The bitter wind was a cadaver hand, pressing blue faces as television controls. It froze eyes of every hue, forming icy cataracts. Between handsome cascades of snow and hail, it distinguished not. Any weapon, it seemed, would do. Slew! Slew! The gale whipped each to sting at the most callous of slants. Only a fool would beg for mercy instead of seeking castle's respite.
Simon picked his way over the rocky path, both his ankles pulsing with pain. The scree ribbon twisted over hills that had not borne grain for generations. All it gave was dust to any wind cruel enough to scream. His eyes were set on the horizon, on a lonesome tree, its sparse leaves becoming a mid-summer dandruff. He trudged, his footsteps with neither accompaniment of birdsong nor floral scent.
A smack of shutters rents the air, scattering shrapnel as mouldy seeds. The space where a door should be is three sides of blistered paint to frame the dank and rotting dark. Another season and all that’ll remain is an obstinance of once loved walls. As my hand makes contact with the bricks, a warmth sings loud and clear. For this place has taken in the summer sun as if it were one last prayer. Who will come? Will they come? For winter’s hand is near.
The smell of the drains was a Gollum hand, reaching up my nose to rattle my brain. It was as if its fingertips had made craters in my grey-matter, bruising it for no other reason than a cold and petty thrill. How could it? Foul though was, it’s just a stink. Somewhere, behind the closed and double-locked doors of my memories, a darkness stirred. PTSD erased my memories, but whatever happened, it stank this same way.
Icy rails whiplashed to the twilight ground, and from them grew shards of ice that sat up as cave-less stalagmites. The heavens lowered, stars erased, so low sat coal-charred clouds. The wind carried not the nightingale, yet a discord of insomniac crows born of vampire’s breath. The trees did crumble to ash, yet no fire did we see. No scent of burning did come. Then to the rails a ghost train was born, not fashioned in the usual way. It was scratch-slashed into the ether with jagged gouges of rough form. Scritch. Scratch. Slice. No Christmas train was this. No carriages of mirth would such a beast ever bring. No! No! This was the nightmare train. This was the rattler that bore dread’s very name.
Upon shoreline slumbered clouds too sleepy to make their way into the sky. The tide was their lullaby with its winged karaoke-choir. Squawk. Ah-ah! Ah ah! Squawk! Their never changing sea shanty did ring out. Then, as a timid drummer to this coastal band, came the clickety clack of the Via Rail. It would be several long breaths before its lights could battle the fog, yet wait, wait, wait… With each passing moment timidness gave way to bold strikes and the headlamps pieced the white-out with ease. Today was the day they’d booked it to stop here, at the GPS coordinates for, “Where the heck is that?” It’s a good name for an almost hamlet. Maybe we’ll call it that. And so the behemoth of steel slowed to an easy jog before coming to a stop.” All aboard! All aboard!” the train’s master did shout.