THAT LONG BLACK TRAIN

A ghost train travelling from Melbourne to Glen Hartwell leaves all of its passengers dead

Well, that long black train
Yeah, rollin' down that track
Yeah, long black train
Please carry me back
Well, I left my baby
So very long ago

Yeah, gotta roll on long train
Roll on long train
Yeah, roll on long train
Roll on long-long train
Roll on train
Carry me back home

Well, that long black train
Is a-puffin' smoke I know
Yeah, that long black train
Is a-puffin' smoke I know
It's a burnin' rail
Carry me back home

Yeah, that long black train
Is rollin' down that track
Yeah, long black train
Please carry me back
Well, I left my baby
So very long ago
That Long Black Train (Franklin Stewart)

Over at platform 19 at Flinders Street Station in Melbourne, a dozen or so people were already waiting for the midnight train to Glen Hartwell, although it wasn't quite 9:30 yet.
"I hope you've got a book to read," said the porter walking past them, "you've still got nearly two hours and forty minutes to wait for the Glen Hartwell train. And it gets cold in here with the open platforms."
"Nah, MP3 player," said a raven-haired teenage girl, Analisa Patterson, who looked about thirteen, but was nearly nineteen, and was heading to the countryside for a job interview.
"I have no idea what that is," said the ancient-looking porter, "but as long as it can keep you entertained for more than two and a half hours."
As the porter strode toward his booth midway along the platform, something caught Analisa's eye. She looked up as a tall, blonde, thirty-something American woman walked slowly down the ramp from street level above, eating and clearly loving her first Australian beef pie with Aussie tomato sauce (not American Catsik).
"Mmmm," said the woman, "this is the bast pie arv ever hard."
She went to take another bite, then seeing a starving-looking white seagull standing looking at her, she broke off a piece of pastry to throw to the gull."
"No, don't!" Analisa called to her, but she was too far away for the woman to hear him.
The woman threw the piece of crust to the lone seagull, which squawk-squawked. Then it was like a scene from the horror movie 'The Birds' as literally dozens of squawking seagulls swarmed down from the curved roof of the platform, where they had been hiding."
"No, no, it's mine!" cried the woman, trying to hold the pie out of reach over her head. Which only made things worse, since the gulls swirled right up along her, like a mini feathered tornado, to literally peck at the meat pie while it was still in her hands.
Finally, the woman shrieked, "Aaaaaaaah!" tossed the meat pie straight up into the air, spun around, and raced screaming back up the ramp to street level.
Despite feeling sorry for the blonde, Analisa laughed so hard that she doubled up, thinking: American tourists, they are so bloody funny! I wonder if she will ever get to wherever she was going?" Unaware that the woman would outlive Analisa by more than fifty years!
Over the next thirty-five minutes or so, nearly fifty people collected on the platform, all waiting for the Glen Hartwell train, still not due for another two hours.
A man looking at least seventy held up a more expensive-looking MP3 player than Analisa's, and music started blaring out:
"Well, that long black train
"Yeah, rollin' down that track
"Yeah, long black train
"Please carry me back
"Well, I left my baby
"So very long ago

"Yeah, gotta roll on long train
"Roll on long train
"Yeah, roll on long train
"Roll on long-long train
"Roll on train
"Carry me back home

"Well, that long black train
"Is a-puffin' smoke I know
"Yeah, that long black train
"Is a-puffin' smoke I know
"It's a burnin' rail
"Carry me back home ...."

