A Tale of Forgotten Gods

Chapter 101: Dead Platform.

The echoes of the final three shots died down, leaving the memory of that deafening ringing in the ears of everyone in the carriage.

The gunsmoke curled toward the ceiling and mixed with the unnatural frost that hung in the air. While on the floor, the entity convulsed one last time. The black cloth covering its face tore open from the impact, revealing a skinny humanoid face without any nose and a half-broken skull visible.

Dark viscous fluid like blood pooled rapidly across the wooden floorboards, reaching toward the trembling thief’s shoes, who let out a choked sob and threw himself backward toward his ropes to distance himself from the spreading stain.

Murphy lowered the smoking barrel of his revolver, his breathing normal despite the chaos exploding around him.

Throughout the carriage, passengers were screaming, scrambling over seats, and pressing themselves against the windows in a frantic bid to escape the bloody scene.

”Detective!” Lin stepped in first, her fingers steadying the brim of her savanna beige flower hat against the sudden rush of wind. Her sharp eyes stared at the scene where the monstrous thing was deflating on the floor.

Behind her, Zhuo came forward, his hand already gripping the hilt of a concealed blade, his eyes wide in focus.

”We felt the temperature drop before the shots went off. What was that thing?”

”Sleep well, Miss. It was just a conductor who forgot his manners.” Murphy replied coldly, flicking the cylinder of his revolver open to dump the spent casings. They clattered against the floor with a hollow ring. He reached his hand into his coat as his fingers pulled out fresh cartridges to reload; of course just an act, it never needed to be reloaded in the first place. ”And a greedy liar.”

Lin nodded, her hand resting subtly near the folds of her dress where her own armaments were hidden. ”And if there really is no driver?”

Murphy offered a thin smile and turned toward the door of the train. ”Then I suppose I’ll need a book guide to learn how to drive a train.”

He stepped over the spreading pool of blood and bent down to retrieve his pocket watch from the floor. He looked outside and saw the station returning again even though the train was moving forward.

He slowly walked toward the door and stopped near it. He opened the door, and it hit the sides with a loud metallic roar, and then he looked outside. The station returned every 10 seconds, then he watched it come again and stared at his watch to calculate the time. ”Ten seconds...”

Finally, he turned toward the thief, who stirred back as he saw Murphy’s wide grin, and by traveling for a few hours, the thief understood it meant something horrific.

Murphy stopped near him, pulled off his clothes, and leaving the thief shivering in the cold, and turned toward the station again.

He threw the clothes outside as the station returned, then he waited for the next ten seconds. As the place returned again, his eyes focused swiftly, and there were no clothes in that station now. ”Hm... so that’s how it works. The stations are copies, but we did move forward.”

With that, he looked at the carriage that reached toward the driver’s cab. He walked and opened the door of the carriage and glanced back once and nodded gently. ”You may rest well, passengers; I will take you out from here safely.”

He entered the carriage and shut the door. Lin and Zhuo noticed the carriage he moved in had started to dissolve in darkness through the window.

Inside, passengers sat, but they weren’t human. For a microsecond, Lin saw the silhouettes with massive, blinking eyes where their skulls should be and things with ears instead of heads. All of their long fingers reaching for Murphy’s throat.

BANG! BANG!

The passengers outside heard the gunshots that echoed as the darkness in that carriage receded for a few moments from the firing.

The monstrous passengers didn’t try to attack as they saw him killing. Another flash revealed Murphy stepping forward, his expression entirely blank, his coat billowing in a wind that didn’t exist. He wasn’t trapped in a carriage with monsters, but they were trapped in a room with a ruthless detective.

One of those entities to his left shifted, pulling with courage against him and turning a face that was nothing but a massive, twitching human ear and letting out a high-pitched frequency.

”No talking during the ride.” Murphy murmured and rushed toward it, then landed a heavy kick into its ear, looking ahead, crashing it down into a sear. He pulled the trigger as the gunshot echoed in the enclosed place. The ear-faced creature burst into a cloud of black ash. The darkness obscuring the front of the carriage thinned, revealing the next row of horrors—things with lidless, weeping eyes for heads, tracking his movements, came again.

Murphy kept walking and shot each one without stopping, while stepping over luggage that looked suspiciously like ribcages. Seven seconds left as he cleared a path through a mass of thrashing, pale limbs. He counted time in his mind, six seconds before the loop started again.

In front of him, the cab’s door loomed. He smashed a kick on it as the heavy iron door launched forward, and entered before the ten seconds passed. He glanced back over his shoulder; the entities he had killed sat again as if they had faced nothing; their fear disappeared.

He stared at the center of the dashboard where an oversized humanoid thing sat with a large typewriter head, its keys forged from bone, freshly painted with crimson bloody chalk. Fed into the roller was a continuous scroll of parchment that stretched down into the floorboards, vibrating with the rhythm of the train’s engine.

Murphy walked over and looked down at the parchment. Written over and over again, thousands of times in fresh, dripping ink, were the words: The train moves forward. The destination is one; paths are many. The passengers are safe as death.

The typewriter looked back at Murphy, who seemed to stare without any clear emotions on his face. He slowly tilted his head and put down the revolver and whispered. ”Where is the driver?”

At Murphy’s question, the entity’s skeletal fingers blurred across the bone keys. A clack-clack-clack sound erupted in the cramped cabin, drowning out the roar of the tracks. The keys struck the paper with violent force, splashing drops of crimson ink onto Murphy’s coat.

Slowly, the roller clicked. The parchment scrolled upward by a single line. Murphy leaned in, his gaze scanning the freshly stamped words: The driver is the destination. The destination is the driver.

He stared at the entity with a flat expression and pulled the trigger without hesitation. The metal struck against the windows. He opened the door and grabbed the entity and hung it by his hands and waited until the station returned.

The station returned, and he threw it outside with a crushing force. ”I didn’t like the answer.”

Finally, he heard a muffled voice coming from above. He looked and noticed a crack and thrust his hand in it before pulling the secret door open. A man landed with a loud thud and groaned as his hand was broken.

He was a short man who wore the uniform of a railway driver, his cap falling nearby.

The driver looked at Murphy and muttered with a groan. ”Argh, thank you for the save, but the train won’t stop. We have to stop at that station.”

Murphy’s eyes lingered at the driver, then looked outside, his mind racing with thoughts. ”Stop it there then. There must be a way to stop the loop in the station.” He paused for a few moments, tucking the revolver into his belt. ”Do not start it whatever happens.”

The driver nodded. ”My hand is broken, so would you mind helping me to pull that lever?”

Murphy turned and gripped the lever and pulled it. The train screeched, slowed down, and stopped near the same station. He looked back only to find no entity; in their places were the normal passengers again.

He opened the door and jumped outside the train. His boots echoed against the platform’s surface. His gaze lay on the nameplate, which was distorted as if the name had been spelled wrong. That place didn’t exist in the world at all, yet it was there now.

He walked deeper into the soft fog as the headless people walked together, but his face held no fear of them.

Just then, their bodies burned in flame, and all of them rushed toward him and screamed their throats out as Murphy turned toward them with his usual expressions. He simply pulled out his cigarette and walked with his normal pace. One of them lunged at him, but he swiftly sidestepped and reached out his hand toward the flames.

The smoke erupted from the cigarette as he held it in his lips, then pulled out his revolver and aimed it at the burning headless thing beside him.