Hell Train (3 page)

There were no dice, no counters, and there was no rulebook, but the more she studied the layout the more it seemed self-explanatory. She set the passengers—little painted lead figures carrying valises—at the station which was, curiously enough, named after their own town of Chelmsk, and even shared the same brick chimneypots, the same town square, the same great foundry at its centre. In fact, the entire layout of the board looked like her town in miniature. Perhaps its designer had lived locally, and had glanced out of his window for reference while he was painting.

The board was slotted with a mechanical railway track running through neat illustrations of idyllic countryside, marked with half a dozen little stations.

Around the base of the playing area ran a curious caption.

‘When the Devil was summoned to Earth, he built a train to take the Damned to Hell.’

A rather severe motto to place upon a child’s game, even she could tell that. Her mother would most certainly not approve of her touching the game, which made it all the more exciting. What harm could come of it?

She looked back in the box. What else was there?

With great care, she removed the largest, most detailed and most beautiful piece—a clockwork train. Its name was engraved on the boilerplate:
ARKANGEL
. She peered in at the exquisitely detailed carriages, their seats and lights and luggage racks. Then she connected the six cars together, including third, second and first class compartments, the last with a section of private suites and a little observation deck at the back.

She picked out the least spoiled players—they were made of lead and had lost some of their enamel painted finish—finally settling on two handsome young men and two beautiful ladies in hats and bustle skirts—one blonde, one dark—and placed them on board the train, in the first carriage. They would be a husband and wife, and a pair of young lovers.

There were two odd little fellows left over, so she set these in the second carriage, a fat little man who had something wrong with his right leg; the lead had got squashed, destroying his foot. She decided he should be a salesman with a sample case. The other was a man in a top hat and mutton-chop whiskers, carrying a tall box. He looked as if he’d be a showman of some kind.

Sparks flashed around the wheels of the
Arkangel
as she wound up the engine with a tin key. Then she set the train down on the slotted track and let it embark upon its journey.

She watched in fascination as the train chugged around the board, making little steam-engine noises, through pretty painted countryside scenes decorated with cherubic angels, over sunlit bridges and through rainbowed ravines.

The train came to rest at a station, and seemed to be waiting for her to do something. She found a little tin ticket machine that dispensed cards, and, turning its handle, withdrew the first one.

It read: ‘Piety.’ But what to do with it?

At the end of the platform was a signal box with a slot in its roof, into which she inserted the card, and a moment later that changed the points. The train set off once more.

It was beautifully made, but what was the
purpose
of the game?

The clock on the mantelpiece chimed three. Outside, the street was empty and misted with falling rain. When she looked back at the board, she saw that the train was trundling along the next section of the track, passing a painted banner that read, ‘Follow The Rules & Shame The Devil.’

Life,
her mother always told her,
is a journey that you must control.

That’s what this is,
she decided.
It’s a game about life.

The pattern repeated itself, and at each station she issued another ticket for another leg of the trip.

These new cards read: ‘Fair Play’ and ‘Decency.’

But as the train progressed and the game continued, her luck with the cards turned bad. The next ones were ‘Drink,’ ‘Lust,’ ‘Violence’ and ‘Godlessness.’

With each new instruction, the points clicked and the train rolled forward. But now it was heading away from the sunlit country scenes, across to the far left hand side of the board, and she realized that it was moving away from ‘The Primrose Path Of Righteousness,’ onto a murky branch line fraught with danger; falling trees, a rickety bridge across a ravine, a densely overgrown forest, great black crows, even what appeared to be an erupting volcano. This line was labelled ‘The Wicked Way To Eternal Damnation.’

If this was a game about life, it appeared that it was also about death.

That’s not fair,
she thought.
My passengers have no choice but to stay on board. The decisions aren’t up to them, they’re just down to fate. How do they know if they’re good or bad? Who has the right to test them?

It was exasperating. Why did games always have to have a moral?

