The No-frills Express

He opened his eyes.

To his right, there was a window.

Outside that window stretched a dim and gloomy landscape with few defining features. It was twilight, apparently, dusk, perhaps, for the distance was lost in a gray and darkling haze. Nearer at hand, there was only flat and barren earth, cast in muted tones of brown, gray, and black, indistinct beneath the looming shadow of nightfall.

Every few seconds something tall and thin would flash by the window, speeding rapidly from his left to his right. Telephone poles. He was in an automobile, evidently, and it was moving at a high rate of speed. That realization shocked him into wakefulness.

When had he gotten in the car? – and why was he a passenger?

Rousing himself, he sat up and turned his head to the left to see who was driving the car. As his head swiveled, his gaze found no windshield, no dashboard. Instead, a series of seats was revealed, extending away to his front toward a wall in which there was a door. The rows of seats were separated by a narrow aisle from yet another series of bench-like seats just opposite. There was no driver to his left. And there was no driver up there, at the front.

Not an automobile then, or even a bus. A train, apparently.

But when had he boarded a train? And why?

Straightening further, he looked around, examining the coach for other passengers but saw none. Except for him, the car was empty, and the seat he occupied was the last in the row upon the right.

He stood, moved to the aisle, and then glanced around again, confirming the fact that he was alone in the train car. He studied the door up at the front where the seats ended and through which, beyond the glass, he could just make out the dimly lit interior of yet another car. He watched that other interior for several moments, but saw no indication of movement. He pivoted then and looked to the rear. There was a door there as well, but beyond that door there was only the outside world and the train track, rushing away toward – and rapidly fading into – a dark and dreary distance.

So, however long was this train, he was in the last coach.

He stood for a moment, frowning at that track speeding away toward wherever it was that he had come and wondered yet again – why was he on a train? – and where had he boarded? – for his memory seemed to contain no information pertaining to his present situation.

Indeed, after a careful search of his mind, he discovered to his concern that his memory was utterly blank, like a book from which the pages had been torn and discarded. Even his name eluded him.

A thought came, then. Since he was aboard a train, he must be in possession of a ticket that would tell him who he was, where it was that he had come from, and where it was that he was going.

Diligently, then, he searched through his pants pockets, shirt pockets, and jacket pockets. Not only did he not find a ticket, but he found no wallet, no cash, nothing.

Concern devolved into alarm.

To defray the onset of outright panic, he decided to go forward into the next car and see whether he could find answers there.

When he reached the door, before pushing through, he leaned close to the glass and peered into the next car. Oddly, it appeared to be empty of passengers as well. After a few moments more, in which he discerned no movement, he went through the door, entered the car, and then moved to the side behind the last seat where he stood for a moment, looking all around.

It was as it had appeared through the glass of the door – this car, like the last, was devoid of people.

Was he the only passenger on this train, he wondered? If so, why had he boarded a train to some unknown destination where no one else wished to go?

He eased slowly up the aisle, checking each seat as he went, looking for luggage, purses, coats, or jackets, any evidence that others had boarded this train, but he found nothing. Reaching the door at the front, he once more halted between cars and peered into the next dim interior, looking for any sign of people.

He saw nothing but a double row of empty seats.

He pushed through and entered.

This next car, like the last two, was also unoccupied, as was the next, and then the car beyond that.

It was while he was moving cautiously through the fifth coach that he realized, rather abruptly, that he was hungry and thirsty.

Hopefully, somewhere up ahead, there would be a dining car where he could find food and drink and – maybe – some answers to the situation in which he found himself. Passing through car number five, he entered number six. Only this was not a passenger coach, nor was it a dining car.

It was the cab.

Shorter than the other cars, it consisted of a narrow hallway running between floor-to-ceiling walls that rose on either side behind which could be heard the thrumming of engines.

Ahead, at the end of the narrow hallway, a small compartment opened up, and a broad windshield revealed a long, straight section of onward rushing train track, coming out of a gloomy, hazy, indistinct distance.

Surely, he thought, there had to be someone here, at the front of the train, for trains simply did not race around the countryside unattended. He eased forward. When he came close enough that he could see into the small compartment a bit to either side, he saw that, indeed, there was someone sitting at the controls to the left of the doorway, for he could see a portion of the person’s black clothing.

He moved up to where he could see the whole of whoever was seated at the front of the train.

There, he stopped short, staring.

