Hell Train (21 page)

‘Wait, I beg you. Please.’

The hand hovered above the little girl’s face, before it pressed down onto her forehead, spreading black rot. The girl began to convulse, but the Red Countess had already grown uninterested and was moving on.

‘I have to know who you are,’ said Thomas. ‘Why are you doing this?’

She turned to study him imperiously.

‘Who are you to speak to me? You, a commoner who will not even play cards with a lonely old woman?’ She flipped the train of her gown away and departed to the next carriage.

This is a problem,
thought Thomas.
How can I defeat a nemesis who will not even deign to speak honestly to someone she considers beneath her station?

The
Arkangel
was slowing down. Thomas could see the station sign, Zoribskia, the last stop before their unnamed destination. He glanced back and saw the Conductor balancing on the step between the carriages, sparks flying around him as the train applied its brakes.

‘What am I supposed to do?’ Thomas asked the Conductor.

‘You cannot change what must be,’ he replied, noting Thomas’s anguish and feeding on it.

‘We’ll see about that,’ Thomas replied, his resolve strengthening.

A
S THE TRAIN
pulled into Zoribskia station, Isabella ran to the window. She longed to disembark, but knew it would be fatal to do so. Perhaps there was another way. A boy was standing nearby on the platform. She called to him.

‘I’ll give you these coins if you fetch the stationmaster and ask him to order the passengers from the train.’

The boy turned away from her. Leaning as far as she dared from the window, she reached out her hand to touch his shoulder. ‘Please, you must help us, take the money!’

The boy turned back to reveal dark dry holes where his eyes and mouth should have been. Isabella recoiled in horror. She saw now that the station was crowded with the dead, passengers boarding and disembarking, every one of them a damned soul.

It was all too obvious what their final destination was to be. Had there ever really been any doubt? No wonder it had been torn from every map and erased from every sign. But were there any others like them, passengers who had boarded with their lives and souls intact? Perhaps if they could be identified, their help could be enlisted.

Or perhaps Isabella and Thomas were alone.

As the
Arkangel
built up steam, getting ready to pull out, Isabella called to an alighting passenger, a farmer carrying newspaper parcels.

‘Please sir, can you help us?’

The farmer turned to look at her, but his eyes were blank white balls, as hard and dry as marbles. His mouth opened and the dry stump of his tongue waggled inside it. ‘Get thee to Hell,’ he rasped with some difficulty. It seemed that the train had the power to preserve the dead in a fit state only while they were on board.

Isabella’s cries were lost in the sound of the carriage doors slamming and the station whistle shrieking as the
Arkangel
pulled out of the Zoribskia.

She decided to search the compartments. If there was just one more passenger on board who was still in possession of his soul, she would find him.

In the second class carriage she spotted a tall box with the yellow painted flag that read: ‘Professor Io’s Marvellous Nightingale.’ It was propped up against a seat like a coffin. The man sitting next to it with the mutton-chop whiskers looked up from his newspaper and smiled, touching the rim of his silk top hat.

‘Good day to you, Ma’am.’ His formal politeness marked him as an American. ‘Are you looking for a place to sit? I believe these seats aren’t taken.’

Isabella was suspicious. She remembered seeing him come aboard at Snerinska. How had he not been touched by the commotion taking place up and down the length of the train? She pushed back the door and gingerly stepped inside.

‘I’m afraid you’ll have to speak up a little,’ he all but shouted. ‘I’m as deaf as a coot. I used to work with Barnum and Bailey’s Human Cannonball and the gunpowder did for my eardrums. They could be firing guns out there and I wouldn’t hear a darned thing. Professor Io’s the name. After Phineas Barnum died I travelled the world with my marvels, amazing the populace. At least I used to, before the war robbed me of my audiences.’ He gave her hand a vigorous shake. ‘I’m a showman. Part illusionist, part huckster, I’ll admit, but I always give ’em a darned good show. We Americans are the best showmen in the world.’

‘Professor Io,’ said Isabella, unsure where to start, ‘this may seem an odd question, but do you remember where you boarded the train?’