Walking over to the old timer, Analisa said, "Wow, that is fantastic, what is that?"
"Long Black Train, by Franklin Stewart and the Stewart Brothers Band," said the old man, Herbert Milton.
"No, I meant the type of music?"
"Rockabilly ... it was the main type of rock in the 1950s, led by Elvis Presley. Then there was a big revival in the British world in the 1980s, led by Michael Barrett, aka Shakin' Stevens."
"Wow, it's fabuloso," said Analisa, introducing herself, "I'll have to try to find some."
"If you've got a PC or a laptop, you can download hundreds of Rockabilly songs from YouTube. "Check out Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Wanda Jackson, Shakin' Stevens, the Stray Cats, Carl Perkins, Carl Mann, and many others," said Herbert.
"Wow wee!" said Analisa, taking out a biro and small notepad.
Just then, with a puff a black smoke billowing into the platform, a massive night-black steam train rolled into the platform two hours early.
"Oh, no, this can't be the Glen Hartwell train two hours early?"
"Don't worry, I'm getting on too," said Herbert.
"And it's a long, black train, just like in the song," said Analisa. "Maybe we could sit together and you can tell me all those names again, so I can hunt them up on YouTube."
"It'd be my pleasure, young Analisa. It's not often that I find someone of your generation with great taste in music."
"What the Hell is going on here?" demanded the elderly porter, brushing away the black smoke with his hand. Shouting up to the driver, "You're two hours early, and you're not supposed to have steam in Melbourne. You're supposed to use electricity till you change engines at Sale."
When the driver failed to answer, the porter raced down to the other end of the train, to the guards' van, hammering on the door, repeating what he had already shouted at the driver. Without opening the door, the guard shouted:
"This is a special train, which will be leaving any minute now."
"Well, I'm buggered if I know," said the porter, wandering back to his box at the centre of the platform. "Nobody ever tells me anything."
After helping Analisa Patterson aboard the long black train, Herbert Milton escorted her into a small room on the train.
Wow, our own private room," said Analisa.
"It's called a cabin," explained Herbert. "Normally, you only get them on famous trains like the Orient Express these days. This train must be older than I am ... and that's saying something."
"And these seats are so lush," said Analisa, bouncing up and down on the padded seat.
"Yes, not like the hard plastic-covered seats on modern trains," agreed the old man. "This train was built for people to travel in style."
"Wow, if only they didn't gas everyone with black smoke when they pulled into the stations."
"That's why you normally only see them in the countryside these days," said Herbert, sounding puzzled. "I can't imagine why this one pulled into Flinders Street."
"Don't know, don't care," said Analisa. "We've got a nine-hour trip ahead of us, so it'll be nice to travel in comfort."
"Yes, I take the Glen Hartwell train twice a month to see my kids in LePage. Usually, my back is killing me by the time I get there. It'll be nice to travel in lush comfort for a change."
"And get there with your back undamaged," said the raven-haired teen, taking her pen and notepad out of her bag again. "So tell me again, about all those chill Rockabilly artists."
"Well, there's Bill Haley, Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Wanda Jackson, Shakin' Stevens, the Stray Cats, Carl Perkins, Carl Mann, Billy Lee Riley, Malcolm Yelvington ..." started Herbert, listing over a hundred fifties rockers from memory.
"Wow, fabuloso, I'm never listening to anything else, once I get all this great stuff downloaded to my MP3 player."
Just at that moment, the long, black train startled them by starting up.
"It can't be going, Glen Hartwell already can it?" asked Analisa.
"Well, the one consistent thing about the Glen Hartwell train from Melbourne ... Is that it's never consistent."

Over at the Yellow House in Rochester Road, Merridale, at ten o'clock, everybody was yawning, getting ready for bed.
"I don't think I can keep my eyes open any longer," said Terri Scott. The Senior Sergeant of the BeauLarkin to Willamby Police Forces, Terri was a beautiful ash blonde in her mid-thirties, and was engaged to Colin.
"Me too, babe," said Colin Klein, a tall, redheaded Englishman. A former London crime reporter, he now worked as a constable for the Glen Hartwell Police Department.
"Ah, quit the pretence," said Sheila Bennett, at thirty-six, Terri's second in command. Sheila was a Goth chick with orange-and-black striped hair. "We all know why you're really both going upstairs."
"Yeah," said Tommy Turner, a short, fat, blonde retiree. "Just throw her across your shoulder, shout 'It's bonking time!' and carry her upstairs."
"I really don't know who is the cruder out of Tommy and Sheila," said Natasha Lipzing, a seventy-one-year-old who had spent more than half of her life at the boarding house.
"It's touch and go," said Freddy Kingston, a tall, stout, balding retiree, "but I think I'd vote for Tommy."
"Me too," agreed Leo Laxman, a black Jamaican by birth, who now worked as a nurse at the Glen Hartwell and Daley Community Hospital.
"Well, frankly, I'm shocked at you, Sheila," said Deidre Morton, whose obsession with the colour yellow had led to her house being nicknamed the Yellow House. "I mean, we expect it from Tommy ... He doesn't know any better! But I like to think better of you."
"Sorry, Mrs. M.," said Sheila contritely.
"What do you mean I don't know any better?" demanded Tommy.

