The Conductor's Tale...

The first chapter of Tales the novel...

Chapter 1 - The Station Between Worlds.

“Welcome to The Station Between Worlds! All worlds are just a train ride away…”

Perhaps you are wondering how I know about all these worlds? Would you believe me if I told you that I made them up, or is that too implausible? I will give you a more reasonable explanation. Long ago, I was a conductor on a train. That train took people across all of the worlds, far too many for me to write about and too many even for me to remember. It was only one of many that departed from the Station Between Worlds, speeding across train tracks like neurones to the far corners of the multiverse. Is that more believable than my making it all up? I think so. It is important for me to be believed, because I must tell you a story. It is the story of the worlds, but it is also the story of how there were nearly no worlds at all. The story is vital, so it would be easier if you simply chose to believe it, without me having to convince you. Is that a deal that we could make, you and I? Just for now? Please?

My train was one of the more unusual, even for the Station Between Worlds. It carried passengers to their soulmates. People bought tickets and the conductors were given a list of names. Each name corresponded to a world where the passenger’s soulmate waited for them. From there it was just a matter of keeping to the schedule and ensuring that everybody on board followed the rules. There were occasional problems, of course, and a soulmate isn’t always exactly what a person expects, but life was simple and I saw many worlds. I thought that my life would never change until the day that it did.

I bumped into a janitor that morning but I didn’t think much about it. After all, I had much more pressing concerns. A train had just arrived at its platform on time but empty, with neither explanation nor signs of a struggle. It was one of my trains. A Soulmate Train.

“Maybe they all found their soulmates?” asked my friend Alain, one of the station guards.

We crept along the empty carriage, past the empty seats and empty tables.

“Including the drivers and all the conductors?” I replied.

They, at the very least, should have come back, along with some of the passengers. Not everybody who buys a ticket for the train actually meets their soulmate. Some undergo a sudden change of heart, others become afraid when they realise that they will be spending the rest of their lives in a different world, some simply miss home. Whatever the reason, the train is supposed to return to the station complete with its conductors, its drivers and a few of the more fearful passengers, some of whom have change their minds again and rush to the ticket desk to buy another ticket.

“All the luggage is still here” said Alain, pulling a suitcase down from the overhead compartment.

Since there wasn’t anyone left to object, we decided to open the suitcase and examine its contents. I shifted through neatly folded clothes, a book and what appeared to be some family photographs. Nothing had been taken, the contents weren’t even disturbed. So the passengers hadn’t left the train of their own free will, or they had planned to return quickly.

“Maybe…” said Alain, scratching his chin.

“All theories are welcome.”

“Everybody got off to look at something…and then didn’t get back on.”

“And then the train rolled all the way back here - across multiple worlds - by itself?”

“Anything is possible.”

I pulled another suitcase down, and then another, and then another. It was all the same. None of the passengers took anything with them. As we made our way along the carriage we found newspapers on tables, half eaten meals and books open midway through a chapter. Nothing untoward greeted us in the conductor’s cabin, only a half drunk cup of coffee. I dipped my finger into the mug. Cold. When we reached the driver’s compartment I hesitated and knocked, even though we knew it was empty. One must respect the sanctity of the driver, even at a time like this. Nobody answered and the door was locked.

“Break it down” I said.

“Really? We should wait for the police.”

“The police won’t tell us anything. They’ll take this off our hands but the police don’t work on the trains. It doesn’t matter to them. We need to know.”

Alain shrugged and gave the door a kick. It didn’t move. He threw his whole body weight against it and then administered a few more kicks but to no avail. 

“Let me try” I said, but before I could make an attempt, footsteps echoed in the carriage behind us.

Despite it being broad daylight in the middle of the Station Between Worlds, probably the most populous and safest location anywhere in the multiverse, the sound of footsteps on that deserted train struck me like rolling bones. Both of us recoiled, but it was only Amira, the platform manager. 

“Any clues?” she asked.

“Nothing” I said, and told her about my findings so far; empty train, no signs of life, but luggage, half eaten meals and mugs of cold coffee.

“Interesting. What are you doing?”

When we explained our predicament with the door she took out a keycard, scanned it and the lock clicked open. The three of us hesitated in the entrance, perhaps expecting to find something unspeakable within. Alain entered first and then Amira, and I followed. The compartment was completely empty with no sign of a disturbance. Even the microphone was in its stand, so the driver hadn’t attempted to radio for help. A quick rummage through the drawers turned up nothing unusual either, just maps, charts and timetables. No body slumped over the controls, no hastily scrawled message warned that catastrophe was near. The cabin was neat and everything was in order. Even the break had been applied when the train came to a stop.

“Incredible” I said quietly.

