Supernatural Tales 15 Read online

  They had a furious row, which ended in Sam telling her that as far as he was concerned they were finished. He had been thinking about it for some time, he said. Sadie was distraught; she even abandoned herself so far as to get down on her knees and implore, plead with him not to go, her eyes gazing up at him in a focus of agony, her hands twisted together against her breast.

  Last Train to Tassenmere

  by Huw Langridge

  On the street outside Tassenmere station is a row of telephone boxes. They are of the new style rather than the familiar red icons of time gone by. These semi exposed glass cubicles were often the first thing anyone saw of the little town were they to travel there by train, and walk out through the doors of the Thirties-style ticket hall.

  Sometimes one of the phones would start to ring.

  The second thing one would notice is the sea air and the sound of the restless waves crashing on the shingle. The sea was always rough at Tassenmere, adding to the half-hidden turmoil that seemed to exist on every street corner, shop doorway and salt-corroded bench.

  Perhaps from my description you are imagining the town in the daylight. If so, please switch off the lights, because in all my visits to Tassenmere I only ever saw it on miserable, rain-soaked nights.

  My first visit to the coastal town happened quite by accident late one Monday night about a week after my twenty-fifth birthday. I can remember running across the concourse at Waterloo Station, deftly navigating my way (despite my drunkenness) around the hordes of people standing around eating takeaways and staring up at the departure board.

  Being a veteran traveller on South-West Trains I knew that the 00:19 to Farnham would be my last opportunity to get back to Surbiton without having to spend a fortune on a taxi, or an eternity on assorted buses. I didn’t fancy staring through misted windows as we thundered sharply down road after road on a grand nocturnal sightseeing tour of Putney, Richmond, Twickenham and Teddington.

  No. This time I was lucky.

  Platform Two, from which the 00:19 always departed, was at the

  opposite end of the concourse and I was relieved to find as I sprinted onto the platform that it was late departing. I got on it at 00:21 and it clattered and rocked and rolled its way out of the station at 00:23. Sometimes, though not often, one could be grateful for the late running of the trains on Britain’s antiquated railways.

  Sitting on one of the few spare seats, catching my breath, I looked around the harshly bright carriage, which was full to capacity with happy drunks; talkative late-night people. The sheer cacophony of voices and laughter seemed to make up for the silent multitudes of commuters who had already used the train that day. The smell of fast food wafting between the aisles made me hungry.

  The chattering and clattering somehow enabled my inebriated mind to focus on the subject of my earlier conversation with Carla. Carla lived in the attic room of a shared house in Muswell Hill. I had been her boyfriend for three years, but earlier in the evening our particular love-train had come to a set of points - in one direction lay derailment, in the other were miles of smooth track and beautiful views. I had become the signalman whose responsibility was to influence the direction of the train, and the question on my mind was: which way was which?

  Carla had hinted at the possibility of getting engaged. At first it had not been in a particularly blatant way, but I still managed to get the message. I admit my guilt in letting the matter get out of hand, but I was a little drunk. We were sitting on the floor around the low table in the middle of her attic room constructing fajitas and absently scattering pieces of lettuce and slices of cooked peppers all over the table. The house was empty but for us; thankfully so on account of the volume of the argument we ended up having.

  She had told me she’d been shopping with her friend Natalie earlier that day, and Natalie had been looking at engagement rings, as she and her boyfriend (of only a year, Carla insisted on reminding me) had decided to get engaged. It was obvious from the tone of Carla’s voice that there was only one destination for all this talk. She wanted to know when I was going to do the same. After three years, she eventually argued, was it not time that I got down on bended knee and asked her to be my wife?

  I’m not ready for marriage, I’d told her.

  But this is not marriage, she said. This is engagement.

  It amounts to the same thing, I’d said. For declaring the intent to

  commit is surely tantamount to actually committing, unless one is a liar.

  This distinction, and our difference of opinion over the meaning of it, caused the rift that resulted in the shouting that ensued. There was however, something that I had not deigned to disclose during the argument. Something that, by its very revelation would have derailed our train instantly, because once you start down a dead-end track, derailment is nothing short of inevitable.

  You see, I was not entirely sure that I wanted to marry her.

  I woke up with a start, a jolt that would have been embarrassing had there been anyone else in the carriage to witness it. The train had stopped. The doors had shuffled open to let in the cold. The driver flashed the carriage lights twice to signify that the train was terminating here.

  I silently cursed my drunken tiredness and got to my feet. The hissing and chugging of some unknown machinery under my feet were the only sounds as. I stepped off the train, wondering how on earth I would get home from Farnham at this late hour.

  Looking along the side of the train, which curved slightly away from me, I could see that I had been the very last person to get off the train. The platform was empty. Everyone else had gone. The station sign read Tassenmere. The train had not terminated at Farnham after all.

  I looked up at the clouds. They were orange from reflected streetlamps, and grey from the burden of rain. They were shifting quickly across the sky under the heavy invisible hand of a high wind, which seemed much softer down at my level. Icy droplets started to spatter on my upturned face. The air in Tassenmere was a few degrees colder than it had been in the city, and condensation was forming from my breath.

