Category: Short Fiction

The Nursery

‘I always feel silly about this bit‘ I told the vendor, ‘But full disclosure is full disclosure.  Even ghosts‘. The vendor was a young man, late twenties, and as well presented as my three bed detached house he was trying to sell.

‘Ghosts, eh?’ he said, rubbing the back of his neck, ‘one man’s ghost is another man’s creaky floor board you know‘

‘Quite true‘ I said, and I had to agree with him, ‘but you know how it is now.  They changed the law to protect the buyer and seller alike.  Anything you mention now, you can’t be sued for later; and we’ve already covered the physical, social and geographical sections‘

‘I know‘ he said, sighing. ‘I know‘

‘I should probably put down that creaky board too‘ I said, ‘just to be on the safe side‘

There had been something of a scandal in the property market of late, with lofty booms and deep depressions, accusations of misleading descriptions, dirty dealings, gazumping and gazundering, and legal actions taken to recover any and every misspent penny.  The inevitable outcome of course, was the full disclosure clause.  A catalogue of features, good and bad, compiled by the seller and presented to potential buyers.  A full service history for the home; every dripping tap, noisy neighbour and molehill went in to the report, and if necessary, an estimate on the cost of correction.  If you knew about something, but failed to log it, you could be, potentially, liable for hefty losses.

The vendor fell silent and rubbed his neck again.

‘I’m guessing by your silence that you have something else to disclose‘ I said.

He laughed dryly, as if choking on ash.  ‘It’s crazy‘ he said.  ‘How can I disclose the presence of something I don’t believe in?‘

‘Do you believe there is a presence?‘

He stared through me, his eyes glazed.

‘Just tell me what you know; we can let the buyer make up their own mind.’ I pulled out my notebook to record the details.

His face dropped.  ‘That’s what worries me‘

            It was a tidy little house, only one year old and with one careful owner. It sat in an ample sized plot, its garden commanded an uninterrupted view down the long valley and the ocean beyond.  A typical modern middle class home, it was of a unique design among its neighbours, and it was hard to imagine how a house of this standard would fail to find a buyer in the current market.

‘We bought it in a rush‘, the vendor explained, ‘with the baby on the way and the unexpected job transfer; we found ourselves moving back out west. Found this house as part of a new development and moved straight in, just one week before baby was due.‘

That was August, last year.  A real heat wave, I remember it all too well.  While I celebrated my promotion to Associate Member that night with altogether far too much alcohol and a skinny dip in the Tamar, the vendor had had a celebratory barbecue at his brand new home.

He took me outside to show me, and his tale unfurled.

‘We were out in the back garden‘ he said, ‘When I first thought something was up‘

‘Over there‘ he said, pointing to the neighbouring street that backed on to his land, ‘That’s Elms Walk now, but when we moved in, that was the edge of the wood‘

‘We were all out here drinking; having a laugh, scoffing Evie’s minted lamb burgers and caramelised bananas. It was a beautiful day, practically tropical.  It must have been about seven o’clock though, when the sun started to dip behind the trees, casting the garden in to shade, and at that same moment, the wind picked up.  The whole yard cooled down, and, this might just be the booze, but the shadows from the wood seemed to dance menacingly toward us, and creepily, and far faster than I would expect the sinking sun to cast.‘

‘I had hoped we get more sun in the back than we did, but I didn’t mind.’ He went on. ‘The setting sun was just an excuse to light the chiminea.  This was when Evie asked me to get her a blanket from indoors.’

‘I did as asked and went inside, everything was still in boxes, even some of the cupboards were still in flat-pack boxes and waiting to be unpacked and assembled.  The Nursery had become an unofficial laundry room while we got sorted, and as I pushed open the door to collect a fleece blanket, something rustled behind the boxes.  I only saw its shadow, but my best guess was a cat, or a small dog; I could hear it rustling the plastic bags as it tried to evade me.  It wasn’t an unreasonable assumption, the doors and windows had been open all day. Anything could have got inside; my only worry at the time was getting bitten by some rabies infected mog.’

‘And then I thought it was a bird because when I crept cautiously round the boxes and found nothing, and walked round around again.  I was certain, then there was a tap and the window, a flutter of wings and it was gone.  I thought no more of it as I picked up the blanket.’

