The cry of steam escaping the iron womb of the train furnace ripped Bakura from sleep, pulling him out of unconscious recollection. Sand. Fire. Blood.
He pulled himself out of the cabin's cot, setting his bare feet down on the floor. The rumble of the train's momentum bucked the timbers something fierce, sending painful, blunt jolts through the young man's legs. He had heard someone mention that the tracks out here in the wilderness had gone to hell. Apparently with all the angry natives around, the hostile wildlife, not to mention the good old-fashioned ghost stories that centred around the area, getting good hands to fix up the railway was an expensive proposition.
He turned to the window, pulling up the blind and letting in the jaundiced light of the moon, sitting low in the sky, fat and sluggish. The wooded hills and mountains stood on the horizon. On the other side would be Pueblo del Juego. They'd be there by morning.
He looked about at the inside of the cabin. A small affair, it served the purpose of a cheap lair to secrete himself in between Great Salt Lake and his destination, away from any prying eyes or tedious conversation.
Another high shriek from the front of the train, mingling with the endless circular rhythm of the running gear until it was gone in the night. Bakura knew he wouldn't be able to get to sleep again. He muttered an oath under his breath and slipped his boots on, listening to the sound of footfalls along the corridor outside. He looked up to see the silhouette of a porter through the darkened glass in his door.
"What time is it?" Bakura called out, buckling the boots and getting to his feet.
There was no response.
"Excuse me. What time is it?" His voice betrayed the irritation. The silhouette had stopped moving, the porter standing still outside Bakura's room. "I don't make a habit of asking the same question three times." He spat as he reached out for the door handle, sliding it open with more force than was strictly necessary, opening it out onto the empty corridor.
No porter. Not a single soul out there. Bakura leaned out and looked down the length of the corridor, discovering nothing but a gently rumbling carriage, its windows rattling quietly. He frowned. He had been sure that there had been someone outside his sleeping compartment…
He stepped out of the room, again looking left and right. Still no sign that anyone had walked past recently, or indeed that there was anyone else in the carriage. The other compartment doors were open, some closing and bouncing open again with the motions of the train. No voices, no snores, no sounds of human life whatsoever.
Bakura crept to the compartment next door to his own, peeking inside to see if this were some prank being pulled at his expense.
What little remained of the compartment's occupants was strewn across every surface of the room conceivable.
Black and red debris littered the floor and beds, glistening in the lamplight. Thick blood, drying and darkening was painted over the walls and ceiling, portions of it running in slow rivulets down to the floor. Against the far wall, pressed up against the window, a woman sat motionless. She was spattered with the same grim fluids and tissue that decorated the rest of the room, but she seemed to be perfectly intact. Her skin, where it was not stained crimson, was a shocking white, darkening around her eyes and lips. The mouth itself was opened impossibly wide in a final scream, her eyes bulging and bloodshot. She had died screaming. Screaming so loud that her jaw appeared to have ripped itself asunder.
A man unused to such carnage would likely have lost his mind then and there, panicked and run screaming to find help. As it was, Bakura turned his back on the scene, returning to his berth to dig out his revolver and holster. He didn't need to check the other compartments to know that they would all hold similar scenes. Whatever had happened here, it had killed these people gruesomely, it had caused someone to die of fright, and all without waking him. That was the part that got him. Whatever it was, it had left him alone. He loaded the gun and stood out into the corridor again.
Without thinking, he turned to his left, heading towards the front of the carriage, towards the head of the train. He marched on, trying his best not to look into each of the deep red compartments along the way.
He shouldered his way through the door connecting to the next carriage, hefting his revolver and holding it ahead of him, just in case.
He got halfway down the carriage, a dining car with a small bar set up at its centre.
"In a rush, traveller?"
He stopped a little more suddenly than he should have, slamming his hand down on the wooden bar to prop himself up. That voice had come from behind him. Why hadn't he been looking both ways as he entered the carriage? He slowly turned back around, facing the way he had come.
The source of the voice was a robed man, sitting at a table to the left of the door, his arms resting on the back of his wide seat. Dark skinned, dark eyed, the man was Arabic, or at least was certainly not from these parts. There was something off about the look in his eyes, surrounded by dark inked lines in his face, as he stared Bakura down beneath the wrapped gauze of his turban. The stranger smiled, nodding his head ever so slightly. Bakura didn't lower his gun.
