::Chapter 1::l:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
Time continued,
as it tends to do, to pass. In fact, five years came and went following the
mysterious disappearance of Simon, Damien, and Mathilda Bishop. The news had
pronounced them all dead a week later, which of course sent the boy’s parents
spiralling into a deep abyss of depression that took months for them to come
out of. Serena didn’t buy it.
How could Damien,
strong, reliable Damien who would give her piggyback rides and tell her things
would be okay even when they seemed hopeless be dead? How could Simon, so smart
and independent, who used to read to her and play knights and princesses with
her be gone forever? It wasn’t possible. Serena refused to accept it. Now she
spent all her time thinking of the brothers that she once had, and that she was
sure still lived.
Lately, Serena’s
grades had begun to slip. She used to be a good student. She used to get good
grades, and while she didn’t necessarily get 100% on tests all the time like
Simon often did, she still managed to be a straight A student. Just like Simon.
She and he used to joke that they had gotten all the smarts and Damien had
gotten whatever was left over, which couldn’t have been much. Now Serena was
just managing to pass her classes, barely scraping up D’s, and if she was
lucky, the occasional C. It wasn’t that she was stupid, per se, just that
Serena didn’t care anymore. What did anything matter if Simon and Damien
weren’t there to experience it with her? So Serena sat through every math class
where her peers learned about the Pythagorean theorem or how to find the area
of an isosceles right angle triangular prism, through English classes full of
talk about the correct usage of all the forms of participles and when to use a
comma, through Social Studies classes where they were expected to name and
locate the capitals of European or Asian countries, then Gym class where she
was meant to run and move but couldn’t quite manage it with the same enthusiasm
that she used to. She sat through all these classes without retaining a single
bit of knowledge from them, except for possibly the fact that she really didn’t
care for school anymore.
Now fourteen year
old Serena Bishop sat on the edge of her bed, staring longingly at a photo in
her hands. The room was painted with various pale colours: all yellows and
greens and eggshell whites. The floor was wooden, a few shades lighter than
mahogany but with the same rich look. It was clean and organized and very
nearly bare, with nothing but a bed, a nightstand and a dresser as far as
furniture goes. A lonely book lay unread next to an alarm clock radio on the
nightstand. A poster that depicted her once-favourite band that she never
seemed to have time to listen to anymore hung above her bed. All in all, it
looked like the sort of room that no one had lived in in a very long while.
The girl’s hair,
brown with lighter, almost golden streaks, was tied back in a French braid. She
had never liked the hair style much herself, but Damien had once told her she
looked pretty with it back like that, and that was enough for her. Now she wore
it braided whenever she could. Serena had pale skin and blue-green eyes and
would at one time have been wearing her trademark smirk, but it seemed like
nowadays, the best she could manage was a sort of sad little smile. She
continued to stare at the small framed photo, which was of the three siblings
playing in the backyard. Damien had been armed with a water gun and his joy in
chasing his younger brother and sister around with it was evident. The three of
them were completely filthy and they couldn`t have been happier.
That was a long
time ago. How long, exactly? Serena flipped the picture over to look at its
back. She stared at the writing and did a quick calculation in her head. If
that was the date… then that would have been back when she was just four years
old, which would make Simon seven and Damien twelve. Wow. What she wouldn’t
give to go back in time and just… do something differently. She wasn’t entirely
sure what, but she did know she would have made every effort to spend more time
with them, be a better sister, stop them from leaving on that last adventure
with Aunt Hildy…
Why hadn’t Simon
and Damien taken her with them? She had begged and pleaded with them, asking to
please let her come, please don’t go and leave her all alone with her parents
at the boring old house when she could be having fun with them.
