(Originally posted to hive-server//cam January 3, 2003)
“It’s getting late,” he said, pulling his watch from within the folds of the pocket of his tan polyester sports jacket and breathing hoarsely in the growing evening chill. “Getting late, and nobody knows I’m out here. I didn’t tell anyone.” His brow furrowed slightly at this realization from beneath his scarf, which obscured most of his face from the rising onslaught of lightless snow that piled up on top of his hat and shoulders.
To his immediate left and right, the train tracks of the abandoned railyard spread out like the wings of some diseased bird of prey, they were dirty and rust-covered and they weren’t any place to stand, yet here he was, all the same, his shoes bent by the abrupt protrusion of the metal bar from the earth. Miles out he could hear the distant echoes of the sign, red and then dark, a familiar beacon to the loneliest people.
“Yes,” he repeated, performing a quick spin on the rail, flinging his arms outward with centrifugal force, then landing back down on the gravel beside the track. “Eleven. Too late, out too late, I’m out here and I’ll see him. That’s what I said. He’ll come.”
The railyard was bathed in the sickly orange glow of the northern industrial wastes, a constant buzz that cracked from every vacant fuse box, illuminating a long few stretches which hadn’t been in operation in years, broken in many places, with weeds and thistles protruding beneath. It had been difficult to make his way in here, he had to scale the gate and skinned his knee badly upon impact. But he was fine now. Breathing beneath his scarf as if it were deep-sea diving equipment, as the night wore on ceaselessly.
The clouds above were a gray which reflected all light from the shadows of the world below, and as such though there was no moon and therefore no moonlight they were a sickly luminescent color. From them, a torrent of cold silent debris fell slowly to Earth, burdened by its own weight and discarded by shovels the morning after without a second thought.
Now, however, it was not the morning. He put his hand to his forehead, straining his vision on toward the horizon, where a billowing plume of smoke grew exponentially, framed by shadows against the nearly indiscernible sky behind it. In the distance came an ear-shattering wail, stark and pronounced against the silent death from above.
“Yes, won’t be long now,” came the stale mutter. “Not long at all. Only a matter of time. I’ll stick around.” From away beyond the confines of the railyard, the siren deepened in pitch and grew in intensity, and the smoke was carried by gusts of freezing subzero wind to the location of the spectator in under five minutes, until the outside world had been blotted out as if by ink and the only discernible objects were the defunct switch between the tracks and the initial twenty feet of the track itself. He rubbed his gloved hands together, producing insignificant heat.
“You said you would come,” he repeated, over and over again, eyes seared from the toxic pollutant miasma. “You said you would. Didn’t lie. I know you, so let’s be honest with each other. Come on out.” Silence. And then, a faint stirring, from somewhere beyond. A blot of complete and absolute darkness. Then another.
It approached not exactly from within the smoke, rather it approached from BEYOND the smoke, such that he knew it had not merely been waiting. It had been summoned. Its legs, one rubbing against the other, its cloak whipping back and forth in the sharp, needle-like gusts, which almost zapped him of his will to live and caused his muscles to grow taut.
It drew on steadily along the straight, well-engineered steel rails, its face obscured in limitless shadow and its size appearing to alter with every step it took. And he removed his scarf from his chapped lips and cheered, the thing being methodical in its approach yet intentional in its movement. It paused, and looked directly at him, and he considered something.
It was late. It was extremely late, and this was extremely bad weather.
It rushed forward, an animal force of nature that could not be controlled or suppressed or told to withdraw, and he began foolishly making his way along a sad and pathetic retreat down to the border of the yard from whence he had approached. But the thing, untiring and implacable, wore the muscles of his now atrophying legs to the bone as the cold grew impenetrable and he careened, face forward, into the bitter permafrosted ground beneath.
“It’s too late,” he said, lifting his arms with his last ounce of strength to shield himself from view of the thing, which reared its head back. “Much too late, and you’re here now. I knew you would be. It’s time.” Five seconds it held still before ultimately entering for its first bite. Out in those unknowable depths, the siren faded.
The railyard remained perpetually silent and pristine, as all railyards do the nation over.