The clockwork engine seemed to be running of its own accord now. Down into the darkest, most sinister part of the board headed the train. The sparks that sprang from its engine threatened to set the cardboard scenery alight. But where was it heading? The name of the terminus on the bottom left hand side of the route had become smudged and was illegible.

And as she leaned closer to follow the train’s path, she saw the
Arkangel
’s wheels really begin to turn as it grew and grew, thundering past her shocked eyes in a blast of fiery steam, threatening to jump the tracks.

The train was getting bigger by the second. With a groan and spit of steel and steam it expanded to fill the room, until it appeared to be thundering out of the fireplace. The pictures on the mantelpiece shook and cracked. The ornaments were shaking. A vase rolled over and smashed. The noise of the engine pounded against the walls, filling her head until she could hear nothing else. The train was thundering across the dining room.

Rectangles of light flashed past on the walls, shaking the pictures from their moorings as the train carriages roared past. The engine funnel was belching coal dust and soot onto the ceiling and over the furniture, the train’s bell was clanging wildly, its horn blasting a shrill shriek that threatened to shatter the windows. The wind from its passing sucked all of her mother’s music sheets into the air. Caught by the
Arkangel
’s cowcatcher, the piano exploded and was hurled across the room. The great wheels revolved so close to her feet that it seemed they would tear up the floorboards and rip the house in half.

Terrified, she could only watch in horror as the great train roared past her on the start of a journey that, once commenced, could not be halted.

CHAPTER THREE

THE ARRIVAL

T
HE RIVETS WERE
white gold, fading to crimson and blood brown before they had been fully hammered into place. Iron plate and tempered steel, rods and bolts glimpsed through fire and steam in the cuprous stench of annealing metal. The world of the engines was ever like this.

The result was a magnificent piece of craftsmanship, but perhaps they were being punished for showing too much pride. One of the workers brought in from the depot had the four fingers of his right hand sheared off in the engine’s coupling joint just hours before the dedication ceremony, and the cheap Russian grease they used on the plates infected the wound so badly that by the time the ambulance reached the hospital, his arm was a livid poison sac. Amputation should have caught the contagion, but no; they buried him beside the track less than twenty four hours after the Arkangel rolled out of its shed. No-one pretended the work was easy, but jobs were hard to come by back then and the line brought hope, even if the means of achieving such prosperity also carried lasting shame...

N
ICHOLAS
C
ASTLEFORD AWOKE
with a start. The memory of his dream blurred and faded like smoke.

He looked out of the window. Greenery, wheat, single track roads, mile upon mile of nothing. Looking at this pastoral scene, it was hard to imagine that the world was at war.

Nicholas had not found the war to his liking. He had absconded to Poland of all places, where he practiced the ancient art of fleecing the locals. Cards proved to be the best weapons in his arsenal, and he used them without mercy, taking huge amounts from stupified villagers who should have known better.

After a trip back to London to deposit more hard-earned cash and to order new suits from his tailor, he’d returned to make a further killing. But this time he had been caught out by a local magistrate and had only just managed to avoid a flogging. With the police alerted, he had made a circuitous route through the nation and across its borders, so that he now found himself on the wrong train, in the wrong country, at the wrong period in history.

Looking out of the window he found the station name to be incomprehensible, but most definitely incorrect. In fact, Nicholas had a feeling that the last half dozen stations had been wrong.

Perhaps the train had turned onto a branch line. Nicholas compared the sign to the railway line in his guide book and saw that virtually none of the letters matched. There were accents and circumflexes all over the place. Why did they have to make everything so damnably complicated? The empire had spread the use of English to most civilised countries, so why the hell had it not reached here?

The battered green train had seen better days, but this was still the most reliable way of getting around the country. Many of the roads had been blockaded, sewn with rolls of barbed wire and planted with rocks. The army was trying to limit civilian access routes across the interior.

