The Abandoned Railway Track

Memories of a lingering wraith

Choo..Choogg.. Choogg ..Choogg..

I heard the sound of the train again, tonight. I told my husband about it, I always do. Every time I woke up listening to the distant sound of the whistle and the speeding wheels against the rail track, I tell him. Just like I did today and as always he hugged me tight and told me it was just an old nightmare and that I shouldn’t worry much about it.

I feel like he’s always been telling me this over and over again . I know he wants me to believe it. But I don’t . And somewhere deep down I think he knows that as well. He never once agreed he could hear the train too like I did. I can’t really tell if he can, but what I know for sure is that he definitely doesn’t think it’s just a nightmare, though he does his best to convince me to believe it is.

The train I hear, sounds like the station it runs on is right near the corner of our street and as far as I know there are no train tracks nearby. The closest station to our home is the King Albert’s station which is one hour from our home.

There is something my husband is trying to keep from me and I need to find out what that is . Probably it’ll be my only way to find out more about this mysterious sound of the train that I hear at night. I can’t shrug off the feeling that something dangerous is about to happen.

“I’ll do something about it first thing in the morning.” I thought and then turned back to him, hugged him and pretended to fall back asleep.

When he left for work the next day, I locked the front door and set off to explore our neighbourhood. What was I looking for again? A hidden railway station in a neighbourhood, that’s been my home for over two decades? Even the mere thought of it sounded stupid. I have been too accustomed to every nook and corner of this place. There is no way I would have missed noticing a full fledge rail track if at all it ever existed anywhere near my home. Even though I knew how in vane a quest this was, I still went out with a hope of finding something , a clue perhaps yet a part of me worried of what might happen if I did find something that could be remotely true to what I really expected it to be.

I feared this train to be a new haunting that had begun to spin it’s web in our city. A sense of relief fled through me when I searched the entire neighbourhood and came back home having found no such strange rail track anywhere in the near vicinity of our house.

That night I heard the train again. It felt closer this time, like I was standing right in the middle of the track while the train was coming right at me from my right, as if the train was on the track I stood. I woke up and the sound of the train was gone, I think I haven’t been sleeping since months now, I am not sure anymore. I can’t even remember when was the last time I slept peacefully. I sat up holding my knees as close to me as possible , hugging it like my life depended on it. I didn’t tell my husband as I didn’t want to wake him up, but that’s when I noticed he wasn’t there next to me. I looked up and saw him sitting on the couch opposite to me teary eyed like he knew I would wake up and this would happen all over again. He came close to me, wrapped me in a tight hug and held my arms before he looked right at me and said in his usual calm voice ,“ it’s okay , it was just a nightmare, let’s go back to sleep”.

I took his hand, looked at him like I always do and then we lay on bed hugging each other.

As we lay there, I asked him, “ You’ll tell me if there is something wrong won’t you?”

I could feel his hesitation even in the dark, the kind that hid pain.

“Sure I would,” he said giving me a kiss on my forehead.

They shut down that rail track 3 years ago, people lost their family members, kids and friends in that tragic explosion. This city had become a living reminder of the dead, many couldn’t take it, so they left this city behind and moved to another city with hopes to start over with what little pieces of their lives were left. With time, the forest consumed what remained of the abandoned railway track. I stayed back because that night, she came back. My wife’s been with me since then. I can’t tell if she’s a ghost or my mere hallucination. Night after night, I see my wife wake up terrified of her repeated nightmares of the train. I thought may be telling her the truth might lessen her pain but I’ve lost count on the number of times I’ve tried to tell her the truth. She listens to them , bursts out crying and then the next day forgets everything like the explosion never happened. Then consumed by paranoia she comes up to me and tells me about the strange sound of the train she’s been hearing in her nightmares, asking me to help her find out why. Every time I tell her, she breaks down in front of me after knowing the truth. This agony that repeated itself day after day simply because she couldn’t remember was way too much painful for me to handle. My wife’s been like this ever since I got her back. There is no way out of this misery, it just repeats itself like we’re stuck in a loop. I no longer tell her the reason why she hears the sound of the train or the truth that this whole thing happens every single night. She goes to sleep, listens to this strange train only she can hear and then wakes up exactly at 2am then searches for a reason to understand why. It’s probably the only sound she last heard before she took her last breath. May be that’s why she hears it every single night exactly at the time of her death. I am not yet ready to lose her. I am just happy she is still with me. I don’t care if she’s dead or alive. As long as I can still be with her, I don’t mind reliving a cycle of nightmare over and over again.. or that’s what I thought. But this pain it’s akin to someone driving a spear right into my chest then pulling it out, waiting for me to heal just so they can drive it back in again. That’s how I feel nowadays. I’m afraid even to say this but it’s true -to simply watch my wife go through this pain has become more torturous for me than her. Three years is a long time for someone to go through what I’ve been through- the truth is she died and I should have died with her or may be she should have stayed dead.

©Aswathi Ashok 2022. All Rights Reserved.

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