The long black train was less than a kilometre outside Sale when the guard opened the door and stepped into the compartment occupied by Analisa Patterson and Herbert Milton. Young and old were both looked sound asleep.
Until you looked closer and saw how dry, almost mummified their flesh looked, as though every drop of fluid had been suck out of their lifeless corpses. All up and down the train, fifty or so people were in the mummified state, all wrinkled, and dry with strangely grey, flakey flesh, as though the long black train was somehow alive and sucked the fluids from their bodies to survive.
With the train going at nearly a hundred kilometres an hour, the guard opened the outside doors on each side of the carriage and then waited until a strong wind blew into the compartment and Analisa and Herbert's corpses blew away, as though they had been transformed into grains of sand.
The conductor then picked up her suitcase and tossed it outside the train, not noticing that Analisa and Herbert's MP3 players had been left behind on the seats. He tossed Herbert Milton's suitcase just as they entered Sale Station, Platform 3. The large, leatherette case bounced upon the platform, crashed into the chain link fence, and fell open, scattering all of his clothing upon the platform.
"Two down, fifty to go," said the conductor, before starting back up toward the engine of the train.
From time to time, he stopped to open doors to allow the dehydrated corpses to blow away in the wind, then he threw their suitcases out the door. Occasionally missing people's spectacles, watches, or other trinkets, like the vanished people in Stephen King's great novella, The Langoliers.

At Glen Hartwell Railway Station in Theobald Street, half a dozen derelicts slept upon the brown wooden benches in the outside waiting area, nestled in mounds of newspapers instead of blankets in the hope of keeping out the July Winter cold.
"Gawd, it's a cold night," said Maude MacAbbey, a short, fat, sixty-something brunette.
"It's not so bad," said Old Joe McGish, a tall, stooped, grey-haired octogenarian. "I can remember the icy cold winters we used to get in Melbourne ... before global warming started and winters started to be less frigid."
"Don't mention frigid," complained Lester Morgan, a fifty-five-year-old man, balding man. "It's due to a frigid wife that I'm living rough. I divorced the cold bitch and she got everything, leaving me penniless."
"Ah, bloody women," said Bertha Bollard, a short, anorexic, purple-rinsed old lady. 'Bloody women' was one of her favourite expressions, despite being a woman herself, possibly because her deceased husband had used the term against her incessantly throughout their forty-five-year marriage.
"Yeah, you're not wrong," agreed Margery Dors, a tall, thickset, sixty-something brunette. She had learnt years ago that it was best to agree with whatever Bertha said when she started rambling.
"Yeah, bloody women," said Virgil Vernon, a seventy-year-old stick-thin man, who had nothing against women, but liked to tease up Margery, who he considered a 'bimbo feminist'.
"Hmmm," muttered Margery, deciding to let it go this time. But she thought: Bertha has an excuse, being senile, but Virgil is just a bastard!
They were still debating the weather in July 2025, compared to July 1985, when suddenly the waiting room and the station were blanketed in thick, cloying black smoke.
"What the firk?" asked Maude, between coughing, as a song started to play through the smoke:
"Well, that long black train
"Yeah, rollin' down that track
"Yeah, long black train
"Please carry me back
"Well, I left my baby
"So very long ago

"Yeah, gotta roll on long train
"Roll on long train
"Yeah, roll on long train
"Roll on long-long train
"Roll on train
"Carry me back home

"Well, that long black train
"Is a-puffin' smoke I know
"Yeah, that long black train
"Is a-puffin' smoke I know
"It's a burnin' rail
"Carry me back home

"Yeah, that long black train
"Is rollin' down that track
"Yeah, long black train
"Please carry me back
"Well, I left my baby
"So very long ago."
When the smoke finally cleared away and the music stopped, they found themselves indeed looking at a long black train still puffing out noxious black smoke as it waited on the tracks.
Looking at his broken watch on his left arm, Virgil Vernon said, "Melbourne train's early ... by about five hours."
"Must have run express from Sale, when they changed to the wood burner," volunteered Maude MacAbbey.
"It's a massive engine," said Old Joe McGish, who fancied himself as a bit of a train aficionado, although he could barely tell a diesel locomotive from an electric.
"Yeah, they usually send a tiny thing, barely any bigger than the Poofy Billy," said Lester Morgan, wrongly thinking he was being funny.
"All aboard, who's coming aboard?" cried the conductor.
"It's the bloody Queen Anne," said Bertha Bollard. When did we move to the docklands? I thought we were at a train station?"
"We are, Bertha," said Margery.
"Then how come the bloody Queen Anne is here?"
"They made a special trip, just to pick up you," teased Lester.
"Well, I'd better get aboard then," said Bertha.
Climbing with difficulty to her feet, she staggered across to the train, almost falling down the gap between the platform and the train, until the conductor grabbed her arm and helped her aboard the train.
"Should we go after her?" asked Maude.
"Might as well, it has to be warmer than out here," said Old Joe.
"Might as well have a free ride," said Margery.
"Until they kick us out at Sale," said Lester, as the five derelicts staggered to their feet to start after Bertha Bollard.
"Still, it has to be warmer at Sale than at Glen Hartwell," said Maude.
Inside the train, they followed the conductor, who was gently leading Bertha into a luxuriously outfitted cabin, complete with curtains and thick, soft seats, almost as comfortable as beds.
"Enjoy your stay, ladies and gentlemen," said the conductor, bowing to them before wandering away, smirking at them behind their backs.
"Charmed, I'm sure," said Maude.
Seeing the others, Bertha said, "Look at the great cabin we got on the Queen Anne. The seats are padded like we were royalty or something."
"What else would you expect on the Queen Anne?" teased Lester.
"Oh, leave her alone," said Margery.