“That’s one thing to call it” Amira sat down heavily in the driver’s chair “We will have to close this platform for at least a day. Maybe even a week.”

“Are the police on the way?”

“What police? We are between worlds. The Station is its own jurisdiction.”

For a few moments we all stood in silence, staring through the front window and down the line ahead of us until it dived into a tunnel. Sunlight streamed in from the glass ceiling, blazing brightly with the force of our two suns. They shine perpetually so that night never comes and the Station never sleeps. I couldn’t even remember the last time that a platform was closed. Trains were sometimes delayed - the nature of our position between worlds means that even a tiny occurrence like a misplaced leaf in one world might have seismic effects elsewhere - but it was almost unheard of for there to be any major delays.

Amira rotated slowly in the driver’s seat. A long chain of command unfolded away above her, so complex and entwined that even the people at the very top might not have known that they were in charge. She would have to report to the department manager, who would report to the section manager, who would report to the area manager…at some point the news would find its way to the station manager and then onwards and upwards to somewhere mysterious.

“Is there a passenger list anywhere?” she asked at last.

“There should be” I said “I’ll go and check.”

Alain hung back in the driver’s compartment and I didn’t exactly savour the prospect of walking back through the empty carriage alone. Sounds from the Station Between Worlds reached me from outside, a multitude of voices in endless conversation, trains coming and going, whistles, loudspeaker announcements…but those noises echoed as though from another world entirely. Silence, heavy and unnatural, hung over the carriage and it seemed to muffle everything from the outside. 

I found my way back to the conductor’s cabin, opened the door and began searching for the passenger list. Now that I was alone, the half empty mug of coffee struck me as especially eerie, and I wondered exactly what could have caused its owner to abandon it and never return. Natural disaster? Engine malfunction? Supernatural intervention? None of them seemed to account for a disappearance so perfect and apparently instantaneous.

The passenger list was pinned to the back wall. It consisted of every name on board, along with their destinations: the world where their soulmates would be waiting for them. Those soulmates must still be waiting, and would be waiting for a long time, perhaps even forever. Glancing down the list I noticed some familiar destinations including the Ice World, The Floating City and even The Burning World, along with many more that I didn’t recognise.

Less than half of the names were ticked off, which meant that more than half the passengers were yet to disembark at the time of “the incident,” whatever that incident might have been. I also discovered the names of the drivers, which were printed at the top of the list. I recognised one of them. Shen. We worked on the same train once, taking people to and from the Rain World. Shen was always a consummate professional, impeccably polite, immaculately dressed and utterly devoted to the smooth running of the trains. He certainly wasn’t the type to suddenly leave a train behind, not without good reason.

“We’ll have to notify the families of all these people” said Amira when I handed her the list.

“And tell them what?”

Before anybody could answer, there came a knocking sound from outside the train. Someone was drumming on the window. All three of us froze. We looked at each other in silence as the knocking continued and then changed into footsteps. Somebody else was on board. Two sets of footprints belonging to two somebodies. The footsteps tramped along the carriage towards us. I don’t know what we were expecting, but we eyed each other with genuine fear until two smartly dressed men in suits entered the driver’s compartment.

The older, taller one extended his hand and introduced himself first.

“My name is Fielding and this fellow here is my assistant, Tripp. I understand that there was a problem with the train. We were sent to investigate.”

“A problem…?” with the tension so suddenly broken, I couldn’t help but laugh.

“What else would you call it?” snapped Tripp, eyeing me with disdain.

Fielding explained that he was sent by the higher ups who watch over the Station and keep things running smoothly. Of course there is always crime, that is inevitable in any world at any time. Pickpockets, robberies, even the odd violent altercation. There have been murders, but only very rarely. At times like these the Station, existing between worlds and outside the jurisdiction of any, sends its own law enforcement to investigate. Usually, though, the officers arrived in pale blue uniforms and hats. I had never seen plain clothed detectives before. 

The two slipped past us and proceeded to investigate the driver’s compartment, rifling through the drawers, opening the cupboards, even asking us about the controls. They were amiable enough but there was something uneasy about them. It took me a few moments to realise what it was. Blandness. They might as well have been grey, and would disappear immediately in a crowd. Their faces were so nondescript - could so easily be the faces of any number of people - that I was sure I would forget them the moment they left. The assistant was the younger and shorter of the two, but that was his only distinguishing feature. They might as well have been the same person. Sometimes when I blinked I had to tell myself that they weren’t and there really were two separate people stood before me.

“I have the authority to requisition this train for my investigation” said Fielding “This form will explain everything. Read it please.”

“Of course” said Amira, looking a little baffled as he handed her a lengthy document.

“Please check it carefully and you will find that everything is in order.”

“Have you any idea what might have happened?” I asked.

“None at all” replied Fielding “But we will have this train thoroughly searched and then moved.”