The man seated at the controls of the train was not dressed in a uniform with an engineer’s cap, as he would have expected, but was dressed in a full-length hooded black robe, the cowl of which was pulled forward, concealing his face.

He gazed in astonishment at this bizarre apparition for several moments, wondering.

What sort of a train company allowed its engineer to dress like someone going to a Hallowe’en costume party?

It was then that he noticed another odd thing.

There were no controls on the panel to the engineer’s front. There was nothing but a smooth and blank console. Indeed, the engineer’s hands were not attending to any knobs or handles or buttons but were folded upon that featureless console.

“Excuse me, sir,” he said.

The engineer did not look his way, but he responded in a voice that was low and muted though resonant, like the tolling of a bell in a vast and deep cavern.

“What is it, Lennie?”

He started.

Lennie?

Was that his name?

Abruptly, a memory swam out of the ether and implanted itself upon his brain. Yes, his name, in fact, was Lennie. Though that bit of information was accompanied by nothing further, he found that it brought him a measure of relief that he could at least attach a name to himself. Yes, indeed, he was named Lennie.

After several minutes, in which he tried to ascribe something more than his name to himself and failed, he decided to cover his ignorance by assuming an attitude of nonchalance and to address his basic needs before asking anything else. “Where can I get something to eat and drink?” He wondered.

The hooded head moved itself from side to side. “This is a no-frills express,” the engineer replied. “There is no dining car.”

Deeply disappointed that his hunger and thirst would remain unsatisfied, Lennie looked again at the engineer and indicated the windshield. “An express?” He asked. “Where is it going?”

The engineer unfolded his hands and pointed with a long, bone-like finger at the track rushing out of the dimness.

“There,” he said.

Lennie stared ahead, out through the glass. Then, unable to make out anything beyond the endless oncoming track – no buildings in the distance, no looming train station, or even signs indicating that any sort of destination was drawing near – he shook his head. “No,” he persisted. “I mean – what is the next stop? Where will this train stop next?”

The hooded man turned his head then and looked at him. The face that was revealed in the depths of the hood was gaunt, pale, gray, and emaciated, like dead skin stretched over a skull. The eyes were dark, the nose was long and hooked and the lips were colorless and thin.

“Stop?” The head inside the cowl moved itself slightly from left to right and back again. “This train does not stop.”

Lennie stared. “What? What do you mean? – what sort of train does not stop?”

“What sort of train? – this train,” the spectral man responded. “This train does not stop.”

Lennie continued to stare, blinking in confusion. Then, he felt a surge of anger arise, defusing to an extent the confusion and alarm. “Surely, you can at least tell me this,” he demanded. “When did I get on this train? Do you know?”

“Certainly, I know when you came aboard,” was the reply.

“When?” Lennie insisted.

“When you made your choice.”

Once again, Lennie found it expedient to stare at the gaunt and ghostly man without comprehension. “Choice? What choice?”

The hooded specter lifted his finger and pointed it at Lennie’s chest. “You were given a choice to make, and you chose.”

Lennie shook his head in frustration. “I don’t understand.”

The black eyes watched him for a long, silent moment. “You do not understand? – or you do not remember?”

“No,” Lennie replied, almost in a shout. “I don’t remember.”

The strange gray man watched him for another moment. “Do you want to remember?” He asked.

“Of course, I want to remember,” Lennie answered, angrily. “I want to know how I got here.”

“Are you certain?”

“Yes, I am certain,” Lennie insisted.

“Then let it be so.” A long, boney finger was raised in warning. “But only this one time,” the spectral man said, and then the finger straightened out and touched Lennie on the forehead.

*****

Lennie leaned out of the doorway to the vault and glanced along the hallway toward the front of the bank and out through the glass of the front entrance. The parking lot out there contained only one car – his. And the light from the streetlamps illuminating that parking lot was normal and mundane. There was no flashing of red and blue to indicate the presence of cops. Apparently, his threat to harm the bank manager’s family had been sufficient to keep the man’s finger off whatever alarm buttons might be about.

Turning back, he waved his gun at the man. “Hurry,” he said. “I don’t want it all, just a good bit. There – that next stack of hundreds, put those in the bag and that will do.”

The manager, a short, stout, balding man, looked up with sweat glistening on his forehead. “And then you’ll let me go? – and let my family go, too?”

Lennie nodded shortly. “Just secure that bag and hand me the cash and I’ll leave you here – and I won’t go near your family again, I promise. You can go and untie them when I’ve gone.”

