When the Devil is the engineer of a steaming locomotive, you can bet your first class ticket that you’re in for one Hell of a ride! “All aboard!”
The Soul Train Short Horror Story By Michael L Lewis
“The eyes are a window to the soul.”
Angel Graves despised flying. Her fear of heights had kept her from doing a lot of things that she would otherwise love to do. Like riding on a speeding roller-coaster, or being lifted high above the ocean on a sky-wheel beside the man she love’s, or even mountain climbing with Mother Nature, but no. Her fear of heights kept her high-heeled wearing feet glued to the ground. Thus; she opted for the number nine train from Trenton New Jersey, to Fresno California to see her parents for the Holidays. Her husband Charles often complained and dreaded the long ride across country when to him flying came just as natural as sleeping, and waking, but to Angel, it was crash and burn and no return. As luck would have it, Charles had contracted a bad case of the flu, and was unable to go this Christmas to his in-laws who he loathed more than he loathed fruit-cake. Angel thought about staying home in their cozy little town-house, and watch over him while he was sick, but she had already paid for round-trip, and that was a lot of money to just throw away. She had to go. Angel didn’t like the idea of riding the train alone on such a long trip, but she was a grown girl, and grown girls did things they didn’t always want to do. And riding on a train with a bunch of strangers for almost three thousand Miles wasn’t exactly her cup of tea.
Angel made sure her husband didn’t need anything before she left for the train depot by taxi. She kissed him on the forehead, and picked up her luggage and headed out the door to the awaiting yellow cab in a misting rain. She arrived at the train station a little past nine in the morning, and the snow had gently started to fall over the icy railway. Her train wasn’t scheduled to arrive for another thirty minutes. So she went inside of the station to where it was warm, and waited for her number to be called out over the intercom. She pulled out a book from her purse, and began to read to kill a little time while she waited. As she sat on the bench reading her Stephen King bestseller, (as they all were) she noticed that she was the only one at the station, except for the people who worked there of course. Where was everybody? She wondered, as she looked all around, this place should be crammed packed with scores of people waiting in long lines; Mothers’ cursing at their children. Had everyone started flying these days? She laughed at herself at the thought of her being the only person left on earth who was too chicken- shit to get on a god damned airplane. Impossible, she thought again, biting her lower lip as she had done growing up as a little girl when she became uneasy about a Situation. “Um, excuse me sir.” She said to a man that was standing by the door dressed in a Conductor’s uniform. “Pardon my stupidity, but where is everyone?” The man in the conductor’s uniform looked at her peering out from above his wire framed glasses and smiled.
“Don’t you worry about a thing, Angel. You’re well taken care of. Your train should be arriving any minute now. He said looking down at the silver pocket watch that was hooked to the side of his jacket with a long silver chain. Angel thought for a moment that she saw a mouth filled with razor sharp teeth behind that crooked smile. She shook the vision off, thinking that she must still be half asleep. “How did you know my name?” “Oh, I guess you just look like an angel. Don’t let it bother you none. I call all women that if truth should be known. “Here it is Right on time,” He said looking down at his pocket watch once again. “Looks like you and I will be the only two boarding this train.” He said smiling, but this time when he smiled. There were no shark teeth. The large black train gradually pulled up to the cement platform for Angel to board. The conductor opened the door for her, and ushered her upon the passenger train, took her ticket, and showed her to her seat by the tinted window. “All, aboard!” The conductor shouted as the train slowly pulled out, and away from the station. Angel noticed that there were at least a lot of people on board the train with her, unlike at the station. Maybe no one from her neighborhood was traveling by train this year. With the economy so bad these days, she even questioned herself about taking such long expensive trips with the times being as they were. The train gradually begun to pick up speed as it raced out of the city of Trenton, and on through Pennsylvania. In her cabin there weren’t many people of her own age on board.
Most of them, if not all were old, and smelly. Not the kind of smell you get from not taking a bath or anything like that, but that old people smell. Angel often thought of that smell as impending death. God, she just knew that she herself would smell like that one day, and someone would think that of her also. But she had a long time to go before she had to worry about that. Still in her mid twenties, and beautiful; getting old was the last thing she wanted to think about right now. But there was something strange and eerie about them just the same. They weren’t talking amongst each other like old people often do when they gossip about everyone else. To Angel, they looked more like wax figures sitting at the pews in church. Never looking away, or speaking a word unless it was to yell out at the top of their lungs for the rest of the congregation to hear their pleas of “Amen!” Angel’s attention broke away from the old people, and turned to a stewardess who was walking slowly down the isle coming toward her with a metal push tray in hand. Upon it was hot coffee, sodas, food, and on the bottom of the tray on a small shelf was the plastic airplane bottles of liquor. Angel thought that she could handle a shot or two of some Vodka if they had it. The young woman stopped in front of Angel with her metal push cart. The young woman was wearing high heels, and a merry maid outfit showing off her long slender legs in black laced stockings like some kind of cheap porn star. She came straight to her as if the others in the cabin didn’t exist. “What would you like dear?” The woman asked smiling beneath a bright red coat of lipstick that was freshly painted upon plump lips.
