Dreadengine 1903

The second part of this strange and ominous tale of a malevolent engine slipping past in the midnight hours.

DREADENGINE 1903

Author’s note: The first part of this strange tale can be read here.

For those who wish to jump straight into the second part of this nefarious story, know this:

The protagonist, a writer, has caught the vision of an uncanny and otherworldly engine screeching past in the night. The train seems to be from another place, or time, entirely. Its innards hold an uncanny light, and there outstretched is a palm — something, on that engine, was watching him, too.

The next year was a state of shuddering half-life.

It was not madness. I assure you of that.

Is it madness for one’s heart to race in thunder beneath eyes of malicious intent? No. It is the right of prey.

And that is how I felt, since the vision. That I had become prey. Or perhaps always was, and yet only now the predator had scented me.

What manner of predator was it that rode the dread engine – that unfathomable and ghastly marvel burrowing its way across the tracks each night?

I left my office entirely, though this did little for my professional success. I could not write my stories under the watchful gaze of a passing ghoul. Mr. Snell called me several times. “You’d been painting such a picture. The readers loved it. What’s all this about a break? We don’t do breaks. We never agreed to a break.” And yet, it had to be so. I used what political capital I had with the editors to allow for it, promising ever more bucolic stories at a later date. The narratives I had been weaving simple felt to have fallen apart, twisted by that Medusa gaze in the darkness.

“Perhaps I might write a scary tale, instead,” I had timidly suggested, in his final call to me. In truth, I do not know why I suggested it. It may be that the thought of penning the story of the ghoul train might release me from it. And yet I shuddered at the thought of doing so, of manifesting it.

In any event, the response had been muted. “We don’t do scary. We don’t do spooky. They want you to carry on with what you were doing. Simple. Pleasant. Can you do that?”

But I couldn’t.

You perhaps have heard of my stories? Have you researched them? Time passes so quickly. You will appreciate that they never continued. Not in the same form, at least.

Instead of writing, I tried to learn. I thought that it might just not be me who had seen the strange engine, journeying at times it ought not to have. A thing of shining metal, its heart a twisted gloaming.

My housekeeper had inspected me with the air of a cautious nurse. “I’ve never heard of such a thing. Are you quite alright?”

“Quite alright, of course. It is just a…curious tale, that I heard. Of a strange train, moving in the night. Accompanied by strange noises.”

She had sniffed. “I don’t go in much for stories, especially ones like that. Sounds like a ghost story. Are you writing those, now? My sister says your writings haven’t been appearing in the papers, of late.” She had, whenever the opportunity presented itself, snatched the chance to remind me that she did not read my published stories. This was a habit of hers that I never quite understood. It was as though she wanted to remind us both that she was my servant, and not a fan of my work: or perhaps she considered the notion of reading to be indelicate for a housekeeper.

I had been deflated by this lack of success in my research of the train, and when I ventured to the town I was more circumspect in my questioning. I created opportunities for acquaintances to let me know if they had seen anything strange. Alas, nothing was forthcoming, and my journeys ended without success.

There was little avenue left for me. And yet…

I had only seen the train, this strange machination, once. Fleetingly, at that. It drove my mind to terrible places and grasped me cold in the night, but it nonetheless had only been once. As the days and nights drifted past, I wondered if it might be best to steal another glance.

But I would need to give it some thought. In every pane of glass, I saw that outstretched palm. That abhorrence. And in the night…I heard that whooshing whistle. The cold burn of its journey.

In my deepest and coldest slumbers, I saw that creature again. A strange train, bearing down into oblivion, and carrying behind it the twisted and collected remnants of people. Sometimes they would scream. They had been carried for eternity, it seemed. The metal tracks were thick with their seeping blood.

Perhaps it was all a phantasm. The noise of the frightful thing still haunted me each night, but might there not be another explanation? I could only check. Once more.

The passage of time is a lie upon which courage feeds.

I had forgotten what that gaze – that outstretched palm – felt like in the moment. Perhaps in writing it does not seem so ghastly, but there had been, at the time of seeing, an utter and indelible knowledge that that hand belonged to something other. Something which had journeyed to me upon tracks impossible and malevolent.

So why did I take it upon myself to look again? To stand above the parapet?

I will never know.

At the allotted time, the midnight train resumed its journey. I knew in my heart that it had never stopped, and that thing had been watching me, fleetingly in its passage, each time.

I scarce could bear to keep my eyes open as it passed, but I had to. If I was to be trapped by fear, I might – like vigilant prey – at least bear witness to the predator.

My heart thundered once more as I watched.

The engine trailed past for only moments, with empty, wan-lit carriage…

A palm, blue tinged, slapped across the glass of the vessel. I could not help but let out a moan.

That carriage slithered away and another took its place…

Two palms slapped against the glass.

Four more.

Behind each pair, only momentarily visible, there stood shadows. The bulk of something, close to visible in that strange light, but not quite. Palms and the silhouettes of bodies, burying into one another; twisting around demonically like knotted tree-trunks, all desperate to steal a gaze at me: the watcher of this darkness. I imagined the screech of the engine was their own screams, forever and endless and wrong.

The train seemed longer, as though it had gained more in its long adventure. Its endless adventure.

Blackness took me.

I awoke, my head pounding, without light. I swam in the darkness of the continuing night – oh, could I not have slept through ‘til the safety of morning? My breath was ragged and awash with fear: my body felt cold with exhaustion, but also terror.

It would be fine. It would all be fine – the phantasm had passed. I just needed to…

A knock came at the door.

My house – inherited as it was, to a poor author – was large. It would take long minutes to venture downstairs and to the front door which faced the road to the village. And in the depth of that house, that dread knock echoed.

It knocked again.

With each knock, my skin crawled and my heart tightened.

It was a slow knock. One of deliberation. One with meaning, and warning.

I imagined pallid and strange hands, fresh from a journey through darkness with no beginning or end, their curled and mottled fingers rapping maliciously against the hard wood.

I moaned again, low and feeble: I could not answer the summons. I dare not.

I had already brought the gaze of the midnight predator upon myself. I would not invite it further…

If it was not already too late.

The uncanny tale of the Dreadengine will continue.