When the new station master, a lanky redheaded youth straight out of high school, Francis 'Frankie' Whittaker, arrived at Theobald Street at eight o'clock that morning, he was astonished to see the Melbourne train already waiting at the platform. Looking at his watch, he said:
"It's an hour early, what's going on? It's usually up to an hour late!"
The earliest he could ever remember the train arriving was at two minutes to nine, but that was before his predecessor had died of a cardiac arrest.
Walking across to the engine, he shouted up, "What's going on, man, you're an hour early? You're supposed to be late, never early."
After receiving no reply, he walked across to open the ticketing booth, which was no longer needed since inside and outside of the station, there were Myki-Mowz card vending machines.
Inside the small booth, he turned on the heater, not bothering to lift the shutters for fear of letting the cold in, then unlocked his private drawer and took out a large Toblerone chocolate bar to have for breakfast, along with a mug of hot chocolate he had brought from home in a thermos flask.
Over the next seventy minutes or so, people gradually filtered into the station, then, delighted to see the train already waiting for them, climbed aboard, expecting to be taken to Sale or on to Melbourne. Unaware that they were boarding the express train to Hell!
As the train started up, exactly at nine o'clock, music started blaring out of the station's speakers:
"Well, that long black train
"Yeah, rollin' down that track
"Yeah, long black train
"Please carry me back
"Well, I left my baby
"So very long ago

"Yeah, gotta roll on long train
"Roll on long train
"Yeah, roll on long train
"Roll on long-long train
"Roll on train
"Carry me back home

"Well, that long black train
"Is a-puffin' smoke I know
"Yeah, that long black train
"Is a-puffin' smoke I know
"It's a burnin' rail
"Carry me back home

"Yeah, that long black train
"Is rollin' down that track
"Yeah, long black train
"Please carry me back
"Well, I left my baby
"So very long ago."
"Hey, who put a CD on?" asked Frankie, barely noticing that instead of heading back to Melbourne, the long black train has raced forward again, heading toward Willamby, nearly an hour's ride away, travelling at forty kilometres an hour. However, the train was travelling at nearly a hundred kilometres an hour, as they roared past Wilhelmina, Lenoak, LePage, Merridale, Pettiwood, Upton, Briarwood Stations, then onto Willamby Station less than a half an hour later.
"It's happening again!" shouted the station master, referring to when a train had recently rammed through the buffer past the station and spun off the tracks.
At his words, twenty or so terrified people raced screaming out of the station, into the car park, hoping to escape in their cars in time. However, when the long black train reached the train buffer, it passed straight through the wooden buffer, as though either the train or the buffer had no physical presence.
Then, racing out into the sweet-smelling forest of pine, wattle, and eucalyptus trees, doing a wide circle, passing straight through dozens of trees without harming the trees, or the train, until it had turned around to race straight back through the train buffer, then into, then through Willamby Station, roaring back toward Glen Hartwell Station, whooshing through without stopping again.
"What the Hell was that?" asked Frankie as the long black train whooshed through the one-platform station. He made it out to the platform just in time to see the train roaring toward the next station, Daley.
Where the nine o'clock train from Melbourne, as usual, more than forty minutes or more late, was just steaming out, heading toward Glen Hartwell.
"Well, that long black train
"Yeah, rollin' down that track
"Yeah, long black train
"Please carry me back
"Well, I left my baby
"So very long ago

"Yeah, gotta roll on long train
"Roll on long train
"Yeah, roll on long train
"Roll on long-long train
"Roll on train
"Carry me back home," started blaring out of the station speakers again.
Covering his ears with his hands, Frankie asked, "What is that awful noise?"