“Vodka.” Angel said sharply, trying not to look at the dolled up stewardess in fear of breaking out into laughter. She would expect something like this at a Hooters bar, but not here where Children were apt to be; although she didn’t see any at the moment. At least not in her coach, but somewhere…? “Will that be all for you. It will be awhile before the master will come for you.” The woman said politely, but there was something about her politeness that didn’t set well. Angel looked at the beautiful woman puzzled. “What did you say?” Angel asked thinking that she misinterpreted the waitress. “Oh, will that be all you need. It’ll be awhile before lunch is served is all I said.” “Another bottle if you don’t mind, thank you.” Angel said, as the woman handed her the bottle of Vodka. Angel sipped on the first bottle, and slammed the second bottle down without as much as a sour face. The woman walked away pushing her tray between the isles of people never showing them any attention whatsoever and the people never giving her as much as a glance, as if she were a ghost on the wind. These people were either dead, or vegetables? Angel thought, feeling scared, and all alone. There was something wrong with this train, and the people on it. Maybe it was just her imagination, but she didn’t care. She was getting off at the next stop, and returning home.
After awhile of sitting, and gazing out the tinted window by her seat, the shots of liquor began to work on Angel. She wasn’t use to drinking liquor this early in the day and with no food on her stomach… she begun to feel drunk, and disoriented. Inside the cabin, lights begun to flicker on and off causing a strobe light effect, and casting eerie shadows with ghastly illuminations. The walls started to melt all around her, and the coach seats now resembled gravestones. Blood flowed freely down the isle; Snakes’ slithered out from the passenger’s eye sockets, and their flesh hung down from bare-bone as they all screamed a blood-curdling scream at the top of their lungs. Angel felt as if her ears were about to explode leaving her brains, and skull fragments scattered all over the place. The screams from the old people grew louder, and louder, until Angel, herself begun to scream. When she awoke, she was still screaming at the top of her lungs until she realized it was all just a really bad dream. Must’ve been the Vodka? She thought pulling herself together. It was already lunch time, and the smell of fine cooked meals awakened her senses making her stomach quiver, and ache. Within moments, the young stewardess came back with the push tray covered with steaming hot food. Again the lustrous young looking woman paid no mind to the other passengers; only Angel. “Now are you ready to eat dear?”
“Yes please, I am famished. I’ll have a large plate of the lasagna, and the garlic bread… oh, and leave the red wine also.” Angel told the woman, unfolding her lap tray. “I told you that you would be starved by lunch time.” The young woman said placing the plate of lasagna down in front of her. The steam rolling off the four-cheeses’ had made Angels mouth water. The garlic bread, the wine, it all looked very enticing, and she couldn’t wait to dive in. Angel pulled her long blonde hair back into a pony-tail, and begun to devour the pasta as If she hadn’t eaten a bite in years. The stewardess turned away pushing the cart pursing her luscious lips lavishly at Angel, and vanished behind the entrance door. Inside the cabin, the lights begun to flicker off and on again as the train passed through a darkened tunnel somewhere in the Appalachia Mountains. As she looked down to her food, her Pasta resembled human brains, and when she stuck the fork inside the steaming lasagna the tomato sauce oozed out as red and thick as blood. She screamed pushing the tray of food out into the floor, and when it hit the floor isle; a small child or something that had once been a child crawled out from the spilled pasta. The pasta she was about to eat was in fact the child’s brain. The child begun to scream and cry, lying upon the isle in its own blood and drool. The lights were flickering faster, and faster, exploding in a shower of sparks. The train whistle began to blow, and the howling of the wind outside made all the noise inside the cabin unbearable. Angel covered her face and ears with her hands to blot it all out. Everything that
Angel had thought to be a dream was happening again. This was all too real. She thought uncovering her eyes and ears once the screaming stopped. Now she was all alone in the dark cabin. The lights were still flickering wildly. Everything was now cast in an eerie green hue of light. The cabin felt cold, and the tinted windows glazed over with thick ice. She could see her own perspiration as her breath left her warm mouth. Everything was deathly quiet except for the screaming of steel wheels beneath her feet. She thought for the moment that she was losing her mind. She closed her tired watery eyes, and then opened them, and again everything was back to normal, and all the old smelly people were back in their seats again looking upon angel with no emotion. Angel sat back in her seat, and began to think of her husband, and how she wished that he was here on the train with her now. She had no business going so far all by herself anyhow. She thought, scolding herself for leaving. She placed her head against the Window, and watched as the trees, and other scenery zoomed by as the train speed onward with its steel wheels screaming upon the track like a banshee.