When I got back outside, Evie was sat up on the bench, nursing her huge baby bump.  I was very protective of my wife and bump, and I didn’t care for the worried look on her face.

‘It got cold very quickly, she told me, as I wrapped the fleece around her shoulders.’

‘I asked her if the baby was ok, and she assured me that everything was fine, but that she’d felt something, like someone had been touching her tummy, stroking her, pressing down like an obstetrician might examine the baby.  She said that she must have imagined it, but that it felt so real with her eyes closed; when the shadow from the trees moved across her, she was sure someone was stood there’. 

‘That sent a right chill up my back,’ he said, ‘and Evie never really shook the feeling that someone was stood over her shoulder where ever she was in the house.  I wished I’d listened to her at the start.’

‘After the barbecue, we only had a week to try and sort the house, but so much of our stuff was still in storage that we just couldn’t feel at home; and the bare walls and polished floors made for a cold and empty feeling.  It was harder to settle in than we’d thought, especially after the weird dream I had that night, I had enough doubts about the house and moving without some haggard looking grey skinned witch with wiry green hair screaming “Idiot, you got the wrong house!” at me. I woke up with a scream, my vest soaking; I very nearly set off Evie’s labour.’ 

‘About a week after later, we were both in bed, and I’d made Evie a caffeine free coffee for a Sunday snuggle and snooze, but we both heard a noise.  We sat upright, and heard it again.  A high pitched, but stifled giggle, like an excited schoolgirl trying keep her cool as she met her idol.’

‘“She’s on her way” The same hushed voice called out. And in the next moment, Evie was gripping my arm.  Her waters had broken.  I won’t bore you with the slippery details, but twelve hours after that, we had a beautiful baby girl, and the creepy voice was right. And after that, things started to get weird.‘

            ‘Got weird?’ I said to the vendor, ‘as if the creepy voice and groping thing was normal?’

He led me back inside and up the stairs to the master bedroom.

‘We kept baby in here with us to begin with, for the first two weeks’ he explained, ‘but she was so unsettled, and it began to interfere with our sleep.  She would wake every three hours for a feed, which is normal, but we started to have weird dreams.  Both of us dreamed that she was in the bed with us, and we’d wake at the same time looking her under the sheets.  It was like we were having the same dream, at the same time, and it was only when one of us looked up to see her in her crib, that we realised that we’d been dreaming it, but it was hard to shake when it was so realistic, like something had been there with us in the bed.’

‘That is weird’ I said, ‘Spooky even’.

‘That’s not the worst of it‘ he went on.

‘One night I woke up in the small hours.  Evie was sat on the end of the bed, with her head slumped.  I asked if she was ok, but she shushed me. I went over to see what was wrong, and tapped her on the shoulder’.

‘She snarled at me, muttering that I’ll wake the baby, but the baby was in her crib, and I told her this.  Then she opened her eyes and saw her empty arms. “Where is she, where is she!” She almost screamed the house down’.

‘It’s all right, I told her, gripping her upper arms to steady her, though by now baby was screaming too, and ready for a real feed’.

‘It was after this I suggested that baby be moved to her own room. I’d hoped that things would get back to normal if at least one of us would get some sleep.  Evie took some convincing to let the baby sleep in another room, but she knew it was the right thing to do, and she wasn’t very far away, and we had the pressure matt, and the sensor, and the night vision camera streaming to our phones, which meant that we were effectively in the same room wherever we were’.

‘On the very first night in her own room, just as we had settled her in her cot and stood admiring her, Evie spun around, adamant that she had felt a breath on her neck.  I shrugged it all off at the time, but if truth be told, I felt it too, and not just the breath.  I also felt a nudge, like someone was pushing their way between us’.

‘As the baby grew older, a couple of months or so, she began taking an interest in the corner of the nursery, always that same corner.  I tried sitting with her facing the other way round so that she couldn’t see it, but that would agitate her, and she’d wriggle her way round, and I’d have to give in and face that wall anyway.  This went on for a few weeks, always the same corner, and if you can imagine, a two month old girl, laughing and smiling at a plain empty corner.  Even I had the creeps by now’.

