Three kids stared into a clear night sky thick with the magic of summer.
"Hey," Sam said, "Do you believe in ghosts?"
I'll believe anything you believe, Mark almost said, but it was sappy and he stopped himself before he said anything stupid to the girl that, well, he kinda liked. His face settled for an awkward blush, mercifully hidden by the darkness. Paul broke the silence.
"Sure. Heck, with all those abandoned houses, this might as well be a ghost town."
"What would you say a ghost is, anyway?" Mark asked.
"An echo of something once living, I'd say," Sam said. "Something that hasn't finished dying yet."
"Hmm. Maybe we're ghosts, then." Paul's voice was husky with awe. "Only an echo of a place that hasn't stopped lying to itself."
The velvet-black sky was resplendent with stars.
The Crossing
A work in progress, which means I'll feel free to talk about back-stage stuff that will ruin the plot and atmosphere. Contrapositively, I'm especially open to comment and criticism. Content-wise, while I don't plan on this getting violent or gory, the characters are rebellious teenagers who aren't shy about the occasional obscenity.
As it stands, I've sketched out plot for six chapters but only written one (and maybe a third of the second). No guarantees on how fast or even if I'll finish (confound college courses. And ponies, too!), so only read if you're willing to be left hanging. And, you never know, this might get long anyway. It's so hard to tell ahead of time.
Come to think of it, now that I've written that blurb, it belongs in the third or fifth chapter, so I've started that one, too! Anyway, enough stalling, here's
First Tale - The Black Bridge
"Hey, last night, I heard it again," Paul said. "The ghost train."
Mark sighed to himself as he pinched off another bit of stale bread for the ducks. "Again? That train that supposedly crosses that bridge downstream?"
Two mallards squabbled over the crumb. Downstream, an iron bridge with peeling black paint spanned the river. Beyond it, framed by the green vegetation flanking the river, lay the run-down buildings and smokestacks of Warton Iron Works.
"Yeah. Well, not that I've seen it. It's just sometimes I wake up and it sounds like something's running on those tracks."
"The tracks that cross Main Street? The ones with no gates and the sign saying 'exempt'?"
"Yeah."
Mark rolled his eyes at that one. Just Paul being Paul, he told himself, but he'll play along anyway. "The tracks that continue across the black bridge that's only still there to hold up the footbridge?"
"That's the one."
"And which only go to the Works, which, I might remind you, have been shuttered for twenty-five years?"
"At least the rails're still there. That's a lot of scrap steel to leave lying around if they're never used."
"Paul. When's the last time you've seen traffic stopped on Main Street for a train?"
"Never." Paul grinned as if rellishing the illogic. "Before you ask, I've never seen a train on those tracks either. That's why it's a *ghost* train. Every week or two, a train comes through in the middle of the night and wakes me up. I'm only telling you what I hear."
Mark glanced at the crust of bread left in his hands. He sighed again, and tossed it at the ducks. With a sharp cry, a slate-backed gull dropped out of the sky, glared bloody murder at the ducks, picked up the bread, and flew off again. Mark chuckled. "Y'think that ****er feels any shame?"
Paul smirked. "And on the seventh day, God rested and looked on all he made, and it was very, very good."
Mark looked downriver to the bridge, a rusting black trestle with train tracks on top and a silver galvanized footbridge welded across the girders below. "Look. I'll bet if we climb up there, those rails will be all rusted up. They haven't been used in, ****, 't's gotta be ten years before you or I were even born."
"Yeah, sure. It's not like we've got anything to lose."
Mark picked himself up, dusting the last of the crumbs off his hands. The ducks gave a few sad quacks and went their separate ways, almost like a crowd of bystanders told to "move along; show's over." Paul was already headed down the footpath a good five meters ahead of Mark, who had to race to catch up.
When they reached the bridge and climbed the embankment, Mark had to admit that the rails did not look like he had expected.
"That's surprisingly little rust."
"So, y'think a ghost train would wear a bright patch like that?"
"Come to think of it, I don't really know what a 20-year unused set of rails *should* look like. Maybe this is normal."
"Well, there's really only one thing to do." Paul grinned, and Mark knew him well enough to have at least an idea where this was headed.
"You're crazy." Actually, he has been a little crazy these last two years--ever since his sister died, Mark thought. But, crazy in a logical sort of way. If there's a ghost train making trips along that track, it has to be stopping at the old Iron Works. There's nowhere else to go. At least, it's enough of a lead to warrant a peek. Makes perfect sense, in a warped way.
"I think I want to take a look around. Just a little one. Wanna come?"
If Mark were totally honest with himself, he did not want to come. He was, as his teachers and parents said, a "good boy," not the sort who would be snooping around an old and dangerous abandoned factory--certainly not the sort to be *caught* doing it--and the safest way to not be caught is not do anything in the first place. That makes perfect sense, too.
But.
But, Paul was a friend, or the closest thing Mark had to a friend, even if he was a little nuts and a bit of a trouble magnet. And you don't let a friend do something stupid. At least, not without coming along to make things a little less stupid. Right?
"Well, not today. It's late and we're not ready. You'll at least want a flashlight and some water and maybe a camera. Hiking boots. Tomorrow at the earliest."
"Cool. I'll see you in the morning."
So, here's what should be going on. Very spoileriffic.
- Mark will be our PoV character this story. He's hard-nosed and dutiful, though he enjoys his flights of fancy. ISTJ. I'm not entirely sure what made him friends with Paul, but now that he is, he is wholeheartedly committed.
- The setting is somewhat post-apocalyptic. A prolonged and severe economic downturn (oil crisis, most likely) and pandemic struck the previous generation. They still have electricity, though it's limited and isn't wasted on things like heating, streetlights, or municipal water. High-efficiency electric lights are a middle-class semi-luxury, and so are computers. (Like cable TV would be to our society) Cars are out of gas, trucks rare, animal traction, common. Most people are now intensive farmers. The adults hate having the plug pulled, the kids never knew anything different, and there's just a little bit of inter-generational friction stemming from that: Parents want their kids to realize that "Life is Hard," but don't realize that they're already up to the challenge.
- Paul is spacey, poetic, private, obsessed with the occult, Mark's best friend, and the villain. INFP. He has already let his curiosity get the better of him, and well, I think I'll leave it at that.
- Samantha is Paul's older sister, irrepressibly exuberant, delights in wild theories, Mark's first crush, and at the time of the story, missing for nearly two years. ENFJ. Paul maintains that she will one day return (and seems driven to bring that day about, if he's ever driven to anything). Mark has finally made peace with himself that, no, she's dead, and isn't ready to talk about her anymore.
- The Ghost is an echo of a memory, a hungry desire in the collective subconscious for greatness to return once again. It manifests itself in different ways to different people: a train to Paul and Mark, fireflies in a clearing and the roar of a waterfall to Samantha. It also does not really exist. (I freely admit that my mind does not comprehend the true form of this character--it's dredged up from somewhere in my subconscious.)