  I buried my hands in the pockets of my winter coat and started to walk along the side of the train, following the signs marked Way Out. My feet carried me under the sheltered section of the platform – the drumming of rain on top of the corrugated sheeting magnified the sound of the downpour.

  I hurried down a set of steps and turned left into an echoing Art Deco ticket hall. A clock hung above the three ticket windows whose drawn blinds bore the words Position Closed. The time on the clock read 1:17 am. Though the lights that hung from the high ceiling were lit, there were no other signs that the station was manned. On one of the walls was a torn map of the South-West Trains area. The rip, unfortunately, was just under the title, Network Map, so none of the map was there to be seen.

  Of the station’s three sets of doors, only one was open. One of the telephones in the boxes outside the station was ringing, and the shrill sound drew me out. I struggled inside the small cubicle to get what relief I could from the rain; then I lifted the receiver and said hello.

  The man on the other end of the line bade me good evening, and asked if I would be interesting in taking part in a questionnaire about the quality of life in Tassenmere. I told him I had been there a few minutes and was hardly in a position to help. He apologised and wished me a good evening once more, before hanging up.

  Stepping back from the phone box into the rain (which had started to ease off a little) I cast my eyes up and down the street, thinking that it might be sensible to locate a minicab office. There was not another soul in sight. Not a single moving car or living being.

  Tassenmere was a ghost town at this hour of the morning. But the silence from living and mechanical things meant that I was able to hear the sea below the soft tapping of the rain. I could hear the sea but I could not see it, and somehow the rain was confusing my ability to pinpoint its direction.

  How had this train reached the coast in less than an hour? Well,
I supposed it was possible, but only if it had been a fast train. If memory served the train had stopped at Clapham Junction and Wimbledon before I had fallen asleep. In that direction a stopping train would take two or three hours to reach the coast, surely? Yet the 00:19 had arrived at a little before 01:17.

  At what point had it stopped being a Farnham train? Had there been a statement on the notice board at Waterloo that the train would split, with four carriages going one way and another four going the other? Had I joined the wrong set of carriages?

  The road that ran past Tassenmere mainline station appeared to be the high street. I chose the direction that seemed to have more going for it, and headed in that direction, walking past dark lifeless shops; Boots, WH Smith, Superdrug. I looked at the ill-lit posters of pretty girls selling make-up and shampoo. There was no illumination outside the orange pockets of warmth that emanated from the street lights, reflected in the wind-rippled puddles that were trapped on the tarmac by the kerbs.

  The rain eased off to nothing and the direction of the furiously crashing waves was easier to locate now; off to my right, undoubtedly a couple of streets away behind the buildings. Still no sign of a minicab office on this road. I thought that if I returned to the telephone boxes I could contact directory enquiries and ask for the number of a minicab. I had no idea how much it would cost me to get home to Surbiton from here, or whether a minicab driver would even be prepared to make the journey at this time of night. Nonetheless it was the only option that occurred to me at the time, so I started to walk back to the station.

  Shivering from the cold, as it was late November, I walked a little faster, but stopped dead when I saw the name above the door of one of the shops on the other side of the street. To think that I had walked past it before and not even noticed. The shop’s awning had been retracted, and above it the sign bore the painted letters (ornate black text on a white background) of the shop’s name.

  The shop was called The Decisions of Alex. I crossed the empty street and approached the wide glass frontage. Just inside, on the sill, was a row of books, presumably the latest releases to draw in the customers. The only light here came from the streetlamps, which cast my shadow across the biggest hardback in the window. I moved aside to shed some light on the cover.

  The title of the book was “Owning Up To The Coin” by Robert Thomas and the cover image bore a picture of a red Ford Escort with dull paintwork sitting in a street not unlike the one where I grew up.

  When I was ten years old Mr Thomas, our neighbour, came over to say that someone had run a coin down the side of his car. He asked my parents if they had seen the culprit. I remember standing in the kitchen, listening to my father tell Mr Thomas that he had no idea who had done it, as he had been out all day and had only just this minute got home. Mr Thomas asked my Dad if it might have been his son. My Dad emphatically refuted the accusation, asking how Mr Thomas could stand to even think Alex was capable of such a thing. Dad slammed the door in Mr Thomas’s face. I don’t think they ever spoke again.

  Back at the train station I lifted the receiver on the telephone I had used earlier and dialled the number for directory enquiries. After no rings whatsoever a kind Scottish lady came on the line at the other end, offering her assistance. I requested the number of a minicab office in Tassenmere. She said there was only one listed, and gave me the number. I memorised it, looking at the shape the numbers made on the telephone keypad.

  I produced a 20p coin and used it to call the minicab office. A recorded message told me that the number had not been recognised. I redialled it. The message was the same. I hung up once more.