           ‘ It could be my imagination, and it probably is in all fairness, but one night, she woke up all grumpy, needing a change and a feed.  Evie was doing her dead to the world thing, so I got up.   It would have been about five am, and she was cradled in my arm, glugging down the milk, and as normal, I was staring at those gorgeous big brown eyes. She smiled back at me, gargling cheerfully on the milk, but she wasn’t really looking at me, she was looking past me, and this is where my eyes must have been playing tricks, because there was something there, moving over my shoulder, reflected in her eye’.

            ‘I froze at first, and my skin tightened as the Goosebumps formed, forcing the hairs of my arms to stand on end.  Baby just chuckled though, and I had to force myself to find reason.  If someone was behind me, it was either Evie, or I had an intruder to deal with’. The vendor continued his story, and even I was starting to have goose bumps. ‘I turned to see an empty room.   I was beginning to agree with Evie, and that we weren’t alone here.  Baby eventually fell asleep and I placed her back in her cot, but I didn’t really want to leave her there on her own’.

            ‘I did go back to bed though, eventually, and snuggled up to the sleeping Evie, wanting to wake her, tell her what had happened, and if she’d seen or heard anything more, but I heard baby was awake again, although this time, she didn’t cry.  I was happy enough to listen to the monitor and leave her to laugh herself to sleep, but as she giggled and gurgled, I made out another, distinct voice in there’.

            ‘Evie, not as asleep as she’d made out, heard it too, and we both sat, bolt upright, at the same time.  We leapt out of bed and ran down the hall to the nursery, terrified by what we might see, but driven on by parental instinct.  I got there first and turned the light on.  Baby was alone and now sleeping again, quietly in her cot’.

            ‘Evie yelled at me, Now do you believe me! I did’.

            ‘I really did, but I didn’t want to believe her.  I’d heard it myself, seen things too, inexplicable things, but if I confessed to this, it would make it real somehow, and it can’t be. So, “It must have been the wind or something” I told her’.

            ‘She harrumphed at me, and we both crept back to our room.  I turned the monitor screen on, and angled it so that we could both see it, and the cot on the night vision screen where the baby was now sleeping soundly, and we listened to every blip…blip…blip of the pressure mat that vigilantly reported every breath and heartbeat, ready to alert us to any lack of movement’.

            ‘Evie turned her back to me, and I felt terrible for dismissing her fears. But we both loved the house, for all of its weirdness, and accepting it really was haunted would destroy that.  Instead, I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the screen‘.

            ‘Do you ever get that thing, where you’re looking at an everyday thing‘, he went on, ‘and it looks normal, but there is something different with it, but you can’t say what. Like when a colleague gets a haircut‘.

‘Well, we had neighbours living on either side of us now, and when a car drove up the road, the head lights would shine through the curtains and cast a shadow on the back wall of baby’s room that was clearly visible on the monitor.  By this time, the neighbours were up and leaving for work in the darkness of the winter morning, and each time a car passed the house, their headlights shone upon the wall the outline of branches from an enormous bare tree.  I’ll attribute my slow conclusion to my lack of sleep, but it did eventually dawn on me that there are no trees outside, and certainly not between the window and the road’. 

            ‘There was nothing outside that could cast anything even remotely similar to that shadow, and I didn’t just look out the window.  I investigated this properly, taking in to account the height of the window, the level of the road, the direction of traffic; I modeled exactly where a tree would have to be to cast a shadow on that wall’.

            ‘What’s more, I have the recording from that night, and the shadow is there.  I didn’t imagine it, it shouldn’t be there, but it is‘.

The Vendor was starting become agitated by his own story.  It was hard enough to imagine that someone would make this up, especially as it could affect the value of their home.  ‘Maybe it was a trick of the light‘ I said, trying not to over stimulate him further, ‘Maybe the tree was further away, down on the main road’

            ‘It really wasn’t‘ he said, ‘And if it was, that wouldn’t explain the leaves in the nursery.  Everyday we’d have to vacuum, but the windows were never open, how they blew in is a mystery‘

            He walked me back through to the nursery and we looked out the window, ‘See,’ he said, ‘these windows were never opened, Evie was terrified baby would fall out one day and it was better not to get in to bad habits.‘

            Outside, he was right, there were no trees, just shrubberies.  The whole wood had been cleared for the housing development, much to the protest of many conservationist and pressure groups at the time.  ‘Show me where the phantom tree would have been‘ I said, and he pointed out a recently disturbed flower bed.

