Dreadengine 1902

The train thunders and whistles. This is fine. But what of the dread cold engine that flows spectral in the night?

Author’s note: This is the first of a chilling story which will unfold in several parts. Perhaps not consecutively: the train arrives as it wishes. Keep a look out for further updates of the DREADENGINE.

It was thunder in the night.

I never believed that I would miss that thunder. Crave it.

Grow to fear the strange wisp that would take its place.

My house sat atop a small promontory: a great distance could be seen, including the grassy verges and copses which dotted across this side of the river. Though the mills could be heard, only the smoky dark-sky of their touch could be seen. A ghastly, acrid thing – and I, thankfully, had little cause to venture that way.

The engine was something different. A thing billowing steam. Perhaps not exactly revitalisation for the lungs, but something natural.

The station was not far from my little place on the verge, and while the train would combust and splutter its way past at a decent clip, it had begun to decelerate by the time it passed me by. I am no locomotive expert, but the shuddering and creaking of the thing’s frame was sufficient evidence of this transition.

And its movements began to envelop me.

I would write during the day in my office which overlooked the verges and the tracks. Each passing of the engine would be an interlude to my tasks: a whistling announcement of its arrival. Then – of course – back to writing.

The train did not operate in my sleep, save perhaps for those few times where I was caused, through one malady or another, to retire early. It was always my understanding that the last approach would be ten o’clock of the evening, or thereabouts. Each such passing would seem to be a parting shot. “Hallo! I shall see you again tomorrow!”

To put it bluntly – the engine became a habit. Not one that I had consciously sought out – the house had been left to me by my late aunt, an opportunity that I could not refuse – but one which I had come to appreciate nonetheless.

That is, until it became dread.

Is that a correct assessment? It remains unclear to me if the dread engine is the very same as my daylight friend. Perhaps it chose to wear a spectral cloak. Perhaps it was touched by something else.

You find this babbling strange. I would have agreed, but I must explain.

It began as a whistling, deep in my midnight reverie. The night was cool, and that noise was cooler: I do not know how many times before then it had entered my dreams. Dreams rarely leave their remnants in the waking world, and I similarly do not know if the noise changed the quality of those dreams. But I do know that once, where I was hale and hearty as ever I had been, I awoke to that noise.

That beastly noise.

You may ask: how can a beastly noise of an engine be worse than its thunder and scream-smoke, to which I had already become accustomed?

It was low, and slicing. An ethereal whistle: perhaps the whoosh of something traveling fast: much faster than it had any right to. It was not an engine: it was a strange spectre visiting in the night.

I did not know this, at first. I cannot say what I first thought the noise might be as I lay, casting off sleep. Perhaps the low mewling of a foxling, lost in the cold? Perhaps the strange screech of a damaged automobile – a noise I have not heard often, but I am aware exists in the world.

So I came to look, at my usual viewing port.

It…is difficult to relay the truth of it.

I will relay the strangeness of it. For that is all that it was, to begin: strange.

The thing was clearly an engine, but one that slipped, rather than roared, through the night. It was sleek and chromatic, and flowed like quicksilver. And the light within…

Light! Ghastly light. Blue and sick and wan. The light of the dead, I thought. Sometimes flickering, but nonetheless nauseating and deathly. No candle, no electric of this world of the living, could summon such a strange and sick hue.

I had chanced to look at quite the right time, because suddenly the apparition was gone. It left in its wake an echo of its cold wail, but even that some dissipated. And moreover, the speed with which it vanished was intolerable to me. How could something of the world, an engine of such size, flow with such shuddering, and yet quietened, alacrity?

That train – that engine…I do not believe that it belonged here.

Where it belonged, in truth? I do not know.

Sleep would retake me that night, but I fancy that the engine remained in my mind, quietly boring through my thoughts without care or delicacy. I say that often dreams do not linger in the world of waking, but this is not always the case. I dreamed up visions of a ghost – a walking cadaver – ambling across the darkened tracks. Behind it, rather than carriages, pooled a soup of desiccated people. They had been speared by the tracks, and by collections of metal, and they were appended to the train against their will. And yet the train continued on, slipping into darkness.

I awoke in a cold sweat. How could I not?

The housekeeper – also inherited from my good aunt – was cross with me, because in my frenzy and fright I had left the house in a disarray. But this problem I left to her, and carried myself to the station. I would not drive, as my nerves were shot – and the walk was limited only. I intended to query – or perhaps remonstrate with – the station officer.

That same man peered at me querulously, for his own part. “And what time do you say this was? Was it the ten o’clock train, you say?”

I shook my head. The autumn air was cool, but sweat still beaded, as the lethargy of a restless sleep clung to my bones. “No, man. My clock showed one in the morning, I am quite sure. I would like to know what manner of train this was.”

The officer sucked at his teeth idly. “I’m not sure what to tell you. We have no trains at that hour. You must be mistaken, sir.”

And perhaps I was.

My fits and maladies had increased, to some degree, in the previous months. One might say that they had clutched at my brain on the sorry night in question. It may have been that terror – and the apparition of it, through the window – was merely another avenue through which the malady manifested.

I contented myself with this. After all, what else was there?

There had been no train.

And yet…

I did not consciously remain awake for the appointed time. That the thing – the spectre – was still boring its way through my mind was unavoidable, and I simply found myself busying with writing until the clock came closer to the moment of truth.

The sound came first, to the second of the hand striking. A cold slice, as though even the very air itself was being punished, and twisted.

A dread crept up within me. It returns, I thought. Oh God, that inexplicable thing returns.

That wan glow spilled across the night, its blue achingly ghastly. It was not a hue of this world: or any part of the world that I knew.

But there was something more, this time. Something that persisted only for one small flash, and even then, it was as that strange light flickered into oblivion and back.

A figure stood in that strange carriage, palm pressed against the glass.

My heart thundered – thundered.

It was not enough that I had seen a spectre, a dread engine from parts otherworldly. More gruesome, more chilling, was that something on that dread engine had seen me, too.