The Monster Of The Mountain Pass

Chapter 4

My rest was riddled with nightmares and screaming, bodies on cobbles and blood splattered cart wheels. I woke up drenched in a cold sweat yet somehow boiling hot at the same time. I jumped and hit my leg off of the desk. I was alive! I was safe! and it was morning! I looked to the barricade, it had held against all odds. I started to disassemble it, before anyone found me like this; crazed, tremoring, petrified. It was as I was putting the chair back under the desk that I heard the sound of Edward's train in the distance, startled I put the pistol back in its box and headed onto the platform. Outside the sunlight blinded me and it took my eyes a few moments to adjust, it was much warmer today, no sign of the earlier rain. The train pulled up and Edward waited for me to come on, again he said nothing, he was silent. Strange. I lifted the case onto the train before jumping on myself. Almost as soon as I stepped on Edward started the train and started to move forward accelerating at a precarious pace. it wasn't until the first bend came int view that he started to slow down, something was troubling him and I didn't know what. I turned and gazed out of the cab and began to ponder, my mind wandering to questions that now troubled me every waking moment of the day; Even though he had achieved his revenge why did The Occisor continue to trap, torture and kill innocent people?

I was weary and tired and as my feet walked across the platform and to my office I longed for a soft bed in which to rest
I made my way into the office and watched all of the trains coming and going. I ended up dozing in my chair occasionally being woken up by train whistles. I slept restlessly and fitfully and eventually gave up after the dozenth time of being woken. I walked out of the station and to the market on the corner of the main street. Smells that I vaguely remembered assaulted my nose. The stalls were every shade imaginable each vendor selling something different. Hawkers called and cajoled the crowd trying to get sales, street performers drew hordes of people hoping to get themselves some money. I stood in the middle of all this overwhelmed yet familiar with it all. I remembered some of the stalls however I couldn't remember why, moreover I felt myself welling with emotion. What was it about this place? It was then I remembered. Remembered something I had forgotten something that I should never have forgotten.

I stumbled against someone and they pushed me off roughly. I leant on a stall the world swimming in the tears before my eyes. This was the market that she had been trying to reach. The market that I didn't want to go to out of sheer laziness. I ran then. Ran away from the bustling market full of tantalising smells and wonderful sights, away from the market and to the station I knew and loved. That I had built near five years ago and was still going strong in the distribution trade. But that wasn't why I was going. I was going there to get away from my memories of her; her perfect smile, the way she laughed, the time she said I do it was all too much I ran to the station without looking back.