            ‘Just there he said, I dug it up, found a bunch dead roots down there, but nothing of note’.

            ‘That’s where you thought the rabbit warren was isn’t it?‘ I said.

            ‘Yes, but as we discussed, the investigation found nothing down there, and no on-going concerns’ 

            ‘Yes, it’s all in the report, and there’s sign of pests. No sense going over old ground, is there anything else I should put in the disclosure?‘

            ‘That’s everything I can think of‘ he said.

            At that, we shook hands and I returned to the office to type up the brochure.

It was about a week later when, I received a visit from an interested buyer, and we spoke at length about this house, in particular, the spooky goings on.  I was worried this would put them off, but she was illuminated by the prospect and she went on to make a very generous offer, generous enough that I wanted to give the news to the Vendor in person, so I could see his face.

            We met in the Kings Arms pub next to my office and he beamed as I gave him the news.  Cash buyer, no chain, wants to move quickly.  It’s the best part of the job for me, seeing someone’s plans work out.

            ‘Who is she?”‘He asked me, taking a long celebratory sip of beer.

            ‘Didn’t like to pry‘ I said, ‘but she gave me her business card‘ and I slid it toward him. ‘It’s got a photo of her it’. His eye brow rose as he picked it up to inspect it closely.

            ‘Cornish Dryad Society?‘ He said, reading the words on the card beside the picture, ‘That’s the old woman from my dream!’

For more tales and spooky matters, click here.

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Two Bridges

It’s funny how becoming a parent changes your life in so many ways.  You look in to those brand new eyes, the eyes of a new person, a unique individual, and imagine all the things they have yet to see; the life they have ahead of them.

For the past, however many months it is, all they’ve seen is the pitch blackness of the womb, punctuated by the occasional red glow of a bright light from somewhere beyond penetrating the flesh and in to the womb, so all of this, my face, mommy’s smile, is all new to them. Or at least it, we assume it is.

I’m not really one to believe in reincarnation, I’m not really sure I believe in a God, but when I look in to those deep blue eyes, there is so much more depth, more pain, more joy, more tales to tell than in any of the other eyes that I have ever seen. The things they would tell you if only they had the words.

It is nonsense I know, but when I tore myself from my wife that night, nursing our new born child in that hospital room, I got to thinking of my own life, my childhood, my parents and upbringing. How might his experiences compare to mine, I too was once a tiny new born once, a blank sheet, as it were, what will his first memory be? I remember mine so vividly, and not like it was yesterday, but like it were today, still happening now, like part of me is caught, forever in that moment.

I can’t have been much older than one. My mother always insisted that all of her boys were walking by that age, though I can’t have been any younger. It was the day I was given a first taste of freedom, and my first real reprimand that I recall, though there must have been others before it, for me to have dreaded this one so much.

My parents were very strict on hygiene, and germs and disease, that led to a paranoid over-cleaning of surfaces and the unfortunate over-cooking of food. Maybe this is why I like crunchy vegetables and rare meat so much, in rebellion of my folk, but I knew even then that I must not eat from the floor. That was forbidden.

                It was a warm day, must have been August, since that was the month of my birth, and I wasn’t quite walking yet, but I do distinctly remember that this was the first time I was allowed out on to the communal grass to play by myself.  To the front of the house was a grassy area where the older kids would play.  There were no cars here, just neat little footpaths that meandered between the houses and through the estate.  I remember quite clearly for such an early age, the elation of being allowed out by myself, the freedom I had been given, and how I would not disappoint. But I was wrong about all three.

                I clambered up the shallow sloped path that led on to the main pathway that served the 1970s traffic-free open plan estate, and remember coming across the small dip in the tarmac.  This dip features heavily in my early memories.  About a foot across, but only an inch deep, this was where the older kids, and eventually myself, would assemble to play marble tournaments.  Or when it had been raining, me and my brothers would race, fighting all the way, to be the first to leap, feet first, in to the puddle, full pelt, and empty the dip of water before the others got there.  It was worth the inevitable thick ear.

                But anyway, back to the one year old me, alone on the footpath.  Dad had definitely closed the door behind me.  I was alone, free to do as I pleased, and although I knew not to put things in my mouth, I soon came across the discarded outer wrapper of a packet of Opal Fruits; the ones now branded as Star Burst.