The Professor thought for a moment, stroking his right sideburn. ‘You know, I’m dashed if I can recall now. It’s on the tip of my tongue. It began with an S but that’s about all—’

‘Snerinska.’

‘That’s the one, little lady. I had to cut short my tour. The troops were moving in and they weren’t too interested in my little entertainment, I can tell you. I barely got out with my life.’

‘Your entertainment—is that it in the box?’

The professor dug out a cheroot and lit it. ‘In part, yes. I had to leave my performing dogs behind. Would you like to see?’

Yes, do anything that will show me which side of the divide you exist on,
she thought. ‘Please,’ she said aloud, and he rose and unclipped the door of the crate, swinging it aside. Reaching in, he pulled something from its protective wrapping of straw.

‘She’s my Swedish songbird,’ said the Professor, stepping back to reveal a girl apparently made of porcelain. She was dressed in a gossamer gown of silver thread that stopped high on her thighs, and had long gold hair in braids over her white breasts. Her blue eyes were set in a smooth, featureless china face.

‘Allow me to demonstrate.’ He turned the figure around and wound a large tin key in the small of her back. Then he set her facing front once more, steadying her with difficulty against the rocking of the train. A music box began to play a Strauss waltz, and the doll raised its arms in a ballerina pose. Then she opened her tiny mouth and began to sing. The sound that came from her lips was astonishing, as high and pure as mountain air.

‘She’s beautiful,’ said Isabella, fascinated, stepping closer.

‘Isn’t she though? She sings more than twenty melodies. She is my fame and my fortune.’

Isabella could not help but smile. It was the first pleasing sound she had heard in the last few hours. The song wound down and came to an end.

‘Where are you heading?’ asked Isabella.

‘To the terminus,’ said the Professor, puffing on his cigar. ‘See, I’ve done this journey before. Would you like to hear another song?’

‘Thank you, I must—’

‘Aw, come on, just one more.’ He rewound the key, pleased with her reaction. ‘It’s good to have an appreciative audience again, I can tell you. The nightingale once sang for all the children on the train,’

‘There were children?’

‘Sure, a seaside outing. The maiden voyage. But that was long ago.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Why, you must know about the
Arkangel
’s first trip.’

‘I seem to remember something,’ she began. ‘Something people said in the town. But I was young, I wasn’t supposed to hear. My mother always said little girls—’

‘—should be seen and not heard. Oh, boy, I’ve heard that a few times.’

‘But I think my uncle was there.’

‘Indeed he was.’ But before he could continue, the nightingale began to sing again, an aria from Gounod’s
Faust
. The china girl raised her arms straight out and spread them wide as her voice rose in scale. The sound was different now, slightly harsher. ‘There’s a bit of a pitch problem there,’ the Professor admitted. ‘Nothing that can’t be fixed with a little elbow grease.’

She felt his hand in the small of her back, urging her to take a closer look. A warning signal sounded in her brain. He was pushing her harder now, his fingers pressing against her spine, and the doll’s voice was rising, becoming more shrill. Her nightingale song had turned into the startled shriek of a child in pain.

‘Wait,’ said Isabella, ‘stop.’

The doll’s face was a pink china heart, but her eyes looked tormented. Isabella tried to take a step back, but the nightingale’s arms slid forward and locked themselves around her, gripping ever tighter.

She had realised her mistake too late. She tried to move, but found herself pinned. The doll’s arms were pushing together, starting to crush her. Its mouth opened and shut, opened and shut, and she caught glimpses of glistening red inside like the innards of an animal. Isabella yelped in fear.

‘That’s it, little lady, you just cry out now,’ said the Professor, laughing. ‘Isn’t going to do you no good, ’cause everybody on this train is dead except you and your friend the vicar, and he ain’t going to be around for much longer neither. Oh, and there’s someone on board you won’t get to meet. He’s in charge of the whole shebang. We’re just his slaves. Yessir, you’d better pray you never meet him, ’cause there’s fates much worse than death, if you know what I mean. So you just yell out now, and all it’s going do is make the other passengers excited.’

