The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 23

RAMSEY CAMPBELL Passing Through Peacehaven

**

“WAIT,” MARSDEN SHOUTED as he floundered off his seat. His vision was so overcast with sleep that it was little better than opaque, but so far as he could see through the carriages the entire train was deserted. “Terminate” was the only word he retained from the announcement that had wakened him. He blundered to the nearest door and leaned on the window to slide it further open while he groped beyond it for the handle. The door swung wide so readily that he almost sprawled on the platform. In staggering dangerously backwards to compensate he slammed the door, which seemed to be the driver’s cue. The train was heading into the night before Marsden realised he had never seen the station in his life.

“Wait,” he cried, but it was mostly a cough as the smell of some October fire caught in his throat. His eyes felt blackened by smoke and stung when he blinked, so that he could barely see where he was going as he lurched after the train. He succeeded in clearing his vision just in time to glimpse distance or a bend in the track extinguish the last light of the train like an ember. He panted coughing to a halt and stared red-eyed around him.

Two signs named the station Peacehaven. The grudging glow of half a dozen lamps that put him in mind of streetlights in an old photograph illuminated stretches of both platforms but seemed shy of the interior of the enclosed bridge that led across the pair of tracks. A brick wall twice his height extended into the dark beyond the ends of the platform he was on. The exit from the station was on the far side of the tracks, through a passage where he could just distinguish a pay phone in the gloom. Above the wall of that platform, and at some distance, towered an object that he wasted seconds in identifying as a factory chimney. He should be looking for the times of any trains to Manchester, but the timetable among the vintage posters alongside the platform was blackened by more than the dark. As he squinted at it, someone spoke behind him.

It was the voice that had wakened him. Apart from an apology for a delay, the message was a blur. “I can’t hear much at the best of times,” Marsden grumbled. At least the station hadn’t closed for the night, and a timetable on the other platform was beside a lamp. He made for the bridge and climbed the wooden stairs to the elevated corridor, where narrow grimy windows above head height and criss-crossed by wire mesh admitted virtually no illumination. He needn’t shuffle through the dark; his mobile phone could light the way. He reached in his overcoat pocket, and dug deeper to find extra emptiness.

Marjorie wouldn’t have approved of the words that escaped his lips. He wasn’t fond of them himself, especially when he heard them from children in the street. He and Marjorie would have done their best to keep their grandchildren innocent of such language and of a good deal else that was in vogue, but they would need to have had a son or daughter first. He ran out of curses as he trudged back across the bridge, which felt narrowed by darkness piled against the walls. The platform was utterly bare. Did he remember hearing or perhaps only feeling the faintest thump as he’d left his seat? There was no doubt that he’d left the mobile on the train.

He was repeating himself when he wondered if he could be heard. His outburst helped the passage to muffle the announcer’s unctuous voice, which apparently had information about a signal failure. Marsden wasn’t going to feel like one. He marched out of darkness into dimness, which lightened somewhat as he reached the platform.

Had vandals tried to set fire to the timetable? A blackened corner was peeling away from the bricks. Marsden pushed his watch higher on his wizened wrist until the strap took hold. Theoretically the last train — for Bury and Oldham and Manchester — was due in less than twenty minutes. “What’s the hold-up again? Say it clearly this time,” Marsden invited not quite at the top of his voice. When there was no response he made for the phone on the wall.

Was it opposite some kind of memorial? No, the plaque was a ticket window boarded up behind cracked glass. Surely the gap beneath the window couldn’t be occupied by a cobweb, since the place was staffed. He stood with his back to the exit from the station and fumbled coins into the slot beside the receiver before groping for the dial that he could barely see in the glimmer from the platform.

“Ray and Marjorie Marsden must be engaged elsewhere. Please don’t let us wonder who you were or when you tried to contact us or where we can return the compliment. ” His answering message had amused them when he recorded it — at least, Marjorie had made the face that meant she appreciated his wit — but now it left him feeling more alone than he liked. “Are you there?” he asked the tape. “You’ll have gone up, will you? You’ll have gone up, of course. Just to let you know I’m stranded by an unexpected change of trains. If you play me back don’t worry, I’ll be home as soon as practicable. Oh, and the specialist couldn’t find anything wrong. I know, you’ll say it shows I can hear when I want to. Not true, and shall I tell you why? I’d give a lot to hear you at this very moment. Never mind. I will soon.”