“Please don’t
go…” Serena whispered, barely aware she had uttered the words out loud. She
might have cried at this point, but she had cried so many times that she felt
she might have run out of tears. Instead, she stared glassy eyed at the photo
until she her bedroom door creaked open. She knew it wasn’t her parents, they
knew better than to intrude without knocking. Instead it had to be the family
dog, Coda. He was an excitable, happy-go-lucky American Field Labrador
Retriever whose blond fur stuck to anything and everything without discrimination,
as if drawn by magnets. He was a sweet, relatively obedient dog who absolutely
loved people and was somewhat iffy with other dogs and really wasn’t too keen
on cats. He was the sort of dog that could sense when you were upset and would,
in his own doggy way, attempt to comfort you. He would curl up next to you or
lick your face or bring toys to you to see if he could entice you to play. Coda
was an all around great dog, and Serena couldn’t have hated him more.
He was a constant reminder of Simon and Damien
and of all the time that they (the siblings and Coda) had spent together.
“Go away, Coda.”
She said quietly, putting as much anger as she could into the glare she shot at
him while still looking convincing. He happily ignored her and jumped onto the
bed, tail wagging and tongue lapping at the air as he tried to lick Serena’s
face.
“Stupid dog,” she
muttered. Thump, thump, thump, went
Coda’s tail against the bed. He looked at Serena with intelligent amber eyes,
rimmed with a deep chocolate colour at the outside edge of the irises.
“Stupid dog,” she
said again, just as she heard three short nervous raps at her bedroom door,
already partially open due to Coda’s forced entry.
“Serena?” said a
soft female voice.
“What is it,
Mom?” she answered with as much irritation as she could. In truth she was glad
that her parents still checked in on her every once in a while instead of
pretending everything was just hunky-dory like her schoolmates and teachers
did.
“Dinner’s ready,
whenever you want to come down.” She said.
Oh.
“I’m not hungry.”
Serena said immediately.
Her mother looked
concerned, but didn’t voice whatever worry she had. “Okay,” she said instead.
“I don’t like you just sitting around in your room all day, though. Can you at
least take Coda for a walk?”
“Fine,” she said,
walking out of her room without another word. Coda followed without being asked
to
Serena walked down the stairs and paused by
the door to grab an old, worn leather leash. She attached it unenthusiastically
to Coda’s collar, then yanked him outside.
It was a cold
day, and Serena found herself pulling her jacket more tightly around herself to
try and trap a bit of the rapidly escaping heat. As she and Coda walked, Serena
found herself thinking, as she always did, about her lost brothers. What had
actually become of them? That night, the night they left and, as it happened,
never returned. They never said where they had gone, but Serena had a feeling
it had something to do with the train tracks. Aunt Hildy had developed somewhat
of a reputation for being a daredevil, and it would just be so like her to base
one of her ‘adventures’ around the most avoided subject in the entire town of
Fahlsinger. Avoided, likely, because of the little boy so many years ago who
had been playing on the traintracks while his family had a picnic in the field
nearby. The tracks had, of course, already been abandoned at this point. At
least, Serena hoped they had, or else she feared that the parents really
deserved what happened next. It was all over the news; a boy who had been
playing around one minute, running up and down the tracks, and then gone the
next. Without a trace. No one ever figured out what happened to him. The media
was adamant that while he was running, he must have slipped and fallen into the
frigid waters and drowned.
“But he was a
strong swimmer, he loved the water!” the family had protested. After that there weren`t any more stories about that little missing boy
on the news. The last official thing said on the air about him was that,
alright, maybe he was a strong swimmer, but cold water like that can make your
muscles lock up and such, so yes he really must have drowned. So sorry but case
closed.
The truth was
that the people of Fahlsinger were so easily stirred up that the news never
told the full story. Reports on murders were ‘tragic accidents’ and real
accidents were ‘even more tragic accidents’. The townsfolk in Fahlsinger were
superstitious and paranoid enough as it was, and had anyone let on that they
really didn’t know what could have happened to the little missing boy, or
hinted that those ‘accidents’ were far from incidental, no good would come of
it. Panic would strike, people would try to leave but with the only ways
of leaving the town being to drive (since there wasn’t an airport and the
trains didn’t run anymore) then the only thing that would come of it would be
congested roads and irritated drivers.
Coda pulled at
his leash, wanting to sniff at something.
“Come on, boy.”