                I don’t know what I was thinking, maybe I figured no one would know, but I felt wrong even as I did it.  It was like being possessed by one’s own primal instinct.  I clutched the litter in my chubby little fingers and raised it to my mouth, but even as I did so, something compelled me to look up.  Twisting my back and neck to look up and over my shoulder. My heart sank as I realised that I was not as alone I had believed.

                Of course my Father hadn’t let me play out alone, I was a baby, and he was right there, watching me from an upstairs window.  I caught just a glimpse of a boiled red face before it disappeared, and before I knew it, I was back indoors.

                I can’t say as I remember my punishment, I don’t really remember much else from that age, but this one thing, every detail, down to the Opal Fruits wrapper, is clear enough in my mind that I know the memory is real.

            I had the most lucid of dreams too as an infant.  Often waking in the night to find my mam sat beside me, often before I’d even realised that I’d even had a nightmare.  Usually, it was my two older brothers that had inspired the dream.  They teased me rotten, both of them being a fair bit older.  I would scream not to be left alone with them as Mam and Dad would get ready for their Friday night out down at the Clog and Hatchet.  Bizarrely, though, my brothers would usually manifest themselves as girls in the dream.

One dream in particular has stuck to me to this day. My “sisters” had pinned me down and tickled me so hard that I woke up screaming. I think it scared my Mam that I talked so much about the sisters I never had, and whenever I try to ask her about it later, she said she didn’t recall, or that it I was confused between boys and girls, him and her, he and she, when I was younger, but I know that that wasn’t it. The two older sisters were blonde and had long hair; I can see them now if I think back, tying me the washing line or putting Barbie’s shoes up my nose for their evil amusement.

            But there was a recurring dream too.  On more than one occasion I had this dream that I had fallen off of a railway bridge, often enough that for some time I believed that it had actually happened, especially though, as I never dreamed of the accident directly, just that it had happened, like I had been told about it happening to me.  I was usually at school or nursery in the dream, and the teacher would explain why I wasn’t there, that I had fallen, had a terrible bump, and why the children must always stay with their Mummy and Daddy and keep away from the bridge.

            I hadn’t thought about this stuff in years but something in Byron’s eyes got me thinking; awakening old memories, my oldest memories in fact.  So old that dream and fact and imagination often overlay each other, blurring the lines that should keep them separate.  Of the nice dreams that I have had, this one was the nicest.  It was about God.

            At the edge of the estate was an old ash path that led through the wheat field, over the railway, and then in to the next village where Gran lived.  I walked this way so many times with Mam, or Gran, or sometimes both, through those bright yellow fields, which to my knee high stature pretty much formed the horizon, connecting with the soft and fluffy white clouds that sailed silently above in the rich blue sky. It was inevitable that they would find their way in to so many of my earliest dreams and memories.

In the warm breeze, where the wheat crops rippled like waves on a vast yellow sea, and birds cawed cheerfully above, my asthmatic gran would wheeze as she dragged me away from something in the bushes that I had no business prodding. In my dream I would hear laughter and happy music, an assault on the senses, and always I would be drawn to this spot, where it was always sunny, and filling the sky above and down to where the sky met the field, was God. God, as I understood him to be with my innocent young mind. He smiled on me; and a long arm would sweep across the surrounding fields, not beckoning, but welcoming, like an open invitation to enjoy all that I could see. It felt like home, safe.

            These dreams stopped by the time I could verbalise them, but that part of the village was always an enormous draw to me; but then I’m sure that the real appeal was a little less ethereal.  It was of course the path that led to the train bridge, and what was more attractive to a small boy than the sight of a dirty great big noisy blue diesel locomotive chugging up the hill with a long train of coal hoppers?  

            My mother must have had the patience of an angel to stand and wait there on the bridge, in all weather, in the hope that something would use the line soon.  But it was hardly a Mainline, and hours at a time could pass before a train would come by.  I loved to see Gran, with her chip butties and jam rolls, but not until I’d seen a train or two.  I image Byron will be very much the same.

