The Thing on the Shore Read Online Free PDF Page A

catch him there and guess at his motivation. He didn’t want anybody thinking that he was some sort of pervert. So he contented himself with lying there on his side just for a short while, while trying to enjoy the sensation. Normally he did. Normally it inspired a sense of belonging that he found difficult to explain: a sense of companionship emanating from the ground itself. This time, though, there was a spiky violence to the oscillations that was entirely unpleasant. It was almost like being run over by a ghost train, he thought.
It is almost like there is a ghost train here with me.
    Slightly unnerved, he got up after a moment and returned to the western side of the tracks, closed the second gate of the level crossing and ascended the steps to his hut. The train would still be passing through Ravenglass, so he had some time yet. He opened the doorand did twenty pull-ups on the top edge of the doorframe. As he lowered himself the last time, he saw the light of the train had now appeared at the end of the straight. “Well done, Bony,” he said.
    It was getting dark now. Up above, the sky was a purplish black with a couple of big bright stars, but over the sea, to the west, it was still a pale blue. In that direction there lay nothing but fields and sand dunes and then the beach and the sea, with a few sheep scattered over both grassland and dunes.
    Bony watched the train get steadily nearer. The Cumbrian coastal line was not a busy route, and the trains running up and down it were old and slow, so, as ever, the thing seemed to be taking an age to arrive. Being so small, Drigg was a request-only stop, so Bony didn’t know if this train would even stop. For some reason he hoped it wouldn’t. He chewed the fingernails of his left hand absentmindedly, running the right hand over his shorn skull. Something about this particular train was making him feel sick; he had known there was something wrong with it from the vibrations. It was moving with an agonizing sluggishness, and he wanted it to be gone. He just wanted the train to have passed through, so he could open up the level crossing and then get back to his pull-ups, his press-ups, his
National Geographic
magazine.
    He tapped his foot frantically, noticing that it had got dark very quickly. His hut looked on to the track at such an angle that he could now see all the train’s lit-up windows, appearing as orange squares with roundecorners. He turned away then, because he didn’t want to see inside. Instead, he picked up the telephone and rang the conductor of the approaching locomotive.
    â€œHello?” said the conductor in response.
    â€œAll right,” said Bony. “It’s Bony.”
    â€œAll right, marra,” said the conductor.
    â€œYou stopping?”
    â€œNo, not tonight,” said the conductor. “Gotta go slow, though. Some bugger’s reported a cow on t’line just past Seascale.”
    â€œOh, right.”
    â€œYou OK?”
    â€œYeah, good. Thanks.”
    Bony hung up. A cow on the line? He should have received a call about that. They’d probably tried to call him while he’d been speaking to his mother. He kept telling her: “Don’t call me at work. It’s very important that the phone line is always kept free. It’s very important. Don’t call me at work.” But she didn’t seem to understand. He looked back out of the window: the train had slowed to a crawl. It was only fair, of course; you didn’t have to be going that fast to burst a cow. It was typical, though. The one and only time a train feels somehow sinister, and a fucking cow appears, as if by magic, to slow it down.
    Bony continued gazing out of the window and noticed the last of the light had drained away during that brief phone call. And there, right opposite him, but a little bit lower, was a train window, through which a passenger stared up at him. All sound slowly stopped.
    Looking slightly too