he told me they were all dead. My family. Just gone. And Katy. And Katy.” He looked up at Cabal with eyes red- rimmed with misery. “She was my lass. We’d been courting since school. We were going to get married in the new year when the War was over and I got demobbed.”
“I know. I know,” said Cabal quietly. All dead simultaneously, he thought. Odd. “You must have loved her very much.”
“She was … Katy. There was no life without her. I just … just couldn’t go on. You can’t imagine what it’s like.”
Cabal coughed. “You might be surprised. Do you want to leave here?” The soldier looked at Cabal blankly. “I can free you. I’ve had some experience with life after death. Do you want to leave here?”
“I keep falling asleep. Every time I wake up, I can just remember another screaming face in my dreams. I don’t think I can stand it much longer.”
“Then, if you just fill in this form, I can get you on your way.”
The soldier looked at him, dazed. “A form? I have to fill in a form?”
“Just a technicality. A signature is all that’s needed.” He was checking his inside pockets without success. Belatedly he remembered that he’d used the last form he’d taken from the box just before leaving Solipsis Supermare. “Ah. I don’t appear to have one on me. If you can bear with me for ten minutes while I get one from — ”
“Will Katy be there?”
There was a hope in the young man’s eyes that made Cabal suddenly feel very old. He thought of the expanses outside Hell, and the toiling masses trying to come to grips with the notorious question one thousand and twelve of Form KEFU/56. Then he thought of what eternal damnation really means.
If I don’t release him, staying here is a sort of damnation anyway, he thought. What difference does it make if he serves it out in Hell or a rural station? He looked at the soldier’s eyes again and knew what the difference was. In the sheer cliff over the Gates of Hell, defying modernisation and innovation, was still carved
“You and I have something in common,” he said finally. “You don’t have to fill in the form.”
Cabal got up and walked to the door, opened it wide, and stepped over the threshold. He took a piece of white chalk from his cigar case and carefully drew a line from the lower edge of one side of the doorframe, across the threshold, and a little way up the opposite jamb. He stepped back into the room, squatted by the line, and wrote a series of peculiar characters alongside it, mumbling under his breath in a discordant chthonic tongue as he did so. Satisfied with his work, he straightened up, put the chalk away, and looked at the soldier. The corporal had stood and moved closer to see what Cabal was doing. Cabal noticed that he was standing in exactly the same spot where he’d taken his own life. Cabal walked to his side and pointed at the open doorway.
“There. Walk through. It’s as simple as that.”
The soldier bit his lower lip. “I’m not sure I can. I’ve sort of tried in the past. I couldn’t leave here.”
“That was before I opened the way for you. See those signs? Those are P’tithian sigils, the single most powerful and dangerous way of forming a portal known to humanity and, guessing from the evidence, four other intelligent species. Believe me, you can leave.”
“And Katy?”
“There I can’t make promises. But I think the chances of meeting her again are excellent. Now, will you please go? My train is waiting.”
The soldier walked hesitantly towards the open door. The sun had moved low, above the top of the cutting opposite, and he was silhouetted. Cabal was unsurprised to see he was faintly translucent around the edges. He stopped right at the threshold.
“Go on,” said Cabal. “There’s nothing to hold you here. Get moving before I change my mind about the form.”
The soldier looked back, and he might have smiled as he stepped forward. Cabal had the vague impression of something dispersing with unbelievable rapidity, and then the doorway was empty. Outside, there was nothing to see. Cabal walked out and looked up and down the track before looking up into the cold blue sky. “Good luck,” he said almost to himself. “Give my regards to Katy.”
Eventually, he went back to the doorway and looked down at the strange symbols.
Back at the train, it took less than a minute to find Welstone Halt on the map and discover that they were therefore on the right track. Dennis and Denzil gave the engine its head, and soon they were barely behind schedule.
At the junction with the main line, they had to get the signalman to change the points for them. Cabal went over himself, climbed the wooden steps up to the signal box, and delivered the customary bribe.
“No trouble at all, sir,” said the signalman. “I’ll have to call ahead so that you’re expected. It’ll take a few minutes for confirmation. Care for a cuppa while you wait?” Cabal took a look at the large tin mugs that hung from pegs behind the sink, thick with accumulated tannin, and declined with passable politeness. Instead, he amused himself by looking at the signal board and found his eye wandering onto “Welstone Halt (Disused).”
“Welstone Halt, sir,” said the signalman when Cabal drew his attention to it. “That’s been closed since the War. Nothing there, that’s why. Not no more.”
“I understand it was once a thriving place.”
“Oh, it was. I went over there years ago, when I was a kid. On a dare, see? It’s meant to be haunted.”
“The station?”
“Oh, yeah. But the town, too. Not much of Welstone itself left now. The station’s the only bit that looks in any sort of fair nick. It was a terrible thing that happened to the town. Well, I call it a town, but it was really not that big. Really a big village with a market. That’s what made it busy.”
The telegraph chattered. The signalman read the tape with interest. “There you go, there’s your clearance. You’d best get a move on or you’ll lose your slot.”
On the steps Cabal asked, “Welstone. I need to know. What happened to it?”
“It were wartime, right? These lines were full of soldiers and equipment for the effort. Well, down the far end of the line you just came down, a munitions train ran into trouble. Caught fire. The best thing to have done would have been to take it halfway up and then abandon it. It would have taken the line with it when it blew, but at least the cutting would have forced the blast up, where it couldn’t do no harm. But the driver was new on this line. Thought he could save the tracks by taking her down the spur that goes behind the station. He jumped out, did the points himself, and took her there. You can imagine what he thought when he came around on th’ spur and found it overlooked Welstone. You could see every house from where that munitions train stood. You’ll have to imagine what he thought, ’cause he didn’t live to tell anybody. She blew up, then and there. There’s a ridge between where the spur was and the station, so the blast was sort of reflected straight out over the town. There was hardly two bricks left standing on top of one another when the smoke cleared. Most of the people living there died in the instant, of course. The irony of it was that the station wasn’t touched at all, but without a village to serve, they closed it down anyway. Anyway, you’d best get a move on, sir. Bon voyage.”
In his office, Cabal found Horst awake and in his chair. “Well, brother,” said Horst without looking up from his book. “What acts of petty despicability have you wrought this day?”
Cabal smiled, and, just for once, it wouldn’t have frightened children and old people. “You might be surprised” was all he would say.
