J Joseph Michaels
Copyright 2013 J Joseph Michaels
--Hoosac Horror--
We walked for what seemed like miles when the mouth of the beast appeared.
Fog rose up from the ground, her warm breath escaping to cool air and rain dripped off of her like drool from a hungry mouth as she greeted us.
“Creepy,” I mumbled, both of us at an instinctive halt, my heart racing. “How much trouble can we get for being here?”
“Relax,” Howie assured me with his infamous shit eating grin. “At the most we’ll get a trespassing citation, but last time I was here I didn’t get caught.”
“Last time you were here you went about fifty feet before turning around and leaving.”
“That’s because a train was going through,” he huffed.
Who was I to talk though? I was standing there at the East Portal not even wanting to take a single step inside, never mind make an attempt at walking her five miles. As I stared at her, intimidated, his train excuse was completely valid. But I didn’t just spend the last three hours of my Saturday morning crammed in his tiny car to just look at her from a distance. I was here to penetrate her, go deep and learn her secrets.
“What if a train comes now?”
“What I didn’t know then,” he assured me, “is that they widened it years ago, there is plenty of room to get out of the way. Plus only four or five trains go through a day so we have a good chance of nothing.”
“Ok,” I nodded. I took my cheap hardware store respirator out of my backpack and pulled it over my head, but past my face and down around my neck like a gold chain.
“Just in case a train comes, I’d like to be able to breathe through the diesel fumes.”
His face twisted at my caution, but was nothing compared to the look of confusion as I pulled a construction hardhat out and placed it atop my head.
“Why?”
“This tunnel is a hundred and forty years old, and I don’t want to get hit with a falling brick.”
“Or a brick thrown from one of those restless souls in there,” he snickered.
I answered with a nervous chuckle, but swallowed my fear. “We gonna stand here all day or are we going in?”
Abruptly he walked towards her, the damp gravel crunching beneath his feet until he got about three feet from her mouth.
“I’m just gonna call Dinah and Trish to make sure they are at the other end and aren’t about to wimp out.”
Mag light in hand, safety gear on my head I waited as I listened to him yell into the phone.
“Ya, we’re about to go in,” he shouted as he paced back and forth. “I don’t know why exactly, I think I heard it’s so bears don’t get in,” followed by, “no trains on this end either, meet you at the Central Shaft.”
He jerked his head toward the tunnel and I took one last look at her as I made my way closer.
“What is for keeping bears out?”
“The other end of the tunnel has a big ass roll up door on it, I heard it was to keep the bears out.”
“So now I gotta be worried about trains, angry ghosts and getting mauled by bears?”
“A great way to spend your Saturday, huh?”
I shrugged it off as we stood at the entrance, the stale cold air of her inside lightly kissing my face.
“It’s five miles of darkness, you ready?”
Cold blackness ahead of me, the warmth of the early spring sun on my back, I nod and take my first step inside. Instant claustrophobia set in and not to mention it was easily twenty degrees colder only two feet inside. I could see my breath, barely through the darkness, but I could. I could also feel my heart pounding on my ribcage, my arms were like limp noodles.
Ten feet inside and I couldn’t see a thing in front of me. No wonder last time he was here he didn’t go in deep. The deafening sound of the black silence was only broken by the seeping water that dripped into the trenches that ran parallel to the tracks. I took a deep breath to calm myself, but it did little among the wet basement-like odor coming out of the dank.
“Ya know, a lot of people say they have had the sensation of being pushed in here.” His voice was like thunder in the silence.
“I read that,” I answered.
“Some get pushed out of the way if a train is coming, and then some feel like they are being pushed into the way.”
“I know. I also have read that plenty of people have gone through and have felt, seen or heard nothing.”
“Do you hear that?”
We stopped to listen. A barely audible yet deep rumble came from the darkness. It almost sounded like a deep voice groaning in pain.
“Might be a train,” I said as I looked behind me to the light, to the escape. “Maybe we should go back out.”
“Doubt it,” he answered. “The girls just said there was nothing on their end.”
“Ya, I guess a paranoid mind can make you hear things.”
“I don’t think it’s that either,” he quipped as he started walking further in. “It’s probably just the wind.”
