Campfire Ghost Stories

by Jo-Anne Christensen

Stories Told By Firelight

Children of the Track

At the edge of a town not far away, there is a set of train tracks that cuts through tall weeds and across a few worn streets, dividing the less desirable part of town into neighborhoods that most would classify as shabby and shabbier. Many of the homes there are little more than shacks; many of the people there are trapped in a cycle of poverty that will never release them. Often their stories are sad, and sometimes they have been tragic. On one crisp fall evening, a young man named Paul drove three of his friends out to those tracks, to tell them one of the more tragic tales.

"Couldn't you habe told us at the coffee shop?" complained his girlfriend. The car's heater was broken and there was a good movie playing at the fourplex in the mall. It seemed to her that sitting in discomfort, listening to one of Paul's farfetched tales was a waste of an evening.

"It wouldn't have been the same, telling the story somewhere else," Paul explained. "You wouldn't have believed me."

"Like this will make a difference," said one of the friends in the back seat.

Paul ignored the comment and made a right-hand turn onto the shadowy street that crossed the tracks. The pavement rose up in a little hill to meet the rail bed, and when the car reached the plateau that lay directly across the rails, Paul slowed it to a stop. The car was straddling the tracks.

Paul's friends were about to voice their objections when he distracted them by doing something even more curious. He stepped out of the car, went around to the back and pulled a small sack of white flour out of the trunk. He ripped the bag open and sprinkled its contents liberally over the chrome bumper. Paul's friends watched through the rear window with expressions of blank confusion.

When Paul climbed back into the car, all three of his passengers askd for an explanation.

"I'll tell you later," was all he said. "It'll make sense to you then."

And then he turned to them and told his story.

"Not so long ago," he began, "there was a poor family who lived down there, at the end of that street. There were seven of them, in a little shack of a house. Five kids. One day, the father piled all of those kids into the back of his old, beat-up pickup truck, because they were going across town to visit their grandmother. They got as far as the train crossing-right here, where we are now-when the truck stalled. It wasn't in the best of shape, and it often did that. Usually, the father knew how to fiddle with the engine to get it started again. But on this particular night there was no time to turn the ignition key just so or to feather the gas pedal. On this night, he had crossed the tracks at a bad time and misjudged the distance of the massive train that was rolling towards them.

"He jumped out of the cab, but before he could do anything to save the kids, who were bundled up in the box of the truck and too stunned to move, the train was on them. The wreck was terrible. They say that people heard the sound of twisting metal for miles. The children, though, they didn't make a sound. Didn't have time. And they died, all five of them."

Paul's girlfriend shivered in her fake fur jacket.

"That's depressing," she declared. "Did you haul us all the way out here just to depress us?"

"No, there's more," Paul told her. He allowed a moment's silence for dramatic effect and then carried on.

"A few months after the accident happened, a woman was driving over the tracks, here, when she ran out of gas. Her car gave out, right on the rail bed. Right where all those little kids had died. That alone probably gave her the chills. But the fact that there was a train chugging down the track toward her, that definitely would have done it.

"She was just about to abandon her car when, suddenly, it started to roll. It rolled right off the tracks, here, and down that little slope, and stopped at the bottom. The train roared by, and her car wasn't so much as scratched."

"So the car rolled down the hill. Big deal." One of the fellows in the back seat found it difficult to mask is boredom.

"But the track isn't on a slope," Paul countered. "And anyways, that wasn't the only that happened. About a year after that, someone had a tire blow out, right on this spot, and the rim wouldn't roll over the rail. Again, there was a train coming. And again, in the nick of time, the car mysteriously moved out of harm's way. It's happened plenty more times since then. And everybody around here thinks the same thing: those people were saved by the spirits of those little kids who died when the train hit them.

"Think about it," Paul said, and his eyes were shining with wonder, "the ghosts of five little kids who don't want anyone else to meet the same fate!"

Paul's girlfriend cleared her throat, and the two youths in the backseat snorted derisively.

"Yeah, whatever," said one of them. "But if you don't mind, I'd like to get back to civilization."

"Me too," said the other. "Plus, if you don't move this heap, we'll be the next ghosts haunting the track. The 8:15 train is comin' through here any time."

Right on cue, a whilste sounded in the distance. All four people in the car turned to look in the direction of the soun, and Paul's girlfriend plucked nervously at his sleeve.

"Let's go," she pleaded.

Paul looked at her and smiled slyly.

"No," he said, and his voice was smooth and confident. "Let's stay. Let's stay and see what happens."

And with that, he reached forward and switched off the car's ignition.

The boys in the backseat wasted no time on tact.

"You're nuts," announced one.

"Totally," agreed the other. And with the sound of simultaneously slamming doors, they were gone.

Paul's girlfriend was less willing to be seen as a deserter. She appealed to Paul one more time.

"Please, the train's getting close!"

She was right. The engine was visible in the distance. Its headlight shone on half of Paul's grinning face, giving him a maniacal appearance. When he made no response and no move to start the car, his girlfriend reached for the keys.

Paul was faster. He snatched the keys out of the ignition and threw them out his half-open window into the tall grass that grew between the tracks adn the street. It was more than his girlfriend could stand, and she fled the car screaming.

"You're crazy, Paul!" she shrieked. "You're going to die!" The approaching train underscored her prediction with a prolonged blast of its whistle. Paul paid no attention to the warning, though. He simply sat in the car, his face calm but his eyes bright with excitement as he watched untold tons of steel bearing down on him.

The few seconds that followed were chaos. The intese white headlight of the train became blindingly bright as it drew closer. The blaring of its whistle mixed with the grinding sound of brakes being applied and the frantic sideline shouts of Paul's horrified companions. Only Paul remained still, quite and expectant as he sat behind the wheel.

His expectations were rewarded when he felt the car shudder. It began to rock a little, then rolled forward, slowly but steadily. The vehicle cleared the track bed and began to roll down the short incline no more than a half second before the train thundered past.

The car came to a stop and Paul leapt out with his hands raised triumphantly in the air. His girlfriend ran to him, sobbing. His friends approached more slowly. They were relieved, but still angry.

"I told you!" Paul whooped. "You saw it for yourselves! The little ghost kids saved me!"

"Shut up!" one of his friends screamed in response. "You got lucky! It's an optical illusion-those tracks have to be on a hill! You almost got yourself killed telling us a stupid ghost story, and there's no such thing as ghosts!"

"Oh, really?" said Paul, and his voice was, again, like silk. He walked around to the back of the car, and a smug smile spread across his face. Eventually, his friends followed. When they saw what he was looking at, their eyes grew wide and their jaws dropped open in astonishment.

The proof was plain to see. On the chrome bumper, in the heavy dusting of white flour about which they had all forgotten, there they were: five distinct sets of child-sized handprints.