The Hungry Ghost Express

Someone was shouting. “Tickets! Tickets! Show me your tickets!”

My eyes snapped open, and I felt a hot rush of confusion and alarm. My head was resting uncomfortably against the back of a hard wooden seat. I sat up and saw that I was on a train that was rocketing through the darkness outside. A man in a business suit sat across the aisle from me reading a newspaper, as a conductor wearing an old-fashioned uniform strode toward us. I was bewildered to see the conductor pause at each bench and request a ticket even though most of them had no passengers.

The conductor stopped next to my seat. “Can I have your ticket, Miss?”

I searched frantically for my carry-on but found only a shabby rucksack I’d never seen before. Flustered, I said, “I’m sorry, I don’t remember getting on this train.” I searched my pockets but came up empty. “I don’t seem to have a ticket. Please don’t make me leave though. I don’t know where else to go.” As I spoke, the snapshot of a burning city flashed through my mind before blinking out again.

The conductor’s bushy mustache twitched as he gave me a disapproving frown. “You must have a ticket in order to ride the train, Miss. You do have a ticket, don’t you?”

The man across the aisle raised a brow at me as I anxiously searched again to no avail. “I have no idea. If I do, I can’t find it. I can keep looking for it and maybe when you come back later, I’ll have it,” I replied.

“This is highly improper, Miss,” said the conductor. “I’ll have to report you to the authorities. You’ll have to come with me.” However, when he reached for my arm, his hand went through it, and I watched in astonishment as he faded before my eyes.

My gaze fell once more on the man in the suit who sat across the aisle. “You’ll get used to it,” he said.

“I’ll get used to what?”

“The ghost,” he replied. “He’s always here. He walks up and down the aisle trying to check our tickets, but no one ever has one.” He unfolded his newspaper with a snap and began to read again, losing interest in our conversation.

I turned in my seat, glancing around to see where the conductor had gone, but he’d simply disappeared. There were a few people in some of the other seats, but like the man across from me, they didn’t seem to be distressed by the phantom conductor.

“No one ever has a ticket?” I asked the man. “Then how did you all get here?”

His sharp blue eyes flicked back to me, and he shrugged before returning his attention to the paper. “We don’t remember.”

Baffled, I said, “You don’t have any tickets and you don’t remember how you got here, but you must at least know where the train is going. As a matter of fact, where are we going?”

“Who knows?” said the man, turning a page in his paper without looking at me.

My eyes fell on a beautiful young woman who was holding a small boy on her lap. Her head was covered in a bright red shawl, and she was whispering under her breath.

“Where are you going?” I said to her.

But she only gave me a frightened look and clutched the boy tighter, training her eyes on the floor. She rocked the child back and forth, and her whispers became more fervent. The little boy stared at me with big dark, unblinking eyes, his expression neither curious nor concerned.

I leaned towards the man with the newspaper and quietly said, “What’s wrong with her?”

“Beats me,” he said.

“Haven’t you asked?”

“No. Why would I? I mind my own business,” the man said. “I’m an extremely busy man. I’m a businessman and I’m very, very important.”

“What do you do?” I asked.

“I’m an importer.”

“An importer of what?”

“I—well, I import—” he paused, a puzzled look on his face. “I’m not sure, but I know that it’s very important, and I’m very busy.”

“You don’t appear very busy to me,” I replied.

The man gave me a condescending look. “And yet,” he said, “I am too busy to talk to you.” He dismissed me with another snap of his newspaper.

I turned my attention to the rucksack in my possession. It was a bit ragged and threadbare in places, and obviously well-traveled, but it certainly didn’t belong to me. I tried to recall how I’d gotten it. I must have had a carry-on, or at least a purse, hadn’t I? I saw that I had nice, neatly manicured hands—a woman’s hands. They were hands that looked like they would be accustomed to clutching a relatively attractive handbag, not a battered knapsack. I suddenly remembered that I was achingly sad, but all I could recall were flashes of burning buildings and people running. Unfortunately, that's where my recollection ended, and there were no specific details to explain how I’d gotten onto the train.