"You," Bakura whispered, "You're the one that did all of… that?" He motioned to the sleeping carriage with his free hand.
"Does that look like the work of one man?" The stranger responded, his smile growing.
"Well that depends on whether you're really a man or not doesn't it?"
"Really now, are we going to trade below-the-belt insults?" The stranger lowered his arms. "Unless of course what you're asking is-"
"I know what you are."
"Humour me."
"A ghost. The spirit of someone long dead."
"Not just Someone, Bakura. A very special person. Though I doubt the name Shadi will mean anything to you. Just as Shada will not."
"I'd be lying if I said it didn't ring a bell. We've met before." Bakura pulled back the hammer of his revolver.
"Indeed we have, more or less. When you struck my body down in your war against the Pharaoh."
"Many people died in that war. As far as I'm aware, you're the first that's decided to get some revenge for that. What's the matter, a few millennia not enough to cool a grudge?"
Shadi's smile became a smirk of superiority. He slowly rose to his feet, stepping out into the aisle.
"I am not here for revenge, spirit of Kul Elna." He spoke softly, taking each step towards Bakura with the slow eventuality of water rising in lungs.
"Take another step and I find an answer for John Donne." Bakura braced his revolver to emphasise the point. Shadi chuckled.
"I see," he muttered, "Can ghosts die? Am I right?"
"May take me a while Shadi, but I'll find a way to leave you in a worse state than your little plaything back there."
"Back there?" Shadi glanced over his shoulder to the sleeping carriage. "Oh… Them. Not my work, I assure you. I would never leave that much chaos and mess in my wake."
"Then who-"
"I'm not entirely sure of their names. They're ghosts just like me, long dead but still enacting a mission. They wanted to occupants of this train for their own personal… diversions. I wanted you. We managed to come to something of an accord. The spirits of this new world are very agreeable… If somewhat unsubtle in their methods."
"And yet you're not out for revenge?"
"No. I'm here for that." Shadi gestured forwards, finger pointed at Bakura's chest. He could feel the Millennium Ring vibrating against his body, the points that had delved into his flesh rattled against his ribcage, beginning to glow hot. "I have come to return it home. Once I have it. We shall see about your judgement, though I can't imagine a very optimistic verdict."
Shadi reached into his robes, pulling out the long, gleaming gold form of the Millennium Key.
Two shots tore through the carriage air, two bullets expertly placed, hitting home in Shadi's left eye and in the centre of his chest. The damage done was purely aesthetic, holes torn in the fabric of the ghost's being, closing up almost as soon as they were opened. The bullets tore into the wall behind the spirit, one splintering the wood of the connecting door as it bounced shut, the other shattering a lamp.
"You will be left in the clutches of Ammit. Deep within Duat where there is no return. It's just a matter of time." Shadi lunged forwards; missing his target by inches as Bakura vaulted the wooden bar, flinging himself over the spirit's head and back into the aisle.
He hit the ground running, charging back into the sleeping compartments. He was halfway down the carriage when the door he faced opened, Shadi stepping out to meet him. Bakura turned, but behind him was also blocked off, the ghost following him from the dining car. The damned spirit had split itself into two, trapping him here, calmly walking onwards. A spider on the strands of its own meticulously constructed web.
"You will face judgement, spirit of Kul Elna," the Shadi to his left called out.
"You could not escape this fate forever. It was only a matter of time," came the voice to his right. Bakura stared into his own compartment, at his effects folded underneath the bed, at the suitcase propped up against the far wall. He hissed a curse under his breath at the desperation of this act as he raised the pistol.
He squeezed the trigger twice, beating the window of his cabin with two well-aimed shots. With a cry of defiance, he hurled himself forwards into the room, leaping through the air and striking the shattered window with his body, taking himself and the remaining glass out into the night air.
As the train continued on its way, Shadi leaned out of the gaping hole in the side of the cabin. He watched as Bakura's broken, crumpled body disappeared into the black. He turned the other way, to watch as Pueblo del Juego came into view, a dark blot against the dawn landscape.
"Just a matter of time," He whispered.