The train arrived with a screech of brakes and a squeal of pistons. There was so much smoke and steam and squirting oil that he thought it might have simply pulled in and collapsed, never to move again. And yet he had barely managed to alight with his bag before it gathered its strength and fled, chuntering and wheezing out of the station.

Nicholas set down his leather suitcase and looked around. He should never have crossed the Carpathian border, not now, not at this time. August 1916, the fragile neutrality ending, the Central Powers on the cusp of invasion. Even a businessman with international standing was not safe in such circumstances. And he was far from that.

Nicholas preferred to think of himself as an adventurer. It sounded colourful, if not quite respectable, which seemed appropriate enough. Although he was a Londoner he had always made his way to foreign climes, accumulating money by gambling, speculating and occasionally stealing. He knew he was heading in the wrong direction, but the choice had not been his to make. He had been escaping creditors, escaping girls, and escaping more than that...

As the smoke cleared he heard nothing but crickets and skylarks, saw no-one on the platform except an elderly man in a stained uniform folding away his green flag. No other passengers had alighted. No-one had been stupid enough to do so.

Nicholas smoothed his slender brown moustaches and looked around: scrubland, tall animated beeches and indeterminate bushes bearing sickly yellow berries. A tree-lined avenue leading away from the station, a dirt road, no tarmacadam. A grey-walled town—possibly abandoned—lay in the distance. Fields and more fields. The rustle of wheat sheaves. A solitary dog barking. No human sounds.

He checked his silver pocket-watch and noted that there was only an hour left before sunset. Had the blasted connection been on time leaving Sofia he might have caught the right train, or at least have arrived in time for lunch somewhere. He wondered what the stationmaster might think of him, a dashing English gentleman, twenty eight, as sturdy and handsome as one of the new automobiles lately seen in Park Lane, dressed in a black brocade waistcoat, a silver-grey suit and a trilby, far too stylishly attired for this rural retreat. He belonged in London, of course, and acted accordingly, but Nicholas liked to make a fine impression on the ladies of Eastern Europe—sophistication made them so susceptible, and gained access to their husbands’ pocketbooks.

He waited for the stationmaster to arrive, and tapped him insolently with his Malacca cane.

‘I say, you there. Are you in charge here?’

All he got back was a blank look.

‘Ah.’ He reopened the dogeared phrase book and spoke loudly. ‘
De tren mi-a laut pentru a gresit locul.’

The ancient stationmaster grimaced like a gargoyle. ‘We speak English in this town,’ he said.

‘Where am I?’

‘You are in Chelmsk.’ The name was pronounced like a gob of spit.

‘Well, your train appears to have set me off at the wrong stop.’

‘That is no concern of mine.’

‘There must be a village, yes? I expect you have carriages waiting.’

‘You can expect nothing here.’

‘Where are your porters?’

The stationmaster looked contemptuous. ‘We do not have porters. Here, people carry their own belongings.’

Nicholas was indignant. ‘But I am English! I will do no such thing.’

‘Please yourself.’ The stationmaster turned to leave.

‘Ah yes, your famous European hospitality. Look here, my good man, just tell me the time of the last train back.’

‘There are no more trains tonight. And I am not your good man.’

‘But I distinctly heard the passengers speak of a train which runs at midnight.’

‘There is no such train. You understand? No such train.’ The stationmaster spat close to Nicholas’ boot, then walked away.

‘Extraordinary fellow.’ Nicholas sighed and hoisted his own valise. It really was the most astounding inconvenience.

There were no carriages waiting, not even a rustic hack. There was nothing else for it. He was forced to set off up the dusty road carrying his own case, the afternoon sun beating down on the gap between his collar and his brilliantined hair. Removing his hat, he stopped before a tall wooden sign consisting of utterly incomprehensible words. He attempted to look them up in his guidebook, but was finally forced to guess the right direction.

‘Ridiculous peasant language,’ he muttered, wiping goat shit from his boot.