Over at Daley at the Railway Station in Dorcon Street, the nine o'clock train from Melbourne, running barely forty-five minutes late, was steaming toward Glen Hartwell when the driver noticed the long black train roaring toward them, black smoke billowing behind it, even though there was no wind.
"Holy shit!" thought the tall, thickset man, Tosca.
He pulled the emergency brake to stop the train; however, there was no siding for the train to sneak to, to escape the onrushing black train. Hoping to scare people into abandoning the train, the driver started furiously pulling upon the whistle, tooting for all he was worth.
Finally, when the long black train was less than ten metres away, Tosca lost his nerve and leapt from the stationary train, fully expecting the collision to send one, if not both, of the steam trains rolling over on top of him.
Instead, the long black train passed straight through the stationary train, sucking the life fluids out of most of the people from Melbourne, but not physically touching the stationary train.
Covering his head with his hands, as though that would protect him if a steam train suddenly rolled his way, Tosca did not see the black train pass through the Melbourne train. But after five minutes or so, he realised that something strange had happened.
"What the fuck?" asked Tosca, sitting up in the ditch that he had landed it.
Along with twenty-five or so other survivors, Tosca looked back to where the long black train was steaming away toward Daley, Perry, Harpertown, Bromby, BeauLarkin, then onto Sales, then finally toward Melbourne, three hundred kilometres away from Glen Hartwell.
"Shit, it must be going a hundred Kays an hour," said a tall, raven-haired business woman, Jeanette Bayly climbing back toward Tosca's train.
"That's supposed to be a nine-hour trip," said Lois Pettyjohn, a tall, leggy, thirty-nine-year-old brunette. "But the way it's going, it'll be at Flinders Street by one PM at the latest."
"If it doesn't take off and fly all the way to Sydney instead," said Hyacinth Hylton, a plump, fifty(ish) bottle-blonde.
"Okay, everybody back on the train," ordered Tosca, struggling to walk up the ditch to reach the engine.
"How?" demanded Jeanette. "The train's too bloody high, without being at the station."
Sighing with frustration, Tosca lumbered down to the Guard's van to borrow a three-rung wooden ladder to help everybody aboard the train again. He then lifted the wooden step ladder into the train, before starting back to the engine.
Only to find that he then struggled to climb into the engine. Gotta lay off those Neenish Tarts after breakfast! Tosca thought. They're delish, but way, way too fattening.
As the train jerked to a start, Jeanette, Lois, and Hyacinth started down the thin aisle to their seats. Then, seeing a tall woman slumped forward in her seat, Hyacinth walked over and asked:
"Are you all right?"
She patted the woman on the shoulders, and with a whoosh, the woman burst apart, scattering minute sand-sized flesh fragments across the floor, along with her now empty clothes.
As the steam train really took off, half a dozen other passengers who had stayed aboard when the long black train passed through them also fell to dust, until Jeanette Bayly, Lois Pettyjohn, and Hyacinth Hylton were all screaming hysterically, before Hyacinth thought to pull the emergency brake to stop the train. In the process, jerking the steam train to a halt, so that twenty-plus other passengers also fell to dust, causing other survivors to scream and/or faint.
"All right, who the Hell pulled the emergency brake!" demanded Tosca, having had to get the step ladder from the guard's van to climb up into the carriage.
By way of an answer, Hyacinth, Lois, and Jeanette all screamed out, silently pointing to the piles of dust flakes, which had been human beings.
"Holy shit," said Tosca, seeing the empty clothing awash with dried flakes of human flesh.

Forty minutes later, Terri, Colin, Sheila, Alice Walker, and Wendy Pearson were taking the statements of the shocked survivors. Then they climbed aboard to take pictures of the piles of grey flakes, before letting Tilly Lombstrom and the medics collect up the flakes to take to the hospital for testing.
"If the passengers can be believed," said Alice Walker, a forty-seven-year-old brunette. An amateur weight-lifter and gym mate of Sheila, "those are the remains of fellow passengers."
"Who just fell apart when tapped on the shoulder," said Wendy Pearson, a forty-six-year-old Honey blonde who looked more like a beauty queen than a cop.
"Or disintegrated from the impact of the train suddenly stopping or starting," added Sheila Bennett.
"So, what's the verdict, Tils?" asked Terri Scott.
"Well ... they could be skin flakes," admitted Tilly, a tall, attractive, fifty-something surgeon at the Glen Hartwell Hospital. "But if so, something has dehydrated them to an almost impossible degree."
"Hence them falling apart when touched or jerked?" asked Colin Klein.
"Well ... yes," conceded the brunette, reluctant to commit herself.
"But, don't quote you, right?" teased Sheila.
"No, definitely not!"

