Temporal Psychopomp

Wade abruptly awakes, startled by the sound of loud banging. He quickly opens his eyes to see a metal pipe coming down towards him. Rolling off the bench seat he was laying on, he dodges the pipe before it strikes the seat.

“What the Hell!” yells Wade as he jumps up from the floor.

Across from him he sees an elderly man begin to laugh hysterically at him. “You were a difficult one,” he says, calming his laughter. “I’ve been trying to get you up for 10 minutes.”

As Wade looks around, he realizes he’s on a train. The lighting is dim and there is a thickness to the air that’s almost suffocating. There are passengers seated at a distance away from him going towards the front of the car, and he hears that someone is weeping. He turns his attention back to the elderly man who has seated himself down on one of the train benches across from him.

“Who are you, and why did you bring me here?” Wade exclaims urgently.

“One question at a time, my boy.” The elderly man sits up straight and clears his throat. “I guess it was rude of me not to introduce myself. My name is Montgomery Wallace, at your service. My friends call me Monty. As to the why did I bring you here, I didn’t. You brought yourself here. I was just simply trying to wake you up.”

Montgomery Wallace is a proud 76 year old man with a full head of white hair and a full beard, mustache and eyebrows to match. He stands approximately 5’7” tall, having lost some of his stature though the years due to health concerns. His voice is raspy despite his occasional attempts of clearing his throat, and he walks with a limp which he acquired after an injury he sustained in a car accident when he was 24 years old.

“My name is Wade Ryder, but what do you mean I brought myself here? I don’t remember coming onto this train. Did you see someone with me? Did someone drop me here?”

“Wow, slow down boy! First off, I’m not your keeper. Second off, how am I supposed to know? You will have to figure that one out yourself.” Monty says with a smirk. He puts his right index finger to his chin and looks off at a distance. “So, what I’m hearing is that you don’t remember how you got here or why you are here. Is that about right?”

“Yes, sir.” Wade says respectfully.

Wade, the son of an Accountant and a homemaker, learned at a young age to always respect his elders. However, growing up in a rough neighborhood taught him to be perhaps a little less nice to others around him. Wade was always smaller than the other kids so he had to learn to be smarter; learning to con and lie his way out of bad situations. He has since grown to be 5’11” tall but still relies on his smarts to get him by. He is slender, but muscular, and wears his brown hair down to his shoulders.

“Tell me, boy, do you remember anything at all?” Monty asks.

Wade sits back down on the bench he was previously laying on, across the aisle from Monty. “Uh, I don’t know.” Wade says as he looks down at the floor. He then looks up turning his attention to his surroundings once more. “I need to get off of this train!” Wade says as the panic begins to build.

“Boy, you are not getting off of this train any time soon. Just calm down and lets try to figure out what might be going on here, ok? Whadda ya say?” Monty says as he stands up from his seated position on the bench. “But first, let me introduce you to a couple of friends.” He grabs the metal pipe, which he uses as a cane, and begins to walk down the aisle between the seats.

Not knowing what else to do at the moment, Wade stands up and begins to walk behind Monty. As they move towards the front of the train car, they reach a woman who is seated on a bench situated on the right side of the car. She is sitting very straight in her seat and is facing forward. She is wearing a sun hat and Wade can see that she has long blond hair and is wearing a dress.

“Good evening, Mrs. Hades.” Monty says as the woman turns to look at him. Her face is that of a woman in her 30’s and she moves gracefully. However, she seems unhappy and her makeup is smeared. Wade realizes that this woman is probably the one he heard weeping earlier.

“Let me introduce you to . . .,” Monty pauses and looks to his right. “I’m sorry boy, what did you say your name is again?”

“Wade, my name is Wade.”

“Right, Wade.” Monty turns back to look at Mrs. Hades. “I’d like you to meet Wade. Wade, this is Mrs. Hades, but we just call her Mrs. H.”

Wade holds out his hand as if to shake hands with Mrs. H who, ignoring his gesture, turns her attention back to the front of the train car. “Where are you headed Wade?”

“He doesn’t know and he doesn’t know how he got here.” Monty says as he begins to laugh hysterically again, barely getting out his sentence.

Mrs. H turns in her seat to face the two men. "You’ll have to excuse him, Wade, he gets like this sometimes. My apologies for not shaking your hand; I’m what you would call a germophobe. I did not mean to come off so rude.”

“No problem. Did he call you Mrs. Hades? Like the place that people go when they die?”

“Well, yes, I suppose you can say that.” she says without expression. “So, you don’t know where you are going or how you got here. Am I to assume you have no ticket?”

“Ticket?” Wade begins to check his pockets frantically for a ticket of any kind but finds none. “No, I guess I don’t.”

“Well, that is not good for you. Albert hates it when people stow away on his train. He gets very angry.” Mrs. H says calmly as she turns back in her seat.

Monty begins laughing again but is quickly stifled by the sound of a young boy sitting a few seats up from them who begins muttering to himself. “Look Wade, don’t worry about a ticket. It’ll be fine. Come on, I want to introduce you to someone else.”

Monty and Wade walk a couple of seats up. Sitting on the right side of the train car, near the window, is a young man curled in his seat and rocking back and forth. He appears to be about 18 years old or so with short, sandy colored hair and metal rimmed glasses. He is wearing a black T-shirt and black jeans with no shoes. Sitting near the young man, closest to the aisle is a young girl of approximately 15 years. She is of petite build but looks strong and healthy. Her black hair is braided and circles around her head. She wears two small flowers tucked into the braid and Wade notices that the flowers are wilted.

