Train Spirits

By Jean Seale

Ever ride on a train? People say that each train has a spirit, strange mythical creatures of the night. Some are protectors, defending helpless and endangered women and children. Others are monsters just waiting to gobble up the next victim. Read these short stories of train spirit encounters. You should before your next train ride.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jean Seale
• Release date: Jun 15, 2024
• ISBN: 9798227751195

Jean Seale

Jean Seale is a high school mathematics and physic teacher. He has four children, three girls and a boy. They live on a small farm in Nicaragua.

Book preview

Train to Berkshire

There are eighteen cars on this train, seven are economy class, five are luggage, one is first class and the rest are just random and standard work coaches. A bar, a restaurant, casinos, bathrooms, etc. I am riding first class tonight because it is empty and I am on a fast trip and don't want to get involved.

Only two people are riding with me. There is a young lady, maybe in her early twenties, with slender, puckered lips, and a great body, tall enough to let her shoulders show against the seat and locked into her tablet.

She couldn’t care less for anything or anyone else in this world. she is just finishing a great speech for the fundraiser tomorrow. her white blouse smelled of an expensive perfume, but I am never good at that, had no idea which one it was. seeing her style, it may be expensive enough to buy the entire train.

The other passenger is a tennis player on his way to face his biggest battles at home. He was an ardent poker player, even though no one else knew that, not even his wife. He balances the Christian father and his addiction very well. never allowing his love for the games to detract from the attention that he gives to them. His two children, Benji and Pamela, are twins, just about to turn twelve.

Benji was a lover of cars and tops. When he wasn’t playing with his huge collection of sports cars, he was throwing his top at the walls. Slender, freckled face with blonde, curly hair that covers his left eye. He was a bit taller than his sister.

Pamela was a bundle. She was model class and sweet to admire. Her hair was blonde and flowing, she created the myth of an Icelandic banshee princess. She spent her time learning the piano with her mother Katty, or with the ballet dance tutor, Marcos Posidini.

My job tomorrow begins tonight. I am coming from Boca Raton, where there are buses that roll over to Disney World every day and trains that never rest.  I must make sure that my tennis player gets home. Even though he is not my mission, he is a central part of the problem.

I sat across from him and watched his eyes as they roamed the curtain formed by the pine trees and the oaks.  He was steady, quiet, and determined. His thin lips guarded the deepest secrets that covered his past and even as he worked his way up to the top of the game, his past lingers.

There is a station up ahead, about three miles out, the train would make a stop there for an hour, before continuing its five-hour non-stop ride to Berkshire. I wanted to warn him but it's against the rules, so I just sat across from him. Tomorrow would be another day.

The train tooted its longhorn as it slowed for the Percadio stop. The darkness began to fall slowly over the land, the sun had retired its lights and the bats took to the skies. The yellow dust of the aluminum mines was no longer visible, even though the aroma caressed our nostrils and filled our lungs.

The station was empty except for a few vendors too tired to even shout out their products. The day can be that taxing in this small town.  I was not sure why there were no passengers here. The dreams had shown a bomb carrier and a spy. They were not here.

Were the dreams wrong?  I took my place from across him on the train as it came to a standstill. I gazed with him at the strange lights that came from the pine trees. They flickered, brilliantly then faded, over and over again.

He stayed on the train for a while and maybe unsure if he should get off or just tuck in and sleep a bit.  He finally pulled off his coat, threw his duffle bag in the overhead cabin, then walked outside. I followed close, hoping to find either the bomber or the spy. No one.

He paused by a small hot dog car and sat down to eat. Maybe the bomber would appear here, or maybe the spy. The dreams have never been wrong, but with all the powers that I have, I could not find a single stray thought about a bomb or a secret agent.  I stayed with him. I reflected on the little girl. The boy was out in the barn, the mother in the kitchen, the bomb had exploded as she came running to greet him. They both died.

How do I save her, or them? Where was the bomber and the spy?

The time rolled on, and he finished his hot dog and ordered a beer. I reflected on their history. The three would always run out to meet him, why only Pamela tonight? Last week, it went just as usual, Katty, Pamela, and Benji, all rushed out to meet him. Throwing their arms around him.  Why would they stay behind today?

He took another beer. Careful. He had no idea that his life was in jeopardy. His