After the long black train passed through the Melbourne Train, the conductor slowly walked from carriage to carriage, opening doors to allow the flakey remains of Bertha Bollard, Margery Dors, Jeanette Bayly, Lois Pettyjohn, Hyacinth Hylton and the others to blow out beside the train tracks, along with the now empty clothing. Plus, he took the time to toss out any luggage that had been carried aboard.
Normally, it took hours for a steam train to reach Sale Railway Station; however, the black train travelling at dangerous speeds reached it in less than an hour, then stopped, and the doors were thrown open for passengers.
"Hey, Doofus!" the station master called up toward the engine. "You're supposed to disconnect to take the steam engine to a siding to replace it with an electrical engine. Steam engines aren't allowed past Sale."
Receiving no reply, the man climbed up upon the engine, slid the door open and stepped inside. To find the cabin empty.
"What the Hell?" asked the station master as the door slid closed behind him.
He grabbed the door and attempted to slide it open, but was still struggling with it when the train took off again.
"Wow, look at these plush seats," said Phyllis Roundtree, a tall brunette teenager, bouncing up and down on them.
"Gentle on the bum," said her sister, Agnetha, also bouncing up and down.
"We were lucky to get a train so soon," said their Aunt Beatty. "I thought we'd have to wait another ninety minutes at least."
"And lucky to get such soft seats," said Phyllis.
"They won't be if you two keep bouncing up and down on them with your big bubble butts," teased Agnetha.
"Bubble-butts!" cried both girls.
"How dare you, Aunty?" asked Agnetha. "Phyl might have a huge bubble-butt, but not me."
"Nah-aah," said Phyllis, "Aggie might have a bubble-butt, but not me!"
"Nah-aah," mimicked Agnetha, and soon the two teens were 'nah-aahing' at each other repeatedly.
"Girls, settle down!" warned Aunt Beatty, her last lucid thought, before the long black train started to draw the nourishment out of herm dehydrating her, until, along with everybody else upon the train, she turned into a pile of lifeless skin flakes, only vaguely resembling a human being.
As the train supped from the human food, over the intercom system, music started blaring out:
"Well, that long black train
"Yeah, rollin' down that track
"Yeah, long black train
"Please carry me back
"Well, I left my baby
"So very long ago

"Yeah, gotta roll on long train
"Roll on long train
"Yeah, roll on long train
"Roll on long-long train
"Roll on train
"Carry me back home

"Well, that long black train
"Is a-puffin' smoke I know
"Yeah, that long black train
"Is a-puffin' smoke I know
"It's a burnin' rail
"Carry me back home

"Yeah, that long black train
"Is rollin' down that track
"Yeah, long black train
"Please carry me back
"Well, I left my baby
"So very long ago."

A couple of hours later, Colin Klein, Sheila Bennett, Terri Scott, Alice Walker, and Wendy Pearson were all standing around freezing in the morgue in the basement of the Glen Hartwell and Daley Community Hospital. The cops were watching on as Tilly Lombstrom, Jesus Costello, and Jerry 'Elvis' Green were examining the vast piles of grey dust that had been collected from the steam train.
"So, what's the verdict, Docs?" asked Terri, her hands shoved tightly into her police overcoat pockets against the cold.
"Well, they're definitely dehydrated human skin cells," committed Jesus (pronounced Hee-Zeus), a tall fifty-something man, the chief surgeon and administrator of the hospital.
"But you would usually only find this amount of dehydration on bodies which have been mummified for thousands of years," said Elvis Green. Nicknamed due to his long black sideburns.
"And if the spectators can be believed, this happened in a minute or less," finished Tilly.
"When, if you can believe the spectators, the long black train passed straight through the Melbourne to Glen Hartwell train, without physically touching it," said Colin Klein.
"Yes ... we were all hoping you wouldn't bring that up," said Jesus.
"So what are we dealing with here," asked Sheila, "a vampiric ghost train, which sucks all the fluids out of its passengers, leaving them lifeless flakes?"
She started laughing, then stopped when she realised nobody else was laughing.
"Seriously, you don't really believe that, do you?" asked the Goth chick.
"Well ... " said Tilly, reluctant to commit herself.
"We won't say yes ... but we won't say no," said Jesus.
"So, what? It's an indefinite maybe?" asked Sheila Bennett.

