The Railway House

An edited version of this story appeared on flashesinthedark.com.

The railway house creaked and groaned at night.  Da said it was just the floor settling, but Cara knew better.  The house was an old soul, grown weary in the years of its disuse, and it grumbled its sorrows to the dark, murmuring of the lost days when trains stopped outside its door and passengers stepped onto the platform and inside for a kind word and cup of tea while a change of driver was made, or before a carriage pulled up and bumped them over the moor to the town or the manor house, the hazy outline of which Cara could see if it was an especially sunny day.  Not that she knew all this from memory, of course.  Da told her bits of it, when she begged him.  Stories of the outside world.  Sometimes when it rained the drops came in through the holes and cracks in the roof and walls, and then she imagined that the house wept.

Cara never cried.  She did, once, the night it happened.  The night Da took her from the village, with the light of the flames and the high voices dying away as they slipped into the shadows and took a boat far, far away, farther than she’d ever been before.  Farther than she imagined she could ever go.  She’d cried for her mother then, to sing her the songs like she did every night, the ones that called the good spirits and protected her against the bad.  She was afraid of the dark, and the ocean, and the most of all the land across the ocean.  The people there had strange voices, her mother said, ones that couldn’t sing songs like hers.  Like the ones Cara would some day.

Da, though, he’d shut her up quick, and she quieted because it was the first time he’d ever been sharp with her like that, threatening to smack her.  Not the last, though.  It got bad for a while, especially the time right after they came to the railway house, and all he did was drink the funny-tasting water all day and look at her, just look at her real long and hard, as if it was her fault they had to come and hide away in this gawdfersaken place.

But it got better.  It’d been years since Da looked at her like that – really, since he looked at her much at all.  He was gone mostly, these days.  He’d tell Cara to bolt the door behind him and then he’d be gone for one two three four five moons sometimes before he came back with food and maybe other things too, like clothes that had the worn stains of other children on them, and strong-smelling bits of lye to use to wash, and once for her birthday a hairbrush that even had all of its bristles, and a comb decorated with a dragonfly that was only missing one jeweled eye.  She’d put her hair up with the comb just like Mum in the broken glass of the station’s toilet mirror, at least as best she could remember, and came out all smiling and ladylike, but Da only cried.  Maybe he’d forgot they weren’t supposed to.

The best present Da ever brought her, though, was Dolly-girl.  Da said Dolly-girl fell off a train.  He said he was down by the tracks where they went over the river, miles away, trying to catch a fish for their dinner (Da never managed to catch a fish for their dinner), when he saw the train coming and a little girl sitting by the open window, hanging her doll out of it when – whoosh! The doll slipped out of her fingers and tumbled down down down right into Da’s arms.

Cara knew this story was a lie, though, because Dolly-girl told her she didn’t fall from the train.  She jumped.  That girl was mean to her, always pulling on her hair and dragging her in the dirt.  When they passed over the river Dolly-girl saw her chance for escape and took it.  It was lucky that Da was there to catch you, Cara told Dolly-girl, ‘cause otherwise a fish might have gobbled you up and then where would you be?

Dolly-girl talked to her in the dark.  Da didn’t know that.  Cara liked that a little, having a secret from Da, who had so many.  Like he had a big basket of secrets and she’d snuck one out when he wasn’t looking.  It made her feel grown-up, in a way.

Dolly-girl said Cara was special.  Cara knew that already, Mum’d told her all the time.  But Dolly-girl said Cara was even special-er than Mum thought, because Cara had the Gift.  Cara got excited and asked Dolly-girl if she could open her Gift now but Dolly-girl told her to stop being so thick.  The Gift (Cara could tell it was spelled with a Capital, like all Important Things) was inside her, Dolly-girl said, and wouldn’t come out until she bled.  So the next day Cara went out and scraped her finger across a sharp rock but nothing came out but her blood and it made her feel a little dizzy and sick, and she got angry with Dolly-girl and told her that she was a liar.  Then Dolly-girl laughed and explained what she meant, and Cara felt sick again and decided it was all right if she had to wait a while for her Gift.

Cara looked out the window over the moor, down the moonlit rail tracks.  The sky was clear, but you could tell it wouldn’t be for long.  There was a sense of something waiting to break on nights like this, a storm ready to be born.

Cara flipped the calendar on the wall.  It was an old one, Da said, but the year didn’t really matter much for them anyway.  He’d said it was to help her keep track of how long he’d been away, but she knew that by the moon.  Six moons nearly gone now, and tomorrow was her birthday.  The food he’d brought the last time was almost out.  She’d have to go out hunting if he didn’t come back soon.  It was all right, she’d watched a pack of wild dogs roaming near the station bring down a young stag, how they’d stalked and savaged it.  The sight of the hot blood glinting in the moonlight had made her lick her lips unconsciously, only realizing when Dolly-girl made a yucky sound.  But when her stomach churned and growled she remembered, and stroked the knife her father had left behind.

Cara went to sleep, and when she woke up it was still night, and her mouth was full of the taste of iron.  Across the bed, Dolly-girl was looking down at her with sadness, and Cara was about to ask why when she felt a stickiness between her legs and she lifted up the sheets.  She got up and changed, folding a cloth like Dolly-girl had told her. Just as she had got into her other pair of underthings she heard a knocking on the door. Da usually didn’t come this late at night, she thought. She got up and grabbed the knife, just in case. Cara realized what had happened to her and wondered suddenly if maybe Da was there to bring her Gift.

But when she opened the door, it wasn’t Da standing there, and somehow Cara knew that Da would never be at the door again.  The shadowed stranger – for he wasn’t a man, and the cloak he wore seemed to be pure darkness, edged in light – reached out to her.  She looked back at Dolly-girl for an answer, but Dolly-girl had lost her voice.  She was only a doll now.  No Capital.

Cara thought of her mother.  She thought of the songs, and the good spirits that came and danced around her bedside, for she remembered them now, remembered so much more.  She remembered how Mum laughed, and how she screamed when the villagers set her on fire.  Cara remembered the hatred in their eyes, and the fear when they looked at her, even through the black veil she always wore. How had she forgotten the veil?  Cara reached up and touched her face. She was still wearing it now.

The stranger was still waiting.  Her Gift, she realized.  Her choice.  She took his hand, and stepped out of the railway house for the last time.  A train that appeared on no station timetables appeared out of the mists and screeched to a stop on the tracks.  Just before she boarded, Cara took the veil off and let the black lace flutter to the ground.

The train moved on.  The clouds rolled in.  The skies opened up.  The railway house wept.