I then tried to summon the memory of where I’d left my bag, but again, nothing came to me. Instead, here I was, in possession of what appeared to be a stranger’s rucksack, and yet there was no one who seemed eager to claim it. I pulled on a zipper and rummaged through the items inside, looking for any indication of who its owner might be. I discovered a small book of poetry by William Butler Yeats. I flipped through it and my eyes fell on the words in a poem called, “The Stolen Child.”

"Come away, O human child!

To the waters and the wild

With a faery, hand in hand,

For the world's more full of weeping

than you can understand."

My heart echoed the pain I read in the haunting refrain, and tears filled my eyes. I combed through the rucksack once more, retrieving a mirror, a seashell, a red painted parasol, an embroidered pillow, a glass bottle, some crushed flowers, and a slice of bread wrapped in a fringed white cloth. I realized I was voraciously hungry, so I unfolded the cloth and broke off a small piece of the bread and ate it, returning the remainder to the cloth for safekeeping. I didn’t want to eat it all now since I didn’t know when I’d have an opportunity to have a full meal.

I pulled the cork from the bottle and took a sip of what I’d assumed to be water, but instantly choked on salty liquid instead. I gasped and coughed until the man with the newspaper rolled his eyes and removed a thermos from its place next to him on his bench. He poured something into a blue metal cup embossed with gold. “Here,” he said, leaning over and handing me the cup.

I drank it greedily, and the warm liquid soothed my throat. “Tea,” I gasped in surprise. “Where did you get tea?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s just always here.”

I was confused. “But don’t you run out? Doesn’t it get cold?”

“No,” he said, “It is self-replenishing. It’s always the same temperature.”

“How is that possible?”

The man glared at me. “You ask too many questions.”

I returned his scowl. “Maybe you don’t ask enough.”

“Who would I ask?” he scoffed. “The ghost?”

Frustrated, I turned to the window at my side, but all I could see were trees and buildings glowing silver in the moonlight as they flew by. I pulled the pillow from the knapsack and studied it. It was lovely and soft. Colorful cranes, clouds, and mountains were embroidered on its gold silk background. I rested my head against the pillow and closed my eyes with a sigh.

I dreamed that I was on a train and that someone was playing Saint-Saëns’ Danse Macabre on a violin. I opened my eyes to discover that it wasn't a dream. I was on a train, and someone was playing Saint-Saëns’ Danse Macabre on a violin--and here that someone was. A man was sitting on the bench in front of me, amusement lighting his sharp coal-black eyes as he watched me. I sat up, startled not only by his presence, but by his physical appearance. His ragged black coat was too big for him, and his tattered flat cap was tilted at a jaunty angle, but what caught my eye was his sky-blue skin.

“Who are you?” I asked.

He grinned at me, and his teeth gleamed brightly white. “Just call me ‘Bluejay,’” he said, pausing to shake my hand in his cold, hard fist.

“Are you all right? Your skin is blue.”

The businessman glared at us as Bluejay threw back his head and barked out a laugh. “Why I’m ‘haint blue,’ darlin’! It keeps the spooks away.”

“You mean like the conductor? Is he a spook?”

“Sure, darlin’,” he said, playing his violin faster, and I shivered as I saw that his canine teeth were long, sharp, and sparkling white in the moonlight.

The train suddenly shuddered, rocking violently as it picked up speed. I clutched my seat, knuckles white as I tried to control the fear that threatened to burst my heart into pieces. The woman holding the child gasped and squeezed her eyes tight, her whispers becoming more feverish and urgent. The boy continued to look on with a placid expression.

“Tickets! Tickets!” cried the conductor, his voice distant and distorted as if it were a weak signal transmitted on a staticky old transistor radio.

“I thought your blue skin kept the conductor away,” I said.

“Look around,” said the blue man. “He wanna be with us here in person, but he can’t make an appearance. Must be so frustratin’ for him.” His lips stretched into a menacing grin.

I felt a chill down my spine. “What do you want from me?” I said in a pleading whisper.

“I’m keepin’ you safe, darlin’.” He sawed violently at his violin and the strings began to spark and smolder. Suddenly, I saw a subtle red glow in the sky outside, and the train was bulleting in its direction.

