THE SALVATION TRAIN

THE SALVATION TRAIN

When the conductor on a phantom train beckons, 
who can resist stepping aboard?

 

Ferreting out the soil in which huckleberries thrive outside of somebody’s garden generally requires a trip far beyond Marion County limits. That’s how Kenny, Ryan and I discovered the old, abandoned railway station where we sprawled, lips stained blue, sunning ourselves on its platform one sultry Sunday. We’d abandoned our bikes a few miles back, continuing on foot through the rougher terrain when Kenny spotted the ramshackle building rising above the brush.

 “Look!” cried Kenny.  

“What is it?” I asked.

“A train station, I think,” said Ryan. “Cool!”

We peered through broken windows into a large room full of wooden benches. The front door was padlocked, but a solid whack with a rock busted that easily. Inside, finding nothing of interest, we returned to the platform to lounge beneath its faded sign:

Lost Springs Railway Station
Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe

“This must be part of the old ‘Rock Island Line’ we sang about in school, remember? “‘Oh the Rock Island Line is a mighty good line,’” I sang. “There’s a spring around here somewhere! I think this station was built nearby so passengers could get fresh water. Something happened out here, so they shut it down.”

“What happened?”

“Dunno.”

“Let’s find that spring!” Kenny said, “We’ll refill our canteens!”

“Is the water safe?” Ryan worried aloud. 

“Springs are pure, sissy!” Daredevil Kenny shouted, leaping off the platform.

 

It was late afternoon with no sign of the spring, when the sky turned dark and thunder boomed across the valley. Soon, we were back in the station huddled on a bench being shaken by thunderclaps, and dazzled by lightning as storm clouds erupted overhead. 

“It’s dark,” Ryan noted, after the sun sank below the horizon.

“I’m not moving till this storm’s over!” 

“How we gonna get home in the dark?”

“Quit worrying. We’ll find our way.”

“My dad’s gonna be mad.”

“My mom’s been going crazy since sunset.”

The storm stopped as abruptly as it started. Peering out the windows into the jet-black night, Ryan tensed suddenly…

“Listen!” 

“To what?”

“That rumbling…”

“I don’t hear anything,” I said.

“There! Hear it? Like a train coming!”

“That’s crazy! This track doesn’t even connect anymore!” 

“I hear something too,” Kenny said. “Like a whistle…woooo-hoooo...but also it’s like…somebody’s…crying.”

“Quit foolin’ around guys!” I said, getting up, then collapsing again as deep reverberations shook the station. “What the…?”

I can only tell you true what I saw next, as the night closed in around us. How moonlight dappled the top of a great locomotive as it barreled up the tracks, crackling with energy and glowing like those fluorescent stars you stick on your bedroom ceiling.

“LOOK!” Kenny commanded with such authority we snapped to attention. All along the platform, phosphorescent children were rising up out of nowhere, filmy, old-timey clothing hung raggedly from scrawny bodies as they merged into a line along the platform’s edge.

A soft, pitiful weeping, which built gradually into a mournful wail rose into the night. Ryan clapped his hands over his ears, eyes wide with fear. Now came the whistling, grinding sound of locomotive brakes, as that train eased into the station.  A cattle car door slid open and the once-acrid scent in the air shifted.

“Chicken soup,” murmured Kenny.

Children pushed towards the open door where, from its depths, ghostly apparitions leaned outward offering each child a gentle embrace, along with what appeared to be some kind of steaming bowl. Every child cradled their bowl like treasure, spooning the contents into their gaping mouths while making their way to the passenger car and boarding the train.

“ALL ABOARD!” a phantasmic conductor brayed.

From a window, a gaunt-faced girl gazed keenly into Kenny’s eyes…

Kenny rose from his seat and said softly, “I need to go now.” 

“KENNY, NO!” shouted Ryan, as Kenny bolted out across the platform and leapt for the train. A translucent arm reached out to embrace him as the train lurched forward then accelerated into the night, leaving behind only Ryan and me, and a hungry moon licking at the tracks. Tracks that train’s wheels never touched.

***

When the search party found us, our garbled attempts to describe what happened were dismissed as trauma by everyone. An abduction had taken place, they concluded, and I guess in a way, that’s true.  Afterwards, I devoured library books searching for answers to elusive questions, but it was my sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Ernst, who provided the missing piece to my puzzle. Lost in my nightmarish daydreams, I almost missed it:

“During the Great Depression President Hoover failed United States citizens by refusing them government aid in their time of desperate need. It was the ‘Emergency Relief Foundation’ formed by a group of wealthy American Samaritans who came to the country’s aid by procuring an out-of-commission railroad train re-fitted to roll across the country, doling out bread and hearty soup from a make-shift on-board kitchen.”

“Chicken soup,” Kenny had  whispered.

“Destitute parents traveled miles to meet this train in a literal effort to stop their starving children’s decline, but before the train’s arrival at Lost Springs Station, violent floods washed out the bridge at Royal Gorge, sending the soup train crashing into the chasm, leaving parents waiting at stations all across the country looking on helplessly, as their children died in their arms.” 

My classmates gasped in horror, but for me, something snapped snugly into place. I reckoned some of those souls got stuck there at those stations, and what I’d come to call “The Salvation Train” returns to carry whoever’s now ready, onward to heaven. 

I pray it carried Kenny to a better place. He’d trusted the message mingled in the comforting aroma of his dear, departed mother’s chicken soup, (powerful things to resist) leaving his abusive father far behind.

I’ve found my way back to that old station every year since. I’ll be there waiting just in case Kenny ever decides to ride that train back home again… 

 

--that train, whose wheels never touched the tracks. 

~By taree Belardes

NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Contest 2017 (Second rnd 1st challenge flash)

Time;48 hrs

Word Limit; 1,000

Genre; Ghost Story

Location; A soup kitchen

Object to include;  A padlock