“Could I…” Amira looked up hesitantly from the paper.

“Yes?”

“Could I ask about your jurisdiction? Who do you answer to?”

Smiling slightly, Fielding reached into his suit pocket and handed us all a business card with contact details for his office. Even so, exactly who he answered to remained unclear, and it looked as though he might have complete jurisdiction over anything and everything that happened in the Station. He asked for all of our names and his assistant wrote them down in a notepad. More police appeared outside the train, this group in their more familiar sky blue uniforms. They wore gloves and masks and were obviously planning to undertake a forensic examination of the train. Somehow, I knew that they wouldn’t find anything. Any evidence would have been wiped clean, just like the passengers.

“Things are unusual” said Tripp, watching the officers through the window.

“But not illogical” replied Fielding.

We made our way outside. Acting under some pretext or other, Fielding demanded to see all the paperwork related to the train and who was supposed to be crewing it, so Amira directed us to her glass office overlooking the platform. From there, the hustle and bustle of the Station below unfolded in every direction, buzzing with people and life. Fielding gathered every document he could related to the train, including a list of passenger destinations. 

To my dismay, I discovered that my name had somehow found its way into those documents. Even though I had nothing to do with the empty train and had in fact been enjoying a much needed holiday, my name was everywhere: on the manifests, the tickets, even the route map, as though I was one of the conductors on board, which of course I wasn’t. Fielding even found a schedule for the dining cart that bore my name.

“Clearly there’s been some kind of mistake” I said nervously.

“Clearly” replied Fielding “Does this happen often? That the wrong conductor is listed, one who wasn’t on board?”

“No” cut in Amira on my behalf “We keep detailed records. I don’t understand how this could have happened.”

She looked at me as if to confirm that I really hadn’t been on board, but I just stared back, turning the new information over in my mind. Fielding eyed me strangely but didn’t say anything else on the matter.

When the detective finally let us go, I wandered through the Station Between Worlds alone, trying to make sense of it all. Platforms and stairways ascended above me, criss-crossing endlessly until they were lost in white light. Our platform was only a tiny fraction of our section, itself a minuscule part of a vast whole. Not just a meeting point between worlds, the Station is a world of its own, one that’s impossibly huge, with trains and platforms as far as the eye can see. There must have been something else there once, before the first engineer laid the first train tracks, but the world that was is long gone.

Passengers of all shapes and sizes jostled by and sometimes the crowd was so densely packed that I couldn’t find my way through and had to take a detour or double back. Mass movement is the language of the worlds; travel and exploration. People want to see, to know and feel, and the Station Between Worlds is their gateway. Some of the travellers dragged gigantic suitcases behind them, even multiple cases piled one on top of the other. Others carried hardly any luggage and then, of course, there were those searching for a truly new beginning. They carried nothing at all, just a vague smile and a lost look.

With no destination in mind, I hurried through the Station. The empty train was unsettling enough and I thought of the passengers, wondered where they could be and how we might be able to locate and eventually retrieve them. Even more unsettling was my name tied up with the whole tragedy. I knew that it must be a simple clerical error, but the detective pounced on it. He was desperate. Anything even slightly out of place would do. It occurred to me that of all the names on the list, I was the only one still here.

White light, pure and even harsh, streamed across the platforms, the trains, the ticket offices and the shops. Gigantic clocks suspended overhead ticked away the time. Wherever I looked I saw life proceeding as normal, but the sight of those empty seats, abandoned suitcases and half eaten food was difficult to forget. I walked and walked, crossing platform after platform, watching endless streams of people arrive and depart until I could walk no further. I sat and stared for a while, watching the inexorable flow of life, before turning back home.

That night, I returned to the empty train. The Station was quieter at night, but it never really went to sleep and one of the two suns remained in the sky. That night was different, of course, because the platform was sealed off with police tape and barricades. Sounds and voices echoed from other parts of the Station, yet the atmosphere was eerie and quieter than I could remember. Guards strolled around the platform but I knew them all by name and none of them paid me any attention.

The train was exactly where I left it, parked perfectly alongside the platform and completely empty. I tried one of the doors but found it locked. I tried another and then another with the same result. Just when I was about to leave, I noticed something at the far end of the platform, near the back of the train. A flash of orange. It was gone in the blink of an eye but it piqued my interest and I followed it, creeping along the platform away from the lights and towards an area where shadows congregated. 

Unsure what I was searching for or even what I was doing, I reached the spot where I’d seen the orange streak, but all I found was a spider. It hung in the air, suspended from a web on the ceiling. Another one crawled along the wall nearby, and a group of them were spinning webs in the corner. I watched them at work, trying to discern where they had come from. When another appeared, I traced it back to a crack in the wall. More spiders were emerging all the time, so there must have been a nest on the other side of the crack.

