The Night Train

There is no sex in this story!

I'm waiting for the Night Train.

In my job this is probably the scariest thing I can do, not the waiting, that's easy, but the bit that comes along when the train arrives, and I start doing my job.

The Night Train is not what you think it would be. Yes, it is a train, or at least it looks like one, and yes, I'm stood on a train platform, but that is where everything stops being normal.

There is a woman stood next to me, she is looking at her phone, probably Instagram or Tik Tok or something stupid like that. She is humming to herself, the mundanity of it makes me smile, the train will be here in a moment, I can already feel it.

Time is a funny thing when the train arrives. If you have the special abilities, you can feel time slipping away from you. It really is an odd feeling when you try to describe it. Imagine the tide going out, except the water is time and the beach is you. It slowly ripples and flows over and around you, but it recedes at the same time. Like I said, weird.

I look up as I feel the effects of the Night Train's imminent arrival. They start to appear, luminous things, up in the rafters, down by the rails and drifting in and out along the platforms with the other, more worldly passengers.

And then it is here, with a rush of spectral energy as it glides into the station. Phone girl next to me is frozen out of time, not that I am in time for it to be moving... The train seems to make its own time to exist in. Describing these things is difficult if you don't understand this world like we do.

And who is 'we'? Hi, my name is Ben, and I am a conductor. No, not a conductor for an orchestra or even a bus or, what you probably thought, a train conductor. No. I am more the electrical conductor. My job is to ground, or more accurately,

absorb

energy, more specifically spectral energy.

When people live, they generate energy, life force if you will. When you die that energy or life force, is expelled. People that die of illness or old age don't have much extra energy left at the end, it is all spent living life or fighting off whatever disease killed them. These people don't pose a problem. The real problem with someone dying unexpectedly, often violently. Wars are the worst, they produce huge problems for people like me, thankfully over time, war has become less of a problem for the world and less of a problem for us.

Our biggest problem now is numbers. There are a lot of people on the planet now and all that life energy is flowing around. The problems for us now are everyday accidents, car crashes, workplace accidents and the violence that comes with too many people in a big, urban area. Thankfully muggings don't tend to kill too many people, those are always the worse for me, it taints the energy, you can always tell when someone has suffered violence at the end. Thankfully violence is something that happens to other people.

As the train's doors silently open the surge starts. The energy around me leaps up as all the spectral energy rushes to the train, I can feel my eyes glowing as I feel the energy envelope me. These are the souls, if you will, of those that have died since the train was last here.

Sunset is when the train arrives. Every day at sunset the train will pull into the station... What station? All of them. When the sun sets where you are the train will arrive to accept its intended passengers, those souls leaving this Earth for the

other place

. Don't ask about the other place. It's not for the likes of you and me. That is

their

place, and you should just accept that. Trust me. You don't want to know where the dead go.

Speaking of not wanting to know. I close my eyes as I take one step aboard the Night Train. These sights are not for me. I do not need to share their views, I like my sanity as it is, thank you. I feel more than hear the doors close. I take two steps forward to stand in the centre of the carriage and concentrate while pressing my hands together as if I was praying to some deity. Keeping my mind steady for a moment I slowly exhale and then, as I pull my hands apart, I inhale and

pull

.

What I am pulling is the abundant spectral energy. I absorb it and bring it down to a level where the train can continue its journey. There is a lot today, nothing I can't handle, but it does make me question what happened around here today. This is a big city, but not that many people should have died in such a manner. I may need to make a report, I'm not looking forward to annoying paperwork!

And then it is done, the energy levels are low and stable. I hear the door in front of me open and I take the three steps needed to exit. The second I leave the train I hear the door close, I would never be trapped in there, but who knows what would happen if anything... Got loose? I don't even want to think about that.

I feel the expected lurch as the train begins to move behind me. I stand statue still as the latent energy that always surrounds the train whips around me and is then gone. Time flows back like the returning tide. I can feel the energy flowing and arcing around me as I take deep breaths now that time has returned.

I open my eyes and look at the open fields ahead of me and nod. I got on the Train at Leeds central station and now I look out over fields about 20 miles away. I did say that the train arrives at

all

stations when the sun is setting, didn't I? Obviously, I can get on at one place and get off the same train at another, yes? This is a mode of transport after all!

Why do we do this? I just absorbed all that energy, as I stand here the residual energy is arcing out of my eyes and fingers. We can't have the normies seeing people with glowing eyes now, can we? I can just imagine what the 24-hour news would make of THAT! No. Best they never see this side of life.

In days gone by it was easier to deal with all this. Humanity was not as abundant in places. Only a few cities had any real numbers of people in them and even those were not too difficult to manage. Just a statistic for you, London sees around 130 people die each day. That is just London. The UK sees 660,000 deaths a year, 1800 per day. That is a LOT of energy to shift around!

The Night Train is only a recent iteration. It used to be a stagecoach, before that it was left to the spirits themselves to make the trip to local standing stones or special temples. Nowadays the stagecoach has been replaced and the old standing stones are gone, bulldozed for the sake of the modernity of humanity.

People thought for a long time that ley lines were a thing. Ironically, they are right, but not for the right reasons. Spectral energy was, and is, always here, ley lines are just the pathways that souls took to portals where their excess energy, if needed, could be dealt with before they moved on

over there

.

In ancient times my job was practiced by a priest of some kind, they would extract the energy and distribute it as needed, the spirit would be left to make its own way in peace, but those religions are abandoned, not practiced anymore, now they have modern religions that simply don't understand how the world works.

If you lived in rural areas the energy would simply float to where it needed to, this was how all the stories evolved about wisps, glows, spirits and the like, there was simply no way to bleed off all that excess energy as the spirit made its way to a site to go

other there

. Sometimes the spirit would never escape where its body died and so you get the stories of hauntings, that is the energy slowly bleeding off. Depending on the vitality and ending of the person it could be a long time or a violent time, but rarely both.

Cities and populations being what they are made this difficult and so stagecoaches and trains were seemingly oddly placed. The city planners probably don't even know why they picked some places, this has led to some innocent people being accused of bribery and corruption, not an easy problem to fix, but it had to be done, the energy needed somewhere to go. Those stations are built on portals to the other side.

This also should explain to you why sometimes there are small stations built in places that really feed no local people. Some blame poor planning, really, they are just for me and those I work with. We need somewhere to, don't laugh, let off steam. Yeah, don't worry, I sighed when I first heard that joke, too!

Oh well. Now I just need to catch the bus from here back into town, I can use that time to write my report. You would think that dealing with the spectral energy from dead people would be strange enough that you would never need paperwork, but you would be wrong. Bureaucracy is everywhere, unfortunately.

Once I have dropped off all this energy and submitted my report I am done for the day. Yes, in case you were wondering, that is my job. All of it. I go to my station, absorb the energy, go back to my base to drop it off and then submit my report. An hour in total and that includes the bus ride.

Not a bad life, eh? It's just a shame you have to be born special and get recruited to do it. But that is another story.

My only real problem is hoping that the busses run on time.

Maybe I should buy a bike?

Fin.