Serena said, lost in her own thoughts of the little boy who had gone missing as
well as of her own brothers. Of the boy, she liked to act like she was an
expert on the case, but all she really knew was hearsay. It had happened so
many years ago and the media had always done their best to keep it quiet
anyway. But it was too late, the people of Fahlsinger had already made up
stories and legends about the tracks being magical, or at least that they led
to some place magical. Those stories continued to stay in circulation, and with
renewed vigour when Serena mentioned to some of her friends that she thought
the tracks might have had something to do with Simon and Damien disappearing.
Fahlsinger was a small town, and like any small town secrets were practically
nonexistent.
‘The tracks will
lead you to the ends of the Earth and further.’
Serena mulled it
over. What did that even mean? After you got to the end of the Earth, what was
there further than that? Or maybe it meant the end of the world. As in, ‘If you
follow these tracks it’ll mean the end of the world and worse.’ Yeah, maybe
further meant worse. But then how come the apocalypse didn’t come when that
little boy disappeared, and when Simon and Damien went on the tracks? If they
even did, which Serena still didn’t know for certain.
Or maybe, she
thought grimly, the end of the world was specific to the person who was
supposedly causing the end of the world. It wouldn’t exactly be fair to the
rest of the planet if one little boy accidently killed them all by following
some old train tracks. So maybe… maybe ‘ends of the Earth’ meant ‘end of your world’, not ‘end of the world’.
Maybe what was
meant by that old story was that those who walk along the train tracks are
killed.
Serena stopped
walking and looked in the direction of the tracks. Because of how they were
situated, it was impossible to be more than a few minutes away from them at any
given time (that is to say, as long as you remained in Fahlsinger). Coda sat
down and looked at her patiently, his tail wagging pendulum-like in the air.
Serena seemed to
make a decision. She was tired of waiting. For five years she had sat back and
pondered what could have happened, but never had she done anything about it.
Besides, did she really want to live in a world that didn’t have Simon and
Damien in it? She had no passions in life, nothing to actually live for, except
to dwell on people that the rest of the world thought were dead. If her theory
was right, and this was to be the end of her world, then so be it. At least she
would know. At least as she was dying she would know for certain what had
happened to Simon and Damien.
Coda whined
softly, watching Serena. What about Coda? He was annoying and stupid and a
painful reminder of what had happened, but it really wasn’t fair to put him in
danger when he didn’t even know what was happening. Serena tentatively reached
her hand out to Coda. He watched intently. Serena seemed to hesitate for a
moment before unclipping the leash from his collar.
“Stay, boy.” She
said decisively. This was it, she was finally going to find out what truly
happened to her brothers. Coda cocked his head to the side. He stood up, tail
still wagging, and took a step towards the retreating figure of Serena.
“Idiot dog. I
said stay! Or go home. Either one suits me just fine. Just don’t follow me,
okay?”
Coda merely
looked at her questioningly before walking further towards her. It was clear he
either didn’t understand or didn’t care that he was being asked to stay where
he was.
“Fine!” Serena
said, throwing up her hands in frustration. “But it’s your own fault if you get
killed. You`re your own responsibility from now on, not mine.”
Coda stared.
“Come on, then.”
Serena muttered angrily, turning towards the tracks. Coda followed, trotting
happily at her side.
Just as her
brothers had done more than five years ago, Serena walked purposefully towards
the train tracks, Coda faithfully following. She tried not to think about the
possible consequences of what she was about to do, but it was nearly impossible
not to and the riskiness of it all gave her an intense rush of excitement and
fear. A few too-short minutes later and they had arrived, Coda completely
oblivious to what was going on but happy nonetheless. Serena looked needlessly
for any signs of an oncoming train before stepping onto the tracks, every little
crunch of gravel beneath her feet causing her to flinch. She cursed and took a
moment to calm down.
“Come, Coda.” Serena
said after a brief pause, and he complied. The pair walked purposefully along
the perfectly straight tracks, not knowing what awaited them as they
disappeared behind a thick wall of swirling mist.
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