I don't usually write stories like this.
But I was told this story by a friend and needed to write it.
Based on a true story from Indian Head, Saskatchewan.
A short horror story.
I pushed the stone home, wedging it into the last hole below the lintel and finally blocking the window.
I stepped down from the ladder and took a few steps back and looked up at the outside wall of my home. The window was filled with stones I had cleared by hand from my fields. The same stones I had built my house with. I brushed my hands together, the cement falling from my fingers like smashed birthday cake. Two hundred yards behind me were the tracks of the train and beyond them stretched fields of wheat that met the horizon. In this new world away from the crushing smog and pollution of London the sunsets were long and golden. No more would their burnt rays would fill my home with their warm glow. You might say this was madness. A man bricking up his own windows.
But I assure you, I am not mad.
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I heard the deep rumble of the train. Don't look. I closed my eyes. Don't look I slapped my hand against the wall of my home. Damn it! Do. Not. Look.
The reverberation of the train grew. How can I hope to spare my family if I allow myself to succumb to the same affliction?
I rested my sweaty forehead against the wall of my home. My stomach felt heavy like it had been sliced open and filled with cement. My knees wanted to buckle. I heard the screech of the train whistle as it passed through Indian Head. Tears broke from my eyes and slid down my cheeks. The sound of the train grew to a roar as it approached.
And I thought back to the moments my family used to run to the window to see this incredible invention thunder past. My daughters' screams of delight. The train had secured the future of our town. The train was supposed to safeguard my family's future. But instead it destroyed it.
I squeezed my eyelids tightly shut. I could hear the train pass the edge of my land and then my ears were filled with the screams of steel tearing across the tracks. Then, just for a second mixed into the sound I could have sworn I heard another scream.
