The Fright Train

The Glow Part 6

The girl knew nothing, that much was obvious.

Being so close to the death of her friends would haunt her for many years to come. Indeed, she may never fully recover from the trauma. Counselling would be offered, of course, but soothing words would never salve the wound that had been inflicted. Lazlo felt for her, particularly after her own experiences so many years before.

But, the girl would survive. Lazlo had more important things to deal with than the feelings of a teenage girl, or the damage that might have been done to the rest of her life.

The eyes. The need. What did they mean? Lazlo was struggling to put the pieces together. As a child, she had never been seemed to be any good at puzzles, preferring to put pen – or crayon – to paper and draw. As an adult, the creative spark inside of her had been extinguished by the death of her own best friend, and she had discovered that puzzles, and policing, were something she actually did have an affinity for.

But this escaped her.

She could question the girl, Ally, further, but she knew there was no point. Let her come to terms with what had happened, or as much as she could. Let the nightmares subside and the fog of guilt lift.

"I need."

It tied them together, she knew, but she had no idea how. The first victim, though she had survived only long enough to say a few words before the blood in her throat erupted in the fit of coughing that had taken her over, had said the same thing. In a voice thick with coagulation, Imogen Walker had said the same thing.

"She needs. I need."

And then she had died, the damage done to her broken body from the bus she had stepped in front of, dragging her brother with her, being too much. Her brother didn't answer any questions. He couldn't. His head had been...

Detective Lazlo shook her head. The sight of broken pieces of skull still embedded in the sister's cheek from where their heads had collided was almost tattooed onto the inside of her eyelids. But life moved on. The case moved on. The victim count, both willing and forced, mounted.

Witnesses, of which there were many, always said the same thing. There was always a pair. Friends. Siblings. Complete strangers. One stiff, moving as if part undead and part puppet, under the influence of someone no-one could see. Uncommon strength, enough to fight of any who tried to stop the inevitable death whilst keeping a tight grip on the one they were forcing to share their terrible end.

And, the eyes Glowing a piercing blue as if illuminated from within.

And those words.

She stared at the large board in front of her. The victims all stared back at her. Irrespective of the angle at which the photos were taken, she could feel them looking directly at her. Accusing. And, even without their blame, she felt responsible. For every day that she failed to understand, another life could be taken.

Two lives.

****

Harrison shouted until his voice was a splintered shard scraping across his throat. No-one came. No-one answered his pleas.

The drop was getting closer as the old woman pushed him towards it. His mother had always warned him about taking his bike too close to the edge. She'd insisted he heeded the warning signs and kept out of the quarry, but he knew better. He could handle the speed and the slippery, chalk covered floor. His brakes were good. His tyres filled. His reflexes sharp.

The woman was ancient, from his young perspective. Her hair was lank and clung to her scalp in clumps of dirty grey. Her mouth was toothless and her eyes were filled with the regret of a long life filled with decisions not made and choices forced.

Harrison's brakes had proved their worth by stopping him long before he fell to his death. His heart was pounding in his chest and the adrenaline flowed freely through his body, setting his senses on fire. He loved the sensation.

Then he'd heard the sound and turned. The woman was shuffling towards him. At first, he hadn't known how to react, even when she grabbed his arm. He had never seen anyone there, the quarry being closed for at least half of his young life. The last person he'd expect would be someone who looked as if she couldn't walk from the bed to the bathroom, let alone the three miles from the town's outskirts to the his playground.

He'd tried to talk to her. To prise her hand off his, but she ignored his questions and resisted his efforts to free himself. Her hand was so cold it might have been frozen to his arm and he could feel the chill radiating through him, in stark contrast to the fire of excitement.

It wasn't until she began to push him that he started to fight her hold. It wasn't until he was only a few feet from the edge that she blinked and the milky, forlorn green became brighter and turned to the clearest blue he had ever seen. Youth returned to her face in that blue but, when they started to glow, she became something else. Something possessed.

"She..."

"Who? What are you doing? Let me go!"

Harrison pulled at her fingers, punched at her chest. She seemed to notice none of it. With the slow pace of someone who had no steps left in them and had to force each foot to lift, scrape and fall, the woman moved forward, pushing Harrison back.

"She... needs," she said. "She... I need!"

Then, there was no more chalk covered ground, disturbed only by the wheels of a young boy looking for a quick thrill before home time. There was only falling.

Harrison screamed. The old woman laughed.

"I need!" she cried with more energy than she had had in the past two decades of her life.

The sound of bones crunching on the floor of the quarry was flat in the evening air. To anyone passing, it might have sounded disrespectful to the sudden ending of two lives, one at the beginning and the other at the end of very different journeys. But there was no-one to hear. No-one to wish for a more resonant and meaningful splinter of bone and splatter of internal organs.

****

Her reflection in the filthy mirror looked back with barely veiled disgust. She smiled at its contempt, knowing the disdain was her own, but she took a warped pleasure in hating herself.

She pulled her gown around her, not as comfort against the cold, as she didn't feel changes in temperature. No. She was gathering herself and wrapping the cloth about her deceptively frail figure was her way of focussing.

Her glowing blue eyes brightened with hungry energy, almost glaring in the darkened room.

She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, the fog on the glass only staying for a brief moment, too afraid to remain visible to her before evaporating in escape.

Her voice was a rasping trickle of words that, like the mirror's mist dissipated with the slightest of echo.

"I neeeed."