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‘And in those days she made a little song,
And called her song "The Song of Love and Death”’
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
The rail station loomed ahead of her, gothic, forbidding, inky with menace. The air tasted of metal, cold metal, that burned the inside of her nose and mouth.
Three a.m. She huffed out a long breath and enjoyed the satisfying crunch of the snow underfoot as she trudged along the road. Nobody awake, darkness. The morning held a special kind of sadness. Her eyes flicked left and right, seeking movement, intruders into her solitude, a cat, a night fox. Pollution from the streetlights bounced off the snow, casting an orange glow over the town, making the stars impossible to see.
Her snow boots hit the kerb and she stumbled, knees banging, hands slapping down onto the asphalt. She glanced around, embarrassed, and quickly stood, ignoring the sting of her wounds. She brushed her gloved hands impatiently and strode with purpose towards the station. Excitement burned in her stomach.
The station’s hollow silence was comforting. The last train to Helsinki had passed through hours ago. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, her heart thumping out a staccato beat of anticipation.
One…two…three
The pin-prick of light began to grow through her eyelids and, as it moved towards her, lit her world pink. She marvelled at the colour for a beat and then, as she heard his whisper, opened her eyes.
She smiled as she watched him glide towards her. His movements were graceful but off somehow, a tune missing a note, a badly cut film.
It thrilled her.
He spoke in a tongue she did not understand, soft but guttural, otherworldly, not human.
She felt his touch, cool, gentle. She pulled the scarf from her neck and, as he placed his fingertips on her throat, she began to hum. She had no name for the song, it just came to her whenever he was near. She watched him sway to the thrumming, dancing almost, with a childlike delight. Ecstasy. A strange, disjointed dance. Time stopped. As she sang her strange song, the pain would begin…no, not pain…it was an odd feeling, as if something was being taken from her, something physical and yet not - an essence. She didn’t care. She loved him.
The frozen air made her cheeks flame and her lips pulse. Dawn hovered behind the pine forest, a pink haze. He took his fingers from her throat and placed his hands either side of her face. With his thumbs he closed her eyes, she felt his breath warm, delicious, on her face. Then, as ever, the cold swept in, and with a rush of overwhelming grief, she knew he had gone.
The ancient station master took no notice of the girl as he coughed his way onto duty. Night ghouls he called them, the ones who came.
Life was trickling onto the streets as she walked home, hitching her coat tightly around her. Market traders grumbled, ignoring her as she kicked errant vegetables from her path. Some of the more raucous men laughed as they watched the early morning drunkards pissing into the gutter, the warm yellow liquid cutting into the snow, steaming, draining down the street, freezing into rivulets.
He watched her every day. Insomnia had broken his spirit some months back. He noted the time: 5.53am. She had been gone for two hours as usual. He lit a cigarette and leaned his forehead against the window, trying to see around impossible corners. Thinking. If he could just leave this room. He sighed. He tapped the cast that extended up his leg and encased his hip. The day after tomorrow, the blasted thing would be cracked and split away from him and he would be free.
She turned the corner onto his street. He backed away from the window, shy not wanting to scare her. She looked thinner today, almost faded. It had not been noticeable at the beginning, but lately she seemed diminished. Oh, she looked as happy as she ever had on her return from the station but even so there was less of her each day.
He watched her gliding gracefully along the snowy path. She moved as if she were dancing, joy radiated from her skin. He sighed at her beauty.
The day after tomorrow. The day after tomorrow.
Crack. Split. The relief of the plaster cast being removed was palpable. His wasted leg looked like it belonged to someone else, not him,. The nurse held his hand while he stood on it for the first time in months. Pain shot through him in sharp thrills, his leg unreliable. But he stood. He smiled at the sweet-faced nurse.
Tonight she felt it. A dragging inside her, a weariness. The wash of love was the same, his touch as gentle, the ecstasy as real. But she felt a pull, a wasting away and for once she felt bereft for a different reason. When he had gone, she walked slowly back home. The world seemed less real, her brain not comprehending shapes that would normally be familiar to her. A couple of times she had to stop, get her bearings. The second time, she looked back and saw it. In the packed ice of the road, a smear of blood. No, more than a smear, a trail. Her trail. She calmly checked herself. No wounds. She walked a little farther, stopped look back. Blood.
She stood for a moment, eyes closed, swaying just a little. Her mind whirled. When she opened her eyes again, the blood was still there. She turned her back on it and started to walk.
He tottered down the path, the ice threatening to take his legs from beneath him. He gripped onto the fence and leaned across it to look down the street. She had just turned the corner at the end. He backed off, excited, nervous. He listened for her footsteps. She had reached the end of his fence.
“Hello.” Soft. He bit his lip as soon as the word came out.
She looked up at him startled, owl eyes blinking.
“Hello.” Her voice was gruff, scratchy from misuse, rusty cogs grinding. He stepped forward. They looked at each other for a long moment. Everything he had planned to say evaporated.
“Where do you go at night?” He rushed the question, regretted it instantly.
She was silent, her face impassive. Then she smiled. To him, it was as if dawn had broken.
She moved away from him and disappeared into the night.
At some point along the way, he had stopped caring that she knew he was following her. After the previous night’s encounter, he had decided that her smile was permission enough for him.
He stayed a way back but he could see by the constant half-turn of her head that she was aware of him. He fancied he could see the uplift of her cheek, that she was smiling.
She strode into the rail station. His face creased in confusion, he slowed his pace. He stopped at the door and peered around. An empty ticket office. Snakes of unease slithered around his body. His footfalls echoed around the hall. At the far end, a gate, ajar. As he neared it, a soft melody reached his ears.
She was singing.
He gripped the metal bars as the song curled its way into his mind, into his soul. Waves of pleasure.
Without thinking he moved towards her, this music, this mysterious hymn drawing him nearer and nearer.
He saw her turn and he moved closer still, mouth open to declare his love.
She turned and at once he felt his world fall away. Her eyes, deep, endless worlds of malevolence; her once sweet smile now a rictus of horror and spite.
Her ice cold fingers snaked around his throat and he now too began to sing, a melody not of love but of unimaginable pain. And yet, the love he felt built and built, saturated every cell of his being until it was all consuming. He moved with the song, jerking movements, her demented marionette. Inside his mind he screamed and screamed and…
The ancient station master took no notice of the young man as he coughed his way onto duty. Night ghouls, he called them.
The ones who came.
M.J. Foster is a writer, poet and the founding editor of Inclement Poetry Magazine (est. 2000). Her work has been published in Still, Iota, Exile, First Impressions, Poetic Licence, Breathe, Candelabrum and Amber Silhouettes. Her short story, 'The Willow' was shortlisted for the Myslexia Women's Short Fiction Prize 2012 and she has been selected for the Gold Dust Mentoring programme. She graduated with a first class BA (Hons) in Writing from Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge. She is often mistaken for Beyoncé by absolutely no-one and has a long-running battle with a squirrel with a grudge.