Philippines, I saw and heard many strange things, but none as peculiar as the Devil Man. Do you remember when I told you about my experiences during World War Two?”

  She shrugged. “Kind of.”

  “I only shared part of what happened. Never this. After the Japanese attacked the Philippines, I had nightmares of a shadow man piloting a plane over my home, the symbol of the rising sun emblazoned on its wings. When the Japanese occupation forces arrived, I had nightmares of that same phantom pilot. Only now he drove a tank that cruised the city streets, the barrel of its gun pointed at buildings and the helpless citizens cowering within.

  “Once I came to the United States, his tank became a boat. I traveled across the continent, from New York to Oregon, and the boat became a train. So no, I don’t know how he gets these things, or whether they’re real or some kind of illusion. But I believe them to be the Devil Man’s way of taking my greatest joys and deepest fears and using them against me. Does that make sense?”

  Not wanting to upset him by admitting it did not, she nodded slowly, and then changed the subject. “I noticed you have two cigars tonight. Is one meant for me?”

  He answered her grin with a patient smile. “As it so happens, almost fifty years have passed since the liberation of the Philippines.” He lifted the second cigar from his shirt pocket and exposed its chipped and peeling wrapper. “Sad as it is, this one means a great deal to me. I’m saving it, for when the mood for celebration strikes.”

  Tonight his smoke smelled sweet, with just a hint of nuts and pepper. She satisfied herself by taking gulps of air into her mouth, hoping she could collect enough smoke to blow rings like he did. He in turn humphed, and held his cigar’s trail of smoke as far away as possible.

  Maja yawned. “I’m going to bed.”

  “Sweet dreams.”

  “Goodnight Grandpa.”

  They hugged and she went inside, leaving him lost beneath an ample cloud of smoke and reverie.

  —— «» ——

  Maja had another night of troubled sleep. In her dreams, she crawled out of bed in a stupor, crouched by her window, and watched the black train chuff into the small confines of her front yard. Three figures staggered down the steps from the murk of the first passenger car. They lined up side by side on the low grass, their limbs held stiff, bodies swaying with intoxication — or so she thought, before the interior of the train flared, and the truth revealed itself more clearly.

  They weren’t drunk, they were dead. Light threaded through their wounds, accentuating every opening with a sickly yellow glow. The man on the left watched her from a pale crater in his forehead. The man in the middle smiled from the broad glimmer of his throat. The man on the right beckoned to her, his finger framed between the puckered flesh that was his headless neck. She gasped. As if triggered by the sound, the light blinked off, smothering the men again in darkness.

  Maja sunk below the window frame. Only the chattering of her teeth alerted her that she wasn’t sleeping anymore. So then, what part of what she’d seen had been real? She couldn’t bring herself to guess, didn’t dare peek up over the windowsill to find out for herself, merely pushed in closer to the wall, and waited.

  An answer came sooner than she expected. It started with a rapping at the front door. She heard a tap coming from the window of her grandfather’s room, followed by a bang against the bathroom’s outside wall, and then a voice flitted in from some unknown distance, attended by the steady drum of footsteps. Waves of cold enfolded her, sunk like needles into her skin. Whatever ounce of courage her uncertainty had offered vanished.

  “Esidro. Nasaan ka, Esidro?” said a man’s voice, his gravel baritone sweetened by the honey of its timbre.

  “Esidro, nandito ang mga kaibigan mo. Lumabas ka at kausapin mo sila. Naaalala ka nila.”

  She knew the language was Tagalog, but she’d never learned, couldn’t recognize a word apart from her grandfather’s name. At first the voice veered away, but then it scuttled closer, as if its owner had circled the house and was now rounding back on her position. She swallowed hard, the wet grinding of her throat exploding in her ears.

  “Perhaps you’ll only answer if I speak English? It tastes like burning charcoal on my tongue, but I’ll use it if you insist.”

  The footsteps and voice converged on her. Her window screen crackled, followed by a deep, harsh sniffing mere inches from her
head.

  “I can smell you Esidro, can smell the stink of flesh rotting on your bones. Why hide? Why make this difficult when you’re so close to death already?”

  Maja had to run, had to get help, but her legs were slender lengths of rope that couldn’t possibly support her. Her only chance was to wait it out. Maybe if she didn’t move, didn’t make a sound, he wouldn’t notice her. Wouldn’t know that she was—

  “Little girl?”

  She held her breath.

  The voice, now stern, continued. “Little girl. Didn’t your grandfather teach you manners? When the Devil speaks, you answer.”

  The cry that escaped her throat endured long after the Devil Man left and her grandfather stormed the room, accompanied by the modest reassurance of her lights. When white spots twinkled in her vision, and her lungs reversed from want of air, she settled into a whimper. Her grandfather held her for an hour. But nothing, not even his crushing hugs and his promise of “it’s okay,” could restore her to her senses.

  Esidro fell asleep on her bed. For the remainder of the night, she cuddled close to him. Weariness clawed at her, dragged her eyelids down. But she didn’t bother going back to sleep. As far as she was concerned, she’d never sleep again.

  —— «» ——

  Maja dressed and caught the morning school bus. Usually her grandfather accompanied her to the bus stop, but he’d looked so frail in his exhaustion she couldn’t bear to wake him. At school, she kept to herself, barely listening when her friends or teachers spoke to her. She prayed the Devil Man was only a dream. But her mind rebelled against such a convenient notion, piling memories into a wall of evidence before her. At recess, she sat beneath the shade of the breezeway, rocking back and forth, inhaling the scent of fresh-cut grass to calm her. So many thoughts of the night before crammed her mind; she had no room left for new ones.