The Soul Train

Supernatural Stories | Dec 17, 2012 | 10 min read
1 Votes, average: 5 out of 5
"The eyes are a window to the soul."

Angel Graves despised flying. Her fear of heights had kept her from doing a lot of things that she would otherwise love to do. Like riding on a speeding roller-coaster, or being lifted high above the ocean on a sky-wheel sitting beside the man she loved, or even mountain climbing with mother nature. But no. Her fear of heights kept her high-heeled wearing feet glued to the ground. Thus; she opted for the number nine train from Trenton New Jersey, to Fresno California to see her parents for the Holidays. Her husband Charles often complained and dreaded the long ride across country when to him, flying came just as natural as sleeping, and waking. But to her it was crash and burn and no return. As luck would have it. Charles had contracted a bad case of the flu, and was unable to go this Christmas to his in-laws who he loathed more than he loathed fruit-cake. She thought about staying home in their cozy little town-house, and watch over him while he was sick, but she had already paid for round-trip, and that was a lot of money to just throw away. She had to go. Angel didn't like the idea of riding the train alone on such a long trip, but she was a grown girl, and grown girls did things they didn't always want to do. And riding on a train with a bunch of strangers for almost three thousand miles wasn't exactly her cup of tea. Angel made sure her husband didn't need anything before she left for the train depot by taxi. She kissed him on the forehead, and picked up her luggage and headed out the door to the awaiting yellow cab.

She arrived at the train station a little past nine in the morning, and the snow had gently started to fall over the icy railway. Her train wasn't scheduled to arrive for another thirty minutes. So she went inside of the station to where it was warm, and waited for her number to be called out over the intercom. She pulled out a book from her purse, and begun to read to kill a little time while she waited. As she sat on the bench reading her Stephen King bestseller, as they all were. She noticed that she was the only one beside the people who worked there at the station. Where was everybody? She wondered, as she looked all around. This place should be crammed packed with scores of people waiting in long lines, and cursing at their children. Had everyone started flying these days? She laughed at herself at the thought of her being the only person left on earth who was too chicken to get on a god damned airplane. Impossible. She thought again, biting her lower lip as she had done growing up as a little girl when she became uneasy about a situation. "Um, excuse me sir." She said to a man that was standing by the door dressed in a conductors uniform. "Pardon my stupidity, but where is everyone?" The man in the conductors uniform looked at her peering out from above his wire framed glasses and smiled.
"Don't you worry about a thing Angel. You're well taken care of. Your train should be arriving any minute now. He said smiling again.

"How did you know my name?" She asked now scared and bewildered.
"Oh, I guess you just look like an angel. Don't let it bother you none. I call all women that if truth should be known. "Here it is. Right on time. " He said looking down at his Timex watch. "Looks like you and I will be the only two boarding this train." He said trying to joke crack a joke, but Angel found nothing funny about it. The conductor opened the door for her, and ushered her upon the passenger train, took her ticket, and showed her to her seat by the tinted window.

"All aboard!" The conductor shouted as the train slowly pulled out away from the station. Angel noticed that there were at least a lot of people on board the train with her, unlike at the station. Maybe no one from her neighborhood was traveling by train this year. With the economy so bad these days, she even questioned herself about taking such long expensive trips with the times being as they were.
The train gradually begun to pick up speed as it raced out of the city of Trenton, and on through Pennsylvania. Along the way, Angel also noticed that there weren't any people of her own age on board either. Most of them, if not all were old, and smelly. Not the kind of smell you get from not taking a bath or anything like that, but that old people smell. Angel often thought of that smell as impending death. God, she just knew that she herself would smell like that one day, and someone would think that of her also. But she had a long time to go before she had to worry about that. Still in her mid twenties, and beautiful; getting old was the last thing she wanted to think about right now.
But there was something strange, and eerie about them just the same. They weren't talking amongst each other like old people often do when they gossip about everyone else. To Angel they looked more like wax figures sitting at the pews in church. Never looking away, or speaking a word unless it was to yell out at the top of their lungs for the rest of the congregation to hear their pleas of Amen!

Around noon a stewardess walked slowly down the isle with a metal push tray in hand. Upon it was hot coffee, sodas, food, and on the bottom of the tray on a small shelf was the plastic airplane bottles of liquor. Angel thought that she could handle a shot or two of some Vodka if they had it. The young woman stopped in front of Angel and offered her something to eat and drink, but Angel also noticed that the young woman wearing the high heels, and merry maid outfit showing off her long slender legs in black laced stockings didn't offer anyone else in her cabin anything. She came straight to her as if the others didn't even exist. "What would you like dear?" The woman asked smiling beneath a bright red coat of lipstick that was freshly painted upon plump lips.
"Vodka." Angel said sharply, trying not to look at the dolled up stewardess who looked more like a porn star than a waitress.
"Will that be all for you. It will be another three and a half hours before lunch is served." The woman said politely.