The long black train moved on toward Melbourne, with the conductor blowing out the remains and throwing out the clothes of the new passengers from Sale. Then he walked through to the engine to dispose of the flaky remains of the station master from Sale.
Realising that they were heading back toward Flinders Street Station for some more food for the train, the conductor thought: Will it never end? But of course, he knew the answer, he had been keeping himself alive for a hundred and forty years now, helping to feed the hungry train as it somehow travelled from continent to continent; from the Old West, to the U.K., to Siberia, then Mongolia, France, Germany, Asia Minor, Africa, Guadalajara, now from Melbourne to Glen Hartwell, via Sale, and back again. Eventually, it would move on to New South Wales, then Queensland, then maybe to the Indian sub-continent. And as long as the conductor assisted the vampiric train, it would allow him to stay alive.
As though reading his thoughts, the train started blaring its theme song again over the intercom system:
"Well, that long black train
"Yeah, rollin' down that track
"Yeah, long black train
"Please carry me back
"Well, I left my baby
"So very long ago

"Yeah, gotta roll on long train
"Roll on long train
"Yeah, roll on long train
"Roll on long-long train
"Roll on train
"Carry me back home

"Well, that long black train
"Is a-puffin' smoke I know
"Yeah, that long black train
"Is a-puffin' smoke I know
"It's a burnin' rail
"Carry me back home

"Yeah, that long black train
"Is rollin' down that track
"Yeah, long black train
"Please carry me back
"Well, I left my baby
"So very long ago."
"So very long ago!" agreed the conductor, hurriedly leaving the engine to return to the passenger compartments.

A handful of passengers were already waiting for the Glen Hartwell train, at Platform 19 at Flinders Street Station when the long black train puffed its way into the station, still belching out its noxious black smoke.
"What the Hell is going on here?" demanded the elderly porter, brushing away the black smoke with his hand. Shouting up to the driver, "You were two hours early yesterday, and now you're three hours early today. And as I told you yesterday, you're not supposed to have steam in Melbourne. You're supposed to use electricity till you change engines at Sale. Did you forget to do that on the way back from Sale? They must be getting as daft as you, if they didn't bother to remind you."
Again, the driver failed to answer, so the elderly porter risked falling by pulling him up to the engine. he hammered upon the door, shouting:
"Hey, dickhead!"
Then, upon getting no reply, he tried pulling the door open. When it refused to budge, he took a large ring, with seemingly hundreds of different-sized keys upon it, from his coat pocket. He examined the lock carefully, then started trying the keys one after another, until on the twenty-third attempt he managed to unlock the door. Sliding it open, he stepped into the cabin and said:
"Hey Dickhead, whatcha...?"
He stopped to stare at the empty cabin!
How could it drive itself? he wondered. Must be one of those new-fangled computer-controlled trains, he thought. But after examining it carefully, he decided: Nope, that's not it!
Then the cabin door slid closed and locked, and the long black train started to filter the life fluids out of him, as the intercom started blaring:
"Well, that long black train
"Yeah, rollin' down that track
"Yeah, long black train
"Please carry me back
"Well, I left my baby
"So very long ago

"Yeah, gotta roll on long train
"Roll on long train
"Yeah, roll on long train
"Roll on long-long train
"Roll on train
"Carry me back home

"Well, that long black train
"Is a-puffin' smoke I know
"Yeah, that long black train
"Is a-puffin' smoke I know
"It's a burnin' rail
"Carry me back home