The manager pulled the strings to secure the top of the large leather bag that Lennie had brought with him and handed it up.

Lennie hefted the bag, satisfied, and then lowered the gun and shot the manager twice, two quick shots, point blank, to make certain he wouldn’t be able to describe the man that had robbed his bank.

Lennie didn’t like wearing a mask to conceal his identity; had never done so, for he preferred to “clean up” the job before he took the loot and moved on. He didn’t really care about the man’s family. By the time they were discovered and released, they would be utterly traumatized and would find it difficult to remember what he looked like. It was doubtful that they could ever identify him. Anyway, by the time they were interviewed, Lennie would be many miles away.

He didn’t know how to kill the light in the vault, so he swung the big door shut and then moved cautiously toward the entrance to the bank building, a small branch that sat on the corner of Hiller Lane and Thirty-seventh. He stopped at the front and pivoted each way, looking out through the glass, studying the parking lot and the streets beyond. The parking lot was empty, except for his small sedan. There wasn’t much traffic out on the streets at this hour, but what there was moved normally, giving no indication that anything unusual had occurred. There was no sign of the cops.

He opened the door and stepped out.

Instantly, he staggered back, banging against an unyielding and very hard vertical surface. He suddenly felt sick, as if the world had abruptly reeled about him. And, indeed, it had – the world been had changed in sudden and bewildering fashion. Bringing his gun hand up to his face, he rubbed at his eyes and then stared, trying to make sense of the sudden, insane alteration in his surroundings.

Gone was his car. Gone were the bank parking lot and the streets that had intersected beyond it just moments before.

Gone, vanished, was every vestige of the city in which he had just committed both robbery and murder.

Instead, Lennie found himself at the top of a gloomy yet ornate staircase with dark-stained wooden steps that went down to a landing and then turned and angled down again to the left.

Utterly confused and more than a bit terrified, he jerked his head about and looked back.

The bank was also gone, vanished. There was no glass-fronted entrance to Mineral Savings and Loan; in its place there was now only a blank wall of dark-stained wood.

What the hell? He wondered in abject bewilderment.

He reached out and felt of the wall behind him where the entrance to the bank should have been. It was solid, and undoubtedly as real as it was incomprehensible and inexplicable. Confounded, he turned back and looked down the staircase. It was dimly lit by pale, ambient light whose source he could not discern.

He looked to his left, over the handrail but could make out nothing in the blackness. Whatever sort of room was down there, it was lost in profound darkness.

Utterly flummoxed, but having no other option, Lennie moved down the stairs, cautiously, one step at a time, while watching below him for any sign of a trap. Reaching the landing without incident, he turned toward the bottom of the staircase.

He stopped short, staring in alarm.

There was a figure down there, standing on the right-hand side of the bottom step. The figure, tall and thin, did not move and seemed to be wearing a full-length hooded robe. For a few moments, Lennie watched the figure closely, but it exhibited no discernable movement. Rather than someone wearing a hooded cloak, he finally decided, it might be nothing more than a long coat hanging slack on a coat rack.

Staying on the left-hand side of the staircase, Lennie moved slowly downward, drawing closer to the strange figure with each step. Still, the figure did not move. Probably, he thought, it was simply a coat rack and not a person at all.

As he descended, while keeping an eye – and his gun – trained upon the unmoving figure, he studied the room below as it gradually resolved itself out of the darkness. It was a small, square foyer, which seemed to have no avenue of egress other than a door that was just to the right and was partially blocked by the robed and hooded figure – or coat rack – that stood on the bottom step of the staircase.

He reached the bottom and made to step out onto the floor and move around the figure to make for the door. Then, as his foot failed to find purchase, he glanced down at the floor and jerked to a halt, reeling, sucking in a sharp breath.

He dropped the bag of money that he held in his left hand and desperately grabbed for the handrail, barely managing to regain his balance and prevent a fall.

At the bottom of the staircase, on the left-hand side of the bottom step, right below his dangling foot, gaped a circular hole, a pit in the floor that apparently dropped completely through the floor and into the basement.

This round abyss was of the size that would accommodate a normal human body, and was deep, black, and impenetrable, as if it plumbed the depths of the earth itself.

Lennie, gasping in shock, moved his foot and planted it once more upon the solid wood of the bottom step.

Just then, the hooded figure moved, pivoting slowly to look at him.

