AN: I don't believe in ghosts or goblins but every area always has the same stories lol. This isn't particularly scary but there may be some out there that don't like it? Forewarning.
October 31st, 1952
"You told me you were dressing up."
"I am dressing up." Jesse muttered from where he lounged on the couch.
"Then stop sitting around and eating all the candy."
"Ruth Anne." He drawled her middle name. "I need it or I'm gunna waste away to nothing."
She shoved a Snickers bar against her twin's chest after he'd stood up, and huffed as he laughed and juggled the bar when she'd let it go. "We're leaving in an hour and you're not ready."
"I have a costume." Jesse defended.
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah, scariest thing I could come up with..."
"And that is...?"
"Alexander Piston."
"Stop it."
"You're just scared."
"I am going to this party tonight, with or without you. I've worked too hard on my costume."
Jesse had to admit her costume was impressive and reminded him more of one of those masquerade outfits. She'd made her own dress and mask, spending over a month on the details. Neither he nor Henry had any idea what her intentions had been when she had set to work at the beginning of the month, and the dress looked like any other black and white ensemble they'd ever seen, but paired with the detailed mask that currently rested on the kitchen counter, and the shawl she'd ordered earlier that fall, she very easily pulled off the look of the high end costume she'd shown them in one of the magazines she'd used as a reference.
"What made you decide on an owl?" Jesse had asked.
"I liked the colors."
So they were stuck waiting for the others to meet up with them before all heading in to town for the Halloween party held at Thomasville Merch. The shop had always been closed up a few hours early, and the Washburn family would turn the back storage rooms in to a venue the town would talk about until the next holiday rolled around. Halloween and Christmas were their biggest parties.
Ruth waited in the family room, glancing up the stairs once and making sure she was quiet as she unwrapped a few candy bars herself and set the bowl aside when she could hear footsteps on the stairs. She watched Jesse pass in to the kitchen with a mouth full of chocolate and raised a brow when she realized he was humming along to the cartoon on the television.
"Trick or treat-trick or treat-trick or treat for Halloween..."
"How many times have you seen this."
"Six...today..."
"Who gives kids fireworks."
"I would."
"Jesse, honestly."
He only raised a brow in challenge and she rolled her eyes.
"So what about this costume..."
"I need your help." He held out a pallet of old face paints they'd kept from the time they were kids.
"Why me?"
"Because you're better at this than I am."
The newly released Disney short had to have played another three times between the regular programming by the time she was finished, and she'd tugged on Jesse's ear more than once to get him to sit still. She wasn't going to be the only one at this party with a half decent outfit, even if the majority of his was just the face paint.
"It itches."
"Don't scratch." After a moments thought she opened the container again. "Actually, hold your hands out."
Jesse flexed his fingers gently as the paint dried, and his satisfied grin was lost somewhat with the skeletal design Ruth had spent the last hour on.
"Next time don't wait until the last minute."
He would have kissed her cheek if he wasn't afraid of ruining her work. "It's what I have you for."
When the others had finally made it to the house, in their own homemade costumes, Ruth locked the front door and slapped Jesse's shoulder as she passed. "Leave the candy."
"Just taking one..." He muttered while returning the handful he'd grabbed from the bowl left out on the porch.
"You know, we have some time before the party actually starts." Junior commented as they made it to the road.
"What should we do in the meantime." Lou asked.
"You've all heard of the other moonshine trails?"
Ruth held back a groan, holding her mask in one hand and looking toward Jesse as his attention had been caught.
"What other trails?"
"They can't be driven on." River replied. "They're so overgrown by now."
"They're pretty rough." Junior agreed. "They go down over the abandoned train tracks."
"Oh yeah. The haunted train tracks." Jesse muttered sarcastically.
"They are, you know."
Ruth was ready to pinch her brother's arm for taking another candy bar from his coat pocket until he offered her half. Pulling the shawl around her shoulders as they stood on the road in front of the house, she looked to the others. "I just want to make sure I make it to the party."
"We have more than enough time." Lou shrugged. "It's just a little ways off the road."
So they'd piled in to their cars, agreeing that they'd only spend a short time wandering the old tracks before continuing to the party. Just enough that if asked, they could all say they'd done it. So what if they were all in their twenties, scary was scary.
Ruth linked her arm with Jesse's as they started down the path. She'd left her mask in the Hornet, not wanting it to get dirty, and was thankful that at least one of the boys had an old lantern.
Lighting the candle within, River waved the match until the flame died and closed the mirrored door. He held the lantern up as they came to the mouth of the first tunnel that lead into the side of the mountain they normally drove over. "My pa used to work for the railroad, until they stopped using this route."
"Why'd they stop using it." Jesse asked.
"Probably the spirit of Alloway Junction."
"Oh come on, Junior." Jesse looked away from the shadows they created on the tunnel walls as the group wandered further. "Every town has the same story, whether it's train accidents, car accidents, a lady in white-"
"Maybe." River cut in. "But we got one too."
"What's the spirit of Alloway Junction?" Lou asked.
"The story pa used to tell was that it was back at the turn of the century, an engineer, traveling home to get to his family...he'd been gone for so long that he ignored all safety warnings, had the engine maxed out and derailed near the turn right before Alloway Junction. Every now and then, other engineers or rail workers would talk about being able to see the light of his lantern through the fog as his spirit wanders up and down that section of track, waiting for a train to come through so he can get home."
The tunnel was filled with silence for a moment as the idea of a wandering spirit settled in to the group, water dripped from the crumbling ceiling in to a puddle along the rusted tracks as their shadows moved across the walls.