  Looking the other way along the high street I could see lights on above a large Tudor house that stood apart from the row of shop buildings. The Tudor building was about a hundred metres further on. I started to walk towards it, and I saw that the lights were shining down onto a swinging sign that read The Three Pistons, Food & Accommodation. Surely they couldn’t turn away a man in trouble?

  I knocked on the heavy oak door, and saw through the rippled circular glass that there was movement on the other side. The rippled movement grew and the door opened to reveal a short old man in a dressing gown. I explained my predicament to the man, in the hope that I could persuade him to let me have a room for the night. I told him that I would never have considered knocking were I not in such a fix, and I admit to exaggerating my shivering in the hope that he might take pity on me.

  After a moment of consideration he stepped aside to let me in, stating that he didn’t normally accept guests at this time of night. The building smelled of greasy chips, which would no doubt accompany every single dish that was served here. The smell had infused the walls and floor, and had become a part of the building’s very fabric.

  The old man was adamant that I pay for the room in advance; twenty pounds. I produced my wallet and handed over two tens, which he took from me and folded once, twice, then three times, before slipping them into the pocket of his dressing gown. Then he asked me to follow him up the stairs.

  The old wood creaked beneath our feet as we ascended, stopping halfway up for the old man to retrieve an ornate key. The key hung on one of a set of hooks that punctuated the wall between two paintings; one was a portrait of a woman who looked remarkably like Carla’s mother.

  When we reached the landing outside Room 3, the old man popped the long key into the lock on the old wooden door and twisted it. A satisfyingly loud click was the cue he needed to push open the door and bid me to enter. I switched on the light.

  Wooden panelling adorned every wall inside the Three Pistons and Room 3 was no different. Though the room was minimalist and functional, it was comfortable in an olde-worlde sort of way. I turned to thank the old man, but he was gone. I took the key out of the lock, closed the door and locked it from the inside. The clock beside the bed read 1:58.

  The room was cold, but the proprietors had thoughtfully provided a fan heater. I switched it on and the sound of the fan was warming in itself. I breathed in the hot dust smell that betrayed the heater’s previous lack of use. I removed my clothes, but not my t-shirt or boxer-shorts, and climbed under the cold sheets. Once I was huddled there I reached out only to switch off the heater, and the lights. Then I lay looking at the diamond shapes in the window as the leaves from a tree brushed against it, rhythmically tapping like a train running over the joins in a track. Sounds like that can send a person to sleep.

  My alarm clock woke me at 7am, just as it always did; the shrill buzz cutting like a scalpel through my dreams and dragging me backwards out of the world of sleep. I reached out and switched it off. I had a splitting headache. I had definitely had too much to drink the night before and I hadn’t had any water to counter the effects of dehydration.

  But… it was my alarm clock. My alarm clock!

  The shock of that realisation made me sit bolt upright in bed and look around my bedroom with a sense I can only describe as confused awe. For how on earth did I get home?

  I was still wearing the t-shirt and boxer-shorts that I had on when I climbed into bed at the Three Pistons the night before. The rest of my clothes were piled on the floor near the bed. I flipped the duvet aside and got up. Picking up my jacket I went through the pockets to see if my wallet and keys were still there. I sighed audibly with relief when my hands found them nested in the pocket there. I think I might have vaguely noticed a problem with the keys at that point, but it wasn’t something that registered. At that point I was just glad that I still had them and left it at that.

  Standing in the kitchen, hugging a cup of tea (with which I took two aspirin) I stared out at the icy, late-autumn morning. I contemplated Tassenmere, and how I had managed to get home. I was unable to draw any conclusions, and an exponential increase in my confusion took place when I tried to to lock the front door of my apartment as I was leaving for work.

  My key ring usually has three keys on it, and an additional leather piece that bore the word “Alex”. Carla had given it
to me as a birthday present the previous week. Two of the keys were for my front door, and the third was for a filing cabinet at work. One of the keys was missing; the one for the main deadlock on my front door. Its absence was not an immediate problem, for I could just pull the door to, and the latch would be sufficient security for the time being. It was nonetheless baffling, because I couldn’t understand how I could have lost just one key off the set.

  When I arrived at work I telephoned Carla at her work to tell her about my strange journey home. Her extension was answered by a colleague who told me that Carla had taken some short-notice holiday, and wouldn’t be back in the office until the following week.

  I telephoned Carla’s house. After ten rings one of her flatmates answered. Neil sounded like just been woken up, and was clearly put out by the intrusion. I asked him if Carla was there. He told me that she was not, but she had scribbled a note on the telephone pad saying that she packed a few things and was going to Cornwall to visit her parents for a few days.

  I was dejected when I replaced the receiver. It was obvious that our argument the night before had been the reason for her sudden disappearance. My sadness wasn’t because I felt bad about what I had said. I felt I’d been within my rights. I merely hoped that I had not done irreparable damage to the relationship. Although I wasn’t ready to make a decision about marriage, I did love her very much.

  I hoped this situation would be able to resolve itself, and I decided that if she wanted to be alone for a time then I would allow her respite; I would not try to contact her.