I was so absorbed in the spiders that I forgot all about the flash of orange until it appeared again, this time on the other side of the tracks, darting from view before I could get a proper look at it. This time I hesitated. My heart fluttered a little in my chest. Something rattled and clanked across the platform and I held my breath. This is The Station Between Worlds I said to myself again and again what are you afraid of?

When I crossed the platform I found the other side completely empty, with no sign of orange or anything else. Whatever I had seen - if I’d seen anything at all - was gone. There were more spiders here, too, spinning a web along the side of the train, but before I could stop to watch them, a voice called to me through the dark.

“Out for an evening stroll?”

It was Fielding, still in his suit and with his hands in his pockets, sauntering along the platform towards me. He looked pale and ghastly in the Station lights and his smile, probably intended to be amicable, adopted a menacing aspect.

“I couldn’t sleep” I replied “With everything that’s going on.”

“I understand completely. Who would be able to sleep with so many mysteries in the world? Who could find a moment’s rest?”

He joined me at the rear of the train.

“Spiders” he said darkly “How unfortunate.”

“We’ll get rid of them when the train starts moving again.”

“One spider” said Fielding, extending a hand towards the web “Is invariably indicative of many more. An infestation. There will be no stopping that.”

One of the spiders left its web and stretched a tentative leg towards Fielding. It crept onto his hand and he held it aloft in the light, scrutinising it like a test subject.

“Such strange creatures” he said, rotating the spider this way and that “People are afraid of them. No. It is more than fear. It is dread, horror. It is something intrinsic. They don’t think - oh no I am afraid - when they see a spider. Their revulsion is instinctive, as if they know.”

“Know what?”

Fielding didn’t answer. Gently, he replaced the spider in its web. It returned to work at once, spinning its web across the train. Even more came creeping out from beneath the tracks and a few from inside the train itself. We would need to get pest control in, or ask one of the janitors to do some sweeping.

“Have you found anything out?” I asked.

“Absolutely nothing. There’s no trace of the passengers, the conductors or the driver, and even less of what made them vanish so suddenly.”

Marooned like a dead fish on the tracks, the train looked unnatural, its contours angular and mysterious. I tried to imagine the passengers sat in their seats, some of them half asleep, others reading books. Some might even have been on their way to the dining cart and then, in less than the blink of an eye, they were gone. Did they experience a rush of terror at that moment, or was there a slow build up of suspense? Perhaps they sensed that something appalling was coming but they didn’t know what until it was too late.

“Could it have been a robbery?” I asked, searching for any kind of rational explanation “Is that possible?”

“Everything is possible, but it’s unlikely. Nothing has been taken. Luggage remains untouched, including valuables. All that’s missing is the people, and even if it was a robbery, how could the train return here of its own accord? To me, that is the biggest mystery, even bigger than the missing passengers.”

When we left the platform Fielding strolled away in one direction, I in the other. I watched him recede into the distance and then disappear behind a ticket desk, his hands still in his pockets, strolling as though he didn’t have a care in the world. I only managed a few hours sleep that night and I dreamed of spiders. They crept through the cracks in my dreams until they overran those dreams altogether, spinning a web that nobody would be able to escape.

The next morning I was called back to the empty train, which was now surrounded by officers in sky blue uniforms. They traipsed on and off carrying briefcases and clipboards, their faces hidden behind masks and goggles. Amira and Alain were there too, deep in conversation with Fielding. They were preparing to lift the train off the tracks altogether, which would require a complex arrangement of cranes and pulleys, and a lot of paperwork and phone calls for Amira.

“They’ve got nothing” she said in a low voice “And people are starting to talk. It’s spreading to other parts of the Station.”

I looked around, up at the myriad of criss-crossing stairways and platforms and then to my right and left, where more platforms and more trains extended away as far as the eye could see. The usual clamour of noise - voices and engines - filled the air. If people were afraid, they certainly weren’t showing it. The Station was as busy as always.

“People still need to go places” I said.

Just then, a group of officers emerged from the front of the train, talking in hushed voices and shaking their heads. They had found nothing and perhaps there was nothing to find. We stood on the platform. A small crowd of onlookers watched from the other side of the cordon.

“Will you be stopping all the other Soulmate trains, then?” asked Amira.

“Stop them?” Tripp sounded surprised “Why would we do that?”

“Until we find out what happened it wouldn’t be safe -”

“We will never find out what happened if we stop the trains” said Fielding “And the aim of life is to know. You must continue. If anything, I suggest that you put on more trains to make up for today’s delay.”

Just then, another train arrived on the opposite platform. It was empty.

To continue the story, Tales the novel - ‘The Conductor’s Tale’ - is out now and available around the world :)