I nodded, but both his flashlight and headlamp were pointed toward the darkness, so he didn’t see my agreement…So I gave him the finger, which he also couldn’t see.
We walked maybe a mile or so deep through the nothingness without a word to each other. I looked back and could still see a glimmer of light from the entrance. I smiled at the sight of it, but knowing that it was just a matter of a few strides and it would be gone quickly erased that happiness.
“Hold up!” he whispered loudly, extending his arm across my chest to prevent me from walking another step. “You hear that?”
Without missing a beat I answered as sarcastically as I could, “probably just the wind.”
“No, it’s too deep of a rumble.”
He killed his headlamp and flashlight, I followed his lead. For about a second we were in pitch darkness until we saw a tiny circle of light from the other end.
At first it was about the size of a speck of dust, but with every passing second it grew and the rumble got louder, the light got bigger and brighter.
“It’s gotta be at least a mile away!” he yelled as he turned and sprinted away from the train, back toward the way we came in.
“Where are you going?” I yelled, but he didn’t answer. “You aren’t going to be able to outrun it!” I flipped my light on and swept side to side but didn’t see where he ran to.
“Hey, where are you?” I shouted.
“Get over here,” I heard him yell, but the roar of the diesel engine was echoing loud enough that I could barely hear him, never mind pinpoint where he was.
I could feel the rumble in my chest, the repugnant smell of the fumes started to overwhelm me so I pulled my respirator over my face. The tunnel was completely illuminated now, I turned around and was blinded by the train’s headlight. I could feel the heat radiating off of the oncoming train and I realized I was still standing in between the rails, directly in the path of the train.
I like to think that the train was just a mere few inches from me when I dove out of its way to safety, but that’s not how it happened. I did jump to the side and dropped my flashlight in the process, but then took about two steps to the wall where I proceeded to flatten myself against it. After that there was a good six or seven seconds before the train got to where I was.
I took a few calming deep breaths as it passed about two feet from where I stood. Then it happened.
My respirator was yanked down off of my face. It didn’t just fall off, it was pulled off violently enough that the nylon strap that went around the back of my head snapped.
>
“Stop being an ass Howie, I can’t breathe now.”
There was no response from him so I reached out for him, but he wasn’t there.
“Whatever,” I mumbled. Then I felt his cold hands grab my sweatshirt at my shoulder as he pulled me toward the passing train. “Stop messing around!”
I hopped away from him and back against the wall rather than push him off me. I wasn’t the jerk he was, and if I pushed him I wouldn’t have to live with myself if he somehow ended up under the train. But again he grabbed me and pulled me toward the passing train, and again for his safety I stepped back away from him and toward the wall.
My heart was racing as my lungs were filling up with diesel fumes every time I inhaled so I slowed my breathing.
“Howie you prick, where’s my respirator?” Even yelling as loud as I could, he wouldn’t be able to hear me over the clanking of the train. It was deafening up that close, and the fact that we were trapped in a tiny tunnel under a mountain only meant the sound had nowhere to escape to.
I felt his hands on my shoulder a third time and I had enough. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t hear anything over the train and couldn’t see a thing and he still wanted to play games. I cocked my foot back to kick him in his shin as hard as I could, but when I swung it forward he wasn’t on the receiving end. His hands were off me and I returned to being still against the wall but at that point the last car had passed.
I pulled my phone out and used the illuminated screen for light. I scanned the area where I was standing but there was nothing. No dropped flashlight, no respirator and disturbingly, no Howie.
“Where’d you run to?” I yelled and got no answer. My heart raced. The worst case scenario played in my head, so I slowly turned and used the dim light from my phone to scan the tracks. Thankfully I once again saw nothing. I turned to face the back of the train and took a few steps, waving my phone back and forth but saw nothing.
“Howie!” I swallowed hard. “Where are you?”
Then I saw the beam of light his headlamp coming from across the tracks and about a hundred yards away as the last car passed by him.
“How’d you get over there?” I screamed.
“I’ve been over here,” he shouted back.
I really wanted to believe him, but I couldn’t.
There was no way, absolutely no way he could have somehow gotten to the other side of the train, that far away in the few seconds that passed from when I last felt him, or someone, trying to throw me under the train.