Locomotive

The locomotive did not skate across frictionless steel but rather it dragged forward, grinding against rough metal; heavy, solid, and single-minded. This was the ethos of the age, that which had value was that which thrust onward irrespective of obstacles or resistance. Speed and comfort were products of another time. Now they seemed a vulgar anachronism, if they did not seem outright reckless. The train meant many different things to the people that watched it scrape through the valley but everyone, even those that had initially feared it, accepted that it had somehow changed their world. It had brought meaning, movement and even time back to the countryside. Whenever they saw its lights confront the night it was like those first hopeful drops of water from the thawing icicle, tantalizing, promising but also reversible. Subject to the same laws of entropy that afflicted everything that had come before it. Twice a day it travelled along the route, firstly toward, and then away from the city. And now it followed its own drying slug trail back to its lair to rest its weary parts. Was this an aged buffalo forced to work until it died or a calf uncertain on its legs?

Henreid sat on the train, one of only seven passengers dotted about the singular carriage. He made a trip into the city every friday, where he had taken a part-time cleaning job at a small church. It paid only enough to cover the price of a return ticket and buy some food to take home with him, but the routine felt salubrious and though he was not a believer the pastor had certainly succeeding in lighting a spark in his imagination. Henreid did not read on the train on the way back despite the fact that the electric lights provided a garish light that was more than adequate for the task. Instead he looked out the window at the void as the pastor’s words rippled through the valley.

“It is movement. Connection. Repetition. This is how one must exercise his soul. This is how we must slay inertia”

This was how Henreid remembered things now, fragments.

“The phoenix has come, salvation.”

It seemed to him that the thought of a progression of ideas was unsustainable. Events just floated, separated by space rather than time, the only order that existed was the order of the importance of that event. It changed, depending on what could be utilized at any particular present.

“The Railway shall return Christ’s wrath to the bandit's den.”

Henreid had been galvanized by the fragments, even if he could not yet establish the full form of the monolithic concept the pastor described, and perhaps never would be able to. Perhaps this was city-thought. The further he travelled into the hills the more distant the pastor's words seemed. The crash of his wave so thunderous in church was little more then a ripple from such heights and yet he could not bring himself to fully deny them.

“We are crawling out of Man’s third and deepest dark age. And our crawl is relentless and each straining of our muscles make us stronger. And joining with one another makes us stronger. We must learn to share space once more. To cross the seas to each other’s islands.”

In the bleakness of the valley something of the absurdity of this suggestion crawled, insipid into Henreid’s head - and yet the pastor had intoxicated him with hope. Perhaps this was just the modest Vorspiel to man’s greatest act. A humble beginning to an as yet unimaginable crescendo he thought to himself.

A crescendo? The idea was so romantic he had to wince. It was so full of tantalizing hope and possibilities that he reflexively devalued it. He thought of all the people he had read of in the past dark ages who believed in the imminent coming of the promised land when they actually lived right in the centre of the storm. Henreid battled between a belief that the pastor was a prophet, and that he was yet another fool carried away with quixotic notions of resurrection that were now empty vessels.

Perhaps he was just too old and sclerotic to believe in the pastor’s sermon. To follow him was to break away from what was his, and though he had little, what he had was his, and this seemed too great a distance to set off from the shore. You could take these risks when you were young with an abundance of life stretched out before you but now he was old, he presumed he was old, this seemed like a great gamble in which the stakes were too high. The great curse of his world was not just a problem of trade or transport but, and perhaps most noticeably, a psychological malaise. Even when he read the works of the past he could never be certain if ideas were healthy or if they were symptoms of a society that had not realized that so many of its customs in its surfeited last age were only a kind of self administered palliative.

“Next stop Keyford Bridge!”

Henreid stood, and walked toward the bell which he promptly pressed. He always hated ringing the bell for it interrupted the train’s slow predictable rhythm replacing it almost instantly with the a sickening high pitch tone that began to emanate from the wheels, a cacophony of cracks and whimpers could be heard from the mechanisms of the locomotive as the driver tugged on the reigns. The beast never wanted to stop. Seven passengers, soon to be six. Surely this isn’t enough. This is just a candle that has to run out of wick.

The train took some time to draw to a halt. Henreid gave the door a hard shove and stepped out onto the platform. The temperature outside was probably not any warmer but a vitriolic wind brought a bitter chill. 'Sometimes I’d prefer the inertia'. Above him on the hillside he saw a few lights wobbling, held by a small group of locals who came out every night to see the locomotive. Behind him he heard the muscles of the train engage as the driver enticed it to labor onward slowly up the featureless valley. It quickly vanished; Henreid lit his torch and wondered up the dirt track to the heath land on the hill’s top.

