Chapter 15: Past Meets Present

As the fog began to creep in, my mind drifted to the carriage we left behind. Detaching from a moving train was uncommon in the present day, though such slip coaches were far more common in the competitive rail market of the early twentieth century. For a carriage that wasn’t designed to do so, such a haphazard separation would cause damage to car and track alike, though thankfully, that wasn’t really my problem; we hadn’t left anyone inside, at least, so there would be no maiming or death as a consequence, which was a better safety record than most slip coaches could boast of.

Finally, as the fog thickened to a familiar, impenetrable red, the Waiter’s words were proven right: with the Steward dead by my hand, and the Chef gone thanks to the Waiter, there was no longer anyone to spring into action and let the fog in from the front, the Club Car was entirely spared from the potent soporific. Now, as the clock ticked by, one agonising minute at a time, all there was left for us to do was wait. I fiddled with my carving knife, passing it from hand to hand to keep them both occupied. The Waiter appeared calm, but his hands shook, too, the butcher’s cleaver trembling in his grasp, just a little. This was the critical moment, for everyone involved, my nerves growing increasingly frayed with every minute that ticked by, until it was ten to ten, and I was convinced I’d die of a stress-induced heart attack.

The end, when it came, was sudden. It came in the manner of battle in truth; not the extended cut and thrust of mythology, nor the exaggerated timelines of film and poem. True battles were often over in moments, decided by all the preparation that built up to the moment, decided by who prepared their ground, who had better positioning, and who had a plan. Thus it was, in battles the world over, and thus it was today.

There was neither any great explosion of sound nor a burst of colour to mark the enemy’s arrival; all that I knew was that in one moment, I was alone in my little corner of the car, and the next, I had company. My knife was moving before I consciously registered the man: a reedy little fellow, with grey hair, stick thin limbs and the beginnings of a hunched back. He should’ve been an easy target, distracted as he was with one of the pensioners, his palm on their forehead as he fed from them. There was no resistance to be found, as both my knife and arm passed right through him; he didn’t even seem to register my attempt, not reacting to my presence in the slightest. For a moment, despite having discussed the possibility prior, I truly feared that our enemy was invulnerable.

*Crack*

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Then, I heard the unmistakable sound of the Waiter snapping his own neck, heralding a wave of power that filled the room for an instant, giving me goosebumps despite the comfortable, climate controlled carriage.

“One’s freedom to forge one chain, one’s death to buy one life,” the Waiter spoke, his possessed body gasping out its last breaths. “In the end, all manner of things are equal.”

True to his words, ethereal chains erupted from the floor, spurred by the sacrifice (however unwilling) of a human life, wrapping themselves around the limbs of the enemy and forcibly dragging him away from his victims. Now, he noticed our intrusion, screaming in pain, in shock and in anger, but he was held fast, at least momentarily. Tightening my grip on my knife, I tried again, this time plunging the tip of the blade into the old Physician’s heart. This time, my blade struck true.

“As above, so below,” I growled, willing myself to kill, and my enemy to die.

Thoughts and prayers alone had little power in the world, but a little power is not none, and we’d done our best to stack the deck, here and now. My latent magical potential, untrained but powerful, now leveraged in my first conscious act of sorcery. A blade through the heart, invoking a sympathetic link between the Physician’s first death, and my attempt to bring about his second. The Waiter’s sacrificial rite, giving up his one remaining link to the mortal world, so that I could strike beyond it. All of these factors converged in the moment, fighting against the man who sought to return from death, and prevailed.

“What have you done?” He screamed in my face, incandescent with rage as he spat and writhed and clawed at me, his broken fingernails gouging bright red lines down my arms.

I held fast, keeping a two-handed death grip on my knife, and twisting it to and fro to maximise the damage done. We were unlikely to get a second chance: even in the event of another loop, if the old Physician survived, he might retain memory of our attempt on his life and subsequently approach matters with considerably more caution. This was our one best chance to win, and I wasn’t about to let that slip away for the sake of avoiding a little pain.

My ally didn’t sit idly by, either, as his true ghostly self emerged from the Waiter’s corpse, lunging upon the enemy from behind. Two meaty hands grabbed him around the neck, doing their level best to throttle the old Physician.

“This is for sixty years, a slave to the railway!” My ally screamed. “For the deaths of my parents, whose funerals I couldn’t attend. The death of my child, who never knew me growing up, and the sorrow of my wife, who lived decades with only my photo for remembrance!”

Pinning the enemy between us, I twisted my knife, and my ally his arms, over and over again, all the while the old Physician grew weaker, his struggles more frantic but less forceful with every passing moment, until finally, as the clock struck ten, he fell still.