

SHSG Creative Writing Group
The Ghost Train
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The piercing whistle echoed through the night, rattling the glass and swirling under doors. This occurred every midnight, waking only one girl. This sounded normal, just a train arriving at a station, but there was one fact that made little Elsie’s skin crawl. There were no trains anywhere near the village…
I woke up with clammy palms and a sheen of sweat dripping down my forehead. I looked at the clock, but it wouldn’t help. I already knew the time, like it was engraved into my brain.
12.00
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It was the train. Every night, it had come. Every night, it had woken me. And every night, I had ignored it. It was time for a change in that routine. After leaving the warm haven of my bed, I seized a torch as if it were a weapon; wrapped myself in an old dressing gown; crept to my bedroom doorway and listened. The comforting snoring of my dad masked the creaks on the floor as I snuck down the stairs. He was a deep sleeper, so it was understandable that he slept through the whistle, but what about the other inhabitants of the village? They would be able to hear it too: they lived very close but showed no sign of waking.
I found the front door open already, the latch undone and the wind flitting through the gap. Dad must have left it open. Every since the incident with mum he’s…. well let’s not get into that now. I gently pushed open the door before noticing an eerie light coming from the edge of a field. I wasn’t
allowed to go near that field and I had never felt like I needed to. Now I was drawn to it, like a moth to a lamp. The frosted grass crunched under the sliders that I had slipped on at the last minute. I felt a breeze drag its icy claws into my skin.
Shivering, I wrapped myself tighter in the threadbare dressing gown and watched the faint torch light drag along the ground, reluctant and stroppy. The black sky stretched endlessly above me, haunted by the ghosts of stars. We lived in the country, but the haze of pollution had spread its formidable blanket over the sky, and stars hung in the sky as if they had been forced to. Every single cell in my body told me to go back. I couldn’t. An urgency was shoving me forward mercilessly.
Getting closer, I realised the light was a… train?! But how? I felt a cold chunk of metal.
Train tracks.
My eyes followed them until the reached the train. The translucent train with a bluish tinge.
It was a ghost train.
I felt a hand on my shoulder. It sent a frozen chill through my body. I spun around to find two black eyes staring back. He wasn’t a typical ghost, mind you. It wasn’t one of those white blobs that look like they have a sheet on their head. He was dressed in clothes, like a human but was partly see through and (like the train) was slightly blue.
Then he spoke.
“You’re Elsie, ain’t ya’? You took a long time to get here, ya’ know. Your mum came easily. We’ve been waitin’ ages for ya’.”
“W-what?” I stammered. I had been scared to silence up until now. He raised an eyebrow and his happy-go-lucky expression disappeared.
“He ain’t told ya’, has he?” he whispered, “that blasted father of yours ain’t told ya’!” The anger in his voice was undisguisable.
“Ages ago, a woman came to us for ‘elp. She had just gone bankrupt, losin’ a load’a money, and a load’a friends. She begged us to return the gold she owned, not just to become rich again, but so she could get ‘er friends back. We told ‘er that we’d do it, but only if she gave us ‘er first-born child.
As the young lady agreed, she went on to have a wealthy, enjoyable life. She soon met a ‘andsome man; married and had a child. Instead of sacrificing the brat to us, she took the kid and ran off. We hunted ‘er down, but we never found her. ‘Cos of ‘er idiotic actions, at eleven years of age every one of her descendants is taken. Only few have survived, making this dreaded family bloodline carry on. We’ve had enough!” he grabbed a knife and held it to my throat.
“Any last words?” he hissed.
“Tell my dad and my sister I love them.” I whispered.
Joanne woke up. It was that blasted train whistle again. It had come from the end of the field. She wasn’t allowed down there, because of some disappearance or something. Anyway, it was time to put a stop to this horrid noise. One quick look couldn’t hurt.
Right?