A Creepy Encounter
Kluck-kakluck, kluck-kakluck, kluck-kakluck.
The train’s wheels counted down the distance left on its journey.
Seated alone in a carriage sat a young girl, Chilli. She scowled through the window, barely noticing the scenery as it zipped past.
She had been on planes, trains and taxis for almost twenty-four hours straight. And now she was on a train to Simons Town in South Africa. It was a town she’d never been to, in a country she’d only read about, to stay with an ancient relative she had never met. Some holiday she thought, not!
This lousy trip to Simons Town was all the fault of some stupid butterfly in the Amazon rainforest. Her parents were biologists and they were headed to South America to study the breeding cycle of the morphus delecti. All she knew about it was that it was a huge butterfly with glossy blue wings that only lived in the Amazon.
“Dumb bug!” she muttered under her breath, “who cares about some butterfly in a jungle that no-one sees anyway? Only flippen scientists who worry about lepidopteras, blah blah blah” she muttered under her breath. She didn’t know what ‘lepidoptera’ meant, but her parents made waaaay too much fuss about it for her mental health.
Chilli wasn’t usually this irritable (her parents would say otherwise). She was just peeved that she had to spend the school holidays away from her friends, video games, movies and civilisation (she wasn’t even sure there was electricity down Africa way). Okay, so the weather may be better, and she may get to see rhinoceros and lion, but so far she’d only seen a mangy cat at the train station.
She had normally stayed with her grandmother when her parents were off chasing some creepy-crawly, but her grandmother had died a year ago. That had left her parents with a dilemma – what to do with Chilli. She couldn’t stay home alone (she was only twelve years old) and the only living relative was her great aunt, Lady Hecubah Stenchmould-Grimsby in South Africa (Chilli suspected her other relatives were in jail or a mental asylum). There was no other choice. Chilli would have to spend the holidays with the old duck. She sounds like a barrel of fun, Chilli had thought sarcastically when she’d heard the name. The fact that her folks had never even mentioned the old woman before was a sign that she wasn’t exactly their favourite relative.
So her folks had made the The Important Phone Call to Aunt Hecubah. It went something like this:
“H... hello, Aunt Hecubah? It’s... it’s Elizabeth. You know, your sister Jermima’s daughter?” said Chilli’s mom nervously. She noticed her mother’s were hands shaking and tiny beads of sweat on her top lip. It reminded Chilli how she had felt when she’d been sent to the principal’s office for not doing her homework. This isn’t a good sign, Chilli figured.
“That’s right, auntie. It’s little Elizabeth. How are you doing? And how’re things at the Manor?” Chilli’s mom had first waded through polite conversation to get to the point of the call. Chilli couldn’t hear her great aunt’s answers, but her mother was doing a lot of eye rolling and face pulling to her dad. He had chickened out of making the call and was nervously rapping his fingers on the kitchen table.
“Oh, that’s good, that’s good” Chilli’s mom replied. “Yes, yes, I know, it has been a long time since we last spoke. But you know we’ve just been so busy studying...” her voice trailed off. Great Aunt Hecubah’s voice grew louder. Auntie clearly wasn’t happy.
“Uhm, Richard and I were wondering... well, we have to leave Chilli alone for two weeks, and we need someone to...” Auntie’s voice got even louder. Chilli managed to catch “... only called me because you want something”. Things were going downhill, rapidly.
Elizabeth changed tack and started using emotional blackmail. “We wouldn’t normally ask you to do this auntie, but since mom’s death it’s been really hard. And I know you wouldn’t want to let mom down.”
Go mom! That’s a slam dunk, auntie! thought Chilli. She’d prefer not to stay with Great Aunt Watserface, but she sure as heck wanted her mother to beat auntie at her own game. Auntie’s voice quietened down. The old woman knew when she was beaten.
“Thanks so much, auntie. Chilli... I mean Rachel, will arrive on...” Elizabeth continued, giving details of Chilli’s travel plans. Aunt Hecubah hadn’t even bothered to reply and had cut the call without a goodbye. Game over!
And that was it. So here Chilli sat with her tired head against the train window. Normally, she would have loved the view; the railway line wedged between the foot of a craggy mountain range and the ocean; its long ribbon of rails skirting the shore. Out in the bay beyond, a lone lighthouse stood watch over vessels anchored in a small harbour.
Unhappy as she was, Chilli had resigned herself to her unpleasant fate. But this wasn’t always the case. She was a toddler when her parents had had their first taste of their daughter’s defiant nature. They had christened her Rachel but as she got older, the little girl had decided she hated her name.