In the distance she could see a dark ominous cloud lying heavy in the sky. It was still spitting snow outside, but she believed they were about to get a full-fledged blizzard by the look of things. The storm made her think about Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, and how she felt like that now. Being swept away so far from her home to a strange land where nothing made much since anymore; that was this train. Nothing on this damned train made any sense! The thought circled inside her head like a bad dream, and she longed to wake up in bed to the smiling face of her loving husband. She could almost see his soft unshaven face in her own reflection. No wait! It was his reflection in the tinted window that she saw. Not her own! What was he doing? My God! His insides have been torn out! His entrails strewn across the bedroom like some kind of sick Picasso painting! She tried to shake the horrible image, and dialed the home phone number on her cell. Her hands were shaking like twigs in a high wind. Her heart pounding in her ears, she began sweating profusely. She thought that she may be experiencing a heart attack, or a panic attack, or a god-damned nervous breakdown! Whatever the cause, even if it were only a bout of food poisoning, she had to get off this train even if it meant jumping from the observation deck. She held the receiver to her ear. No signal.
Now she became so frightened that she was making herself sick. She began to get up from her seat to find a restroom, when a long bony hand pushed her back down into her seat. “What the fuck!” She cried out to the old smelly man that was now a skeleton sitting silently across the isle from her. The old man turned his head, and looked at her distraught face, and dis-shelved hair. She gasped kicking herself away from the old man who looked upon her with empty eye sockets. Everyone in her coach was now looking upon Angel with those same empty black holes where there eyes use to be. She began to scream for dear life. Angel kicked at the old man and the others, flailing her arms like a mad orangutan, but there were just too many of them. She could not fight them all no matter how hard, or how old and bony they were. It was twenty to one. “Get the hell off of me!” She cried out again, but it was of no use. They had their bony dry crusted hands all over her now. They were trying to rip her apart, just like in the image of her husband with his insides torn out. “Oh, God!” She cried aloud over and over. “Help me, somebody, please….!” Then when she thought that her thin body could take no more of the prying, scratching, and pulling. A dark figure, a silhouette of a man stood in the doorway looking down at her. He walked in closer. The engineer. Angel thought, and took in a deep breath, as he sat down across from her. She could see that he was a very handsome man with strong facial features. Almost like an Angel. She thought;
falling in love with the beautiful looking man at first sight like she was in some kind of a trance. She was unable to move, or think for herself. She thought about those old Dracula movies where the women were vulnerable under his spell. That’s how she felt now. Only this wasn’t Dracula, or a Dracula movie. This was real life, and the man that sat across from her was… the Devil! The old people without eyes, or their skin returned to their seats quiet again, as if nothing ever happened. She looked down at her watch, but it had stopped working. The hands on her watch had stopped precisely at the time she boarded the train. She didn’t dare move for the fear that it would provoke another attack by those things sitting around her, and the man, the engineer, the devil that sat across from her now clasping her tiny hands in his own had captivated her. She couldn’t move even if she wanted to, and she wanted so much to get the hell off this train! Ten years later. Charles decides to go to the train depot, and take a trip across country in memory of his wife’s Ten year anniversary since her disappearance. He bought a ticket in the same coach, and seat as to where she had set on that gloomy winter morning. As he climbed aboard, and went to his seat by the tinted window. He noticed an old woman sitting where he was suppose to have been sitting. He didn’t want to bother the old lady, and sat down beside her in the isle seat instead. “All aboard!” The conductor called out as the train slowly pulled away from the station.
Charles sat quietly in his seat twiddling his thumbs like a school kid when he noticed something very familiar about the woman beside him. The old woman he noticed was wearing the same clothes his wife had left the house in. And her purse. That was the same purse his wife had carried also. He started to say something when the old woman turned to him. Her eyes were missing. Just dark sockets where her eyes had once been. “Angel…?” The train screams around the bend and vanishes into a thin vapor. The snow is falling gently upon the icy railway. To him, flying was just as natural as sleeping, and waking. To Angel, it was crash and burn and no return…