In the dark it would be near impossible to find one’s way were it not for Henreid’s experience of the route. He was well versed in detecting the clandestine edges of the footpath. This myopic mental cartography was the only means of orientation in the dark, particularly when after around 300 steps along the ascent the dim lights of the village faded and he only had his weak incandescent lamp that swung in the wind and cast mischievous phantoms that would beguile the less adept travelers down the wrong paths. This path took the utmost concentration. I envy the train he thought to himself considering its hard virtuous facade, impervious to wind and its path that guided rather then deceived so all its power could be utilized to plow forward thoughtlessly. To get lost up here in the hills might put you miles from anywhere; with no chance of returning to your route before the cold of night set in. All who had got lost had perished, even to slow down was perilous.

To the left of the path the hillside reared upward and commanded authority; on the right the land submissively sunk beneath the tyrant. As Henreid gazed up he could just about make out the summit of the leviathan whose crown could be glimpsed in a beam of moonlight that breached the cloud and passed over the land. The wind was picking up and the storm would be with him shortly. It was time to get to the shack. His initial ascent lasted only a while longer before he reached a point where the path descended onto a small, heath covered plane and then rose steeply toward the moorland plateau. If the moon could just break the oppressive cloud once more he might have been able to see the faint trail timorously, weaseling forward across the land barely daring to raise it’s head. But tonight the moon could quite break through and would not do until the storm had begun to exorcize the clouds. He lumbered on.

As he approached the highest point of the second ascent toward the plateau he noticed how labored his breathing had become. The wind that now blew impetuously against him seemed to snatch the very air from his nostrils. It thrust not in direct opposition but askance, attempting to entice him, or force him upon a new course into the darkness. It was everything in Henreid’s power not to accept the invitation. The familiar rock formations at the hill top bore little comfort for him. From this point onwards he would have to orienteer by compass and hagg across the peat flats, ever weary of the insatiable quagmires that lay in wait for unsuspecting creatures to stumble into their furtive throats. Where possible he followed the winding trenches that cut through the land and at some angles brought respite from the bitter winds and at others channeled and emphasized their condemnatory gusts.

A familiar crag thrust upward from concealment and towered over the peat wall. Henreid clambered over to greet it. From its base on lighter nights he could make out the faint dimensions of the shack. Tonight was so dark that he almost did not look, but even his fleeting glance was enough to note that something was amiss. He looked once more for what he thought he had seen, but now there was nothing. A trick of the mind he assured himself. He made his way forward but could not shake the fear that gestated within him. After a few more paces he saw it once more. I fragile light that seemed to flicker and it lay in the direction in which he walked. Once again its glow proved ephemeral but its second spark inspired trepidation and then terror. He stopped. His feet could not march him forward and yet behind him there was near certain death. 'I must have not extinguished a lamp. It seems only dim. Could it have burnt through the day?' But these words did nothing to alleviate his swelling fear. Had they he would have scolded himself for wasting, in a time when there was so little in abundance. He might have even been relieved for this upset, that would replace his grave fear. He suspecting he knew exactly what was in the shack.

But nature broke his inertia as it cracked a dead tree’s branch out of sight. Henreid was awoken from his stupor and reminded of the other peril. He thought of the words of the Pastor but nothing seemed to fit at a time when both inertia and actions were so perilous and potentially futile. He decided that he needed to investigate and began to edge closer. The light appeared again, first strengthened, and then squared. Now the Pastor’s words did come to him:

“We must form a creature of our collective spirits. Our spirits are our portal to the divine. They are guided by His image and shall form our own light on Earth in honor of his radiance. But alas we can only honor him together.”

He even gently mouthed the words as though the Pastor spoke through him. How were these words to be applied to the scenario he now found himself in? Was the Pastor’s methods merely a prescription for society that attempted to universalize his feelings about inertia. All this rushed to through his head as he moved closer and then something brought fresher more vivid terror. A shadow, something dark, interrupted the light from the window whilst somewhere from the night at the same moment a screech rung out.

Henreid was running away with all the energy he could muster as a visceral terror seized control of his legs. Other then one stumble he maintained surprising control. He seemed to be running for some time before fatigue began to ration his energies more frugally. He slowed and then walked before stopping and glancing back behind him into the night. There was still that light. He sat by a large rock that had been forced up from the underworld through the peat, and he starred. He wrapped himself tightly in his clothes and pondered his next move. How long he sat there was impossible to say but soon he noticed that the wind had grown more potent, and the clouds were beginning to break up as the storm approached its apex. From this distance the whole landscape was lit up by scales of light. The motion of both the silver clouds and their dimmer, grounded mirrors made him nauseous. He could feel the Earth spinning on its axis whilst his head thundered painfully and louder then the wind.

The light had gone out at the shack, although he had not seen this occur. He turned behind him and starred into the gulf of night. He saw shapes pass through the dark just out of plain sight. The inclement weather beckoned him toward them, but Henreid did not heed it’s pressure. Though he feared what might lie in his house he knew it must be confronted and understood. And so he fought against the wind and made his way back to the shack.