Even saying so much in so many words earned him no response, and yet he didn’t feel unheard. His audience could be the station announcer, who was presumably beyond one of the doors that faced each other across the corridor, although neither betrayed the faintest trace of light. “I nearly didn’t say I love you,” he added in a murmur that sounded trapped inside his skull. “Mind you, you’ll know that, won’t you? If you don’t after all these years you never will. I suppose that had better be it for now as long as you’re fast asleep.”

He still felt overheard. Once he’d hung up he yielded to a ridiculous urge to poke his head out of the corridor. The platforms were deserted, and the tracks led to unrelieved darkness. He might as well learn where he’d ended up while there was no sign of a train. “Just stepping outside,” he informed anyone who should know.

The corridor didn’t seem long enough to contain so much blackness. He only just managed to refrain from rubbing his eyes as he emerged onto an unpromising road. The front of the station gave it no light, but the pavements on either side of the cracked weedy tarmac were visibly uneven. Beyond high railings across the road the grounds of the factory bristled with tall grass, which appeared to shift, although he couldn’t feel a wind. Here and there a flagstone showed pale through the vegetation. A sign beside the open gates had to do with motors or motor components, and Marsden was considering a closer look to pass the time when the announcer spoke again. “Going to attract effect” might have been part of the proclamation, and all that Marsden was able to catch.

Some delay must be owing to a track defect, of course. Much of the voice had ended up as echoes beyond the railings or simply dissipated in the night, but he also blamed its tone for confusing him. It had grown so oily that it sounded more like a parody of a priest than any kind of railway official. Marsden tramped into the passage and knocked on the door beside the ticket window. “Will you repeat that, please?”

If this sounded like an invitation to an argument, it wasn’t taken up. He found the doorknob, which felt flaky with age, but the door refused to budge. He rubbed his finger and thumb together as he crossed to the other door, which tottered open at his knock, revealing only a storeroom. It was scattered with brushes and mops, or rather their remains, just distinguishable in the meagre light through a window so nearly opaque that on the platform he’d mistaken it for an empty poster frame. Vandals must have been in the room; the dimness smelled as ashen as it looked, while the tangles of sticks that would once have been handles seemed blackened by more than the dark. That was all he managed to discern before the voice spoke to him.

Was the fellow too close to the microphone? If he was trying to be clearer, it achieved the opposite. Of course nobody was next to alive; a train was the next to arrive. “Speak clearly, not up,” Marsden shouted as he slammed the door and hurried to the bridge, where he did his best to maintain his pace by keeping to the middle of the passage. If an object or objects were being dragged somewhere behind him, he wanted to see what was happening. He clumped breathlessly down the stairs and limped onto the platform. How could he have thought the windows were poster frames? There was one on either side of the exit, and although both rooms were unlit, a figure was peering through the window of the office.

Or was it a shadow? It was thin and black enough. There was no light inside the room to cast it, and yet it must be a shadow, since it had nothing for a face. Marsden was still trying to identify its source when he noticed that the door he’d slammed was wide open. It had felt unsteady on its hinges, and at least he had an explanation for the dragging sound he’d heard. He set about laughing at his own unease, and then the laugh snagged in his throat like another cough. The silhouette was no longer pressed against the window.

Had it left traces of its shape on the discoloured glass? As he paced back and forth, trying either to confirm or shake off the impression, he felt like an animal trapped in a cage and watched by spectators. He’d met with no success by the time the voice that might belong to the owner of the shadow had more to say. “Where’s the party?” Marsden was provoked to mutter. “What’s departing?” he demanded several times as loud. “It’s supposed to arrive first,” he pointed out, glaring along the tracks at the unrelieved night. The few words he’d managed to recognise or at least to guess had sounded oilier than ever, close to a joke. Why couldn’t the fellow simply come and tell him what to expect? Was he amusing himself by spying on the solitary passenger? “Yes, you’ve got a customer,” Marsden declared. “He’s the chap who has to stand out here in the cold because you can’t be bothered to provide a waiting-room.”

The complaint left him more aware of the storeroom, so that he could have imagined he was being observed from there too. He would much rather fancy his return home to the bed that he hoped Marjorie was keeping warm for him. As he hugged himself to fend off the late October chill he wasn’t too far from experiencing how her arms would feel when she turned in her sleep to embrace him. He couldn’t help wishing that the tape had brought him her voice.

The only one he was likely to hear was the announcer’s, and he needed to ensure he did. He lowered himself onto a bench opposite the exit and planted his hands on his knees. Though the seat felt unwelcomingly moist if not actually rotten, he concentrated on staying alert for the next message. His ears were throbbing with the strain, and his skin felt as if his sense of being watched were gathering on it, by the time his attention was rewarded.

Was someone clinking glasses? Had the staff found an excuse to celebrate? Marsden had begun to wonder if they were deriding his predicament when he identified the noise of bricks knocking together. The factory was more dilapidated than he’d been able to make out, then, and there was movement in the rubble. Perhaps an animal was at large — more than one, by the sound of it — or else people were up to no good. Suppose they were the vandals who’d tried to set fire to the station? Would the announcer deign to emerge from hiding if they or others like them trespassed on railway property, or was he capable of leaving his solitary customer to deal with them? Marsden could hear nothing now except his own heart, amplified by his concentration if not pumped up by stress. He wasn’t sure if he glimpsed surreptitious movement at the exit, where he could easily imagine that the dark was growing crowded; indeed, the passage was so nearly lightless that any number of intruders might sneak into it unseen. He was gripping his knees and crouching forward like a competitor at the start of some pensioners’ event while he strained to see whether anyone was sidling through the gloom when his heart jumped, and he did.

The voice was louder than ever, and its meaning more blurred. Even the odd relatively clear phrase amid the magnified mumbling left much to be desired. Marsden could have thought he was being warned about some further decay and informed that he had a hearing problem. The latter comment must refer to engineering, but wasn’t this unreasonable too? How many hindrances was the train going to encounter? The reports of its progress were beginning to seem little better than jokes. But here was a final one, however inefficiently pronounced. It meant that the train was imminent, not that anything would shortly be alive.

Perhaps the man was slurring his words from drunkenness, and the clinking had indeed been glass, unless the contrivance of equality had reached such a pitch that the station was obliged to employ an announcer with a speech impediment. On that basis Marsden might seek a job as a telephone operator, but he and Marjorie were resigned to leaving the world to the young and aggressive. He peered along the railway, where the view stayed as black as the depths of the corridor opposite. All that his strained senses brought him besides a charred smell and a crawling of the skin was, eventually, another message.

“You won’t be burying this old man,” he retorted under his clogged breath. While the announcement must have referred to the train to Bury and Oldham, the voice had resembled a priest’s more than ever. “And where’s this train that’s supposed to be arriving?” he demanded loud enough to rouse an echo in the exit corridor.

The next message was no answer. Presumably he was being told that unattended luggage would be removed without warning, but since he had no luggage, what was the point? Couldn’t the fellow see him? Perhaps some legislation allowed him to be blind as well as largely incomprehensible. Still, here were another few words Marsden understood, even if he couldn’t grasp where passengers were being told to change. “What was that?” he shouted, but the announcer hadn’t finished. His tone was so ecclesiastical that for the space of an exaggerated heartbeat Marsden fancied he was being offered some kind of service, and then he recognised the phrase. It was “out of service”.

He sucked in a breath that he had to replace once he’d finished coughing. “What’s out?” he spluttered. “Where’s my train?”

The only reply was an echo, all the more derisive for sounding more like “Where’s my Ray?” He levered himself to his feet, muttering an impolite word at having somehow blackened the knee of his trousers, and hobbled to the bridge. An arthritic pang set him staggering like an old drunk, but he succeeded in gaining the top of the stairs without recourse to the banisters. He preferred to keep to the middle of the bridge, especially along the passage over the tracks. It was too easy to imagine that the darkness beneath the obscured windows was peopled with supine figures. Surely the humped mounds consisted simply of litter, despite the marks on a window about halfway along, five elongated trails that might have been left by a sooty hand as its owner tried to haul his body up. That afternoon Marsden had given a few coins to a woman lying in a railway underpass, but he hoped not to encounter anyone of the kind just now. He faltered and then stumbled fast to the end of the passage, mumbling “No change” as he clattered down to the platform.

“Here’s your customer,” he said at several times the volume, “and what are you going to do about it?” The question trailed away, however, and not only because the office was so thoroughly unlit from within. The imprint on the window had silenced him. He might still have taken it for a shadow if it weren’t so incomplete. Just the top half of a face with holes for eyes was recognisable, and the bones of a pair of hands.

Some grimy vandal must have been trying to see into the room. Of course the marks weren’t on the inside of the glass, or if they were, that was no reason to think that the figure at the window had stood in the same place. Nevertheless Marsden wasn’t anxious to look closer, although he’d managed to distinguish nothing in the office. He made for the door with all the confidence he could summon up.

The storeroom distracted him. Even if his stinging eyes had adjusted to the dimness, he couldn’t understand how he’d failed to see that the room was more than untidy. It was full of burned sticks and bits of stick, some of which were thin as twigs. One charred tangle that, to judge by the blackened lump at the nearer end, consisted partly of a mop or brush came close to blocking the door. When he lurched to shut away the sight the edge of the door caught the object, and he glimpsed it crumbling into restless fragments before the slam resounded through the passage. He limped to the office door and, having rapped on a scaly panel, shouted “Will you come and tell me to my face what’s happening?”