Isabella twisted and turned as the doll screamed in her face and its grip grew tighter.

CHAPTER THIRTY

THE ESCAPE

N
ICHOLAS HAD CARTWHEELED
into the long grass at the edge of the station platform at Blankenberg, and lay on the wet soil, panting. He tried to assess whether any limbs were damaged. His right leg hurt at the knee, and he had landed badly on his left wrist, but nothing appeared to be broken. With a grimace, he pulled himself upright. Below, the track twisted back on itself in a broad loop, like a railway line on a board game. The
Arkangel
was pulling into Zoribskia station. It was hard to see from where he sat, but the waiting passengers looked as dishevelled and strange as the rest of the travellers he had seen on board.

Climbing to his feet, he found himself still smeared with the Brigadier’s blood, but his mind felt different, unclouded and clearer. Now that he was away from the train, he seemed to be free of its baleful influence.

He thought back to the events that had led him to jump from the
Arkangel
. He had vanquished his nemesis, but more importantly he had admitted the truth about his desertion. Moments later, he had leaped into the unknown.

Miranda was dead, the victim of her own greed, and Thomas could not be trusted. Nicholas had seen the lascivious look in his eye, and felt sure it would be the path to his undoing. Each uncovered flaw would lead to destruction, just as his own fear of dying had almost proven the undoing of him. The vicar’s lust was his weakness, but what was Isabella’s? Her innocence? Was that a mark of human frailty? Her curiosity? Either way, she would be no match for the wiles of the train.

But what did he care? He dusted himself down, testing his leg. Isabella was just another girl in a long line of bored and boring village beauties whose heads could be turned by any man with a mellifluous voice and no stains upon his shirt. He had found girls like her wherever he travelled. He owed her no loyalty. If he had left her in Chelmsk, one of two fates would have awaited her; she would have been raped by the arriving soldiers, or protected by Josef until they had gone. But Josef had been left far behind, and he had abandoned her to her fate.

But if he didn’t care, why the hell couldn’t he get her out of his head?

Isabella was different from the rest. She was more than merely innocent. She was the very spring of life.

Sharper-witted now, Nicholas realised he had been a fool. She had found a way under his skin, and perhaps—against all the odds—he had finally met a girl who could tame him. Yet he had abandoned her at the moment of her greatest need.

Now he was seized with the need to make amends. He had to board the train once more. It was the only way to know for sure. She was probably frightened, hating him for leaving the way he did, but what else could he have done? He had known the station was approaching, and they had not. It had been the only way out.

He could not leave her to fight on alone.

Nicholas limped down the hill toward the distant platform. The
Arkangel
stood in the station, almost as if it was waiting for him, daring him to try and board. He dropped lower through the grass, and found the going easier. The stations were really no distance from one another; the track had been forced into its circuitous path by a succession of rocky outcrops.

In another few minutes he was no more than a dozen yards from the rear carriage. The engine’s pistons pumped and it breathed steam, preparing to leave once again.

Ignoring the pain in his leg, he ran harder. The platform was in darkness. He could see no guard or stationmaster, only passengers who had been refused the right to board. The carriages were pulling out and the engine quickly gathered speed, but he was pacing beside the train. He looked in through the windows and saw bright, empty compartments, just as he and Isabella had seen when they first ran for the train—an illusion provided to lure the innocent. For all he knew, all Hell was breaking loose in there again.

He was beside one of the door handles now, ready to board and take his chances with Isabella. He reached out to open it, but his weak right leg folded beneath him and he fell sprawling, almost slipping from the platform under the thundering wheels. Gripping his leg in pain and rolling over, he watched as the
Arkangel
thundered past, too fast to board.

I’ve failed her,
he thought.
There’s nothing I can do now.

Hobbling back to the ticket office, he watched as a pair of Bulgarian soldiers dismounted from their motorcycles and strode onto the platform. They headed to the ticket office and began a drunken argument with the collector over some perceived transgression.

Nicholas backed out, and ran to one of the bikes as quickly as he was able. Its engine was still warm, and the ignition was operated by a single switch.