“Are you a demon?” I asked him.

“I can be your demon if you want me to be,” he said with a wolfish gleam in his eye.

My heart skipped a beat, and I looked around frantically. The woman clutched the child with both hands and made the sign of the cross with another. A fourth hand pulled a rosary from her coat pocket, while a fifth touched each of its beads during her fervent prayers. A sixth hand smoothed the hair from the child’s face as he trained his unblinking gaze on me.

Panic swelled and frantically beat its wings in my chest. “What’s happening here?” I cried. “This train is as deranged as the city I left behind! Is the whole world going mad?”

The businessman looked over with a disapproving sneer and bellowed, “You people are disturbing my peace, and I can’t have it! I’m a very busy man. I’m very important!” He returned his attention to a leather-bound notebook, scratching numbers onto a page in blood-red ink.

The mirror fell from the rucksack onto the floor. I reached down to pick it up and saw my own wild and gaping eyes in its reflection.

The blue man abruptly stopped playing his violin and set it on the bench next to him. He leaned forward, his gaze deep pools of darkness as he spoke to me in a low, hypnotic voice, “I have something that will make you feel better. Take a little sip—just a wee nip. Trust me. It will relax you and release you from all grief and grievances.” He held out a small vial of purple fluid, and it swirled and bubbled as he waved it in front of me.

I started to reach for it when one of his sharp canines pierced his bottom lip and a bead of blood, black as night, appeared and dripped onto my shaking hand.

“No!” I withdrew sharply, recoiling against the window in alarm. “Leave me alone. I will be better off without you!” I pushed against his chest, and he dissolved into a cloud of blue and black pixels. With my next breath, I inadvertently inhaled every particle, drawing them into my lungs and filling my chest with a cold biting sorrow that stung me from the inside out.

“Oh, my god!” I gasped. Turning to the businessman, I asked, “Did you see that? Have I been possessed?”

“See what?” said the man, his expression indicating that he’d seen everything.

“Never mind,” I muttered, knowing that he would be no help. He’d continue to claim ignorance no matter what.

I tried to calm down, focusing on my breath. I closed my eyes and was starting to relax when, suddenly, there was a loud crash. I looked up to see a large, enraged man, muscles bulging as he lifted benches and crushed them to splinters with his bare hands, moving down the aisle in our direction. “Where is she?” he thundered, “Where is my wife?”

The six-armed woman whimpered in terror as she pulled her red shawl lower, covering much of her brow with it and concealing the boy, and her numerous arms, within its deeper folds. It quickly became apparent what was happening, so I gathered my courage and made my way down the aisle until I was standing in front of the strongman, blocking his view of the woman and her child. “How dare you come onto this train and terrorize people! You should be ashamed of yourself! How dare you!”

He looked down at me with murder in his eyes. “You can’t stop me! I’ll destroy everything in my way!” the strongman roared.

Then his body expanded, his bones and muscles swelling and filling the space before me as he grew larger and larger. When his head reached the train’s ceiling, the metal flexed and dimpled for a moment before cracking open with the sound of wrenching steel and splintering wood. He began to spin, creating a tornado of destruction in our car, and forming a divot in the floor. I lunged forward, reaching my arms around him, and held on tight.

Suddenly, everything became still and silent, only a tiny whirlwind of dust remained in the divot. I turned my face to the damaged roof of the train’s car and saw that the light of millions of stars was shining down upon me. As I did so, the whirlwind rose up and circled me, embracing me, and sank itself into my skin, muscles, tissues, and bones, invigorating me with an expanding sense of power and strength.

My eyes fell on the woman. The shawl had fallen back, revealing her lovely long brown hair and beatific expression. “Thank you,” she smiled. “How did you know what to do?”

“I’m not sure,” I replied. “I suppose it was instinct.”

The woman made room for me on her bench. “Eat with us,” she said. She lifted the lid on the basket at her feet, revealing fruits, cheeses, loaves of bread, ruby red wine, and steaming pots of soup. I joined her and the boy, accepting her offering with gratitude. As we ate, she told me of how she and her son had run away from the strongman and his violence, how they were looking for better lives, how the child had stopped talking, stopped interacting with the world around him.