"Yeah, that long black train
"Is rollin' down that track
"Yeah, long black train
"Please carry me back
"Well, I left my baby
"So very long ago."
Out on the platform, the dozen or so passengers gladly climbed aboard the long black train, grateful to get out of the cold and onto the comfortable, plush, padded seats.
"Wow, this must be how Queen Victoria used to travel in the 1880s," said nineteen-year-old Paulina Cowan, an attractive brunette in her gap year.
"Well, the train certainly looks old enough for Queen Vicki to have travelled in it," said her older brother, Arnold, also a brunette. "When did she die, in early 1nineteen hundred?"
"Ha-ha, it is to laugh," said Paulina. "Why can't you just enjoy the lush comfort, without belittling everything?"
"Sorry, Sis, I must have left my rose-coloured glasses over at John Farnham's house, the last time I visited."
"As if John Farnham would allow a dweeb like you into his house!"
"Ha-ha, it is to laugh," Arnold quoted back at her.
The two young adults were pulling faces at each other and sticking out their tongues when more and more passengers started to board the train.
"Hopefully, we won't have to wait another two and a half hours before we leave Flinders Street," said a tall, busty redhead of around thirty-five.
"I told you we were leaving Sunshine too early," replied her husband, Marcus, a tall, lanky, dark-haired forty-something man.
"But don't we have to get here hours early for long-distance trips?' asked the redhead, Marion.
"No, honey, that's for overseas flights, not train rides. Hopefully, this train won't be taking flight."
Ha-ha, it is to laugh! Arnold thought.

"So what's our next move to stop this long black train?" asked Sheila Bennett. She stop, cocked her head as though hearing voices no one else could hear, then added, "If I remember rightly, Franklin Stewart wrote a song called 'That Long Black Train,' which he and his brothers recorded in the 1950s."
"Trust Sheils to know of every unimportant rockabilly song ever recorded," teased Colin Klein.
"Unimportant, constable, how dare you?" demanded Sheila, before singing:
"Well, that long black train
"Yeah, rollin' down that track
"Yeah, long black train
"Please carry me back
"Well, I left my baby
"So very long ago

"Yeah, gotta roll on long train
"Roll on long train
"Yeah, roll on long train
"Roll on long-long train
"Roll on train
"Carry me back home

"Well, that long black train
"Is a-puffin' smoke I know
"Yeah, that long black train
"Is a-puffin' smoke I know
"It's a burnin' rail
"Carry me back home

"Yeah, that long black train
"Is rollin' down that track
"Yeah, long black train
"Please carry me back
"Well, I left my baby
"So very long ago."

At the stroke of ten o'clock, the long black train pulled out of Platform 19 at Flinders Street Station, and over the intercom, Franklin Stewart started singing:
"Well, that long black train
"Yeah, rollin' down that track
"Yeah, long black train
"Please carry me back
"Well, I left my baby
"So very long ago

"Yeah, gotta roll on long train
"Roll on long train
"Yeah, roll on long train
"Roll on long-long train
"Roll on train
"Carry me back home

"Well, that long black train
"Is a-puffin' smoke I know
"Yeah, that long black train
"Is a-puffin' smoke I know
"It's a burnin' rail
"Carry me back home

"Yeah, that long black train
"Is rollin' down that track
"Yeah, long black train
"Please carry me back
"Well, I left my baby
"So very long ago."
"That's quite catchy," said the busty redhead, Marion. Her last rational thought, before the long black train started sucking the life essence out of her. To leave her as a dehydrated pile of skin flakes.
So very long ago! thought the conductor again, as he walked down the train again, disposing of the flaky piles that had been passengers, after the train had sucked the vital fluids out of them.

"Maybe, we should check out our witchy friend, Magnolia McCready, again?" asked Colin Klein, referring to a local Wiccan who occasionally helped them out, for payment, since 'Wiccans gotta live too,' as she liked to say.
"Didn't Stephen King have a story about a haunted computer that made whatever you typed come true?" asked Alice Walker.
"He probably still has," teased Wendy Pearson.
"Ha-ha, it is to laugh," said Alice.
"Then there was a story about a computer that ate people, if I remember rightly," said Wendy.
"And how do carnivorous or magic computers help us in dealing with a vampiric train?" asked Terri Scott.
"Well ...?" began Alice.
"Maybe it's time to call on God again," suggested Sheila.
"Sheils, have you suddenly found religion ... belatedly," teased Colin.
"What do you mean? I've always been a good Protestant."
"Well, don't tell Father Montague that, if you were suggesting we ask for his help," teased Terri. "He still asks me every Sunday why you and Colin never come to chapel with me."
"Uh-oh!" said Colin and Sheila together.
"At our wedding, Colin will have to convert to Catholicism anyway."
"How come?" asked the redheaded man.
"Because, as far as the Pope is concerned, when you marry a Catholic, you become a Catholic. Whether you like it or not."
"Uh-oh, I may have to reconsider this whole marriage thing," teased Colin.
"What?" demanded Terri, glaring at her intended, until Colin gave it away by laughing.


THE END
© Copyright 2025 Philip Roberts
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia