This story was inspired by another favorite author of mine, a man by the name of Manly Wade Wellman. Wellman wrote in a number of genres, including sci-fi and fantasy, but he is best known for his tales of Silver John. John is a wandering veteran of the Korean War, armed with tall tales, a pure heart and a silver strung guitar. He wanders the mountains of Appalachia, solving mysteries, fighting evil and most importantly, singing songs of folklore. I would categorize thee tales as a kind of "cozy horror", where good prevails and nothing is particularly violent or grotesque. That doesn't mean the stories don't have chills in store for you.
Enough babbling, here is "Down Across the Tracks". Part 1 of 2
It’s been many a year now since that frightful night out by the old rails east of town. Nary a soul remembers the night old man Kramer dared raise hell ‘round these parts. If you were to listen right careful you might hear whispers telling of the cries in the dark that night. Folks might even spin yarns of the phantom train to their young ones, but you’d be right lucky to hear anything more than that. It's only old timers like me that recall the horror that brooded just outside town that night. I am afraid I am the last to remember the deeds of my grandfather who silenced that old wizard for good. You sit closer though, and keep your ears sharp and I’ll tell you about that strange night so’s you can remember it too. Then one day when you grow old and withered like me you can tell your grand kids about what happened down across the tracks.
If you were to ask around about when the trouble started you would be told of the night the tracks began to rumble seemingly of their own accord. In fact, this was just one stop in a long road that led all the way back to when old man Kramer was just a boy. You see, a long time ago where stands only this small town, there once stood two. The two villages were separated by the serpentine Blue River and a set of railroad tracks, Nothing more. You can stand on the banks even today and not but a stone’s throw away are the ashes of East Milford.
East Milford was a prosperous place and many people came right far to call it home. Nearly everyday that train rolled through town and brought more folks and more money into that little place. Meanwhile,just on the other side, the future did not look so good for the citizens of West Milford. The train never stopped and no one cared to see what the farmers on that side had to offer. Well, the East kept growing and the West stayed right poor; up until one summer that is.
That one rain filled season was all it took for the winds of change to come barreling through again. That summer the crops grew taller and stronger than ever before and their harvest was so bountiful they had to build huge grain bins just so their crops wouldn’t spill into the streets. I swear up and down that it was just pure luck and God’s good graces that sent that rain, but if you go and ask one of those East Milford stock they might tell you differn’t.
You see it was whispered that they’d got some sort’a magic from an old indjun man that still hung around these parts. Horse pucky you ask me! Well the man that owned the rail company took notice of this turn of events and he wanted his share. That very year they had built a whole new set of tracks and now the train stopped by West Milford every day.
The people of the West couldn’t have been happier, yet being the humble, gracious folks they were they felt right bad for those over East. Time and time again they offered to share their good fortune and even built a bridge across the river so everyone could share in the bounties to be had. Well, those people across the river had gotten pretty used to their decadence and did not like sharing with those poor farmers one bit. They tried and tried to stop the train from skipping them everyday, but whatever they tried just never seemed to pan out quite right. That is how the whole mess got started. Greed. Simple as that. The good book says: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods” but boy were those Easterners a covetous.
Now, as for Old Man Kramer, he was nothing but a boy five years old or so. Son to a wealthy merchant he was, He was blessed with being raised on the finest of goods in the finest of houses on the East bank; suckled from the teat of a golden cow, one might say.
However, when that train stopped stoppin’, it hurt the Kramer’s real bad and soon enough they were just as poor, if not more down and out that those on the West side once were. His pa soon had to take up working for a pig farmer on the west side much to his chagrin. Every day he would get off work and stomp his muddy boots back across the bridge, a grumblin’ the whole way home. He moaned and groaned day and night, it was all the young Old Man Kramer would hear. The seed of hate was sown and it began to take root in the poor boy’s head. Most of the East Milfordites moved on to greener pastures but Kramer was a stubborn man and soon they were the only family left on that side of the river. There they stay even today.
It’s said that Ma Kramer couldn’t take any more of her husband’s grumbles so she packed her bags and ran off with a traveling salesman. Well that just gave Pa Kramer even more to complain about.
It’s said that if you go stand by his headstone at night you can still hear him a grumblin’ on in the afterlife. With all that hate bottled up, surely he couldn’t get in to heaven, St. Peter wouldn’t dare take his fingers from his ears long enough to open those Pearly Gates, So down to Hell he went. When he got there, not even ole’ Satan himself could put up with so much moaning and crying. So, there he lays, just bones in a grave, grumblin' for eternity.
At least that’s how I heard it.
Well Old Man Kramer grew up to be a right bitter man. For years he plotted against those good folks across the tracks. He sat alone in his darkened old house and thumbed through books that surely no man should. In the pages of one of those old, moldy tomes he found the means to his revenge.
Many years passed, and few ever saw or even though about Old Man Kramer. Your ancestors came around not long after, when my grandfather was just a boy.
Well, eventually he bore my dad, my dad bore me, and so on and so forth. It’s gone like that all the way till you come about and one day you will bear another.
My grandfather was a right peculiar sort. He spent most of his time poking his nose around old things. Old books, old houses, really anything that was soggy, run down and mold covered, my grandfather was waist deep in it. He loved his history. All those things that happened before us were of high value to him and it was him that instilled that value in me.
One night when I was about halfway into my eighteenth year on this earth a strange noise woke me from what I recall to be a fairly decent dream. It wasn’t just me that woke up, all the lights in all the windows all throughout town turned on and just as soon as the sound had come it faded away into the night. In the morning a whole mess o’ folk gathered outside town hall. They were just itchin’ to ask Sherriff Yocum what the ruckus had been about. Sherriff Yocum was a jolly, fiery haired sort and he kept a right good eye on the goin’s on around town. When asked what had happened last night he was sorry to say that he just didn’t know. The crowd went back to their breakfasts disappointed but grandfather was determined to find what was the cause of such a noise in the night. It sounded like an old steam train but there hadn’t been one rollin’ through here for quite a long spell. The strange rumbles continued on through the week and just seemed to get louder and longer each time.
One morning while I was visiting my Pa at his office I heard the town drunkard mumbling to himself about firelight and strange chants from across the river. Him being such the drunk he was I took little heed in what he was saying. Two nights later while my family visited my Grandfather and Grandmother the drunkard’s words came up in passing conversation. Now my Grandfather being the astute man he was knew that every story had a grain of truth, even if that story was from a man who reeked of booze. That night Grandfather asked me to come with him and watch from the old Indjun Ford and maybe we could see what was going on. We sat down on a washed up log on the sandy riverbank and stoked a little fire. It was late summer if I recall correctly and there was not cloud in the sky. Soon after sunset the frogs began to croak and the crickets began to sing. It was a right alien tune if I do say so myself. A strange, almost eerie chorus of ghastly strings and mad piping surrounded us. An owl would hoot and the mourning dove would cry and on occasion a whippoorwill would call out just as they do when they search for souls escaping from the dying. All the stars were beaming brightly and the moon was but the slightest of slivers in the empty space above.
The trees that lined the bank looked bright and cheery with their emerald green leaves in the daytime but at that moment they creaked and swayed like giant skeleton hands reaching from their graves. In between the bony branches was the blackened outline of Old Man Kramer’s farmhouse. It was a right creepy night, even for a strapping young man like I myself was back in those days. I had brought with me an old 16-gauge scattergun that I was right proud of. It had a leather sling like the English used and the stock was hand carved from an ancient hickory tree one of my ancestors had planted all by his lonesome. It was more for good luck that any other reason. It was right around midnight when all of a sudden the weird symphony died and we were left in silence. Even the bony trees seemed to cease their swaying. Grandfather and I stood as if we were startled and became fully aware of our surroundings.
An ear splitting sound broke the silence as Old Man Kramer’s door creaked on its rusty hinges. There were a couple of footsteps up on the east bank. Grandpa signaled and I quickly doused the blaze we had set. It was dark. And not just dark like night, it was real dark. Dark like maybe the inside of a coffin might be. Gives me the willies just tryin’ to imagine it. I held my gun tight and waited for my eyes to adjust to the shadowed world in which we stood. Up between the bushes and the trees we could see a small glow rise from the ground. It grew brighter and brighter till we could make out the silhouette of an old farmhouse and a hunched little man. Grandpa whispered to me, “That’s Old Man Kramer’s place.” I had known fully who and where we were watching, it was more the what we were watching that concerned me. Grandfather reached deep down in his slacks pocket and whipped out a spyglass. Not just any ordinary spyglass mind you, his great-great-Grandfather who crossed the ocean to bring our family over from England back in the old days held this particular spyglass.
Well, we watched Old Man Kramer from a distance and from there we bore witness to a most dreadful scene that I will surely never forget. That strange old man began to wave his hands wildly in the air and prance around most crazily. He chanted strange words in a tongue that neither Grandfather nor I rightly knew. The glow of his firelight grew and soon shapes began to stir around the flickering light. Shadows and amorphous forms that swayed to an unheard rhythm swirled around the old man and soon added their voices to his. The dancers began to mold themselves into definite forms but whatever the forms where I had never seen such a thing in any book or picture. Some looked akin to dogs and other beasts but where paws and hooves should have been it looked as though the hands of men replaced them. Others were long and spindly with bulbous heads that nodded and throbbed to the time of a silent song, eyes glowing like lanterns swaying in the wind.
There was a high-pitched whine and a trumpeting whistle and all the chanting and dancing ceased. The world around us began to rumble, I likened it to a stampede of mammoths like those the First Ones once hunted before they became the Indjun tribes you and I know today. It was like a blast of thunder that scared Granddad and I white as ghosts. We took flight and clambered up the west bank as quick as our legs could carry us. We reached the top just in time to see yet another odd scene. Let me tell you, it was just about all I could handle in one night. The old tracks shook and trembled like they were gonna just jump right off the ground. Then it came. An old steam engine, just like the ones the James Brothers robbed when they were up to their outlawin’.
It was pale in the faint moonlight and transparent too. It chugged along at a breakneck speed. As the cars flew past we could just make out the shapes of the phantom passengers, mere shades and bleached bones still dressed up in their travelin’ garb. Women wore their big bustled dresses and men were in top hats and there was even a livestock car complete with a herd of skeletal cows. It was a sight that turned ole’ Grandpa’s hair just one more shade whiter. That night, the legend of the Ghost Train was born.
Stay tuned for Part 2!