            It wasn’t just the trains either, that drew me to the bridge.  Down the line was another bridge, just close enough, on a clear day to see people crossing it.  Sometimes they too would stop and look up the line, and I would wave to them, and they would wave back.  Another little boy and his Mam perhaps, just like me, waiting for trains to pass beneath.

            I was fascinated by that other bridge and I kept nagging my Mam to take me there, but she would always say no, that it was too far, or we don’t have time; but as a child I was as resourceful as I was persistent, and eventually persuaded her that we needed to walk down the path that ran parallel to the track and in to the village. I was certain that we would cross another footpath that would lead to the other bridge.

            The path ran straight and hugged the side of the railway that lay in the cutting to the left.  I would have been most disappointed had a train passed now as it would have been out of sight.  It wasn’t long though, before the path began to descend, and soon we were level with the track.  There was a gap in the hedges here and I could see through to the rails.  The rail was now at eye level.  It would have to rise again soon to provide another crossing, but it didn’t.  The path continued to descend, and dropped through a hedge row and in to a ginnel flanked by high fences before emerging on to the main High Street of our village, next to the low bridge that took the road beneath the railway and out of town. 

I couldn’t understand it. I thought I had the whole spatial awareness thing sorted. I knew my way around the village. I had been wrong before though, at Christmas, Santa came to the Woollies Grotto and I remembered quite distinctly how to get there. It was in the snowy area outside of a small cave toward the back of the store. You had to wait your turn and then cross over a small hump bridge, over a frozen pond with penguins and elves, before sitting on the bearded man’s knee and telling him that you wanted a train set. Later, after Christmas, I wanted to visit him again, mostly to tell him about the apparent mix up with the presents. I ran to the back of the shop, my wheezing Gran in hot pursuit, only to find nothing. Where I expected to find the grotto, now there was no cave, and no humpback bridge, just a selection of light fittings; from which I was promptly pulled away.

            Of course, now I understand that it was just a display, specially erected to draw customers, but to this day, I have no such explanation for the bridge.  The next nearest bridge was two miles down the line, near enough to see the tops of wagons go over, but you’d need a hefty set of binoculars to spot someone waving.

            Until just a few days ago, I’d put this one down to false memory, or an overactive imagination. But Carmel had started researching our family tree, now that we had started a family of our own, and we’d agreed that we would put aside a copy of the local paper from the day of Byron’s birth; but as a nice surprise, I ordered reprints of the Chronicle from the days that me and the wife were born.

            On page eight of the Dearne Chronicle, 22 August 1974, there was an article about the planned demolition of the unsafe Spur Lane Bridge as it was structurally unsound.  It went on to say that the Vickers family, whose son had tragically fallen from the bridge in December the year before, were leaving the area to start a new life with their two remaining daughters.

            Make of this what you will, I like to think that my feet are firmly on the ground, but in the delivery suite, when Byron took his first good discerning look at his new world, the midwife looked over and smilingly said, “This one’s been here before”.  I knew exactly what she meant.

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Derek Throttlebottom the Time Travelling Train Spotter


“What did you say?” I said.

“I said don’t interfere with anything, you’ll ruin it all” Derek Throttlebottom barked the repeat instruction, as if my very presence here was riling him, though it probably was.

“Alright, you don’t have to tell me twice“

Derek Throttlebottom frowned at me with his usual suffer no fools glare and then stepped back outside on to the narrow icy pathway that had been cleared through the snow. I watched him walk down the full length of the platform, treading carefully on the frozen snow that shone bright by the light of the full moon hanging above the town. The frozen snow crunched loudly underfoot with each historic step.

‘Don’t interfere’ I recalled as I returned to my cosy warm chair in the station Tea Room, the crackling fire routinely spitting out hot projectiles on to the hearth. ‘Perhaps I should return the fairy cakes on the display back to their original positions’. I said to myself.

“There you go dear, get that down you” The old tea lady took me by surprise. She coughed her words, a spent half of a cigarette clutched twixt her parsed lips. I shooed her filthy smoke away with an exaggerated grimace, but she just rolled her eyes at me, tutting, as she turned back to the counter from whence she came. The smoking ban may have been a long way from here, but that didn’t mean I should inhale her cancerous filth.