"Another bottle if you don't mind, thank you." Angel said, as the woman handed her the bottle of Vodka. Angel sipped on the first bottle, and slammed the second bottle down without so much as a sour face. The woman walked away with her tray between the isle of old people never showing them any attention whatsoever, and the old people never gave her so much as a glance. These people were either dead, or vegetables. Angel thought, feeling scared, and all alone. There was something wrong with this train, and the people on it. Maybe it was just her imagination, but she didn't care. She was getting off at the next stop, and returning home. After awhile of sitting, and gazing out the tinted window by her seat, the shots of liquor began to work on Angel. She wasn't use to drinking liquor this early in the day, and with no food on her stomach... she fell fast asleep.
When she awoke, it was already lunch time, and the smell of fine cooked meals awakened her senses, making her stomach quiver. No sooner than the thought of eating a hot cooked meal had entered her mind. The young stewardess came back with the push tray covered with steaming hot food. Again the lustrous young looking woman paid no mind to the other passengers; only Angel. "Now are you ready to eat dear?" The stewardess asked with a soft pleasant voice that sounded very seductive.
"Yes please," Angel replied in her own lovely tone. "I'll have a large plate of the lasagna, and the garlic bread... oh, and leave the red wine also." Angel told the woman, unfolding her lap tray.

"I told you that you would be famished before lunch time." The young woman said placing the plate of lasagna down in front of her. The steam rolling off the four-cheeses made Angels mouth water. The garlic bread, the wine, it all looked very enticing, and she couldn't wait to dive in.
Angel pulled her long blonde hair back into a pony-tail, and begun to devour the pasta. If it weren't for those ghastly old people just sitting there around her, she believed that she would enjoy her meal a lot more than what she was. A conversation would be nice. She thought savoring the taste, before washing it down with a sip of the red wine. The stewardess saw that Angel was very satisfied, and turned away from her pushing the cart and spoke something that Angel couldn't quite understand.
The woman turned to Angel pursing her luscious lips lavishly, and vanished behind the entrance door. Angel finished her plate, and disposed of the red wine that made her feel a little high, but it had diminished her fears somewhat. As she sat back in her seat relaxed, and quite full. She began to think of her husband, and how she had abandoned him at home while he was sick, and in need of her help, and how she had wished that he was here on the train with her now. As soon as the train stopped at the next depot. She had made up her mind to go back home after all. She had no business going so far all by herself anyhow. She thought, scolding herself for leaving. She placed her head against the window, and watched as the trees, and other scenery zoomed by as the train speed onward. In the distance she could see a dark ominous cloud lying heavy in the sky. It was still spitting snow outside, but she believed they were about to get a full-fledged blizzard by the looks of things. The storm made her think about Dorothy in the Wizard Of Oz, and how she felt like that now. Being swept away so far from her home to a strange land where nothing made much since anymore. That was this train. Nothing on this damned train made any sense! The thoughts circled inside her head like a bad dream, and she hoped that she'd wake up in bed soon to the smiling face of her loving husband. She could almost see his kind face in her own reflection. No wait! It was his reflection in the tinted window that she saw. Not her own. What was he doing? My God! His insides have been torn out! His entrails strewn across the bedroom like some kind of sick Picasso painting. She tried to shake the horrible image, and dialed the home phone number on her cell. Her hands were shaking like twigs in a high wind. Her heart pounding in her ears. She begun sweating profusely. She thought that she may be experiencing a heart attack, or a panic attack, or a god-damned nervous breakdown! Whatever the cause, even if were only a bout of food poisoning. She had to get off this train even if it meant jumping from the observation deck. She held the receiver to her ear. No signal.

Now she became so frightened that she was making herself sick. She began to get up from her seat to find a restroom, when a long bony hand pushed her back down into her seat. "What the fuck!" She cried out to the old smelly man that was sitting silently across the isle from her. The old man turned his head, and looked at her distraught face, with her dis-shelved hair. She gasped kicking herself away from the old man who looked upon her with empty eye sockets. Everyone in her coach was now looking upon Angel with those same empty black holes where there eyes use to be. She began to scream for dear life. Kicking at the old man and the others, flailing her arms like a mad orangutan, but there were just too many of them. She could not fight them all no matter how hard, or how old they all were. It was twenty to one. "Get the hell off of me!" She cried out again, but it was of no use. They had their bony dry crusted hands all over her now. They were trying to rip her apart, just like in the image of her husband with his insides scattered about. "Oh, God!" She cried aloud over and over. "Help me, somebody please...." Then when she thought that her thin body could take no more of the prying, scratching, and pulling. A dark figure, a silhouette of a man stood in the doorway looking down at her, or she thought he was anyhow. She couldn't really tell from all the darkness. She couldn't really tell if the dark figure was a man either. Just its broad shoulders made her think that it was. It didn't say anything. It just stood there for a moment, and then it was gone. The old people were back in there seats quiet again, as if nothing ever happened. She looked down at her watch, but it had stopped working. The hands on her watch had stopped precisely at the time she boarded the train. But she guessed it to be around two in the afternoon. She didn't dare move for the fear that it would provoke another attack by those things sitting around her.

Ten years later. Charles decides to go to the train depot, and take a trip across country in memory of his wife's Ten year anniversary since her disappearance. He bought a ticket in the same coach, and seat as to where she had set on that gloomy winter morning. As he climbed aboard, and went to his seat by the tinted window. He noticed an old woman sitting where he was suppose to have been siting. He didn't want to bother the old lady, and sat down beside her in the isle seat instead.

"All aboard!" The conductor called out as the train slowly pulled away from the station. Charles sat quietly in his seat twiddling his thumbs like a school kid when he noticed something very familiar about the woman beside him. The old woman he noticed was wearing the same clothes his wife had left the house in. And her purse. That was the same purse his wife had carried also. He started to say something when the old woman turned to him. Her eyes were missing. Just dark sockets where her eyes had once been.

"Angel..."

The train screams around the bend and vanishes into a thin vapor. The snow is falling gently upon the icy railway. To him, flying was just as natural as sleeping, and waking. To Angel, it was crash and burn and no return...

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