As far as he could determine, silence was the answer. He could have fancied that the station and its surroundings were eager for his next outburst. “You’re meant to make yourself plain,” he yelled. “I couldn’t understand half of what you said.”

If he was hoping to provoke a response, it didn’t work. Had he offended the man? “I need to know where I’m going,” he insisted. “I don’t think that’s unreasonable, do you?”

Perhaps the fellow thought he could behave as he liked while he was in charge. Perhaps he felt too important to descend to meeting the public, an attitude that would explain his tone of voice. Or might he not be on the premises? If he was beyond the door, what could he expect to gain by lying low? Surely not even the worst employee would act that way — and then Marsden wondered if he’d strayed on the truth. Suppose it wasn’t a railway employee who was skulking in the office?

The kind of person who’d tried to set fire to the station would certainly be amused by Marsden’s plight and think it even more of a joke to confuse him. Perhaps the indistinctness of the announcements was the result of suppressed mirth. Marsden shouldn’t waste any more time if the information was false. He hurried to the phone and glared at the dim wall, which didn’t bear a single notice.

No doubt vandals had removed any advertisements for taxis. At least the phone wasn’t disabled. He fumbled the receiver off its hook and leaned almost close enough to kiss the blackened dial as he clawed at an enquiry number. He could have thought his hearing had improved when the bell began to ring; it sounded close as the next room. The voice it roused was keeping its distance, however. “Can you speak up?” Marsden urged.

“Where are you calling, please?”

This was sharp enough for a warning. Presumably the speaker was ensuring he was heard. “Peacehaven,” Marsden said. “Taxis.”

“Where is that, please?”

“Peacehaven,” Marsden pronounced loud enough for it to grow blurred against his ear before he realised that he wasn’t being asked to repeat the name. “Somewhere near Manchester.”

In the pause that ensued he might have heard movement outside the passage. His hectic pulse obscured the noise, which must have been the tall grass scraping in a wind, even if he couldn’t feel it. He was relieved when the voice returned until he grasped its message. “Not listed,” it said.

“Forgive me, I wasn’t asking for Peacehaven Taxis. Any cab firm here will do.”

“There is no listing.”

Was the fellow pleased to say so? He sounded as smug as the worst sort of priest. “The nearest one, then,” Marsden persisted. “I think that might be—”

“There are no listings for Peacehaven.”

“No, that can’t be right. I’m in it. I’m at the railway station. You must have a number for that at least.”

“There is none.”

Marsden was aware of the dark all around him and how many unheard lurkers it could hide. “Is there anything more I can do for you?” the voice said.

It sounded so fulsome that Marsden was convinced he was being mocked. “You’ve done quite enough,” he blurted and slammed the receiver on its hook.

He could try another enquiry number, or might he call the police? What could he say that would bring them to his aid yet avoid seeming as pathetic as he was determined not to feel? There was one voice he yearned to hear in the midst of all the darkness, but the chance of this at so late an hour seemed little better than infinitesimal. Nevertheless he was groping for change and for the receiver. He scrabbled at the slot with coins and dragged the indistinct holes around the dial. The bell measured the seconds and at last made way for a human voice. It was his own. “Ray and Marjorie Marsden must be engaged elsewhere. ”

“I am. I wish you weren’t,” he murmured and felt all the more helpless for failing to interrupt his mechanical self. Then his distant muffled voice fell silent, and Marjorie said “Who is it?”

“It’s me, love.”

“Is that Ray?” She sounded sleepy enough not to know. “I can hardly hear you,” she protested. “Where have you gone?”

“You’d wonder.” He was straining to hear another sound besides her voice — a noise that might have been the shuffling of feet in rubble. “I’m stuck somewhere,” he said. “I’ll be late. I can’t say how late.”

“Did you call before?”

“That was me. Didn’t you get me?”

“The tape must be stuck like you. I’ll need to get a new one.”

“Not a new husband, I hope.” He wouldn’t have minded being rewarded with the laugh he’d lived with for the best part of fifty years, even though the joke felt as old as him, but perhaps she was wearied by the hour. “Anyway,” he said, “if you didn’t hear me last time I’ll sign off the same way, which as if you didn’t know—”

“What was that?”