Startled, Lennie let out a bleat of terror, clutched the handrail more tightly, and raised his gun, pointing it at the figure.

“Who-who are you?” He managed to blurt out. “What do you want? – what did you do to me?”

The face that was revealed within the depths of the hood was garish and gaunt – the skin pale, stretched, and cracked, and the eyes black, the mouth thin and colorless.

The thing shook its head, slowly. “I did nothing to you,” it said.

Lennie stared, breathing in short, sharp gasps. “Then what happened to the bank?” He demanded.

“Oh, the bank is far from this place – far, indeed,” the robed figure responded.

Lennie glanced about the small square foyer and then looked back, being careful to keep the business end of his gun pointed at the strange, robed figure. “What is this place?” he asked.

“It is a place of choosing,” the spectral figure answered.

Lennie, at a loss of how to respond to this arcane statement, retrieved the bag of cash and then motioned with his gun. “Well, I have no business here,” he declared. “So move aside and let me to the door or I will shoot you – and that’s not an idle threat.”

The ghostly figure nodded slightly. “I know that you will find it an easy thing to employ your weapon,” it replied, “for you slew the bank manager without compunction.”

Lennie motioned with the gun once more. “Then you know I mean business. Move.”

The figure extended a long, slender finger and indicated the pit in the floor. “You could go that way,” it suggested.

Lennie glared at the gaunt and ghostly face. “Are you insane? Why would I want to fall into a hole in the floor? Now, get the hell out of the way.”

“No,” the specter answered. “This is a place of choosing and a choice must be made.”

“I warned you,” Lennie answered, and he pulled the trigger, twice.

There was the sound of bullets striking something – something solid, but something that seemed to lie beyond the robed and hooded figure.

The figure itself did not react to the gunfire but remained as it was, unaffected, gazing with its gleaming dark eyes upon Lennie.

Lennie was spooked now. More than that, he was terrified. “What the hell?” Was all that he could manage.

The figure reached out its boney finger and jabbed Lennie in the chest. Where that finger touched him, Lennie felt as if ice, frigid and sharp, had found his flesh. He staggered back against the railing.

“This is a place of choosing,” the thin, colorless mouth in the ghostly face stated, “and you will choose.”

Lennie stared back, gasping with fear and bewilderment. He shook his head in confusion. “Choose – what?” He bleated. “What am I supposed to choose?”

The figure moved the finger, indicating first the pit in the floor and then the door behind it. “Your choices are between the two ways that you may leave this place,” it said. “You may choose the abyss or the door.”

Lennie nodded his head at once. “Then I choose the door,” he answered.

The figure shook its finger in his face. “No,” it stated. “You must not choose until you learn the consequences of each choice. You must listen before you decide.”

Lennie gazed back for a moment and then nodded his head again. “Okay,” he said, “I’ll listen. What are the consequences?”

The finger moved once more, indicating the pit. “Should you choose the abyss, you will face the consequences of your actions and your criminal behavior over the last several years of your life,” the specter told him. “You will make recompense in whatever way that society demands of you. All your wickedness will be made known, and you will answer for it.”

Lennie, his eyes wide, shook his head. “No way,” he declared. He pointed beyond the figure. “What about the door?”

The figure turned and looked for a moment before turning back. “Should you choose the door,” it told him, “you will run and keep running.”

Lennie frowned at this, and his eyes narrowed. “But I will not be found out?”

“You will not be found out,” the figure agreed. “You will run and keep running.”

Lennie felt relief seep into him. He drew in a deep breath, let it out again, and shrugged. “Well, I have been running for most of my life,” he answered. “I choose the door.”

The spectral figure leaned close. “Are you certain?”

Lennie nodded, bobbing his head. “I am,” he answered.

“Then let it be so,” the specter said, and it moved up one step, allowing Lennie access to the doorway.

Lennie shot the gaunt and ghostly face deep within the hood one quick glance as he went by and then he stepped down, avoiding the pit, and hurried through the door.

*****

He opened his eyes.

To the right, there was a window.

Outside that window stretched a dim and gloomy landscape with few defining features. It was twilight, apparently, dusk, perhaps, for the distance was lost in a gray and darkling haze. Nearer at hand, there was only flat and barren earth, cast in muted tones of brown, gray, and black, indistinct beneath the looming shadow of nightfall.

There were no gaps in his memory now, and as he stared out upon that bleak landscape speeding by the window, Lennie’s spirit plunged into despair.