“I would do anything in my power to protect my son,” she said, her voice shaking with emotion. “I would give him the world, but the world usually just takes, takes, takes, and gives nothing in return.” My heart swelled for them in sorrow.

The businessman laughed gleefully, interrupting the moment. He was staring at a small glowing screen in his hands.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

“My numbers are climbing higher than they’ve ever been before!” he exclaimed. “I have stocks and shares in everything—coal, oil, water, land, oxygen—you name it, I own it, and they’re increasing by billions every minute!” the businessman crowed triumphantly. “I’m the most powerful man in the world!”

“Then what are you doing on this train? Shouldn’t you be on a private jet? Shouldn’t you be rocketing out to space, making your way to your exclusive hideaway—your spa and retreat planet?” I asked.

He looked puzzled. “I—I don’t know.”

The train suddenly lurched wildly as its velocity increased dramatically.

“Look!” cried the woman, all six of her hands pressed against the glass. I looked over her shoulder and the distant red glow came blazingly into focus.

My heart constricted, and I suddenly remembered. I remembered that my home and the entire city I came from were burning to the ground. I remembered the anguished cries and suffering. I remembered that the world was on fire.

The flames that were consuming the villages and cities behind us were now in front of us as well. We were heading right into the fire. I remembered that in the end, even those with all the wealth and all the power had nowhere to go. I looked at the businessman in pity now because I saw his blindness. The sense of power he'd felt from all his wealth was just an illusion. He still couldn’t see that he was no better than the rest of us and would suffer the same consequences of our anger and greed as everyone else.

My heart began drumming, pounding against my ribcage. “We have to get out of here!” I shouted. I stood up and made my way to the door that would take us outside.

The businessman looked up in a panic. “You can’t do that! You have to stay here! If you open that door, we will all die!” And with that, he started ripping at this tie and unbuttoning his shirt. “I can’t breathe!” He screamed, collapsing to the floor in a slick, oily black puddle of liquid.

The train suddenly tilted on the tracks as it sped through a curve, and the oil beaded together and rolled under my feet, soaking them, saturating them, and filling my body from the ground up. In that moment, I felt that I was capable of anything—I could do anything. However, I realized that in spite of my ability, there was simply nowhere to go.

I sat back down in defeat. I held the woman’s hand, clinging to the small light of her kindness as she sang her son a lullaby, rocking him to sleep.

Someone was stroking my hair. I opened my eyes and saw an old woman standing over me, her warm smile lighting her features with tenderness. The six-armed woman and her child were gone, and this stranger was here in their place. She seated herself on the bench facing me, and I took in her beaded calfskin dress, moccasins, and long white hair.

“Where did you come from?” I asked.

“I’ve always been here,” she replied. A small black cat jumped onto the bench and curled up in her lap, purring. She took thick skeins of her hair and began braiding them together as she hummed the same melody that the six-armed woman had been singing.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I’m making a rope for you,” she said.

“What for?”

“So you can escape,” she smiled.

“Escape?” I said. “What’s the point? There’s nowhere to go!”

The woman just smiled and continued to hum, the cat perfectly content in her lap.

“I’ve had enough of this,” I declared. “I’m going to see the engineer. Maybe I can get him to stop the train.”

I stood up and made my way down the aisle. I moved from one car to the next until I reached the engineer’s cab. I flung the door open and cried, “You must stop this train!”

The engineer turned to me, and I fell to my knees.

I was staring at my own face.

The engineer looked at me in compassion and smiled. As she turned her face away, another one appeared. It was the businessman. Then she turned again, and I saw the face of the conductor, and then the blue man, the strongman, the six-armed woman, her child, the old woman, and her cat.

All at once, my heart pulsed with a burst of light that filled the cab. I found the knapsack in my hands, and I knew what to do. I would get off this train and forge my own path in the world.

I removed the shell from the bag and used its sharp edge to cut a door in the wall. Suddenly, the strongman and the six-armed woman were there within me, and they helped me break down the wall that kept us from the world outside. I found the old woman’s rope of hair in the bag, and I tied it into a lariat and tossed it into the darkness. It pulled taut as it lassoed a tree. I opened the parasol, held onto the rope, squeezed my eyes shut, and jumped into the void, the train disappearing behind me.