For too many seconds he wasn’t sure. He’d been talking over it, and then she had. Surely it had said that a train was about to arrive; indeed, wasn’t the noise he’d mistaken for thin footsteps the distant clicking of wheels? “It’s here now,” he tried to tell her through a fit of coughing. By the time he was able to speak clearer, the train might have pulled in. Dropping the receiver on the hook, he dashed for the platform. He hadn’t reached it when he heard a scraping behind him.

The storeroom was open again, but that wasn’t enough in itself to delay him. His eyes had grown all too equal to the gloom in the passage, so that he was just able to discern marks on the floor, leading from outside the station to the room. Could someone not be bothered to pick up their dirty feet? The trails looked as if several objects had been dragged into the room. He didn’t believe they had just been left; that wasn’t why they made him uneasy. He had to squint to see that they were blurred by more than the dark. Whatever had left them — not anybody shuffling along, he hoped, when their feet would have been worse than thin — had crumbled in transit, scattering fragments along the route. He thought he could smell the charred evidence, and swallowed in order not to recommence coughing, suddenly fearful of being heard. What was he afraid of? Was he growing senile? Thank heaven Marjorie wasn’t there to see him. The only reason for haste was that he had a train to catch. He tramped out of the passage and might have maintained his defiant pace all the way to the bridge if a shape hadn’t reared up at the window of the storeroom.

Was the object that surmounted it the misshapen head of a mop? He couldn’t distinguish much through the grimy pane, but the idea was almost reassuring until he acknowledged that somebody would still have had to lift up the scrawny excuse for a figure. It hadn’t simply risen or been raised, however. A process that the grime couldn’t entirely obscure was continuing to take place. The silhouette — the blackened form, rather — was taking on more substance, though it remained alarmingly emaciated. It was putting itself back together.

The spectacle was so nightmarishly fascinating that Marsden might have been unable to stir except for the clatter of wheels along the tracks. He staggered around to see dim lights a few hundred yards short of the station. “Stop,” he coughed, terrified that the driver mightn’t notice him and speed straight through. Waving his arms wildly, he sprinted for the bridge.

He’d panted up the stairs and was blundering along the middle of the wooden corridor when he thought he heard a noise besides the approach of the train. Was he desperate to hear it or afraid to? He might have tried to persist in mistaking it for wind in the grass if it weren’t so close. He did his utmost to fix his shaky gaze on the far end of the corridor as he fled past shadow after crouching shadow. He almost plunged headlong down the further stairs, and only a grab at the slippery discoloured banister saved him. As he dashed onto the platform he saw that both doors in the passage out of the station were open. The sight brought him even closer to panic, and he began to wave his shivering arms once more as he tottered to the edge of the platform. “Don’t leave me here,” he cried.

The squeal of brakes seemed to slice through the dark. The engine blotted out the view across the tracks, and then a carriage sped past him. Another followed, but the third was slower. Its last door halted almost in front of him. Though the train was by no means the newest he’d ridden that day, and far from the cleanest, it seemed the next thing to paradise. He clutched the rusty handle and heaved the door open and clambered aboard. “You can go now. Go,” he pleaded.

Who was the driver waiting for? Did he think the noises on the bridge were promising more passengers? There was such a volume of eager shuffling and scraping that Marsden almost wished his ears would fail him. He hauled at the door, which some obstruction had wedged open. He was practically deaf with his frantic heartbeat by the time the door gave, slamming with such force that it seemed to be echoed in another carriage. At once the train jerked forward, flinging him onto the nearest musty seat. He was attempting to recover his breath when the announcer spoke.

Was a window open in the carriage? The voice sounded close enough to be on the train, yet no more comprehensible. It was no longer simply unctuous; it could have been mocking a priest out of distaste for the vocation. Its only recognisable words were “train now departing”, except that the first one was more like Ray — perhaps not just on this occasion, Marsden thought he recalled. He craned towards the window and was able to glimpse that both doors in the exit corridor were shut. Before he had time to ponder any of this, if indeed he wanted to, the train veered off the main line.

“Where are you taking me?” he blurted, but all too soon he knew. The train was heading for the property behind the station, a turn of events celebrated by a short announcement. There was no question that the speaker was on board, though the blurring of the words left Marsden unsure if they were “Ray is shortly alive.” The swerve of the train had thrown open the doors between the carriages, allowing him to hear a chorused hiss that might have signified resentment or have been an enthusiastic “Yes” or, possibly even worse, the collapse of many burned objects into the ash he could smell. As the train sped through a gateway in the railings, he read the name on the sign: not Peacehaven Motors at all, or anything to do with cars. Perhaps the route was only a diversion, he tried to think, or a short tour. Perhaps whoever was on the train just wanted somebody to visit the neglected memorials and the crematorium.