Hell Train by Christopher Fowler Read Free Book Online

first time Miranda regretted marrying a country vicar. He checked his pocket watch and looked anxiously down the line.
    ‘Can you see anything?’ she asked.
    Thomas’s eyesight was poor, but he could discern a faint glow moving in the shadowed woods.
    ‘Is it the train?’
    ‘No,’ said Thomas gloomily. ‘I think it’s the army.’
    The bushes at the end of the platform suddenly rustled and parted. Emerging from them, a filthy boy stepped onto the paving stones. His clothes were ragged and his feet were unshod. His piercing blue eyes held the signs of madness.
    Thomas refused to be intimidated by a mere child. He strode up to the urchin and confronted him.
    ‘Little boy, can you understand me?’
    The child studied him, then pulled something alive from his wild hair and put it in his mouth. ‘We all speak English. There was a teacher here once. We liked our teacher very much.’
    ‘Jolly good. When is the next train?’
    ‘No train.’ The boy scratched at his head, looking for more lice.
    ‘I thought there was supposed to be one at midnight.’
    ‘Something comes at midnight.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘Something that looks like a train.’ The boy examined another wriggling bug held between his fingers, then ate it.
    ‘Where does it go?’
    ‘Mustn’t look at it. Turn away when you hear the rails sing. Cover your ears when you hear the whistle. At midnight you must run. Hide.’ The boy turned to go.
    ‘Wait—’
    But it was too late. The child had vanished in the darkening woodland.
    ‘What was the boy saying?’ Miranda called.
    Thomas could hear the worry in her voice. ‘Nothing that made sense,’ he told her.
    ‘What shall we do?’
    ‘What can we do?’ said Thomas. ‘We wait.’

 
    CHAPTER SIX
     
    THE ESCAPE
     
     
    N ICHOLAS LOOKED THROUGH the window of the tavern and saw trouble brewing. Josef and Ivan were standing with Isabella’s father. There was much gesticulation.
    ‘Wait here,’ he told Isabella, and he went as close to the window as he dared, listening.
    ‘Wake yourselves up, you two,’ the landlord was saying. ‘Stop the Englishman. And find my daughter. Ivan, sober up and help Josef. It’s his wife he’ll be losing.’
    Nicholas watched as Ivan and Josef left the bar with sudden purpose.
    ‘Come this way,’ Isabella whispered. She was holding open a narrow wooden door at the side of the tavern. He slipped inside, and followed Isabella to the foot of the stairs.
    ‘Go to your room and pack your bag,’ Nicholas said. ‘I need some things. Be as quick as you can. I’ll meet you outside.’
    Running lightly up the stairs, Isabella darted into her room and stuffed her mother’s old cloth bag with a few essential items. When she glanced out of the window, she saw Ivan and Josef burst into the courtyard below. Isabella blew out her candle and descended, leaving through the back door, into the alleyway at the side of the inn.
    Outside his room, Nicholas froze as the floorboards creaked. He listened intently, but hearing nothing from the floor below, he continued inside. Quietly and quickly, with an expertise that revealed much practice, he grabbed his valise and the string-tied wad of notes he had hidden under the mattress, and started to leave, crab-walking awkwardly down the back stairs.
    At the bottom of the staircase, the landlord and his men were waiting for him. The barkeepers of Eastern Europe kept a keen eye for men who tried to slip out. ‘Where do you think you’re going, friend?’ asked Isabella’s father. He tapped a heavy stick in his palm.
    Isabella stared through the window helplessly as Nicholas was hauled back into the inn by the drinkers, and was forced to sit on a stool before the open fire. He was surrounded by angry villagers who never once took their eyes from him.
    Nicholas considered his options. He had, in truth, been in stickier situations. There had been that time in Valencia with the Mayor’s daughter, for a start. They had nearly cut