The Vanishing Train- A sci-fi story | Read mysterious stories

 The Vanishing Train- A sci-fi story

The sound of wheels rolling on the rails clickety clack should have been the most comforting sound in the whole world. Sometimes it appeared as if I could even hear the vibrations in my bones that put me into a state of calm drowsiness. I see the image come back as if I have remembered it in a dream. Bright light coming in through the closed compartments, old wooden dividers of the cars, smell of burnt coffee dominating the air, soft distant giggling of the passengers in the next compartment. Each of it just like the other, mundane and everyday. However, what is commonplace is most often the shield, which imprisons an energy that consumes, bite by bite, consistently. And what does one get to know for any such ordinary awfulness? 

 This grin with which I am familiar now looks sinister — upside down. I can’t get the feeling of panic out of my head: the screams, the loudspeaker announcement, the red dots on the car, when everyone became tenser and tenser, like the air was cracking with the enormity of the mystery that had just happened, then hushed and icy when they started whispering about the unthinkable vanishing.

 

 Instead of the train going to Alderswood simply disappeared and it was as if a ravenous hole opened in the ground, claiming even the souls that were stuck inside like moths caught in a spider web. Oh God, you should have seen my eyes, like marbles of dying light, when the call came through. “Oh well, it is up to you, Irene,” they told me. I felt the impression in the chest, a flare of a heartfelt contraction. I was on that train… our food, our everything — Kiran. 

I was looking at the case folder now; that white compilation of official and impersonal documents and missing information provoking me in its blank stare… The chief had sent an officer my way. I saw him twirling a pen, trying to distract his mind with the object that seems to help launch words on paper as if the ink can cure the anxiety building up on him. ‘Do you recall that last seen report they released?’ he began but the words disappeared in the ringing sound in my ears. Because what of it? What of its urgency? By this time I was half a detective, half a spirit, a spirit wandering, haunting the streets that had scenes of horror. 

 I take a deep breath, open my eyes and reality anchors itself to me again Despite apprehension, there r broad outlines of possibilities like tangled skein unraveling itself. But what if the threads that one was following led somewhere treacherous? I tie all these thoughts in a tight knot that someone should not escape my hands. 

 Though different aspects of Kiran filled her memory, there was a certain joy in remembering that cheerful ‘Kiran’s smile’ which could light up anything wrong. He was furiously passionate about the quasars and black holes overhead Every time electron and quarks dance called him . It was there that I had seen him for the last time leaning against the glass window of the cafe located opposite the station, beckoning me over with such eagerness. I can almost see him smile, just the sort of happy laughter that seems to be well deserved. So why hadn’t he phoned? Did he see what was threatening us? Nonsense? The panic worms me. I don’t know, it isn’t right. It isn’t right at all. 

 “Detective,” the officer suddenly interrupts and I stop, turning to look at him and his words sound frightening. “The last timetable reveals that the train departs at 14:30. ” From those words create a timeline of the events that happened that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. 

Every name on the manifest pricks: lives cut short, promises not merely dampened but erased. I slowly open the case file and there it is the manifest looks neat with the list of passengers printed alongside the basic information on the last sighting, there it is Jacob Mercer staring at me from the page like a ghost. My forehead falls into my hands, and for a moment, the weight of the Tangos slams into my gut like a freight car. That was the last thing he ever desired to have. He was to be having fun; the kind of life he wanted, taking photograph tour, relishing the fragrance of the place I called home – the wild of Alderswood. 

 Perhaps it was all linked? I collect direction and storm out on to the platform. The wind of the evening fills the air with the blackening of the sky and courses over my heart, and murmurs. In my own search through the records as good as I can, I continue to boil in lists of the other passengers whose names I wash between my fingers—like grains of sand, vanished and otherworldly. 

 A lady in a floral headscarf then catches my eye; she seems to be well-immune to all that is going on. There is some steely hardness hidden in her eyes which is not the sorrow, but the awareness of a terrible reality. “You are looking for them,” I reply, attempting to control my voice. 

 I smile at her sophistication, and say to her, “There is actually nothing to scratch when you do not have to scratch the surface. ” Part of me hazarded that there is something wrong with her: something existential that I am detecting, an inkling. beneath her skin I can sense a chill — what does she have on her lips? I want to know her secrets which are usually concealed but with her rather infectious laughter. Hi there, Dave,” she said, looking up at him, and he thought that perhaps she was the first person he wanted to see when he opened the file, that he’d had this whole idea in his head of questioning people, working the case, “People disappear, Detective, when they know too much or when they owe too much. ” 

“What do you mean” I whispered with puffed cheeks as my heart thudded in my chest. 

 Her hand goes up and she adjusts the scarf that is around her neck and then she brings her face forward and lowers her voice almost to a whisper against the noise level. “It must be the company that runs the train… they stirred taboo… antiquity of Alderswood that should remain buried. ” 

 A cold feeling sets in as if a hand grabbed hold of my heart and dragged me towards becoming more morbid. The truth is often said to be ugly and this is further manifested in that the truth here blossoms like a wound. Maybe, it was not the childhood’s silly dream to disappear between those tough trees; it intertwined the evil and the joyful in the spiral dance and revealed the sinister choreography. Kiran, Jacob—Man infinite, all these more, but only mere dancers, co- rotating in an endless loop of darkness and confinement. 

 I knew I could scream out every knot, but I wouldn’t. That is why, tucking my coat around me against the wet cold, I collect rescue-like glimpses. Therefore, I descend into the darkness of those, who might think they’re untouchable, into such things that might be covered with ancient wisdom – serpents dwelling in a hidden gorge. 

 And while it starts with a train disappearing into thin air another unearthing of a surreal reality was imminent shrouded as tightly as a butterfly within a snug of bureaucracy and failed transportation. I realized it then—the predatory instinct arose, the future of a thousand people lay in my hands—and only in the realm of night would I ever search for a new spark in the depth of the being.