After she’d placed the cup of hot Bovril and two slices of generously buttered thick white bread on the small round table beside me, she stopped for a moment to peer out through the misty window. She saw Derek, my travelling companion outside, stood at the very end of the platform. She parted a dirty look in his direction. “Is he alright?” She chirped, “Standing out in the cold all night with barely a jacket“

“Oh he’s fine. He’s quite warm out there” I told her, I considered explaining his fleece jacket and twenty first century thermal underwear but I was interrupted before I could.
“In the head I mean” She said, “He’s been standing out there for nearly an hour and nothing’s come in. The next train is the London one and that don’t stop here”
“Oh he knows how he looks…” I couldn’t tell her why we were here. That we were time travelers on a secret mission to change a catastrophic sequence of events and avert a terrible tragedy, but before I’d had chance to remember my cover story, she’d wandered off, mumbling something about the oddness of trainspotters.

Derek hadn’t told me why we were here. But I knew my history. It was the 29th January 1957. The night of the great railway disaster.

It was freezing outside, I could see Derek through the window, at the very end of the platform, lit up like a Christmas tree beneath the brightest full moon I ever saw. Surrounded by his own breath that hung close to him in the windless night as he checked the battery on his digital camera. What good the camera would do I had no idea, but I had faith in his judgement. This was my first trip with Derek, but he was a seasoned traveler, and I was only allowed to join him because I’d promised to follow his list of rules.

  • Do everything he says
  • Don’t touch anything
  • Don’t talk to anyone
  • Watch where I step
  • Don’t ask stupid questions
  • Don’t wander off

Somewhere up the line was the very late 15:25 from Glasgow to London, it wouldn’t stop here, but would carry on south through the freezing night, until somewhere just south of Preston, frozen points would misroute the train into the back of the local Liverpool service. Twenty people would die this evening, were it not for the brave intervention of one time travelling train spotter. My skin tingled, excited to see what Derek would do stop it happening, to rewrite history.

I looked at the clock above the fire. It was one minute before eight. A whistle, miles away, heralded the approach of the 15:25. It was delayed at Carlisle by a snow drift blocking the line and was trying to make up time. It got louder and louder as it approached, the train was now slowing for the curve, and by now the pistons were audible, Chuff Chuff Chuff. The blanket of snow muffled most of noises of the town, but the oncoming train grew louder and louder. Chuff chuff chuff chuff chuff chuff.

Derek hadn’t moved at all. Still standing at the edge of the platform, anxiously fiddling with his camera. What was he planning?

The train drew closer. The whistle sounded. It was very near.

I tore myself from the fire and left the warmth of the cafe, out into the frozen wilds of Cornfirth Platform One. It was almost upon us. Looking up the track I could see its silhouette against the snow covered whiteness of the embankment, smoke bellowing out from its chimney. It was slowing down. I looked the other way to where Derek stood, the signal set to caution. Was that Derek’s doing?

The whistle blew again as the doomed train entered the station. I had yet to work out Derek’s plan, but he must have been confident. He was taking pictures of the fateful last journey as it went on its way, gaining speed now. The driver opening up the regulator in response to the clear road granted by the signalman, the station filled with smoke.

I looked into the well lit carriages as the train steamed through the station. Through the condensation on the windows, I could see the passengers, oblivious to their fate, I saw every single face on that train, everyone of them made eye contact, meeting my gaze with their long dead piercing eyes, glaring at me, as if they knew, as if I was responsible. It seemed a lifetime before the guards van passed at the very rear of the train and faded in to the night.

Now I was confused. Derek seemed to have done nothing. I followed the train up the platform, a flashing red light marking its position as it slowly accelerated in to the fateful night. I marched up to Derek. He was wearing one of his wider grins, the self satisfied one.

“Did you do it?” I asked him, anxiously. I could still see the passengers in my minds eye.

“I Sure did” Derek replied, proudly, “I got exactly what we came here for” and he offered his camera to me to see the screen. “46603, look at those shots…” 

“And the crash? Did you stop the crash?”

Derek looked at me blankly. Like I was speaking Urdu or something.

“Don’t be daft lad” he said “The crash already happened long before we were born, can’t change that“

“Then why are we even here?” I said, flapping somewhat.

“Here, in the past the past you mean?” He said, “Why do you think?”

“Beats me” I said, and I shrugged my shoulders.

“I’m a trainspotter, I’m here for the numbers” he said, “That’s all”

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