The shriek that broke the silence caused them all to jump.
"Oh! Don't do that Jesse!"
"I didn't do anything!"
"Sorry, Ruth." Junior muttered. "I thought you were Lou in the dark."
"So it would have been okay to scare me?" Lou asked.
"Well, yeah...ow-"
"That's what you get."
They continued on in silence for some time, Ruth clinging a little tighter to her brother's side. "How far is this junction?"
"It shouldn't be too much further, unless we were supposed to have taken a right back there..."
"I thought we did take a right."
"No, we went left."
"Left hand makes an L." Jesse muttered, holding up his left hand and forming the letter with his thumb and index finger.
"Alright Mr. Smarty-" Junior started.
"Annnnd there it is." River cut in, gesturing to the section of track ahead that met up with another. What once might have been a small junction building stood dilapidated in the trees, overrun with brush and vegetation from lack of use.
"It really does get foggy back here." Lou commented as she stepped in to the moonlight.
Ruth glanced over her shoulder, back in to the long darkened tunnels behind them before looking in the direction of the small clearing. Silver moonlight filtered through the trees, casting dark shadows over what was left of the tracks. The darkened windows of the little building made a very unwelcoming image as the group continued forward. The fog that hovered shifted and danced with the falling leaves as the breeze picked up, whispering through the trees and ruffling their hair.
"This is where the train derailed?"
"Supposedly."
"As fun as it is out here, we are supposed to be in town, and considering no one seems to know the way back-"
"Aww, Hudson's scared."
"No I'm not." Ruth could practically see the look on his face from the sound of his voice. "I just know it's gunna take forever."
"Wait till everyone in town hears."
"I'm not scared."
"I want to go back." Ruth spoke up. "I'm not scared, but there is a party I really wanted to go to..."
Finally the others relented, and Ruth could tell Jesse was a little irritated that they hadn't taken his word for it and she'd had to speak up with basically the same argument.
Her own irritation flared when they stopped five minutes after turning around.
"Are you sure it was this way?"
"I don't remember making any turns."
"We turned left, so we're going to have to take a right."
"Which right?"
"What do you mean which-"
River held the lantern higher, gesturing to the fact that the tunnel didn't just split in to two, but three different directions.
"Prefect."
"What do we do?" Ruth asked.
"We can't split up." Jesse replied, putting a hand over hers as she tightened her grip on his arm.
She watched his eyes as they considered their situation and noted to herself that she'd done a little too good of a job on his face. As they stood there, the orange light of the lantern cast dark shadows and at a quick glance it was hard to tell that it was only white face paint to look like a skull.
"Was it a gradual left or a hard left?"
"I wasn't tracking the difficulty of the angle."
"Hudson it's an honest question." Junior commented.
"How are we supposed to tell in the dark?"
"What is that?" Ruth asked.
"What are you talking about?"
"That." She gestured, still holding Jesse's arm. "What is that."
The group fell silent as they all looked in the direction she had indicated, down the length of the middle tunnel.
"I don't see anything."
"There was a light."
"It's just the shadows from my lantern."
They all fell silent again, instinctively closing their circle a little tighter as a faint light suddenly shown at the far end.
"Hello!?"
"Junior, shut up!" River hissed.
"You don't really think it's-"
"No." Jesse muttered lowly. He didn't believe in such things. "But we don't know who it is either."
"It could be someone who doesn't want us trespassing."
"Who even owns this property?"
The spirit of Alloway-"
"Oh, give it a rest."
Ruth watched the light in silence as it drifted slowly closer through the fog that had begun to fill the space. Brighter than River's lantern, the light arced along the brickwork of the tunnel and cast shadows through spider webs she'd been unaware of until then. She shivered beside her twin, suddenly afraid of any creepy crawlies that could be hitching a ride without her knowledge.
As much as they all considered themselves to be level-headed, it was a little strange to see exactly what River had described rail workers in the past seeing.
Not because he was afraid of some wandering ghost, but because he didn't know who else could be wandering the back woods of Georgia, Jesse stepped in front of his twin. Placing himself between Ruth and this newcomer, he felt her hand on his shoulder as they waited.
Ruth's heart pounded in anticipation as they finally heard the footsteps to accompany the moving light, no one made a move to continue forward, but they weren't running either. Finally they could just make out a figure behind the light, taller than the rest of them.
"You have got to be the biggest bunch of idiots I have ever known."
"Henry?" Ruth stepped around Jesse.
"Luckily for the rest of you...you know this area was made off limits years ago?"
"I didn't know that." Jesse replied with a look at the others.
"Hey." Junior muttered. "We were just looking for-"
"The Alloway Junction bit. I know." Henry muttered with a knowing look toward his siblings. "But these tunnels are dangerous, so it's time to hit the road."
They followed behind the much brighter light of the flashlight as they made it back to the road, Ruth still holding her brother's arm for fear of twisting an ankle over a railroad tie.
When they finally made it back to the opening where the cars were all parked, someone asked how Henry had found them, only to have each of the cars pointed out with the flashlight.
"You're not far off the road in to town..."
"What are you dressing as, Smokey?" He didn't appear to have any kind of costume on.
"A disgruntled father, I thought it was obvious."
The twins looked between each other, knowing they'd hear it the rest of the night.
After being instructed to park the Hornet closer to the tunnel where it wouldn't be as easily noticed from the road, Jesse climbed in to his usual spot in the truck and grinned out the window, watching the fog roll in around the Hornet as Ruth complained to their brother.
"Henry, that candy bowl was for trick-or-treaters!"