“Wade, this is William and this is Margo.” Monty says as he points to them respectively. We call William ‘Billy’, but mostly just call him ‘Pedia’, short for encyclopedia, due to him always spitting out facts. Margo here is the chess champion; she wins every time.”

Margo waves to Wade as she chews her gum and then turns back to continue flipping through an old magazine.

“Wins every time? So, you guys ride this train often?” Wade asks.

“Yeah, you could say that.” Margo interjects. She begins to laugh under her breath as Pedia begins spitting out more facts, catching Wade’s attention. As Wade tries to make out what he is saying he notices the train car window beside Pedia’s head and realizes it’s nighttime.

“It’s nighttime.” Wade mumbles to himself. “How long have I been on this train? What was I doing before? Think, think. I remember going to work and getting off. Did I meet up with someone afterwards? How did I get here?”

“Monty, what time is it? How long have I been on this train?”

Before Monty can answer, Pedia begins to rock harder in his seat and his muttering becomes louder. “Black Beetle; only one; train goes 183.681 miles per hour.”

“Is he saying that this train goes 183 miles per hour?” Wade questions. “I thought it seemed to pick up in speed.”

“Yeah, it does that. Of course it stops when someone comes aboard, but then it takes a little bit of time to get up to speed. But boy can this sucker go!” Monty says with enthusiasm.

Pedia’s muttering continues, “M-497; jet-powered; New York Central; Black Beetle.”

“Wait a minute,” says Wade, “the M-497 Black Beetle. I heard about that train. But wasn’t that train scrapped years ago?”

Pedia’s muttering continues, “1966; jet-powered; Black Beetle; Black Beetle; speed of 183.681; current speed 487.23 miles per hour; Black Beetle; Black Beetle.”

“Current speed! Is that right? Wait! Is he saying we are on the Black Beetle?” Wade says surprisingly.

“Finally,” says Monty, “took you a minute.”

“That train was scrapped! I learned about it in school. Did they lie about it? Why would they lie?” Wade’s surprise turns to confusion.

“Geez, kid. Just when I thought you got it you lost it again.” Monty says shaking his head.

“Is this train really going 487 miles per hour?” says Wade beginning to panic. “We have to stop this train! STOP THIS TRAIN!!”

“Relax. The train isn’t going to jump the track if that’s what you’re worried about.” Monty says calmly.

“How long will it be until we hit the next train station?” Wade says as he calms himself down.

“It’ll be a while, kid. Just relax and enjoy the ride.”

“Why are you telling me to relax? We need to get someone to slow this thing down!” Panic begins to set in again as Wade runs to the front of the car. He reaches the door between the cars but it will not open. He sees other people in the second car and begins to bang on the door. No one seems to hear him. Wade turns to look back at Monty who is laughing hysterically.

“I love this part.” Monty says as he turns and begins to walk towards the back of the car. He stops a few seats away and sits down as if he’s sitting down for a show.

Wade sits down on a bench and clutches his head with both hands. “What is going on here? Why is this happening?” he thinks to himself. “Wait,” Wade says as he straightens up, “calm down. Think. What is the last thing I remember? Oh, that’s right. I was with someone, but whom? Jack, that’s right. We were doing something, but what? Think.”

Wade stands up and goes back over to the door and looks out into the next car, trying desperately to remember. Suddenly he sees darkness at the other side of the car that begins to move through the car, engulfing everything in its path until Wade can’t see the passengers. As Wade watches the darkness move closer to the door, a face suddenly appears and rushes to the glass of the door. Wade quickly jumps back away from the door with his hands out in front of his body as if to protect himself from the face that is now disappearing into the darkness. A few seconds go by and the darkness suddenly disappears.

“What the hell was that!” Wade screams.

“That was Albert.” says Mrs. H nonchalantly. “I told you he gets very angry.”

“Don’t mind her,” says Monty as he chuckles, “Albert isn’t angry.”

“Not angry? What happens when he does get angry?”

“Not sure you want the answer to that, my boy.”

“So, what exactly is Albert?”

“Not sure you want the answer to that either.”

Wade cautiously takes a step back up to the door and looks into the next car. He is shocked to see that there aren’t as many people there as before. “Weren’t there more people?” he asks himself. “I don’t understand this. I don’t understand what’s going on. Is this a dream? Yeah, it’s just a crazy, scary, unbelievably realistic dream.” Wade suddenly and forcefully slaps himself in the face.

Monty begins to laugh as the act surprises him. “This is better than I thought it would be. You are one crazy guy.”

Realizing that it isn’t a dream, Wade sits back down, calms himself, and tries to remember what happened prior to ending up on the train. “Think, Wade, think.” he says as he puts his head down on the back of the seat.

Wade suddenly jerks himself up as if he had won the lottery. “That’s right, I remember. Jack found out that I ripped him off. What then? Remember, damn it!” He begins to wring his hands. “I remember it was raining and I was getting wet. Crap! I remember. Jack took me to the woods. He shot me. He shot me! I remember laying there yelling for help. It was dark and raining. I kept hearing this banging. Like the banging that Monty was doing.” Wade begins to remember little details from the time he woke up on the train. “That banging, it wouldn’t stop. I’m on a train that was supposed to be scraped, with Mrs. Hades? I was shot. I was shot. Did I die?”

As the realization begins to sink in, his eyes widen and he begins to shake. “Am I dead?” he thinks to himself. Just then he can hear loud banging behind him in the distance.

“Wake up, boy!”