Chapter 11: Eleventh Hour

Despite my mounting paranoia, I didn’t actually peg the fog as a problem, at first. As far as annoying weather conditions went in Scotland, fog was positively mundane, and still a far more welcoming sight than the usual torrential rains. As long as it didn’t get so thick that vision became a genuine concern, it was little more than a pleasant distraction, usually. That said, fog didn’t usually come in a blood red tinge, nor did it tend to go from barely noticeable to all encompassing within the span of thirty seconds. Suddenly, it was no longer a mild autumn fog, but something that could only be supernatural in origin.

That was still fine though, because despite the disconcerting appearance of riding along in a sea of red, the fog was still behaving as I’d expect it to, namely, clustering along the side of the train without actually finding a way in. That didn’t change, for all that I stared hard at it, those first five minutes, until eventually I felt relaxed enough to get up and brew myself another cup of tea. As I sat there, sipping my Scottish Breakfast Tea with milk and two sugars, I watched the clock tick over, now a quarter to ten, and knew that I was on the home stretch at last.

All of this is to say that, when I noticed the fog creeping up from behind me, having arrived not from my window but through the slight gaps around my cabin door, I was quite annoyed.

“It’s morning in the Scottish Highlands, the temperature can’t be higher than the single digits, not at this time of year, so who is opening their bloody window?”

In my eagerness to investigate, I opened my cabin door, which was a mistake. Oh, it probably would have happened before the end of the loop regardless, but getting blasted with a face full of fog certainly sped the process up. The outcome was remarkably soporific, which finally explained why every peaceful loop had ended with me asleep. I tried to fight it, of course, for all the good that did; whatever was in the fog was as effective as any sleeping gas I’d ever been given. I lasted thirty seconds at most, though in truth I suspected that number was closer to ten, and then I was out like a light.

—

I woke up again, at one minute past five, with a terrible headache and a newfound hatred of fog. It was painful enough for me to consider going to the club car and ask him for something strong from the bartender. I didn’t, because in my experience, alcohol only offered temporary pain relief, and returned it twofold with a hangover soon after, which was quite frankly the last thing I needed. At least it wasn’t hard to work out where to go from here: the fog couldn’t make it through the closed window, meaning that there were limits to its reach, I just had to figure them out. Unfortunately, I couldn’t see any way to be clever about this, so it was back to the old trial and error for a bit.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

First up, a slow paced film for a change of pace: Avatar was out, 2001: A Space Odyssey was in. Two and a half hours went by fast, even my headache largely receding as I immersed myself in one of Stanley Kubrick’s best works. In a flash, it was half past seven, and back to the Club Car I went. I wasn’t in a fit state for a full Scottish again, so I settled this time for the more restrained Continental Breakfast: toast with marmalade, a blueberry muffin, a pot of low fat strawberry yoghurt, orange juice and coffee. All of this complimentary, the price being included with my top tier cabin, and that came with free refills, so I made good use of my free time, downing what must have been a large bottle of orange juice at least.

When the staff eventually began cleaning up, I asked if I could sit in the Club Car to admire the sights; they were fine with this, so long as I got out of the way of their work, so I grabbed a movable chair, parked myself at a window by the corner, and stared at the sunrise, waiting for the fog to return. From my vantage point, I also got a great look at the empty tables, and realised for the first time that I’d been alone on both instances of the breakfast. I marked that down as possibly suspicious, although it was just as possible that everyone else were either early birds who ate and finished before me, or late sleepers who couldn’t be bothered getting up, and would eat after getting off the train at Fort William. A possible point of investigation, but not one worth pursuing unless the more obvious paths didn’t pan out.

I stayed in my chair, barring a brief trip to the loo, until it was half past nine again, and we reached the final stretch of the journey. Mere seconds after the turn of the clock, the thin mist arose. I had my phone out this time, tracking the progression by the second as it swiftly thickened from a thin spray, to the oppressive red blanket that smothered out the sun and the horizon. Less than a minute, for the whole process, in line with my expectations the night before. There still wasn’t any sign of a leak, which made me wonder if the source was in one of the passenger cabins. That would be problematic if they weren’t willing to open the door for me, as I lacked my own battering ram to force an entry.

I was half heartedly considering searching for the battering ram, when a steward caught my eye. He was standing motionless in the middle of the Club Car, the only one left in the carriage besides myself, and his eyes were immobile, staring far off into the distance. Then, he turned forty five degrees, in the most robotic cadence I’d ever seen outside of a haunted house, and moved towards a closed window. Damn it.