I landed in lush green grass beneath a tree. Hearing a cricket, my eyes opened, and a lake appeared before me. I smiled when I looked into the water.

There I was, sitting amidst a beautiful, bright, and sunny day, but my reflection was smiling back at me from a dark and starry night.

It was then I realized that all of Life was my true destination. There was nowhere to go because I’d been there all along. As I continued to stare into the water, I saw Myself and all of my other faces in my reflection—the good and the bad, the exquisite and the grotesque, the scared and the brave, the weak and the strong, the right and the wrong—the life and the death.

I knew then that we were all perfectly and truly One and the Same—all of us living as hungry ghosts, asleep until we awakened from the nightmare of our perceived distance from each other. I saw that, in Truth, we are all connected—We Are All One.

I looked around and saw that the rucksack had opened and disgorged the bottle and dried flowers next to me. I uncorked the bottle once more and placed a drop of its contents on my fingertip and tasted it. When the flavor of salt burst on my tongue, I realized that the bottle contained tears, so I poured them onto the ground. Instantly, the dead flowers took root and began to shoot up from the soil, unfurling in radiant colors and sublime fragrance.

I saw then that I’d always had the freedom to choose between two options—love and fear—and that the key to a happy Life was to choose to love it all—all of it—in its messy, perfect, colorful chaos, destruction, and creation. Free will was the great binary option that shaped the quality and expression of my experience. When I chose love, I chose Life. The decision to choose love was the option of true fortune, and when I learned to love unconditionally, it charmed my experience in life.

As I embraced love, the other passengers reappeared, summoned by my heart’s acceptance of them just the way they were, and we all held hands and jumped for joy in infinite laughter. Our celebration created waves of beauty that were felt in every aspect of Life—and the world awakened and blossomed in harmony.

This was how the world began to thrive as the big, beautiful, free creature it was always meant to Be—just You and Me—thriving in One perfect singular duality of Life among the verdant trees, silvery streams, and lush grasses of our beautiful earth.

***Straw Dogs and Hungry Ghosts***

*on the road to Heaven, we the hungry ghosts,

run weeping and screaming through the hell we believe in,

never reaching Nirvana until we discover that God is really Life Itself,

and Life Itself is the greatest expression of Love we can experience.

*if in this Truth we place our faith and trust,

we will release our fear of death and the illusions it misperceives.

when we learn to appreciate every chord in the entire symphony,

both major and minor,

we become the wind that drives away the dust and reveals the sun.

this journey brings our darkness and light into balance and harmony,

and finds us arriving at our heart’s most joyful destination.

*trust in the Tao to feed blazing love and devotion to us ALL—

just as we are—

One— messy, amazing, flawed,

beautiful, misshapen, miraculous

Whole Being composed of polarities—

in perfect concert of LIFE.

*celebrate songs both joyful and sad in this present experience.

know that as expressions of Life Itself,

we are Truly a blossoming, expanding, growing,

paradoxical infinity of singularities,

eternally evolving towards greater grace, maturity, and understanding

right here and now and forever.

*there’s never growth without growing pains.

they are the catalyst for change.

therefore, Namaste, Y’ALL.

trust in the Tao to know that the way to our healing

is to feed love and compassion to all of our inner superstars and demons alike,

for we without love, we are just straw dogs and hungry ghosts.

*the Truth is that we are all different facets of the same diamond—

life, death, and everything in between.

we are the form and the formless,

Matter and Void,

Whole in the singularity of duality.

*the Tao honors and thanks the demons and angels alike

for the blessing of the wounds, sacrifices, and miracles

each of them presented to us.

these were the opportunities for us to learn that, in Truth,

we are All One in Life.

*in this knowing, we become bamboo, and our flexibility

brings forth our abundant harvest of love, peace, and beauty—

in ourselves and in the world around us.

thus, turns the wheel of change

so Mother’s cooling waters may fall to our earth

and douse the flames within us.

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