Across the Tracks

Two

  No one expected it when Althea Allard came into town. She was young and pretty and had no reason to be in Waywyn. She seemed the type to kick up dust at any opportunity and smile in the face of the person it covered.

  She carried a notebook everywhere she went and made furious notes in shorthand. She followed people and was found out in the street after dark and had to be escorted back to her lodging, of which had almost closed down on account of no one visiting Waywyn in twenty years. For good reason.

  She asked people weird questions about dark things no one asked and she watched people's eyes with keen interest like they were books. She'd been pointed in the same direction for two weeks but she saved it up for the perfect time. She needed more information.

  She was talking to an old drunk at the local pub at eleven in the morning when he started saying something interesting to her that seemed to be coming up often. Although he had some new information to add to the list of reasons as to why she was so intrigued.

  "His brother, you know," he was saying between drinks and nodded to the bartender who was taking his glass to refill it, he was running a tab for himself, "says he was taken. Poor boy..." he pondered as the glass was returned to him.

  "What happened?" she enthused and leaned forward, copying down his words.

  "Well," he started, "you see, Farren was always a wondering kid, you know? Getting into places he wasn't- that he really wasn't supposed to and running amuck through the neighbourhood-" he took another drink, "he was out at night, right?" he established.

  She nodded.

  "Not supposed to go out after dark, are ya Frank?" he asked the bartender. Frank shook his head and watched her eyes snap back to him. "But he did- cause of the stories, you know... of big monsters in the forest that ate bad kids- but they were all stories... just kiddies' stories to keep 'em behaved..." he mused and stared into his glass.

  "What happened to him?" she asked as his tired eyes turned up.

  "We don't know... his brother says he saw a monster made of black smoke with knives at the end of its hands and burning eyes... He was sixteen, still a lad here... five years on he still believes it, was slashed that night by somethin'. Farren was seven years younger than him and, you know, with their parents dead he looked after them, getting jobs and such..." he murmured.

  She stared intently which warranted a strange look from Frank.

  "Farren would have been fifteen now..." he whispered to himself.

  She knew she wouldn't get any more information from him. He was lost to the drink. She paid for his tab to which Frank nodded a small thanks and she left her stool. She'd been told earlier that the older brother, Iden, could be found at the garage, repairing cars.

  "Be careful with him, hey," Frank said as she reached the door.

  "Why? What's wrong with him?" she enquired.

  Frank shook his head quietly and looked upon his friend beginning to fall asleep beside his glass. "He's not right," he put his fore and middle finger to his temple, "in his 'ead..." he explained and picked up the glass to wash it down.

  He wasn't going to say anymore so she left the pub.

                                       **

  He wiped the oil stains from his hands as he stepped back from the engine. The car was old and needed a service every couple of weeks. Mrs. Marden wasn't the kind to buy a new car unless it was already fifty years old and dirt cheap. Her husband was the one to service the family car and when he died three years before, it fell on Iden to take up the job.