HE’D JUST GOT a pint in when the aura started. A quick flickering of iridescence on the periphery of his vision that already made his stomach turn. He shut his eyes in the hope that perhaps it was a trick of the light, overtiredness from the night before. The last thing Harry needed was another late evening, but then he’d promised the missus this for months. A bit of dinner, a few glasses of wine, then down to the pub after for an hour. The tentative re-beginnings of a relationship which had sprung leaks years earlier, but whose gaping holes only became apparent with the departure of their only son to university.
‘Empty nest syndrome,’ one of the drivers had told him that day as he’d mentioned during break that he had to go out. They’d all been out the night before on a work do; John-Joe Carlin’s leaving party. He’d been driving the Belfast–Derry train for thirty-three years, through all kinds of shit. And now, this evening, he was bringing his last train home.
Harry glanced at his watch, could just make out the time beyond the growing intensity of the flickering, his whole field of vision now haloed with shifting ripples of light. John-Joe would be on the final stretch of his final drive, passing Bellarena.
He stumbled back to the table where his wife, Marie, sat, glancing around her, smiling mildly at the other drinkers.
‘I need to go home,’ Harry said. ‘I’ve another bloody migraine starting.’
Marie tried to hide her disappointment, a little. ‘Have you none of those tablets?’
Harry shook his head. ‘They’re in my work uniform. I left them in the station.’
She tutted, turning and picking up her coat, the fizzing soda water untouched on the table where Harry had set it fifteen minutes earlier. ‘Come on, then. I knew it was too good to be true.’
The shimmering had thickened now into a perfect circle of tightly packed strands of light that seemed to encircle his pupil. Harry felt his stomach lurch, swallowed hard to keep down his meal. It really would be a wasted night if he brought that back up.
His phone started vibrating a second before he heard the opening notes of ‘The Gypsy Rover’, his ringtone. He stared at the screen, trying to make out the caller ID.
‘John-Joe,’ he said, answering the phone. ‘You’re done early.’
‘Earlier than I’d planned. Something’s happened. The train’s just died.’
‘Where are you?’
‘Just past Gransha. Coming in on the final stretch.’
That was less than two kilometres from the station. The train would already have been slowing, rounding the curve at St Columb’s Park, then the last few hundred metres in past the Peace Bridge.
‘What happened?’ Harry asked, shifting the phone to his other ear.
‘I don’t know. We just lost power. Everything. Can you check it out?’
Harry glanced up at where Marie stood, the keys in her hand, the hoop of the key ring hanging off her wedding finger.
‘I’ll be right down,’ he said.
AS HE MOVED onto the tracks, away from the brightness of the station, Harry was grateful for the silence after all he’d listened to in the car. The darkness actually helped ease his building headache a little. The aura had stopped as they’d pulled into the station, though that was perhaps because his attention was diverted into trying to placate Marie. After all, he was well enough, she suggested, to work, but not to take her out for the night. How could he explain that it was John-Joe’s final night? That the man needed to get his train home, one last time? She wouldn’t understand it. He could see her now, sitting in the car, the heater turned up full, arms folded, tight lipped, her expression pinched.
He could feel the migraine proper begin to build. He tried focusing on the bobbing of the torch he held as he walked the line. He glanced ahead a distance, to his right, at the looming shapes of the trees separating the train line from St Columb’s Park.
Power cables ran along the track side, heavy copper, sheathed in plastic. It was to these that Harry turned his attention, for undoubtedly that was the reason for the train stopping. Sure enough, only ten yards ahead, just beneath the Peace Bridge, the lines had been cut.
He dialled through to the train.
‘John-Joe? Sorry, man. You’re not going to be bringing this one in for a while. The lines have been cut just outside of the station. We’ll need to get the passengers bused out. Have you many on board?’
‘One. And he’s sleeping off a session.’
It wasn’t unusual. The Belfast to Derry train was so slow a journey most people took the bus. The line had been promised an upgrade for years. They were still waiting. Maybe, Harry reflected, the cost of replacing the broken lines would be the latest excuse for not doing it.
‘Maybe just a taxi, then.’
‘How much cable is missing?’ John-Joe asked.
‘I’m still walking it,’ Harry said. ‘It’s gone until at least St Columb’s Park,’ he added, shining his torch along the side of the tracks, noting the absence of the thick cabling.
He was moving away from the light thrown off from the street lamps of estates up to his right now, and heading below St Columb’s Park itself. The moon hung low over the tops of the thick-limbed sycamores above him. To his left, the lights of the city seemed to wink at their own reflection off the river’s surface. Harry could smell the sharpness of the mudflats he knew to be just a few feet away from him, a sudden drop down from the tracks to the river’s edge.
Suddenly, ahead of him, he saw something.
‘Shit, I think one of them is still here,’ he whispered, lifting the mobile to his mouth again.
‘Get out of there. Call the cops,’ John-Joe said.
Harry squinted up ahead. His headache had gathered now behind his right eye. He felt a wave of nausea, felt the sweat pop on his forehead. He could make out a figure who seemed to be lying on the ground, as if hiding, perhaps hoping that, in so doing, he wouldn’t have noticed them.
‘Oi! You!’ Harry shouted. He tried training the torch beam on the spot where the figure was lying, but even so, his headache had grown in intensity to the point that he found it hard to make out what exactly he was looking at.
‘Get up off the tracks,’ he shouted as he stumbled up the tracks, his foot catching on one of the sleepers beneath, his hands taking the main force of the impact on the sharp-edged grey gravel between the tracks as he fell.
Cursing, he stood again, retrieved his torch and stumbled onwards. It was clear now that the figure was lying on the train line. It looked like a girl, for the hair was long, brown, hanging over her face. She was lying face down on the tracks, her throat resting on the side closest to the river, her legs supported by the other side, her body sagging into the space between them.
‘Jesus, get up,’ he shouted. ‘You’ll be killed.’
It seemed a pointless thing to say. The train wasn’t going anywhere because of the cables. Besides, lying where she was, she was obviously trying to kill herself anyway. Not brave enough to throw herself in front of the train, she was lying on the tracks, waiting for it to come. She’d picked a spot on the curve so the driver wouldn’t have time to brake by the time he’d seen her. In fact, he might not even realize he’d hit anyone at all, until the body was found.
‘Come on! Get up, love,’ Harry shouted, as he covered the last hundred yards. He wondered if she’d be pleased or sad to find out that the train wouldn’t have made it as far as her. Maybe God was looking out for the girl when he sent whoever out to steal the cabling. Mysterious ways and all that.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked, approaching the girl now. He couldn’t tell her age, but she was dressed young: flowered leggings and a hoodie. He noticed one of her baseball boots was lying on the gravel off to one side.
He crouched down beside her, placed a hand on her shoulder. ‘You need to get up, love.’
No response.
He left the torch on the ground and, using both hands, gripped her shoulders harder, struggled to turn her over. Finally, she fell onto her back, though in doing so, he knocked the torch onto its side, its beam spilling out onto the river.
At first, he couldn’t quite comprehend what had happened. Her head lay unnaturally tilted back, though in the weakening gradations of light thrown from the torch, he couldn’t quite see why. It was only when he shifted the torchlight towards her that he saw the gaping wound severing her throat.
Harry struggled to his feet but only managed a few yards before he finally brought his meal back up.