It had startled her parents when their sweet two-year-old daughter had fiercely declared “Rachel gone. Chilli is here now!” and poked a finger at her chest. And that was that. Nothing anyone said, no amount of coaxing or bribing could get her to change her mind. So ‘Chilli’ it became, and ‘Chilli’ it remained.
She was Chilli by name, and Chilli by looks. She had a wild mane of curly red hair that no clip, rubber band or scrunchy could keep in check. Like her, it had a will of its own and ended up doing precisely the opposite of what anybody wanted. This was mostly why she hated this trip. She’d had no choice and was forced to go along with the plans. She’d rather have gone to the Amazon and faced the rainforest’s bird-eating spiders. Even that sounded like more fun than staying with Great Aunt Hecubah. And spiders were the only thing that scared Chilli stupid!
Chilli’s red hair crowned a face covered with a generous scattering of freckles that dotted her face from forehead to chin, and from ear to ear. But she didn’t care. Chilli loved her freckles. They made her stand out from the crowd; made her an individual. She hated the thought of being a thought-clone like other people. She took great pride in her inquisitive mind and rebellious nature. Nothing escaped her pale green eyes and no fact was left unchallenged. Her motto in life could have been: question everything.
Her parents had put her on the train at Cape Town’s train station with strict instructions not to get off the train until it reached the end of the line. Chilli repeated the words ‘end of the line’ to herself and shuddered. It sounded so final.
Chilli had tried to cheer herself up by thinking about the wild animals she’d see in Africa. But even that hadn’t worked. This was not the Africa she’d imagined. All she’d seen so far was traffic and smog. I might as well be in Concordia, she thought gloomily, it’s like Concordia, just with better weather.
Spending time with Great Aunt Hecubah sounded like it was going to be about as much fun as a sentence in a maximum security prison. It should be auntie spending time with flesh-eating piranhas and bird-eating spiders the size of dinner plates. Maybe it would do her some good. That should soften that stiff upper lip! The thought made her smile, but only briefly.
Chilli’s sense of humour was her best defence against anything that bothered her. She’d Googled for a nickname for Great Aunt Hecubah.
When she saw a picture of a lumpy-faced warthog rolling in the mud, she knew what to call her - the warthog. Perfect!
A sudden movement on the seat in front of Chilli brought her back to reality. She gasped with fright as she glanced at the seat opposite her.
Staring at her was a massive dog that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. She was sure she was alone in the carriage. No-one had boarded the train since it had left Cape Town station.
The dog sat completely still, his massive paws planted firmly on the plastic seat. Chilli nervously leaned towards him and reached out her hand.
“Hello boy. Where’ve you come from?” she asked quietly, hoping he was friendly. At the greeting, the dog’s tail started wagging furiously and long strands of drool began oozing from his large jowls.
Chilli ruffled his ears which, alarmingly, caused even more slobber to drip from the corners of his substantial mouth. She noticed a large red collar around his neck and read the inscription.
“Able Seaman Just Nuisance,” she read aloud.
“That’s a very strange name for a very strange dog, Nuisance.” Nuisance’s face stretched into what only could be described as a smile and offered Chilli his paw.
“Pleased to meet you, Nuisance” beamed Chilli, shaking the dog’s paw. “Are you alone? Where’s your owner?” She stood up, hoping to see the dog’s owner. She scanned the whole carriage and, seeing no other travellers, spun around to face Nuisance. He had disappeared! Where had he gone?
The hair on the back of Chilli’s neck stood up. She got up from her seat and walked up and down the aisle, hoping to see Nuisance sitting on another seat. He was nowhere in the carriage! She flopped back onto her seat.
What’s going on? Chilli wondered. He came from nowhere and then disappeared. The train hasn’t stopped and the windows are closed, so he couldn’t have jumped out. Nah, I’m tired, that’s all, she concluded. I must’ve imagined it.
Chilli looked at the seat where the dog had been sitting. A puddle of saliva lay on the seat. I didn’t imagine it! Her mind chased itself round and round, but she couldn’t come up with a good reason for what had happened.
That puddle of whatever that stuff is was there all along. I never noticed it, that’s all. I must’ve dropped off to sleep and dreamed it or something.
Chilli’s reasoning made her feel a little less freaked out, but deep down inside she knew something very strange had happened. A niggle in the pit of her stomach warned her she might be dealing with something else entirely. Something she didn’t dare think about.
With so much on her mind, Chilli did her best to ignore what had happened. It was tough enough just keeping her usual brave face, without having to deal with disappearing dogs.
She pushed the bizarre meeting to the back of her mind and settled back in her seat again.